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1. self-mythology; ruin
I knew to tilt the vinyl just enough to warp the sound
but not how to dip my face under water
to see the boy in me drowning.
when the bible said jesus walked on water
it meant every one of us stands
with an ocean underfoot.
most of us sink half our soul to seabeds.
in my coming-of-age
I tethered my boyhood to a sunken ship.
boy soul, the son I could’ve been.
at nineteen young luxx was all fur coats and lingerie
bowie grinning off the record player,
kid-come-woman still learning how to swim
preoccupied with being the opposite of men.
shaved bare and shitless, tits up and clothes strewn across the room
ain’t no costume colder than that of the young woman.
2. Carl Jung; analysis
i've seen you, big man, locking
horns as if the world were closing
in. a single seed in both fists
show me your overwatered harvest,
lady soul perspiring through your skin
(she always escapes, btw
an underwater with wings).
with a record skipping on the deck,
you press yourself into a woman
you just met, lamplight pouring shadows
round the room.
Jung named an animated foreign body
in the ocean of each of us,
saw men clawing back towards the womb
warned us if we neglect our opposite
sex- soul could lead to death.
gender. the oldest weapon against ourself.
3. Amina Coming; disorder
bowie knew
when the tides come
her scent will intoxicate you
rising from drain holes
open windows
air vents blowing smoke
of thin cigarettes
you will drown in her
grinning too / unsure of why you’re grinning too.
big man, the abyss is always watching you.
look at us:
dusting eternity off our knees
rinsing shadows down plug holes
wiping soul off reading glasses,
we ain't clean right through.
she will be your living end.
my boy soul became suspended
beneath the record player needle,
abandoned song
humming haunt into my nudity.
water is how we measure fright.
if I had been all soil and winged,
I could've pretended I couldn't hear him
echoing through the emptiness,
chasing me to hospital beds.
big man, you were in the bed beside me
no beetle cars, or musky scents.
we both swallowed too much sea.
you looked a lot like a part of me.
4. Amina Fought and Won; spiritual development
this small blue we shiver on
is a costume party
but at 4am when the tides come in
we’re tender, bare faced,
clothes strewn across the floor.
that breadcrumb trail of surrender.
naked, walking round the room
extractor fan blowing through a soul
you can’t be told
has always been chasing after you.
my boy soul was not my living end
I lay that belief on you.
the lady of your soul grins, laughing;
she will change your point of view
don’t be afraid of the shadows who seduce you.
flooding into this room
that grinning, half-sung, still singing
soul, will come will go.
I say: Please… can I join you for a few moments in this sort of conjuring -I’m a fan?
He says: Sure. I’ve taken the pulse , I’ve taken the temperature here
in the afterlife, I’ve run so far away from myself and your hot bodies
I’ve parted the willow trees hair pained myself in the water
I’ve studied the breathing moss
sampled some of the delights of the underworld
all its potions and charms their versions of snails
and the true earthworms and the hollyhocks and I’ve
tamed my ear brought it down so close to hunt down
the music and it’s all so inhalable and bright and all it’s all so so so
And I say : Tell me more, those are totemic lines…
And he says: You poets. You poets are all the same…
So much for your stomach-churning ambiguity
and your personas and sad fishing performances
here the poets take off their putrid costumes
this is a party with a commitment to the
afterwards where the errant rules, where the delinquent poets
are outed and placed in the middle of the treeless field
naked as dusk -this is the afterlife after party
of course I’m not going hand it to you on
a steel platter in all straight lines.
And then he says:
I’m going be wearing
my best version disguise painted
in madder root -like those quick footed clowns
all oozy like the mushrooms we picked
and I’ll tell you something else
I find new words here, language
for the word when you ready yourself
for a photograph tilting your head right back
just so and a new word for the moon snug in its pocket
embalmed and drunk in its bright yellow liquor
I say: ok tell me about lyrical beauty again
I say if feeling is first then can you tell me how it is for you
bring me out poem if you can..
And he laughs says: all the sound engineers have gone home but
Ok ….
I’ll attempt something in this dharmic frame
In the blind moments of this insane
Uncoupling from the breathing world
It kind of feels pure and pellucid as pain
And yet writers reign
In full rhyme
And I say-thank-you.
Thank you,
Aladdin Sane
And.. he goes quiet and says:
It was brave of me right to try on
the other parts myself right
all earthy and sweat and
so blurry and the audience there
bright or brittling like icicles
caught in the mouth of a cave?
That’s the version of a life I’m re-Sampling ,
it’s so beautiful and insane, the fire ants in their fedoras
travelling along the delicious veins
of the flowers …what a fucking party.
Then he says:
You poets are all the same
wielding your knives in the rafters
practicing your moves
but have you truly watched that man,
there in the shadows
are you watching him cut out his heart
not content for the music to resolve itself
sympathetically ..syntactically-unfolding -long cord of breath
watch that man,
feed him the question to the answer
we knew all along
when the song begins to sting you have to stop.
I move my lips without really even realising I am doing it
so there is something of him in the red of my mouth, a
vowel or hoo molten and coating. The voiceless ‘h’, exhalation,
reoccurs silently in my mind as if he were breathing over my
tongue. Hunky fusion machine.
Interconnectedness –
his cupid’s bow arching over mine, non-local particles
reacting, orbicularis oris phasing in, out, orbiting – is a kind of
physics. Interdimensional kiss folding in on itself like a star.
Supermassive neutron collapsing in hot gloss bomb colours.
Blood rich lyricism.
He’s been on my mind – live in Hammersmith 1973
pulsating in a cut-off unitard. His limbs are nebula-like; bars of
gaseous red under the gel. Blowing kisses, I catch one fifty
years on. This is for me, he says. By which he means this is
for me, Richard.
Inflections, mantle, his sexiness form a zodiac constellation.
7, 1, 83, Small Magellanic Cloud – of flesh. A piercing through
the red-black flank. Out of my head. I’m h-h-h-high on this
ventriloquism. Erasing. The lyric I is an alien. Pink river
dolphin chirping in syntax.
Jaunty piano sharps,
occasionally pentatonic, lighting up the auditory cortex like a
comet’s tail. Like ionisation. Neon red and lit from within.
His voice, a solar radiation. The tiny bones of my ears. The
belt, the parabelt receiving direct input. Fuzzy centaur.
I cannot adequately translate my mind’s arachnid locomotion
as it reacts to his song. Hibiscus-hued nerve impulses, a
miniature and internal lightning. The redness extinguishing
ambivalence is need. My yearning. A kind of gravitylessness.
Maronite electricity grazes the Kármán Line.
I ask my friend about his song and she says, oh I don’t know –
sexual healing or something. Shards of red howlite melt down,
are recrystalised, within the furnace of his mind. Space-red
rock. Lattice system aching, rebranching, stave-like. I’m often
moved, rarely healed.
I am night. Red night. My fooling mouth deciding on need.
Him, transcendent, guiding us around and around and around.
Together is no excuses. Together is hey, hoo, h-h-h-high.
My mind smiling now. Young and ephemeral amalgamation.
We hang above the lunar occultation of Mars. Strong. Defined.
I listen to Let’s Spend the Night Together
continually for one night so do we spend the night together?
His tongue, my ear disappear into each other completely. An
event horizon. Red luminosity humming itself into me like
quasar light penetrating the singularity. Aperture finally visible.
My imagination is quantum.
I am fragmented by resonances, intention, flowing from his
mouth and the associated Brownian, red, noise. Annunciated
waves that roll like firework theory static. That will not be
stopped on flesh. Fixated glam queering. A futuristic patina
scabs the wound.
Connection to him –
persona, lick of gas giant pink darkening to red – is a ghost
particle, unphysical state. Clavicle. Accretion disk. Red
mouth. Red tongue. Retrograde motion. The red dwarf of his
body satelliting towards me. Red life. It was such a clear
invitation to have sex.