Behind my walls are my cats

And behind my cats is a peacock singing to me of my death and yours

I said to her

"In the silence of an eye, I shall smile and arise"

And see someone I used to know sleeping

In her room, in her bed, in her body

I was in paradise

I am awake in the sound of roses and a young girl's voice

We are drowning in the approaching shadows

I am dreaming and cannot hold it

I have seen

Dear Christ, the silence and the loss

We are born and fall

Dear Christ, you too are broken and lost

And hanging like a Roman standard ovеr us all

Behind the line of my skull that hidеs behind my hair and skin

I see the selfsame skull of my father

And beyond the skull of my father; the skull of my grandfather

And the skull of my great-grandfather, whom I never knew

And so on this line, and the Alpha and Omega pointed infinity

With my eye, this fire, this fly that sees everything and smiles

And comprehends nothing and dies

I see all around my head and that end

I have invented myself

I have created myself

I am just a form of dream English, words stretched with skin and fear

From my eyes in my skull

My father observes this immense and kaleidoscopic dream

By birth, I am other than this

The mosquitos rejoice in my skin

The lizard is on the ceiling above me

The shallow water pots deny the ants routes to food

There is no silence ever

The cicadas are omnipotent sound

The Kampong is dark and still

I am not what I thought I was

I am not what I seem

Most of all, I am not what I am

I thought it was the news rushing down the wires

Happy in death and fashion

Spinning yo-yo's and clacking it's jaw

Raising its eyes, mimicking dogs at play

The sun shuts down and a-raises bird-light

And in this stunted eclipse, I saw myself

Some darkness, at last, tenuously visible

Love is the sweetest thing

Al Bowlly, Jack Buchanan, sing on

Dreaming of the lamps and the beautiful ladies

Bowed lips packed with blood

The staged kisses trembling under the placid stars

The coffee taken with cream and scones under the Viennese moon

Whilst we are weighed, we are judged

And twist in this storm likes birds over sails

I have the caught the dead again

I click my eyes and there they are; Mercurial ghosts

Formed moving

So the dead do move and shout and pray and cry and suffer

And the eye click on and one

The one shut catches the dead

The clouds pass by

God hovers over us and shrieks

We don't hear the slightest crackle

Can't see the slightest smiles

We'd be blur into our death and the second great death

Whilst we chase chicks and dream of a paradise without wings or sorrow

Christ tears fall over Jerusalem

The curtains are groggy with damp

And the rails and the tracks and the tacks and the black of the bats

And the shriveled shrill lights trip and laugh over the weeds and the blossoms

And throats open, shut, and sigh

I am the moon and the sun; the rising and the setting

The first and final breaths and the product of the stars

I am some immortal and pointless dust

Two bodies lie in bed for their brief moment together in eternity

The memory holds still

We watch the fireflies kiss the night and turn their backs on the Milky Way forever

As our eyes shower sweetness upon each other

I caught a glimpse of your eyes last night in a restless dream

Awaking out of green field, blue sea stars

Your eyes arose like the specters of flowers

I turned out the light and clicked fast the door

The book fell

I had so many thoughts, so many signs

I made sense of nothing at all

This green dream was unreal

The crickets sing across deserts and plains; the lost feast

Whose shimmering teeth are marking the passing of time

The cloud falls

A bird shivers and sings, its beak stained with night pure gold

The dark is waiting

The darkness is hungry

The deep is angry

And the telephone rings on

A film screen descends and the silent movies play

Buster Keaton falls and rots, as Big Ben sings and boils on an endless swamp

The silence is treacle thick

And calls us to prayer

Paint God with your blood and fill haunted women with knives and kites

And gauges and valves

And make them weep long hymns

To gaseous and clumsy mortality whilst fish descend

Remember, remember the burning ember embedded in your chest

The soul watches TV and gorges itself on blood and popcorn

Now that's what I call decay, decline, and hard times

Hard times, very hard times, Mr. Lindsay

Hard times and winter so cruel

You have stopped my watch at the stroke of three and call for the police

But there's a time for tea and a time for expiring

And the notice to quit is in the post

And you should know

Your little cow and calf is gonna die

I was awake, dreaming of new dystopias to run to and hide within

And new faces to wear

And new bodies to inhabit

And new lies to guzzle

And how I loved the moon

And its sheets of seeds

The moon tiding in your body

The smell of your blood breathing

And its taste in the sea in the south shining my feet

'Til it seemed as if they were made of dew

With pearls of huge beauty

Whilst your mouselike breath was the hand upon my clock

And one each breath I came nearer to my silly and shining end

All long, summer long

Under the fly-dance and the thumb-thick twilight

The thought of you smiling and laughing with children crippled me

Typecast and forlorn, smudged ghost gorgeous

There is a love so profound, so broken, and risen

Torment, black valley slumbering between our lips

And the lies we thoughtlessly wove

I knew your essence once

At our time when the sunset and I touched you

In the slanting room, just south of the past

Between your belly and thighs

This was a temporary deceitful paradise, lost as we created it

And destroyed in tasting

So much blood is lacking now

I dreamt for your bit lips, haunted like waves

In the ecstatic arch of evening

You and the night, you and the mountain

You and tomorrow, you and the tomorrow

Stay away, stay away, stay away!

What we want, we cannot have

And wanting all the more, I slept on words and lines and texts

Of useless want, staring at the time

And finally lost you, finally, finally lost you, finally

As the moon swept down and wept

Good morning! How are you?

I have called to say I saw you dreaming of conquests

Of large wars, bigger walls

But I am pleased to say your houses are dead

Your children are full of flame

The horses are dead and the butterflies fall

God is abroad

The wind is in the air

And from the depths, I point at us all

Good morning

The clouds of smoke arise

Arise, arise full of eyes of eyes

Your sons are suffocating their sisters

And painting eyes on the walls

With tongues dipped in blood

Arise, arise full of eyes of eyes

And from the depths, I call to us all

Good morning

I have seen the face that lies

I have seen the lips that smile

With false smiles, arise, arise

Look, look, I have read a book, a book that has spelt out the future

And from the depths, I see a king arise, arise

With on his forehead many eyes, eyes

And he is on a horse, a horse, a horse

With a train of smoke behind its hooves

And I must say, from my depths

I have seen a story emerge from a cloud of wings

Arise, arise from eyes, from eyes

And a number is seen, is seen, is seen

From the depth's beauty

And from the depth's loss

From the depths, from the depths

I have called and added and have seen you all

Your children are dead and waiting for you

"The sun has already just set", you said

And behind it; the moon-faced disc

Blue; pearl; white, opaline mouth

Sack of hopes, of dreams, of fur

Catching the moths that trail dust in the dusk

Caused you to open alone and sign goodbye to us all in the white room

In the eye-white, skull-white room

In the bed, amongst the dead

Santa Rita, ora pro nobis

I looked at you and touched the earth

Hid under concrete and cruelty

Credo quia absurdum est

That the dead rise, rise, rise

And in the blink, in the twink of your eye, Santa Rita

I saw you dart, dark as an eclipse

Whilst the twilight made a rainbow all around your passing

And I saw and was saved

In dream, you are there

As the tip of the tongue collapses towards the teeth

And the waters of dream mass around

You are there

You are there suddenly and silently

You are the force of the wave and birds, all birds, reel in the distance

Their face at dawn where profound and terrible armies surge

And foreign towns collapse under the weight of prophesied terrors

All the dead advance, great armies

Martyrs for the Blood, the Sign, the Wound

And time

The animals all sorted

Fishes too I have eaten, judge me at God's right hand

And the cats that arise from the dirt and the filth

And the starving and the scabby

The tortured, the tortured, the tortured

I see them at night before I drift

During my sleep, they gambol and play

And chase balls or children or giants

They play cards and click their eyes

They laugh and take tea at six

They laugh as they tumble

And have teeth the size of cloudbursts

And grip us and take us down to the deep

And we sigh and expire and see silence smiling

I cannot bear this all any more, not enough silence

But in the desert I sometimes see ships

And hear the black diamond express near the station before mine

"Caesar, where are you going?", he said to me, grinning

You will reach the Kingdom with a bow and a sweep

You will reach the Kingdom

I have caught and tortured time and I arise

We are surrounded for the last 2000 years by a vast Empire of Death, Empire of Blood

This was all after the Crucifixion

So try to remove whatever may dream or spill or seed or spread on your breath

Or your silence will seep into the something you wished to avoid

It will be seen some fine day, all right, yes, all right

I will make you mine, just you and I whilst our breaths pass between us

And spiral off to mausoleums of desires and hopes

When my friends pass into the great goodbye before my eyes

And I too move with them without sound, just words left floating through the streets

And the ears

And the souls of the people who were with me

I was in them and they were in me

And off they go, a pint in their hands a glint in their eye

And I see tambourines drearily clapping out the pavine carnival march

Now you see 'em, now you don't

I did not want the world to stop, and I have seen it rush past me as a ferocious fury

But such angelic fury

And I was taking the temperature of a thousand changes of mind

I might take you now, but perhaps I shall wait 'til the postman comes for toast

And with notes of the obsequies at 12

With your teeth on edge at the faint sound of the swans charging at the trees

That you built swings on and killed under and dreamt under

With your beloved in that first and last virginal Summer

When you entered this world of blood and belief and coupled under the Tropical Sun

And gave birth to children in your cries

I am born to die

I am born to die

I am born to die

Jesus snorted

He was moved to his guts

And the dust was everywhere and Pilate arose in his fury

You have a boat waiting, friend, and it is time to board

All aboard, all aboard

We don't save the living here

The cyclamen opens at evening, and the world was gentle tonight

Summery, hints of rose and rouge in the sky in the north

Over the dome of the glass greenhouse

Pilate arose and washed his hands

I washed my hands; I cleared dust of them

I can see specks of blood laughing upon them

Pilate washes his hands

He arose and washed his hands and the sword fell

Meanwhile, in the house with nothing at home

In the cafe with plates of liver and kidneys and offal

In the slaughterhouse near the schoolyard

In the damaged rooms of the school Mom at rest

In the fallen arches of the brilliant silence, coloured at dawn

And twilit by the twittering of birds

In the moon shining down on the shrew on my step

At the freshly cut grass

At the sound of the bell making toast or tea or time

Buzz by with loud whoops of shouting

"I am here, I am there; catch me if you can, catch me if you dare"

At all these moments, and all these daydreams

And all our breaths which dream idly into deaths, deaths

At all these deaths

I remember you, beautiful, with love and fear

With swooping hair biting the words out of your mind

And delivering them to me hating to pass the time

Which swept by, as proud as a ghost

Whilst we tossed coins to see who would disappear first