CANEÇAS

Superheated air streams in 

Through the driver-side window as I burn the car

Across the blistering heat, exhuming Ian Curtis's

Pompeian corpse from deep within my past.

So long forgotten, so long unused –

The Eternal procession in the heat of July.

My aging car flashes warning lights

Into the corner of my eyes, 

Through nowhere-scapes east of Lisbon

Away from the coast, far from the sea.

And open sky grey with searing smoke

From wildfires in Spain, 500 miles east.

All is dry as white is bone.

The air around unbreathably hot

I roll past parched brown soil

Hissing clumps of sickly cabbage

Brambles laden with shrivelled berries

Scattered black among brothels and slums

Decaying filaments of 

Blunt bleaching houses

Rot fast in the fiery sun

In whose fire..

Hot hot sky, the leaden glow of end.

Sixty-four I am.

Through nowhere-scapes east of Lisbon. How long, 

How long must I sing this song? 

In nowhere-scapes east of Lisbon. 

Will you still need me

When I'm seventy-four

In the superheated air

iridescence

go and ride a thousand days,
my clear-eyed messengers,
scour all points of the compass
and find me a glimpse of iridescence

for shining guidance into the unknown
on the day that I die

azerbaijan noon

erratic echoes
of a swallow's cries
faint and shrill,
lost midget amid
the persian blue vault
of turquoise and gentian tiles,
pool of cool noon,
in iridescent samarkand.

the first shy note strikes the oud

mother

and so I'm finally an orphan.

all your deaths
have scarred my soul:
I've grown numb
to my own death
number 1 of 1

burn

so, eventually there comes a time
when our words mean nothing
when our ink's dried out
and our pain is gone
and nothing is, but
what we do.

ages-old friend
 welcome back
 together again

 let us love

facetime

catch a window

my distant tendrils already
burying into seniority,
with twenty-six percent of the
body and brain
slowly breaking down

what-the-fuck as I look in the mirror.
no gentle business,
and ever-so-irreversible.

true, it's vaguely becoming -
I've got the style now
but no looks or stamina are left

this sad sod here,
waiting for you to
catch up
with me

melancholia

single pidgeon
in the distance
of boundless
grey suburban skies.

sombreness
dememoritised