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 over us all
♪
Behind the line of my skull that hides 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 to 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 its 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 like 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
A 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 walls, 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 off 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