Hypnagogue I

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