Story...

In the apriori of the story,
A simple complication persists,
In the hole in the wall of Johnny McCrory,
Effects are cut loose, the hacks to fumble,
In holy darkness with the line of facts,
Truth be to impress, as God is my witness,
Or consciousness in its pure reproduction,
In an illusion of an evolution, convoluted in emanation,
Hindered in misapplication of an implication
An ineffectual involvement, confined
To tentative tip-toeing, the immanent eminence to shun…

Nothing doing...

It is done and done until,
Nothing more can be done,
Nothing but its undoing,
Is to be done,
And done and done until it is undone,
Until nothing more can be done,
In the undoing.

When all doing and undoing is done
All is done and undone,
The doer is done, and undone,
Done in deed, done to death,
On the dying day of doing,
Nakedly the doer does nothing,
As nothing is done before.

Isolation...

Incontovertibly and…
As if she had the wind at her back,
She is busy with her forceful efforts,
Creative in part, via certain lynch like law,
To enter the inner part of him,
Where he is alone, disowned,
To embrace his solitude,
And by way of her mathematics,
And seductive grammatics,
Add it to her loneliness,
The danger in this unaccountable categorics,
Is not to be inclined in the mind,
To underestimation, unholy as it is,
Of the singular Jesus separate in body,
In intimate closed communion.

Velocity...

There’s a nameless madman on a line in the middle of an entry,
Goes by the name Lamont, with a resident grin on his gate,
Lamentably, he tells a passing obtuse pig-like mademan,
To distribute his grunts in his own way, if it’s sadness he’s after,
He’ll find it in his wake, circling the dead with daft laughter,
This madman later tells, with his third eye, a passing unmade man,
Who idles in his half-mast uniform trousers, at a high internal velocity,
Not to follow or fall foul of the mademan with sadness in his wake,
As there, in the mournful circle, he’ll be fiddling profoundly with his fate,
But to quicken his step and stand by him, soundly in the middle ground,
Formed at an angle not out of sight, between the mademan at his wake
And the madman perpendicular in his entry with the grin on his gate.

Composition...

An appointment is waiting, impatiently,
In the hierarchy, foreshadowing
An encounter horizontally, empathy,
An engagement longtitudinally, synthesis.
Feeling the Individual in infinite ways,
Betraying the whole in infinite modal displays,
In restless determined mode invited, activated,
Into unrealised form on the thinking high way.
Accelerated thought,informed,fast flow to know,
And be known as a friend, a fortress of fortitude,
Filled with invariability, a secret unity, a surprise,
Forging knowing out of nothing, molding mood,
To a momentum, the impulse to organise,
Quickly, quickly, come and see what can be seen.
A man born again as mankind, immanently composed.

Passion...

Ah! Sad passion. poisoned passion. Behold your triple truth!
Told in tyrannee, sold in slaveree, Preached in roberee,
Founded upon the entrails of beasts, the cast of a lie,
Whore of Golgotha that denounces whore of Babylon,
In the minimum threshold where one or two are gathered, there...
Fathered in mocking fashion, its fountain blood filled.
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins - the sinful stain, the guilty refrain,
Finalitee, as the first and free.
Moralitee, as master of the slave bodee.
Theologee, as the object of God’s gloree.
The dreamee, conscious witness to separated joys.
Decomposed of the slow death march,
Knowing deception as a virtue, that is the quick step.
Sad passion, poisoned passion, live death and beyond...

Measure...

Off the bedstead,steadfastly,
Time and motion, time and motion at work,
Mutter, discarded words that matter,
Then take myself out there without a care,
On the coat tails of an idea,
A flimsy notion that floats on volition,
Knowing that I had other things to do.
And others would know too,
If they asked, why?
Why the City on that day?
That day, that Saturday,why,
That is where the measure of a boy is,
Amongst sinful and sensible measuring men.
Sin that is sensed in insubstantial innocence,
Indefinite Dionysian darkness embraced,
Distant of measured Apollonian light.

Can't...

I cannot point, there is no point,
Except maybe on the horizon of horizons,
No pin-point place, no space there in between, instead,
I will tell you where I want you to be, in a word,
For your return, you’ll see, by an inner vision,
But don’t depend on me, as I'll say I can't,
I cannot posit or promise, or plan,
Particularise, universalise, tantalise,
Reach out, seize, tend to you,
Take care of you, carry and cradle,
Create, commit, throw to fate,
Inform, re-form, forlorn in rising,
Note my nothingness on blank paper,
Wordless, I hesitate, shift my weight,
But too late, what was underneath,
Has gone, in an absurd weightless word.

finis...

It takes hold, as it must, as elementary demand,
Utterly, definitively, into and upon nothing,
It belongs, in triangular threat, with anonymous authority,
In coming in this broad daylight, with nothing hidden,
In this narrow nightlight, with dark promise,
Thou, tightly coiled, aroused to aversion,
Either in this birth, emergence,
Or in this death, loss,
In this sleep, confusion,
Or in this wait, emptiness,
Endlessly we ask, I and thou plead in infinite silence,
No answer, in essential uncertainty,
Delivered we are into this ontic fate,
Viewing always this fixed horizon,
Of this final breath through this veil of intended fear,
This ultimate moment, despair of all doubt,
Possessing and having not this cold terminal tear,
Self surrender to certainty,
No more questions, no more doubt,
No more loneliness, no more self.
Point to point, striving to epicyclical escape,
A courageous covering to geometrical affirmation.

F...{Forsaken}

In the red light district fuck all is free,
You may walk the streets with an operating open mind,
You may take a stand on a corner, the exquisite idiot,
Standing on the realisation of a firm two feet, in divine assurance,
These feet will not be moved and the word will hold you fast,
What is it that you are selling, it’s not the brave new thing,
Speak for all is to be said, the red light is on for you to sing,
The self centred song, with hands lifted to heaven,
Dizzily self centred, the ministry of tongues, tongues on tongues,
The uncomfortable partitioning the self, the sharing
From there see all possibilities, you’ll find you are not blind,
Fuck all is unconcealed, fuck all is revealed,
Fuck all is strictly a promise, a pin prick hope,
So, exercise single minded restraint, a feint,
Let loose the captive will, a foil to the relentless grope...
To be possessed, submit on your knee to the holy C,
In the red light district,
Cock and cunt as fount present the fundamental novelty, and expansion,
The price to pay is to know, and be known,
And not to be a mere formality, taken,
Given over, given the name, forgiven not, forsaken,
In the red light district
Exclusion is dramatised, in symbolic phantasie,
Extinction is actualised, in unfulfilled lust,
Simply, turn off the light – have encompassing ungodly faith,
In ecstatic darkness pray to the tyranny of earthly feel,
Blind to the idol father of unprincipled disgust.

One...

Labyrinthine threads impossibly unafrayed,
Sewn to securing see, no loose end, the eye betrayed,
By untimely untalk of silence self fulfilled,
Directly undirected, crawling to the very edge, willed,
Yet still encircled by orbiting modes,
Life, reasoning, imagining, toward an uncertain future,
Through seasoned signs of artificial nature,
Pointing to a greater impossibility, a singular substantial feature.

Revelation...

His bicycle took him to all roads north and south,
To the sunshine demon he submitted his smile,
In return, a palomino tan was his, so all was fair.

To the north south wind he paid no bloody heed,
It blew him backwards to the madhouse south of north,
Unknowingly he parks and departs the two-wheel transport.

On a spot of blackened track a madman offers an exchange,
The bicycle for a horse from his team of two,
A wild fractious stallion that roams his range.

This will take you far, farther than any north or south,
To the cold and lifeless suspended star, now and then,
There you will be king, reigning in the here and there.

A revelation from on high granted of the here and there,
A dispensation to the lowly below of the now and then,
A miracle, a gift, a blessed assurance of the unknown.

Plato's Beast...

From scratch, or a scratch, in the sensuous setting, an empiric indiscretion,
Idea and thing in grand isolation, idea from idea, thing of king from king thing,
What an impression, what a mutilation, what a deviation, the fling of sense,
Saved in accumulated singularity, hermetically hidden, secretly seen.
A notion notioned, in an ocean of devotion to the perceived has-been.
Infinite deference to the uniqueness of reference, to multiplicity of fact.
In the theatre of one and only one presentation, the first and final bow.

This informed instant, first met, divided it stands, united in doubtless demand to be,
To be called forth, called to mind, in a sign signified, of intimate design, divine,
A malignant kind, this instance of a thought, instantaneous identity in difference,
Unmutilated vision in the spirit of all, a prior find in a perfectly prior mind.
Whose mind? A mind, a frame of mind, inclined to all minds,
A frame of reference, A preference, A prejudicial flow, at-one-ment, God sent.
To judge the judgement of particular fact, erasing with universal contempt.

A Classic Erect Pile......

A practical louse sees a situation, a modal modulation,
To situate about face - an invitation to know received, to face the music and to do, refusal denied, modality is the measure,
Peter, Peter, Pater, rat, robed in denial, padre R take this cup away from me, filthy little crock,
Pressed, mocked, possessed at long last in the occult courtship, advancing to the rear,
Near farcical to even fear the ample agent, ample in agency in ass cock, buttoned up, dressed down,
Obligingly poised horizontal on the goose-pimpled hillock, confined by a stifling heat to creature trembling,
Impoverishing the power to fumble away those bountiful holy book hands, under their auspices,
Outstretched and prompting the first arrival of ripe plump lips to push please pleasure, please stop,
Orchid blossom, dreadfully missing saying her name, Rosy, Posy, Chloe, the rose of Sharon,
Let thy praises roll, Lily of the valley, flower of my soul, a fragrant wee ditty,
Sweet smellness now banished to the neat freckled nose, but take it on the chin,
And therein lies the dread, wedded now to the forked tongue, fucked by the hand that jerks,
So, eat not with your fingers,
The pincer movement, from here, kindness hard to resist, from there, the opening to exposure,
From way back then, when the need to beg to be fed urged wild imperatives,
Appealing through those pure parted lips, to pleading silvery tongue, mercury rising,
Yell and spit out the yum yum yum, to be said in a simultaneous swallow,
Will not in submission do you hear, but in obedience to thyself,
Be unafraid of the pain and hurt to follow. The lice icicle in the hollow,
Inevitably it will be done, unto glory,
Such is a classic erect pile, a sacra elect ice lisp.

Hearing...

Faith cometh through hearing...

Listen...
It comes to me, that bastard notion, in the midst of ructions,
Making known to me, him and his like, he knows himself as not of his like,
Firmly erect to his horizontal,playing with his pipes, a seemingly insubstantial stimulation, in the ear,
His very own noise is excessively everywhere, the quiet man next door, the man of incapacitated logos, the lost word is his,
In silent setting, from the first low light of day to the descending dusk, is his exported resonance,
Imported engine-ear poised not to hear, the scooter brain, nostrils flared and flooded, responsive to the overpowering smell of his own fuel, the fool of foolishness and unfulfillment,
External combustion echoing from internal frustration and turmoil, the bad mad medley of revving the beast in his yard, it trembles before him,
In the chaotic walled space, that sort of place, yes, like air forced through the trembling flabby buttocks,
There he weaves it, there he leaves it - when not tuning up his fiery red-head, after dusk, or in midnight madness, his fancy fiancé, stranded, he nightly igniting her to pleading cries,
‘Tis music to his hidden ears, his own displeasure pleases him, his worst fear begets his monstrous ire, and drains his mad passion into her,
Let him who hath an hidden ear not hear!! Lugs live under his long yellowing white mane, cascading greasy strands, grease and gravity,
Sprouting outwards, dangling downwards, on all but the top, a coup d’etat for desolation, a critical segment of displaced growth,
A skating rink for Ginger’s fingers, sweeping them in revolutionary movement, hypnotic heavenly transport for his eyes,
So, I get a bit "edgy" at times, I need the sobering effect of strong wine, then I hear,
I just want a quiet life, his noises have no quietness about them, sounds of the synthetic sort, without essential belonging, they seek ownership in the unhidden ear.

There is...

There is the there
the just there
And, there is the there as
The there as something

To be just there
Bare of outward impact
With nothing to share
A mere fact

To be there as
Is a power to share
The inner with the outer
A virtuous snare

Undertaking...

Draw me up to the graveyard mother, to know your sodden soiled mound,
To touch your cold and heavy heart of solemn stone, solidly silent in its sound,
Father me mother with punishing hand, pain to know I am not alone,
Grant me a bothering brother mother, with awfulness in his eye of still night,
To face the fearful demonic dread to come, and launch the cursing kill-cry,
And an unapproachable sister who knows my evil seed, wild in deed, of me I deny,
Marry me majestic mother, spread yourself and suffer me a persevering child,
Tarry with me ‘til I take flight, then feed me well into the good ground mother,
Atoning finally with heavy stone, and sealed to the exclusion of all living light.

Hush...

Tip toe softly through the rape field, the seedy soiled patch of sprouting want,
Take care where feelers find you, and take you, in the swaying sphere of touch,
You’ll be whispered the brazen invitation, temptation with sluggish lustful lips,
Plucked with nimble hand, marked with jaundiced eye, urgently anointed,
Unction of sinful muddied drool that blinds, that seeks like Christ to make you see.

You’ll think what your boastful body will demand you to be, an accord of eloquent evil,
Don’t act the fool, be silent in the way you express yourself here, in fear of fear itself,
Hush here! Find utterance only in a look, don’t breathe a word, in voiceless defiance,
You’ll not shake the savage province with the commonplace, with contrary science
Behold! Bound now through the rape field, to the edge of no sense nonsense, and ease.

Presently...

Presently…not quite now, in due course, approximately, you’ll know the moment, it never comes,
In the entry it comes…between high sentried houses, exiting a low rear doorway, in standard shadow,
Greet the leering little suckling, to its face within the cherished pram, high hooded from the wind,
Wheeled on puddled concrete worldward in solicitation of shifty adulterous uncle Sam, the shaman,
Divining all ahead in silent inward judgement the slipless field in distant view, in fear of focused face,
Hey pushy well meaning mother, don’t play mind games, said the child’s enigmatic dewed eye,
Uncle Sam has a mind overflowing with next step notions, motioning to within the view,
The quick step, leading, a step ahead, bounding gracefully to a trot, the talent of all but a few,
Baby knowing notions is not daunted says, truly I’ll not always be mild and meek,
Something Sam cannot abide is riled infant cheek, so loins he lays bare and takes a lengthy leak,
Hey bud, says baby…spurred on by baptismal spray, this bloom will grow and have its day,
You’re a mere bud now babe, says Sam, a sapling, rooted, an abstract slice of life, not the whole deal,
There is only one place for you, a lowly skitter, under my instep lifter stiletto heel.

Not...

Out of the dark spot, when he shot the man he aimed to shoot,
The shooter swore the man lying there was not man he shot,
It was a shadow, he said, of the man that I had in mind,
A shadow without a doubt, of the man he was thought to be.

Out of the shadows echoed a shout not unlike a kind of a shot,
A cry transformed in the obscuring depths into an unmoving innocence,
That the deafening darkness nor the shot could not appropriately conceal,
Resembling the voice of the man it was essentially not.

Indeed, though he had heard it not, not in the way of the voice he knew,
He could tell it was not that of the man he knew he aimed to shoot,
So, out there, beyond lightness, appearing to his receiving standing stare,
Lies revealed the existing body of the man he did not execute.

Is it him? Is it him? came their shout out from the darkest spot,
Was that truly him you shot, was that really the shout of him you shot?
It was too dark to tell, and when he fell, and he did shout upon my shot,
It looked like the fall of him and the voice of him, but truly it was not.

He...

Delicately he is installed on the promontory, precarious pedestal of promise,
Where all have been placed before, the tantalised elect,
Urged on by captive, ever wanting will, stiff-necked and erect,
He obeys the consuming command to embrace not-him for himself.

Firmly fixed gaze on the immanent redemptive judgement,
An encounter with the distant consequences of an evil act, an error,
Out there, to come through hoary haze always just out of reach,
Threat beyond the breach, hell, in a mist of demonic difference.

Same as all differences, the very same, multiplicity of pitiless striving,
Overwhelming uttering only on the inside, confiding,
Imparting a revelation without words, to the highest instrument,
Graciously in the age of the burdensome breath.

Listen closely how it maintains all life breath, as one breath,
And as many in a dreadful condemned line, even beyond death,
If he stays on his cleftless rock, it may not make an approach,
May not encroach to this faultless firmament which holds him firm.

He, stiff necked and erect on the lookout for the painless state beyond,
He, on this his island of no dimensions, has no tendency to transit,
No heading here to kindle passion, no heading there in steps to suffering,
Save in thought alone, he reclaims himself redeemed, in still clear contemplation...just…

...or unjust?

Waiting for Acceptance...

Old man in the upper room, up an ageing root,
Old man en route to distant glory,
In his cot not of straw he curls for warmth,
An issue of the elemental, eternal foetus form, unborn.

His cold hands nestle in the nest of testicles,
He thinks of his full chamber pot below,
Hot piss within - too cold to stand a piss below,
On those feet that prognosticate the weather.

Possessed he is by those idle stand-ins,
Idols hard at it on elevated stage,
Divine dildos, inserts for the righteous sinner,
Fucking the old man mind to senseless separation.

There he is, no more waiting, old man dying,
In the upper room, up an ageing root,
Full of warm piss and rolled up like a fag,
Through the skylight in the roof, he meekly takes his leave.

What remains...?

What remains…?
What remains!
In the healthy striving mind,
In the endeavouring heathen heart,
Dealt a death blow,
Delivered with a stone to the ear,
Stone deaf to the beat,
That ear to the ground,
The millstone placed upon the neck,
The weighty purpose to dethrone.
What then remains?
Remains to be said...

The unruly habit...

As a rule
I never get into a habit,
A rabbit as a habit
Never gets into a rule.
Yet, the fool says,
That the rabbit in a habit
Is as me - the very same
Playing the very same game.

The Closing of an I...

From a certain aspect,
An end is in view.
I lie at the mercy of fortune,
I say I, but I lie,
Insofar as I remain,
It is not I, Why not I?
Infirmed by unsteady mind,
I am to be overcome,
A kind of work not of my own,
Yet my own cause,
A primary blunder of desire,
The necessity of a deficient nature.
Where do I go?
To where goes the I?
The I opens to pure passion,
And closes to every thing without,
Without knowing in any true fashion,
Possessed only of its very own doubt.

Communion...

Drink ye all of it,
Ye all from timeless cup,
Romance the pouting lips,
Treat the trembling tongue.

Substantial adulterated mingling,
In salivating cavity confined,
Crucified coctail in emptied heads,
Swooning, swirling, gathering, unrefined,

Spinning out the spritual energy,
Shaking out the inner demon,
In sweaty budding beads,
Sucking in the breath of God

This union of quivering saints,
Heads and hands heaven bound,
Unbound dancing body giving forth,
Life entire to unseen ground.

esse qua esse bonum est...

esse qua esse bonum est
Unambiguous, unconditional,
Rescued from matter,
In this mind,
In this body confined,
Kissed by the creative form,
Loved in uniqueness,
By self and not-self,
In our lonely tower,
Conatus all are we,
Endeavoured perseverence
Essence, virtue, power,
The good being is what it is.

Godly Union...

She sways me this way and that
The whence of my passion
Identical loss, identical gain
Confounding self love.

Moulded by her spirit
In fitting harmony
In naked mutilating truth
Interdependent, essentially prejudiced.

No Godly union this
No amor intellectualis
It languishes inadequately in deep darkness
Bounded, grounded at the rungless ladder base

Random pleasure abounds
Brimming with remote distortions
No inkling, no vision of signs
Fruitless in its eternal reward

Getting it...

He uproots a stubborn tree,
Then stops, stoops,
And looks up at me,
Straight in the face
I follow his stare,
An eye for an eye,
Neither say not a word,
It seems absurd,
But I get it,
And so does he.

Body Awareness...

Enclosed in length
And breadth
And depth
Bound to when, before, now, after
Thought touching body
Body confined in mind
Connected perfectly
Reflected matchlessly
Finitely felt
Conceived as consequence
In motion and rest
Where there is one
There is the other
In idea, in body
Pointing ever outwards
Ever onwards
Ever upwards
Ever, ever, ever more,
So, lets not think
That this is all there is -
Bend to still necessity

Sinful Caring...

Trapped in the way I see,
Trapped in the way I be,
I be is I see mapped,
So - let me be, as if thou were me,
In unfree - intentionality...
To tend, to attend,
To the pretension of self mastery,
A law unto oneself,
An evil unto others.

Being alone...

Into fancy,
Inevitably,
Intuitively,
Preliminary to action,
It just kills me to think,
That there is always someone there,
Who is not me....that I cannot see,
...and all that this means.

Displaced,held in this place,
This place,this time,
Sight succumbing to half light,
Unsited, sited to blindness,
Confined to the not to know,
Lumbering, in My very own noble loins.

Without within.

First the words,
Talk of her world,
There, where there is life,
Stressing, how she wants me there,
To know it, to share it,to see it,
But for the life of me,
For the me of my life
I cannot…
It is either too big
Or too small,
Or too far off,
In the back of beyond,
From where in the afar she utters,
The meaningless words,
The pictures of nothing,
Fantastically framed with labios,
Luscious labios.
I think she will have to be there alone,
With her lips,
But sometimes it is the greatest treat,
To be without within.

In fancy...

If I stop loving myself
I will stop loving others
And others will stop loving me
So then all will be free,
Except me…
Which is where I started
In infancy,
Fancy that...
In infant insanity.

Life...

The sentence...born to life,
Life…what matter? Matter of fact, de facto,
Strife...defier of the little life,
The little life known to all men, big and small,
That brute impudent lump...
Confining self to serfdom...
That sickly orphan child….
The spoilt dependent form that never grows up…
Trapped truly by time,
Wandering for all time, seducing to destruction;
Yet, it is begatter by God of mind…
And we are the fathers and mothers born of that fledgeling…

Ours is not to cling to a further single breath
for the sake of furthermore,
for the fear of death…
but rise we must to prise from the dark naked unknowable unknown its claim to our boundless being…
…from its distant black pasture it lays waste to wonder
casting upon it its heavy pall of sorrow,
filling even our dreams with its stain, the stainless stain,
Of nothing...We dread the nothingness…
…in life we dread the experience of having nothing…
…being nothing to someone.
The little life isn't there,
It is the little life that wipes the smile off your face.

He will know as he is known:

I never – never - answer the door to a knock that I don’t recognise. Re-cognition is a funny thing. It is the thing. To be re-known. A person of reknown. I don’t have a door bell. I ripped it out. Only two bare wires in a hole. No ding dong merrily on anywhere. No rising and falling musical announcement that's no great shakes in removing of scales off your ignorance. A knock is the necessary preliminary to further refinement of the required recognition. It ignites the process.

The rap is more telling. More like a voice. A full knuckle rap of agression, a single finger timid tap, a flat palm, the side of a loose fist, a tight fist, the number of knocks, the rhythm, the weight. Where on the door. On a panel, in the more solid centre or side. This form of expertise developed ever since I had that phone call to say that I was a wanted man. A wanted man by those who never forget. A bitter Belfast voice telling me, You’re a dead mawn. It was a familiar voice yet I have never been able to place it. But I was placed by it. And so the factory of fear starts in its production of idols.

There’s an unfamiliar knock to which I responded immediately. Just having dressed. It caught me out. I was not myself when it did. There was something. I turned to do to the door and was struck to the stationary by an idea of my pyjama trousers. They were on top of the bed instead of under the pillow. I had made the bed and left the pyjama trouses were they should't be. That was not me.

Or maybe I was a former self. It is daytime. There was at the root of the independent action, a powerful sense of self sovereignty. A weary, blackened, endlessly shitted upon will gives way to a new direction. It was a sunny day and wearyingly warm and I didn’t feel it was a day to kill or to be killed. Making the bed normally makes me sweat. The sun blasts its heat through the window onto the bed. But, I didn’t stop and sweat, no sudden anxiety, I move wilfully, steadily and without hesitation down the tiled hallway, to the door. The tiles are cool on the bare feet. It’s a hard door to open, there is a raised tile that catches the hem of it, and the bloody big brass knob is stiff to turn and in that moment only, I confess, between my hand slipping on the smooth burnished brass, and tightening to get a firmer grip, the idea of my imminent demise chilled me to the briefest suspension of action. It took hardly any time at all, just enough though for it to be there, to emerge and to exist.

Revealed to me as the door swung inwardly into the house on smooth hinges, in the bright light, is this guy with something taking leave of his lips that is vaguely language, but identifiable as a question. Unless he’s a Geordie. Mumble mumble mumble…Jack? I know him, Mr Mumble, something of a relief, but his name escapes me. Do I know it or not? I may as well not, it won’t come to me. Then I hesitated, and felt an urgency to retreat, a panic gripped me. It was a panic from years ago. The very same. How do I know it’s the same? It rules me, that’s how I know. It follows me and I follow it. No mistake, though I could be mistaken.

He’s resided right across the street from me for an abundance of years, in fact, for as long as I’ve lived here – about 20 years - he’s lived there, there in a house almost directly opposite. Across a pitted tarmac street. I see him all the time, going in and out of his flaking front door. The colour is an in between blue. There are about four unpainted concrete steps up to the door which, in my experience, he invariably jumps. Not that this indicates his athleticism, rather maybe his impatience.

I see him, getting into his car. Roaring up the street in it. Almost always not the same car, different sameness in a rusty wreck of one make or another with a noisy, house-shaking exhaust. He never turns the key to lock it, he leaps out and is on his way before the door closes behind him. Sometimes it doesn’t quite close fully, the door simply resting outside its proper flush to the chassis position, and that I found annoying. As is the way he parks the bloody thing, with no attention paid to where it is in parallel proximity to the curbside. He roars it into the spot almost as fast as he roars it up the street on his way to somewhere. The tyres are rasped against the concrete, the rims thud as the car is driven straight up onto the pavement. Total lack of precision. Like with his hair. A mass of motionless mattedness, save when he threw his head back to see the world in front of him. Me, now, here, he threw it back and he saw me.

It became an obsession to watch the imprecision. It drew me to my window. Away from my work. Work that needs precision, that needs my undivided attention. Sometimes it was him, sometimes it was not. It fascinated and terrorised me. The divine demon. The limbo where the self is pulled to and fro. His unashamed presence pulled and forcefully embraced me until I had him practically within me. God’s small voice must have spoken to me as I thought of the Biblical test, it is not I that live but Christ that liveth within me. I am saying NO to me and YES to him.

- Jack? Jesus! Jack! A momentary period of attention was spent on his quest. Soon dispelled and then…but what about my pyjamas? He looked at me.

Holy whores of Babylon, let thy praises roll! A vision! A separating thought from pyjamas and all else. Taken I am to intellectual sanctuary. My eyes tighten up to a fixed couple of slits, fixed firmly on his teeth and the mouth that freely accommodates them, so removing my mind’s eye from his request. His teeth dig into me and off go my thoughts to ponder the thing I cannot remember what he wants whilst I take in his Stonehenge-like gnashers. It’s like a day out at the National Trust heritage site. Well, a few moments out. He has in the meantime explained something, or nothing, and pointed in such a way to something (and nothing) – a high arm with a lowering finger - that indicates it’s out of sight, over the hill, at the end of the street somewhere. Perhaps. I don’t really know what he said, the discursive detail is totally absent, eclipsed by extension, but he has the word jack back in his vocabulary – jack, jack, jack! - and that thricedom of e-jack-ulations reigns in the distant pondering thoughts of mine,

But the fucking teeth, hell’s gates, those smashed desecrated tombstones will find no neglect with me…the appreciative attention to such an array of decay and demolition must be freely given. In fact I questioned my inner fortress, my freedom, the teeth seemed to be gnawing at it, forsooth to captivate the title holder and deny him his autonomy. But no, I felt my own inclination to admiration of this singular demonstration of oral art. But into the fray came the friar St Thomas Aquinas, as is his wilful tendency, to say that every faculty that is a manifested inclination is a power by which each of us directs our selves towards that aspect of Being, to incorporate it into our own being or be incorporated into it. No, no, no! Thrice no! I deny it. The teeth shall not prevail, nor the gates of hell which they imaginatively resembled. Indeed, a fiery breath lurked behind them, stoked to a spicy heat with a deep turbulent inner spasm.

I’ve seen these teeth before but not in such a circumstance, in such close detail and not particularly as teeth. From a distance I see merely an odd oral chiaroscuro, an unevenness maybe, an imperfection, especially displayed with a full smile. Or is that my way of seeing it? Is there an interference? I wave a friendly hello and he does the same. And we go our separate ways. Him and his hair and car. The very same thing for many years.

I ask him for his name. He asks me for mine. Not giving it I say that we say hello to each other all the time and yet are unknown to one another. He presents to me his teeth in extra close-up accompanied by an after shock of the hot breath. Jack? he inquires. His name was given to me but now it escapes me. He said he thought my name was Patrick, but I told him it wasn’t. But what was it? He said his wife told him that it was Patrick. No, I said. His wife for the life of me I know her as well as I knew his name.

I knew it already, from when I fucked his her. After the exhausting fuck with us lying entwined there totally fucked to stupidity, where ideas of any value were hard to find, she said it when the door knob turned. That’s when his name hit me. But I lost it as soon as I had it. I want it that way. The less I know him the better. For I wanted to know his wife. Lilian by name.

But he grabbed me like death does a life from the womb. Only one way to go. His question. His teeth. His hair. His car. His louty life.

His wife.

Whore the devil are you?

There is...

There is the there
the just there
And, there is the there as
The there as something

To be just there
Bare of outward impact
With nothing to share
A mere fact

To be there as
Is a power to share
The inner with the outer
A virtuous snare

The English Architect [A Tribute to Donald Robinson - Murdered at Home by the IRA 02/03/1977]

Drawing, drawn, drawn out
Led from cosy lofty space
His official place
By far below bellows

Young Celtic fellows
In sporting devotion
The source of commotion
Precise lines blurring.

Designs he has
This placid stranger
On the construct of peace
Twixt work and play

'Tween fellows and he
The plan, the view
To purchase a crease
In pastures green

This cute old Angle so benign
The peace he finds
Applying soothing voice balm
To claim the celtic calm

That accord achieved
In elevated peace withdrawn
Plans he weaves
For plots not his own

On other drawing board
A deadly plan hatching
From a single chamber
A designer death despatching

And, up in airy room
The fixer fails to see
His life loom nearer inevitably
To pretty emerald tomb

In pastures green
At crease unaware
Young Celtic fellows declare
A joy by English Architect unseen

The Mouths of Men...

The men slip in their slabber around him,
Simpering - smelling small prey,
They swell with devotion to the notions
Of weakened will, fleeing fortitude,
Of wisdom in freefall - firmly faithful to lowly lust..

From when he was mightily small
Whether in proneness or uprightness
His extension is a hushed shout – his exit gagged
Suppressed supremely by shyness
The devouring whyness of personal doubt.

They see in his lips a mute moment
A measure of minimal time – primitive pouting seized
For altered pleasure hidden well away
From eyes and voices and the torments of hell -
So cry out he did with the unborn word.

Little Deity

Little Deity
Shuts the heavy blinds
And closes his weary lids
Blindly to see the clearing path
And in this darkness
He follows the terminal signs.
"Approach me", says the dark Divine,
"Rest within me your weary soul",
But,once within sightless sight,
Within a single solitary stride,
Awakened to the immense divide
It signals him;
"UNAPPROACHABLE PLACE!
DARE NOT DOUBT!
TURN ABOUT!"
You are not free, it is said,
From some unlit recess within his head,
That here at this point,
Of no return, of no advance
In this space there is no there here,
Here there is no here,
In this time there is only now at this time,
The only time,
Without a tick or a tock,
The timeless lock.
Little faithful deity reigns unfree
In the perfect present.