From Poems
Second Series
1996
© S.R.P.publications London 1996:- ISBN:1 871446 04 X
Empty headed, sensualistic,
Hedonistic, animalistic,
Materialistic, I yet feel
Inferior, I, genius, superman,
Great Free Spirit, shown
A lowly and inferior thing.
She is
Powerful, strong,
Low and vulgar, yet high in status,
Superior as certain animals
Are superior, as Pushkin is superior,
My cat.
Confusion upon confusion
Megalomaniac lust.
Paranoid
insecurity.
Questions of status
Status as determined, fixed
By things that happened long ago,
Old patterns
Left in the sand by thirsty men
Who crawled across deserts.
My status, my reactions.
They, sinners.
Sinners forgivable.
I powerless, I saintly,
I devil.
You’ve got that stink about you
I think you’re a nark
You have upset mypeace of mind.
I am inwardly uneasy, anxious &
Insecure.
Try to forget it.
Pull yourself together.
Neurotic reactions are philosophical confusions.
Learn to separate the ka from the karma,
The ka from the karma.
You, Me, He, I, They?
What do you want?
What do
you know what you want?
Moses and Temujin,
With open ears ascended to the lofty places
Distilling ecstasy from refuse of unsatisfied desire.
The goat triumphant,
The goat of the Sabbath,
Sits in the seat of secret power and invites
The lonely man who weeps too much
Of heaps of crashing Hollywood images
Which hides from him the scene.
We smoke and get high
Here is the rub
One of us must die.
The strippers of your younger day
Where are they?
Bodies grown old
Or cold.
I buy you beer
You talk of your fear,
Explain your depression
Make a confession.
Observe her sitting near to me
In a vision I forsee
Her fresh young cheek
Age scarred.
As a general truth
The hopes of youth
Are cruelly marred.
You say your moods
Go up and down,
Speak of the news
And the talk of the town.
Time is void, Nagarjuna said,
You are, were, will, shall have been dead.
You struggle, fear, resist, reject,
Relax, submit, enjoy, accept.
We discuss other things,
Like mediaeval kings,
But you feel that your mind,
Has lately declined.
Before and after, one retains
In memory, emotional strains,
Qualities of light and air,
Foul, indifferent or fair.
In a hospice bed
In a month or so,
Stone cold dead,
Both of us know.
The question is of when, not if,
You make your exit, shedding a stiff,
As the Indian stick insect sloughs its skin.
The beautiful thoughts
That I think?" asks
Someone.
"Because I discipline
My mind" says someone else.
"But how do you know
Whether you weed out weeds
And cultivate flowers
Or weed out flowers
And cherish weeds?"
A seed is a seed
Of flower or weed
A garden is a lovesome thing
HIGHGATE HILL
On Highgate Hill
The spires and the domes,
The gables and rooftops,
The trees,
Dense bare branches, high on the horizon,
Cumulatively speak
Like Gloucester or Chartres
Religious mystery,
But half apprehended
By lunatic Ruskin
When writing in praise
Of the magic of turrets.
On Suicide Bridge,
Dark clouds bode darkness
Above
The black dolphin, glistening
Raindrops in the shafts of
Evening sunlight, with kindly old
Nereus, many times witness of
Madness, self murder, despair.
The ground
A crucified man falls down from
His cross, stands on his head,
Spreadeagles his legs
Becoming a lotus, from which
A child is born, rising upwards,
Flying as a cow’s head with ears
For wings, over the forest,
Pierced by the top of a pine tree
As it falls.
Pine tree, wigwam
An Indian brave walks out of
His wigwam and fires an
Arrow at a bird, pierced
By the top of a pine tree as it
Falls.
Pine tree wigwam.
A Red Indian chief, with full
Feather headdress, walks out of
His wigwam, and fires an
Arrow at the moon.
The arrow falls back, fatally
Piercing the eye of the chief as
It falls, like Harold of England.
Redirect-
Body rolls down to the lake
At the foot of the forest.
Two female arms rise out
Of the water, and pull him
Down to the bottom.
Bottom - an enormous bottom
Excreting jewel bestudded turds
Into the water.
Flailing backwards, the giant
Floats on the water
Two female arms rise out
Of the water and cut off
His balls with Excalibur.
The giant disintegrates into
Sand.
A pyramid of sand in the centre
Of the lake...a sandcastle,
A standard rising from one of the turrets
Standard water flagstone
Indian
Bad thinking
Stop.
One murky evening,
Where dull Victorian terrace
Follows dull Victorian terrace,
And tedious modern estates,
Amid bleak industrial wastes,
Walking wearily through ‘em
In the London borough of Newham.
Mile upon mile of human habitation
In the general vicinty of West Ham station,
Like human intestines packed together,
With scent of sewage and clammy weather.
Daffodil and springtime cheer
Are not encountered here.
London’s pleasant qualities
Are here not felt,
Anymore than springtime freshnesses
Are likely to be smelt.
And as for the charm of England.
There is so little about.
Here one feels the old world
Has more or less run out.
Walked around the Raja Rani
Temple, passed the road to
Sisupalgarh, crossed the Daya
River where the sun reflected
Rippled and pure, passed
Fishermen, bathers, washerwomen
Bullocks working, bullocks lazing
In the water, fields of rice and
Fields of sugar, passed the
Gaily coloured sarees and the dhotis
Laid to dry in the rays of the sun,
Large green butterflies the kind
I saw at Khandagiri, lizards, frogs
In stagnant water, waterlilies
Waterweed, unnamed beetles of
Radiant beauty, naked children
Banyan trees, dropping new roots into
Water, A woman with a basket who had
Come to gather cowpats being old and
Poor. I walked towards a hill, seen from
Afar, believed to be Dhauli, Tosali in
Mauryan times. Near are found
Asokan edicts, chiselled in rock, guarded
By a hewn stone half elephant, merging into
Unshaped mass behind. From the
Monument I wandered, till I reached a
Minor pathway, leading to a field of
Tiny trees. As I climbed the rocky
Mound, by far the tallest in the
Vicinity, I came across a hermit’s
Cavern, then deserted, carven from the
Rock. At the summit I discovered that
The object which had made me
Wonder, was in fact a fallen temple
With the largest lingam, leaning, I had
Seen. And a tree among the ruins
Intertwined amidst the old Kalinga
Structure. Sitting and standing on the
Highest stone, I could see
Multiform palm trees, trees I cannot
Name, and lakes and rivers and a tall
Hill in the background, and the fields of
Rice and cane, smell the verdure in
The sun heat, feel the cooling breeze
About me, hear the birdsong and
The rustle of the leaves beneath my
Feet. Shapes of trees recall to mind the
Power behind shapes of projections on the
Chariot temple at Konarka, which in
Turn reminded of the power of
Magnificent music to lift and
Educate the spirit till all
Imagination is alive with liberated
Dance. Then the shapes of lakes and
Rivers, and the various arboreal
Patterns, and their subtleties of
Colour, set alight mental and
Physical experience with a green
Resplendent burning. Nor is it a
Fire which parches, though I long for
Cool clear water, all I lack is
Cool clear water, to slake the
Inside of my body, that my throat and
My digestive functions might
Participate in this my Orissan natural
Ecstasy.
As the ancestors rot
Aesthetically appalling
If sexually not.
Critically thwarted
With what he thinks he knows
By this civilisation
Late as it goes.
Religion all is dubious
Philosophy too
Poetry is certainty
Baudelaire knew.
Purchase ledger assistant
In a road named Arodene
Twenty years old
Her name is Maxine.
As I walk to Brixton station
In a very light rain
I consider exhilaration
And intolerable music
As part of the pain.
Cow parsely groweth high
Among forget me not and catseye
Bluebell, dandelion, ragwort,
Bumblebee and magpie.
Among the myriads, the overcrowded
Legions of the dead, a tiny
Aristocracy of living.
A girl, desired, standing on
A grave with a guilty look, smiles and
Photographs a tree.
The dead. Less substantial than
The living, shades which merge and rapidly fade.
But they will rise, perhaps, death is nothing forever.
There is no necessity of thought,
Nothing beyond the right and the true,
Leading upwards to freedom absolute.
And for me one problem to resolve,
One final error to refute.
No more than a pastime, a sport.
Fame is an ornament to hang around the neck.
There is no necessity of thought.
Nothing beyond the right and the true
Leading upwards to freedom absolute.
And for me one problem to resolve
One final error to refute
The pernicious notion that the land is well
And mere information will save us from Hell.
Made by a Man
On top of a mountain
On the awfulness of democracy
The awfulfness of the people
Another protests:-
Left to itself
It undermines security
Brings odious tyranny
Sanctifies brutality
Gathering likeminded
Out for themselves".
Down in the valley,
His foul exhalation
Is what we must breathe.
Suffocating,
We see and know nothing beyond
Living room curtains
Kettles and cookers.
This is the universe.
This is a phase
Of total necessity
The sexual redeemer
The man Adam Kadmon
Cannot redeem it.
All of its joy
Is under the Mountain.
From a hundred lemons
Juice of novel and witty
Ideas, dripping onto the page.
One day he picks off his head
And squeezes.
Juice of a novel and witty idea
Dripping onto the page.
Of Winchmore Hill station
In the bright May sunshine
The station building
Is not without charm,
With the lush vegetation
Trees and shrubs
Tall grass
Above the round edged top
Of the black brick wall
On which observe the tiny creatures
Molluscs and arthropods,
The grey and the black,
Woodlice, small slugs
Immobile, then moving
Stalk eyes waving.
Like a dim witted King’s Road poser in
His snazzy clothes, past
The humble greenfly
With senile dementia
Standing, dying.
Large ants, reddy brown
Or black, scurry,
Collective, anonymous,
Carrying greenflies, dead or alive.
Two comrades meet
Touch antennae, part.
A black and a brown meet
Recoil, repelled, afraid.
Each has business, or else
In idleness
Suggests not joy but the mundanity
Of human experience
Like a school playground,
Or some busy town
Conceived in its human equivalent,
To seem a delightful game,
One would need to snort cocaine.