Songs for the Devil and Death Read online

  With suicide; death stole his chance.

  A jaguar or a ghost of pain –

  Too many days of gold disdain,

  And loss flares with an icy light,

  Transcending passions of the flesh.

  All tedious irks of tawdry slights

  Condense to wrath born as it’s slain,

  Set loose to prowl in summer’s sun.

  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

  Now herded mourners cramp the church,

  In lumpen masque of funeral rites

  To gift a corpse to god’s embrace,

  And to that god surrender praise.

  The minister mocks pantomime

  With droned summations of a youth

  To family and friends, the known

  Who lived what this baboon intones.

  To class of corpses, ward of flies,

  A wanton god once jawed a quote,

  Lear’s paean of our futile lies,

  A sophomore reciting rote.

  I would spit grave dust in his eyes,

  Cram corpse meat down his retching throat.

  This sheep who dreamt his soul a goat,

  I’d drag to jaguar, show him waste.

  II - The Prayer (II)

  As – heaven – is on earth – it is

  On coffined love a stranger’s piss,

  This service prattle preaching zeal,

  Magician’s dove and Judas kiss;

  Applause and pleas, all fawning spiel

  Of apes in pulpits stands revealed,

  Abhorrent sentiments of awe

  To flatter massah, absent god.

  Lord, on our broken knees we beg,

  Give us this day our daily bread.

  The black satori of a void

  Distorts all space around a point

  To hollow of forever, fed

  By gravity with white-hot stars

  Of piteous angst, by weight collapsed

  Beyond horizon of events.

  Our trespasses – forgive us – and

  No hell, just paradise of sand?

  A mother’s hand, more gift than grasp,

  A fist unfurls, to join in clasp –

  To comfort who? Her son or self?

  As scheme of soul exploits the grief,

  He grips to loss, would choke belief,

  For nothing matters, nothing else.

  No prayers absolve our foes, our selves

  As we forgive – against us – those

  Who trespass – god in heaven knows

  Fuck all! There is no christ of hell

  To reap the cold ash of a shell,

  A world kicked in and ground to earth,

  Scorched to be sown with teeth, to birth

  The jaguars of the end of soul.

  Into temptation – lead us not –

  But shepherd us in mask of kin?

  A father’s hand on shoulder speaks

  Of quiet bond in snub of hymns,

  The truth: a sire of flesh, blood-strong,

  No trance of tyrant spun in song.

  Usurper, nameless fraud in sky,

  I know my father’s hand and eye.

  Deliver us from evil – but –

  Deliveries come by hearse or truck,

  Or by the church-load, captive pews

  Delivered, audience to lies,

  Delivered up to hear good news.

  A flock of slaughtered doubts deny

  The brutal truth that gathered all:

  He was too young, too young to die.

  The kingdom – is – the power – thine –

  And – for – the glory – cattle and swine

  Led by an ape bow heads. They should

  See jaguar leap from coffin’s wood

  At baboon’s throat, make blood run river

  Forever – never, no – and ever –

  Never – amen – but beast’s attack.

  Fuck you. I want my brother back.

  III - The Wake (I)

  The good die young, the golem said.

  He chalked the tally in his head

  Of muttered platitudes, well-meant

  As Hallmark cards, forlorn intent

  Of clockwork care, robotic clay

  Of hearts bereft of sense to say.

  What could be said? Not twenty one

  And dead by step in summer sun.

  The pews are cushioned, velvet red

  As Babylon blood from babies’ heads.

  Drab stone and dark wood crypts the kirk,

  Stained-glass, chivalric angels, swords

  And dragons, brass plaques on the wall

  For soldiers dead for king and war.

  Clouds patch the veils of glowing glass

  With shadow as they drift beyond.

  In golden sun through halo hair,

  A forward step lacked sight or care

  For Ford Capri – and were there dice? –

  Three lads let slip from work, a scythe

  Through weft of hours, a rent in time

  Between before and ever after. Rhyme

  Cannot conjure the broken world,

  A fireman neighbour’s unreal knock.

  The church around him is aglow.

  A shaft of summer fires the glass,

  White dove in azure sky, a splash

  Of white among the blue. It limns

  The baboon’s head in cold, bright light

  To fleshless skull, a deathshead grin.

  World edges tremble, shivering weak,

  A flash of scales and feathers speared.

  One bruise on temple, as a coin,

  They said, rune of the hammering of mind

  Known with night’s operations past.

  He took raw information as

  A china plate of straw and grit,

  Senseless as urge to stand or sit,

  Between his legs the brother’s dog

  He’d stayed to watch. Facts had no taste.

  A rain of serpents, red and green,

  Old 3D film or acid stream,

  The coiling and uncoiling force

  Of primal chaos, snakes the world,

  A form slipped out of lapping waves

  Submerged again in ocean’s moan

  On threshold of the audible.

  Leviathan slithers, ancient, vast.

  He knows there’s something wrong, someone

  Said somewhen in the whisky hours,

  The days of tea and flower bouquets,

  The doorbell minutes full of chat,

  Between the death and funeral. He

  Looked at the dog, saw just a dog

  At home in crowded room of chairs,

  And biscuit crumbs brushed to the floor.

  IV - The Wake (II)

  Stained glass behind a father’s face

  Is background, gauche as peacock’s tail,

  Turquoise and ruby, world of eyes,

  Air filled with watchers of design,

  Come to behold the gathered breach

  Of night, folding into itself,

  The shadows of the vaulted sky,

  A golden city, harbour bright.

  She said, You don’t have to be strong,

  Broad Irish ma of childhood friends,

  Tongue-lashing brass in scold of sons,

  Now bustling queen of kettle and cup,

  Proud Mary, matron of the wake,

  Who drew him to her breast to break

  Down in her bosom with the leave

  He didn’t know he lacked, to grieve.

  Ape lifting arms, all rise with books.

  Silk ribbons, crimson garlands mark

  Thin hymn to sing to celebrate.

  A shape of chasm in him shifts

  As sinews under jaguar’s skin.

  No gospel scrap of verse can speak

  As loud as presence in the aisles.

  As eloquent as a joke, a smile.

  A quiet word in laughter’s wild

  Re
membrance of glad vanities,

  The high-jinks of the golden child.

  Don’t drift away, his mother said,

  The darker son, already strayed

  To dreams of death astray as well,

  Sat on an island rock, the swell

  Of ocean drowning what he said.

  His grief is locked in shuttered life.

  All doors and windows bricked with jest,

  Walled in the mansion of desire.

  His book sits shut in hand on lap.

  The crimson leather soft with age,

  As mother’s leather-bound King James,

  Dried flowers pressed flat on sepia page,

  Fine remnants of the Girls’ Brigade.

  The doorway frames his father’s stance

  At kitchen phone, the phone in hand.

  It lasts forever, every dial,

  Each pause for answer, answer, talk.

  He’s dead, his father says each call,

  So many times, call after call,

  So many times, with catching voice,

  Until the thick grief chokes to noise.

  The sombre organ’s notes begin

  A line of melody, a pause,

  A moment of sustain, of claws

  Unsheathing, steeling in his chest.

  Arise, mourners, in gathered breath,

  As beast from Blake stirs in his breast –

  As false as all, but truth is torn.

  Behold, from lies, the jaguar born.

  V - The Hymn (I)

  Whose anchor holds in storms of life?

  Let clouds unfurl all wings of strife!

  The jaguar spits at spear of rhyme,

  Conquistadors, his looted shrine.

  Let riptides lift, let cables strain,

  Wrench anchor loose from death’s remains.

  Where is brute grief in priest’s refrain

  Of solace sold in rock and chain?

  Where collars ripped in coat and shirt?

  Or face smeared grey with ash and dirt?

  Where filth and feathers as a meal?

  Or mirrors hid from fist’s appeal?

  Where incense belching to high vaults?

  Where mountain tombs of burning boats?

  Where is the pyre that paints the grave?

  Where grief’s chiaroscuroed cave?

  In white slave’s spiritual, in dirge

  For supplicated soul, the urge

  Of flesh – to live! to live! – is wrought

  To iron faith, safe haven bought.

  It rattles bones and hums in ears,

  This hymn, dark angel of the lord,

  Milks dread of death, desire for more,

  To hawk eternity as whore.

  Bound deep and grim by saviour’s glove,

  Lashed fast to rock will never move,

  Promethean man at foot of cliff,

  Shackled in ragged scripture, screams

  Defiance as his hellish waves

  Crash over ears to drown in pain,

  In truth, all sentimental lies.

  No eagle answers futile Why?

  The echoes of the hymn resound

  Past lyrics. Solid as the ground,

  The stone walls murmur back in tones,

  Impervious to aught but drone

  Of organ, voices, music’s moan.

  Carved by the architecture’s mass,

  Deep sonics take a solid shape

  That swells beneath all rhyme of ape.

  Moored safe, they sing, in saviour’s hand,

  Secured. But anger wells, waves grow,

  And storms withstand bark of baboon.

  The tempests rage, the wild winds blow,

  To break the rhetoric of chains,

  In choral reverie reveal

  Reverb of passion under verse

  As serpent under angel’s heel.

  They sing an anchor keeps the soul

  Steadfast and sure as billows roll

  But jaguar reaps the temple now,

  Cracks altar, casts soul merchants out,

  Laps poison of Gethsemene’s streams

  Where Yeshua wept as on the cross;

  And in pieta, only three

  Cradle cold body in their arms.

  VI - The Hymn (II)

  The trill of birds in morning trees,

  The hum of distant cars, his heart

  Pounds as the mad on padded wall.

  The song of world, the sound, the ground,

  A thousand rivers, cataracts

  Of tracks so layered the instances

  Of phrase are lost in flood of death.

  Cold waters chill our every breath.

  Sure, hold to prayer in straits of fear,

  But breakers tell the reef is here

  With schizoid howl of menace, crushed

  In skull of clay, the river’s rush.

  The hymn grasps counterpoint to this,

  But sinks as galleon wreck of bliss.

  Blood’s rising tide can never fail.

  No hopes abide beyond the veil.

  As fugue melts form now, music’s breach

  Is cadenced with dead brother’s speech,

  As on sleep’s cusp, you wholly hear

  The darkness speak sharp, waking fear,

  Your name, barked from some inner mouth,

  To shudder windows of bone house.

  Eyes widening at the basement door,

  You look through into madness, roar.

  The brass plaques on the walls engraved

  With generation of the brave –

  Names run as molten sigils, crawl

  As insect whispers in his ears,

  Howl liquid logos, spume and swirl,

  A maelstrom gyred to kraken’s maw,

  Abyss, the world’s noise crashing down,

  Over the precipice and down.

  Then storms are past forevermore;

  Bronze statue by the heavenly shore,

  He stands to leave, with scar of oath

  At hymns that twist the lips – grotesque

  To worship architect of deaths,

  To build in hearts of the bereaved,

  Cathedrals of delusion’s rock.

  No, with the jaguar he will walk.

  They’re for the living, clay lips mused

  Of funerals. Insults to the dead,

  He broods as mourners gift respects,

  Handshakes and hugs; and in his head

  A reptile bulk sloughs skin of sleep,

  Slow dragon in the dead soul deeps.

  It turns impassive gaze to quake

  The earth, the quick of him, to wake.

  I don’t know what to say, his friend

  Says, frail in failure, honest truth,

  Incomprehension on his face,

  As glimpse of snake or jaguar’s grace.

  There’s nothing anyone can say,

  He says, that nothing gulf of use.

  On such a day, on such a day,

  There’s nothing anyone can say.

  Sonnet 14

  A simple sonnet for your Christmas Day,

  for you and the Lord to whom you pray:

  call on your Master, sovereign of blue sky.

  His hollowed name promise to glorify.

  His Kingdom, Reich or Fiefdom come;

  each whim, demand, command of His be done

  here in real life as in the dead’s sky city.

  Beg for your daily scraps of crumbs. Plead pity:

  not to be lured with life, with rich appreciation,

  but to be saved from sorrow, spared love’s tribulations;

  to be absolved of shame as you yourselves

  deign to absolve those you disdain as serving Hell.

  As for you, little god, your Kingdom, Power, Glory, yes, are thine,

  forever and ever till you rot, amen, Tyrant Divine.

  Sonnet 15

  Let us all gather at a new Cafe Procope,

  philosophers and li
bertines, to roast the pope

  in postures modern Aretinos and Raimondos might devise

  were Romano’s positions not locked from profane eyes

  in the archives of the Vatican for cardinals to teach

  their choirboy Legion secret pleasures they might reach,

  hand jerking on their cock, tongue working on an ass,

  cleaning the sin of shit and spunk, these secrets passed

  down through the centuries from popes to priests,

  from cardinals to bishops, in the groping hands, the sheets

  soiled with the blood of lambs, slick trickling down the thighs

  of boys so soft... so sensual... so innocent. Ratzinger sighs.

  He thinks of sweet fucks with his shorts down in the grass and dirt,

  a boy of fourteen, buttons open, smooth skin under his brown shirt.

  Sonnets for Kouroi Old and New

  I

  I call the Muses, ode and melody and meme.

  Daughters of sooth and memos signed,

  consigned to mythic woods of history and dream,

  I call, through you, the god you once defined.

  Poor mellow man of tragic urns and comic tales,

  apple Apollo, grant me a kiss upon the lips,

  and I will sing for you and, in your name, regale

  the world with musings, your good news my verbal flips.

  Apollo of the many hymns sung by a tipsy choir,

  clear through erratic calliope’s gyre, I’ll dance your trip

  to the archaic three chords of a Delphic lyre,

  prance to the neat, the messy and the hip.

  Muses, through you I call upon the god himself, Phoebus Apollo:

  make me your new eromenos; give me your pearls to swallow.

  II

  Apple Apollo, with your taste upon my tongue