Behind The Blinds (Or Everybody Loves a Good Conspiracy)

BEHIND THE BLINDS

There are far too many distractions
to crank up a good conspiracy

theory these days.
This is now my preferred

spot, facing the north wall, looking
blissful, deathless & permanent like Buddha

in the age of Queen Victoria; a human
soul twisted in metal,

a crane gone wrong,
the government, the shard, the man who fixes

the cranes overlooking the tallest building
in the kingdom imagining he’s Rodin doing Balzac,

or just Jacko doing Rockin Robin.
Remember what she said,

The Government is a criminal enterprise.
There is no world inside a world Lee Harvey Oswald.

It can all be fixed by coppers.
Brass.

I’ve just read the paranoid elite &
they’re starting a haiku war in spring, like in Prague

but different, taking just three lines, a war in three
lines like 3D perspective goggles dished

out for Avatar & probably Born Free too
these days: deal or no deal.

Escher loved waterfalls & stairwells,
but he could never understand monologue, paranoia or

Torremolinos, which was a computer
game, set in Spain like Hal was set in space

which sounds like luxury
in Lancashire mill towns burnt by the eighties drought,

when cookers came from wood &
urine was animated.

But following an animated, doctrinal debate
with the neighbour over

the garden fence about beet, carrots & spuds,
the luxury turned to rain, not rainbows,

You can’t opt out, every moment
is creative, if you look

for the missing link in the riddle.
Only paranoiacs do crosswords. There are no

obsessives only paranoiacs doing crosswords.
I do dot to dot, very slowly unless I

see a beautiful woman, or an elephant,
or just what’s in front of your bleeding eyes seeing

red, but the revolution won’t lead to a product
that you can sell -

or will have a shelf life,
or be a short term investment -

it will disappear when you try to possess it -
let it go…

it’s working behind the blinds directed
by Peter the Pleater of Old Street.

There are far too many distractions
to crank up a good conspiracy theory these days.

Lecherous Pliability (Or Neighbourhood Watch)

LECHEROUS PLIABILITY (OR NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH)

After dinner in the new swank restaurant,
she showed me what looked like the sculptures of Rothko,
skyscrapers bending in the wind,

seizures blinded by light; the new space invaders
developers had reserved for the very important
neighbourhood watch meetings –

unsettling, unified encounters brimming
with close encounters & bilious joy
now they had finally packed away the inflatable

jacuzzi & dumbbells loaned from
the friends of Bow magistrates, who come two in a pack
like marooned t-shirts from Mars.

Imagine the Krays
playing baseball, juggling orange pips while
whistling professional cockney geyser;

or Hollywood action Gandhi blowing through a megaphone
in the bushes reserved (for Tarzan)
when Slayer would do if you really wanted to get them out of such cults.

& look at that. The new black cat scratches the turntable,
unburdened by the energy, frozen &
unperturbed by the boundaries of public decency.

Oversensitive In The Face of Death

OVERSENSITIVE IN THE FACE OF DEATH

Smoking Craven A -
Not having a skin – or a raven -
he was a pure system -
of spasms -
alert – with growing -
indifference – clutching a Stanley Knife -
as if Jesus Christ -
were the only critic in town -
& Shakespeare was just blank, talking
numbers on a page – like Yeats – reaching the age
where his daughter beats him -
at croquet.

Everybody is Doing a Live Stream

EVERYBODY IS DOING A LIVE STREAM

Everybody – is doing a live stream -
Of consciousness – it’s what
Everybody does – yet everybody – thinks -
the alternative is therapeutic – or -
scandalous – invests time hoping so -
but dies soon – hoping – no.

Fairground Architects

FAIRGROUND ARCHITECTS

Cool linearism in the libraries, dynamic cities
surrounding the sanatorium
made famous by the architect sent to experience love
in a gulag, or some other fantastic open space
that if you close your eyes
could be the Central institute of Aerodynamics & Hydrodynamics. It’s not quite Borges,
the pool, the eccentric fenestration & portable
propaganda kiosks resembling lego
in St.Petersburg, Kiev or Baku.
This is such a thin place.
Even the priests are ducking &
diving & I’m nothing if not walking the sky
among the urinals & rotating
confessionals of the catholic tradition, built to throw away
last along with the photographs of myself
in the hall of mirrors, tortured &
in deadly cahoots with the subject supposed
to know, who doesn’t know as I approach Tatlin’s Tower
with a ladder, trying to fix it (again).

The Flower Police

THE FLOWER POLICE

Flowers with police arrange the cemetery,
the last gasp of voice vanishing, like a public parked.
A whole culture refusing
to go gracefully, to begin another ghost-story,
or occupy infinity, like successive wooden boxes,
or Lenin’s Mausoleum, back from the future
gathering dirt, accumulating damage underneath the statue,
sponsored by Bloomberg, if this debacle carries on.

Dante’s Olympics

DANTE’S OLYMPICS

In Dante’s time, there would have been a trip to mars,
or a moon landing, some glowing firework
inside & nothing but violins
among the bins & donkey jackets wearing heaven.

In the 70′s I used the rim
of a brass coin to rap on the door of life,
hoping for the 6am call;
the last orders of eternities curtain,

where any activity might pall
into a purge drinking with the sun still rising
over Stalin, a steep learning curve
if I could only get in & join the revolution, then I mentioned his name.

I spiralled, Escher through hell, with the bonus
of a ouija board lodging in the constant wreath of smiles, living light,
which, from the fountain of light, cascades in ribbons
that don’t unite paradise.

Paradise resides with militancy -
being cantankerous in the face of rainbows at night.
Eternity is a fair stretch,
the smiles, at least, partly offset the impression; time being nothing

but what is; waste a lot of it; but what is
almost resting in torpor, beyond the human suspended.
Until he moved there
was no before or after hours,

it was always
open & I was just loafing;
but had I been made earlier, or known my bloody Bleasdale,
I would have been born redundant in the empire of trauma,

like the laughter of paradise in Milton’s time, ladders of
lightless words casting their fatal shadow, the last
post on the bugle ascending, or, more often
descending, like a great, great grandfather.

After the Protest

AFTER THE PROTEST

After the protest, surprised by her confidence
that I was indeed a believer in an “Arthur Daley sort of way”,
willing to rally to the cause, while always on the qui vive for dodgy little earners,

I would return to a quiet fishing community, where eye candy was the colour of water.
I had no idea what the future might look like then, after the protest,
other than a very effective poisonous pill, but the colour

became a kind of emptiness, eclipsing the situation I was now in
surrounded by the authorities, barking dogs, vitriol.
Worrying obscurities cloud the medical record & even the doctor in attendance.

Resistance Wearing Thin

RESISTANCE WEARING THIN

My negative capability is acting out again &
I’m trying out the tensions in this shirt,
compressed, highly rhythmical,
wrenched in a small space,
wrestling without describing
anything in particular,
the detail you can’t explain
like the press of a button, a hole
in the sleeve.

Last Rites

LAST RITES

The Bishop described it as perfectly useless concentration -
this act of self-erasure,
being placed in a submarine while Ernst Stavro Blofeld pulls the plug.
The camp has spread to Finsbury Square,

bright contraptions gathered discretely at first, eventually become a nuisance
& a relief to the occupants, provisions for the journey.
Solomon Grundy, who was born Roman Catholic, is likely to be offended by Moonraker &
orthodox Christians will fare no better from this rich refusal,

especially those who behave
as if they were anointed, but charitable lovers, playing with names:
minimalists & therapists, comics, teenage vegetarian survivalists; stout,
funny & always beautiful – like a parade of picture postcard gravediggers, policing the wedding.