XLV

I am undead, but living I am not;
The trappings of mortality are light
Upon my shoulders, sunshine is too hot,
I am a creature of the moon, the night;
My senses are excessively refined,
I see each wrinkle, each reflexive twitch
Of human nature, on which I have dined
For centuries of time, an ancient itch
Of consciousness am I, incarnate thirst
For spiritual substance as my wine,
A deathless, lifeless, curious appetite
Insatiable for love and the divine
And secret offices of the dark sight;
A daughter of the nothingness am I,
Without your sustenance I surely die.

XLVI

This my enchantment, Lamia that I am,
Seducer of men's souls with wiles and song,
To leave the flesh alone, bereft of name
And form to wander all this world along
Unsure of what it is; I leave the fools
And carry on my rapes in other parts
Of cities far away, of capitals
Where there are brimming stores of empty hearts;
For I am seeking someone, such a man
As in this age is constant, very rare
And sacred, Michaelangelo in plan
And action, strong enough to cure despair;
I have a weakness for the smell of paint,
Canvas that reflects without complaint.

XLVII

The empty mirror, where my face should be
Reflects a world of stubborn things, and doubt
Of the existence of eternity
And spirits such as I, although I shout
And pirouette in front of its blank gaze,
There is no answer, reflection's gone dim,
The light of life still shuns my ghostly days,
Though fantasy sustains my every whim
I need a genius of a painter here
To cover all my emptiness with hues
Of human kindness, to dispel this fear
I may be missing my immortal dues;
I must seem human, though my beauty lies
It is no worse than anything that dies.

XLVIII

I am the ghost in the machine, and you
The empty vessel, in which spirits dip
Themselves to be released, and we renew
Ourselves with art, with learning how to stop
The mind, so that our love can fly as true
As a good arrow. No encumbrances
May leave their dust upon this mirror's face,
The lenses of our eyes are clean and new,
No clinging to this world, and no disgrace
Attends us. Others know not what they do,
Are still conceived, not unborn in this place
Of the illuminati, of the few
Where death and birth are cancelled, where I wait
For you to meet me, where we meditate.

XLIX

Each morning I awaken still, to cease
Existence in the tide of love's increase
Which has no object, which, beyond the shore
Of mere perception, floods the senses more
And cancels passion out, drowns sentience
And want with quite another, greater sense
Without conditions and without surcease,
The vaster purlieus of infinities
That language may not bite, nor fingers grip
In childlike grasping at sweet soaps that slip
All bubbles, from the evanescent hand
That vanishes too fast into the bland
Spin-drift of sleep. I waken quietly
The roaring silence of eternity.

L

And if I have this love, why do I need
Your presence and your faith, yourself indeed?
What purpose has this love, this empty heaven
Without the gift of it, not being given?
With all of passion fused, compassionate
In the true meaning of commensurate
Appropriate action, not the sitting still
In an ambrosial fit, abstracted, chill
To touch and to the flow of consequence,
This makes the gift itself the only sense
Existence has, that living may contain
Apart from logic in the toiling brain
With all its fractal, curved infinities,
Frustrating taste as much as they can please.

LI-LII

I know this is no time to hesitate,
She loves you equally as much as I,
To pause for breath is to inspire too late,
The passion that you feel may quickly fly
I am not perfect in my manifest
Arrangements that are not discreet enough,
Personae dramatis, the actor's best
Portrayal on the surface is too rough,
Performance here is lacking, there are none
Of those fidelities that feed good sense
Of those more private acts, we stand alone;
There is no virtue now in innocence;
I am most given when I am most removed,
She is most absent when she is most loved,
Where is the joy that in the past has proved
Your sustenance when sexually starved,
A memorable colouring of time
A gift in fourteen lines that's more perverse
In being full of reasons for your shame?
For being from another universe
There is no presence as the matters lie,
Where moral laws compose the greater theme,
Our love divided so will surely die
Of the construction of an abstract dream;
There is no sexual contact to refresh
Her voice that's all you have, the wires that sing
The agony of stale and distant flesh,
Of love and of adultery, the wrong.

LIII-LIV

I want you, but I do not want you here
Unless you come complete, and fully see
Beyond this presence of an ancient fear
There is no woman in the gift for me;
There is no threat of madness in my heart
You are all men and one particular
Can stop my song, one only plays the part
Of all I know, can take my soul so far
That I am fused with, consummated in
The heat of being taken, given more
Than doubleness itself, this only one
Must be for both of us most singular,
To me importance rests from loving free
In sacred space, and living in bright time
While prominence is coming home to me
There is no place for conflict and no room
There is no dwelling-place for perfidy
For anyone with any other name
The gates are closed, the garden of the tree
Of knowledge I can give, there is no shame
In angels' hands. I leave you presently
To be with others of familiar kind
Bound to enjoy the known simplicity
That you have made, the child of heart and mind,
Of absent love, ah, loving hopelessly.

LV-LVI

You have to die to be as I am now,
The Dharmakaya, the forbidden says
There is no future in a broken vow
Abandon hope all fools who find this place
There is no present in a love forlorn
Unchaste cascading energy and grace
To fire the synapses, the sinews torn
From their illusions in the body's space
Time and again no time for us to be
The flash of lightning in the depths of night
In love undying, love so hopelessly
Reborn anew the simple soul, delight
Unleashed on nothingness, the empty jar
Of water for the Chinese brush, the dips
Of colours and of concepts meaning are
Mere words and lights to draw your absent lips
To mine the worlds of every distant star
Unknown, untouched upon the arching void
My silent song is waiting quiet there
A love to drive an English poet mad
Beyond the pale of man's most dark despair
Continuous surging lives whilst feeling dead
A painted wall that really is not there
Break down the barriers of bitter mood
Surrender to my plea, the open door
Of fifth dimensions reaching out to touch
In strange conditions of this urgent hour
The hands, the face that I have loved so much.

LVII-LVIII

I burn, I swim in fire like a warm sea
This wine-dark sea that Homer visited
With myth and legend washing over me,
To sing the living out of tales long dead
'Thalassa', seaside shanties come in waves
To bring the gods into my sleepy whim
The incandescence of my love behaves
Like a great wave of blue and leaping flame
Curling and whelming, out of principle
Beyond control, as ruthless as the seed
Of time and space expanding, animal
The primal chakra energies that speed
At base of spine, the round perpetual
Motion of lust contained until it feels
Closing of circuits in your arms, the fall
The rising fall of penetration, coils
Unsprung from gravity, the falling free
Of a mercurial ichor lifting sense
From its quotidian weight to really see
To see what knowing is without pretense
And in your eyes surrender every let
And hindrance to communion. So increase
Our bent to licence, what our peers forget;
Love's rule that's wide, and only leads to peace,
We resonate, and these our children are
That hidden legislation for release
The secret coding of the lovers' war,
My promise to respect proprieties.

LIX-LX

We're at the end of history, it all
Starts over, memory of ancient rules
Has fallen and declined, material
Considerations paramount, the schools
Of Heisenberg victorious. Particles
And waveforms of pure lust, we dissipate
Material in its million articles,
What centuries have known, the consummate
Decease is soon upon us. Now reborn
Faust pays in every office blood for love
The ghosts of former selves are advertised
Uncertainly we buy and raid the grave
Assuming it's the latest fashion, prized
The vampire's cerements, our doctor's diet
All inspiration exiled to the hills
White noise triumphant so the wise keep quiet
The Bodhisattvas in the bars drink Pils
To drown enlightenment in silence, slow
A dangerous relevance that's bottled up
Until the day of judgement, which is now
The revelation is upon us, stop
The tomb awaits us if we do not wake
From dreams of commerce we will surely die
Our souls were sold to purchase fillet steak
Of madness, now defined as property
Who is possessed and who is the possession,
What is the exorcism to set us free
Where is the priest to cure us with confession?

LXI-LXII

Dona eis requiem… the dead shall rise
The land shall fail, there shall be no more sea
The cities of the plain, of enterprise
The ocean of desire shall ebb, dismay
Will founder in a tide of ghostly vision
Possessing multitudes who cannot pay
The debt to reason. Living, I am legion
Their future's costs and bodies' rental fee
Accounted in my ground, in my estate
Invisible. The surging ghosts go live
From every screen and wire they populate
To haunt the wallet of each stipend slave
Each reflex, to acquire and to remove
In circulation, everything they have
The mind being conquered so they do not grieve
That artifice is food, the shadows close
Upon the theme of actual cogent day
Upon the truth, the life is lost to those;
The word that kills, illusion's filmy joy
Usurious in its interest on their time
Preventing access to the art of love
Their motivation greed, an awful shame
They miss the moment and a treasure trove
A thousand things unseen, the world to come
Already ruined, since they preconceive
Beauty by glossy magazine reviews
And do not look beyond the frame, or give
Thorough deception any chance to lose.

LXIII

I need you like a bird needs air to fly,
Or like a fish needs water. If you stay,
Or else return again I will remain
Postpone the evil day of leaving Spain.
It would not matter if a continent
Were placed between us, letters can be sent,
There are no barriers I will not leap
If your consent awakes me from this sleep:
I have not seen a man so beautiful
In all the world, and my world has been full
Of elegance and brilliance in friends
Who love me from long past, and from the ends
Of this old earth. This beauty that I see
Is in your heart and mind, and not in me.

LXIV

You find this heavy: I am losing weight
Living on numen as I meditate
Upon my love as if a universe
Were all contained within my tranquil, terse
And burning heart. The coiling chakra lines
Unwind their lightning fire about the spine's
More basal sections, rising in a flood
Of energy which cools and slows the blood
The breathing calms, and insight opens wide
The storage chambers of the brain, a tide
Of ordered matters, with the gaps between
The discrete concepts overt. I have seen
What I have in me, make of this a page
To quiet time, to conquer distant age.

LXV

To conquer distance, this is why I write;
The world that we perceive is just a night
Of our unknowing, of illusory
And fading twilit dreams to you and me;
We know this, as we know of this desire
Which burns all bridges, sets the dark on fire,
Cold flame and icy conflagration. Break
From knowledge to direct experience, take
My hand and lead me from this dwelling-place
Into the light, beyond your absent face
Beyond your fear of what I cannot see
There is no blindness, emptiness is free
Of preconceptions and of lies, it leaps
Into your arms undone, and never sleeps.

LXVI

To stay awake, to always stay awake
When everyone is making this mistake;
Believing in themselves, in their despair
Believing thought when there is nothing there;
The empty mirror does not show my size
But a reflection mirrored in my eyes,
I look upon your face, my senses scan
The weary features of an ageing man
But nothing in this world can quite destroy
The sources of my love and of my joy;
To know you for a minute or an hour
Opens a door to light, cascading power
Invades my nerves, the void within my form
Opens the mind, unleashes quite a storm.

Conclusion—»