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Babylon's strange, seventh wonder of the
earth :
gardens ablaze in colour, slowly rotting
in the dirt
and, with your head on fire, you can't
really see.
The hanging gardens sing,
but with a hollow ring :
the life is false, its killing me....
Don't look back, or you'll turn to stone;
look around before your life is overgrown
with concrete slabs!
On your back the searching eyes that stab
between chintz curtains, glinting,
but never owning to a name -------
like the inmates of asylums
all the citizens are contagiously
insane....
Atlantis is strange, the explosion of an
age :
no-one really knows what to do, and the
city
is a cage.
It traps in ashen hours and concrete towers,
imprisons in the social order :
the city's lost its way,
madness takes hold today...
I can't live under water.
Willie, try to stay a child sometime, for
as long
as you feel you can learn. Babies all
turn to
people, and people can really be strange
: they
change and, changing, bring pain.
Try to treat your parents well because
they care,
and what more can you do?
When you find your lovers, be good to
them as
you hope they'll be to you ------
be honest, be true.
Willie, you are the future; all our lives,
in the end,
are in your hands. Life's hard now ---
you know,
it gets harder, and hope is but a single
strand;
we pass it on and hope you'll understand....
We know that we do it wrong, we're not
so strong
and not so sure at all; groping in our
blindness,
we may seem big now but, really, we're
so small
and alone and searching for a home in
the night.
Meanwhile you're still a baby; you'll be
a lady
soon enough and then you will feel the
burn.
So hold my words : people all turn to
children,
spiteful children, and they're really
so cruel...
cruel fools!
Just follow your own rules -
don't think that I'm silly, Willie,
if I say I hope that there is hope for
you.
Incautious laughter after confession.
Benediction ------- fictional fear
Hidden faces ... Grace is a name,
like Chastity, like Lucifer, like mine.
You took me through the window-stain,
drowned in image, inscence, choir-refrain
and slow ecstasy ------
I'd embrace you if I only knew your name....
The silent corner haunts my shadow prayers
:
ice-cold statue -- rapture divine,
unconscious eyes,
the open mouth,
the wound of love,
the Lie.
You took me, gave me reasons for
saints and missals, vigils, all the more
holy martyrs -----
I'd embrace you and walk through
the one-way door...
I'd embrace you, but it would be
just another lie ----------
Time, alone, shall murder all the flowers,
still, there's time to share our plots
and all that we call 'ours'.
How much worse, then, if we all deny each
others' needs
and keep our garden's privately?
Its getting colder, wind and rain leave
gashes;
looking back, I only see the friends I've
lost.
Fires smoulder, raking through the ashes
my hands are dirty, my mind is numb,
I count the cost of 'I' :
"I need to get on, I've got to tend my
garden;
got to shut you out, no time to crave
your pardon now".
Now I see the garden that I've grown is
just the same
as those outside;
the fences, erected to protect, simply
divide....
There's ruination everywhere, the weather
has
played havoc with the grass --
does anyone believe his garden's really
going to last?
In the time allotted us, can any man keep
miserly his own?
Is there any pleasure in a solitary growth?
Come and see my garden if you will ----
I'd like someone to see it all before
each root is killed.
Surely now its time to open up each life
to all ----
tear down the walls, if its not too late!
There is so much sorrow in the world;
there is so much emptiness and heartbreak
and pain;
Somewhere on the road we have all taken
a wrong
turn ----
how can we build the right path again?
Through the grief, through the pain,
our flowers need each others' rain....
Once, constellations were holy, now darkness
pervades
all the older ones
and in the brunt of implosion, all yesterday's
golden
now reddened suns ....
and hope is a word with no space for blame
in ---
Red Shift, displaced now in time and relativity;
Red Shift, all moving away from we.
So here I am, though I might well be with
me :
I'm falling down deep to the rim of the
wheel.
Is it sham?
Does the world have a meaning?
The more that we know , the greater confusion
grows :
stars are like atoms, and atoms are patterns
and probably in the end :
'Maybe its all been a dream ....'
Time locked in negative matter, all theories
shatter
beneath the weight.
Happy is the man who believes that the
world
is a dream and all reason, fate.
Time moves on with no time;
the eye moves on with no rhyme,
and I'm a song in the depth of the galaxies
---
Red Shift is taking away my sanity;
Red Shift, all moving away from we ....
Peer through the backcloth : I am a character
in the play,
the words I slur are pre-ordained ----
we know them anyway.
Don't change your mind, don't be a fickle
friend;
don't change your mind, don't pretend
to something false.
Open the toy-box : you are Pandora, I am
the World.
If you cross the stream, you never can
return;
If you stay, you'll surely burn.
Don't change your mind, don't come all
orchid eyes;
don't change your mind, don't disguise
the fear
you feel :
it's real, and you must
guard your castle well, for I am the lone
wolf,
and the boar at bay -----
grant me your Pax, you know we only live
today,
and on, and on, and into :
"so Long" -- it takes so long to drown;
it takes so very long to choke on the
taste you'd spurned.
If you cross the stream you never can
return;
If you stay you'll surely burn.
I've lived in houses composed of glass
where every movement is charted,
but now the monitor screens are dark
and I can't tell if silent eyes are there.
My words are spiders upon the page,
they spin out faith, hope and reason ----
but are they meet and just, or only dust
gathering about my chair?
Sometimes I get the feeling that there's
someone else there :
The faceless watcher makes me uneasy,
I can feel him through the floorboards,
and His presence is creepy ----
He informs me that I shall be expelled
....
What is that but out of and into :
I don't know the nature of the door that
I'd go through,
I don't know the nature of the nature
that I am inside ....
I've lived in houses of brick and lead
where all emotion is sacred,
and if you want to devour the fruit
you must first sniff at the fragrance
and lay your body before the shrine
with poems and posies and papers ----
or, if you catch the ruse, you'll have
to choose
to stay, a monk, or leave, a vagrant.
What is this place you call home?
Is it a sermon or a confession?
Is it the chalice that you use for protection?
Is it really only somewhere you can stay?
Is it a rule-book or a lecture?
Is it a beating at the hands of your Protector?
Does the idol have feet of clay?
Home is what you make it, so my friends
all say,
but I rarely see their homes in these
dark days.
Some of them are snails and carry houses
on their backs;
others live in monuments which, one day,
will be racks --
I keep my home in place with sellotape
and tin-tacks,
but I still feel there's some other Force
here :
He who cracks the mirrors and moves the
walls
keeps staring through the eye-slits of
the portraits
in my hall;
He ravages my library and taps the telephone
--
I've never actually seen Him,
but I know He's in my home
and if he goes away,
I can't stay here either.
I believe -- er -- I think --
well, I don't know ......
I only live in one room at a time,
but all of the walls are ears, all the
windows, eyes :
Everything else is foreign,
'Home' is my wordless chant :
mmmmmaah!
Give it a chance!
I am surrounded by flesh and bone,
I am a temple of living,
I am a hermit, I am a drone,
and I am boning out a place to be.
With secret garlands about my head
unearthly silence is broken :
the room is growing dark, and in the stark
light
I can see a face I know ----
could this be the guy who never shows
the cracked mirror what he's feeling,
merely mumbles prayers to the ground where
he's kneeling :
"Home is home is home is home is home
is home is me!"
All you people looking for your houses,
don't throw your weight around, you might
break your glasses
and if you do, you know you just can't
see
and then how are you to find the dawning
of the day?
--- Day is just a word I use to keep the
dark
at bay,
and people are imaginary, nothing else
exists
except the room I'm sitting in,
and, of course, the all-pervading mist
---
sometimes I wonder if even that's real
....
Maybe I should de-louse this place;
Maybe I should de-place this louse;
Maybe I'll maybe my life away
in the confines of this silent house.
Sometimes it's very scary here; sometimes
it's very sad;
sometimes I think I'll disappear; sometimes
I think ..... "
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