Angels in Despair

(Prometheus)

Les anges de la inhabitation urbaine
S'appellent la bonne
Mais il n'y pas nous qui crions
dans la nuit noire
et qui dancons comme des enfants
sans savoir at qui oublions?
Mon dieux, pourquoi vous avez me depardu
pour trouve ca que n'existe pas
ca que nous voisons seul parce ce que
toujours encore nous espérons

Peter Paul Rubens, Prometheus Bound (1618)

Rivers of the Underground: Styx

This promise that leads to our death, is to desire life. We are so faithful and stand at the side of the father like a flock of children. Zeus is grateful and tragically obliges our wishes without much thought. Yet what is happiness but the absence of unhappiness, what is pleasure but the absence of pain. To avoid our suffering, we desire to live. To fulfill my yearning, all I crave for is to avoid unhappiness. So I seek more pleasure, I must fulfill this desire, even if it means my certain death. So I enter this underworld of the subway at Grand Army Plaza, and every morning, dutifully, to avoid discomfort, I repeat this same, civic ritual, I descend, I wait. Then I see the head lights approaching, growing larger as they roll near. There I see the shadow of the driver of souls, appearing on the dreary side of the traced, yellow line on the platform. I step back at the roaring proximity of the flashing eyes. I get on, and am shaken silently, tens of meters under the East river to the island of Manhattan, where rivers are split, bordering the marshes of Jersey. Who is immersed here, finds eternity, invulnerable to the suffering of life, but lost of all human measure.

Rivers of the Underground: Lethe

Of all the evil my eyes have seen, oblivion was the most unforgiving. Who escaped it, never spoke of it again. Of all sins, to forget the wrongs committed, the most cruel is, more gruesome than the wrong that suffers of it, to forget. The closest to death in deed, oh she is not sleep, for even sleep will be forgotten. Here I sink into this hole of liquid, here I am washed clean of myself, and so not only drowned into this river of the living dead, also to know nothing of it. Three times crows the rooster, three times I disown, three times disowned, so I deny the love I loved, so I deny the friend I once knew. Is there greater sin than to stop loving, than to forget. Man, I do not know what you are talking about! and the Lord turns and looks straight at us. Oh Lethe, who washes with your waters my love. Oh Lethe, don't leave me denied. As I sink I feel her sense of great, calm soothing. There is no deeper river in the mind, there is no broader realm in the soul of man. To forget is the devil's water, and more than death, Matilda's hand I fear. Matilda, most beautiful woman, most gracious and fair, it is her who makes me forget what in my dreams I longed. She is covered in her veil, and by the spell of magic in her eyes, the breath of her soft breasts in her tender voice, the Siren draws me onto her clips. Here it is I strand, on the shore of Lethe, while on my long sea way home.

False Associations 2

False Associations (1)

So let us sit a while in the space left between ending and beginning

So let us sit a while in the space left
between ending and beginning

Here where
Nothing grows or ever
Dreams of living

There is a silence here that sings as sweetly as any song
And says that
Love has passed through these fields;
Has passed through and moved on

Here lies a land owned by neither bird
Nor flower -
Beauty has no place here,
Time holds no hour

And so let us sit a while in the space left
between ending and beginning

Here where
Nothing grows or ever
Dreams of living

Spanish Bluebells

Those weeks when the Spanish Bluebells came
As quietly as starlight pouring blue
And brilliant upon
The small bank of earth before my window
Have now passed.

So then the earth is back.
The bare earth.

Between scattered weeds - that I've not
The heart to move -
Crisp packets hunched as old women
Twitch in the late evening wind -

And how the wind howls across this sorry patch of England!
If the rain falls - and it does fall
How the packets crackle like fire!

But they bring none of the joys of fire
And sound as mocking and as uneasy to me
As the forbidden laughter of strangers.

Dalston Night Song

And so it's midnight
outside the Tesco Express
on the Kingsland Road

A man kicking at the wind
the rain
red lights from passing cars

And you have your hand in mine beneath an
old umbrella -

No, let's try not to think about the morning darling

For now
All that matters is
huddling from the rain and that
I've your bag and a bottle of wine

And that in half an hour we will be home

Bushwick Tales (1)

i wake up at 5.30am, from a drunk, hispanic laughter in front of my window, a cool breeze flows through my open window, on the doorstep of my house, two men in black baseball hats, three-quarter length cargo jeans, bid farewell to a friend on his way to prison today, the conversation is occasionally interrupted by repeated phone calls, where are you man? or the blase answer, in a light accent, changing to spanish at times, they're not saying much, mostly how loco and cool it is, cracking jokes about court day, i look up the weather forecast, it is going to be a cool summer day today, a slight chance of rain

the marriage of aphrodite

from the eastern crest of the setting eve
a wave of crystal particles like foam diverge
its shining stars wash ashore of ithaka
and curl in the green room of night
it is still and it is dark here
beauty greater than gold transits before a churning fire
so bright and large that it blinds our sight
her eyes sparkle married in heaven lit for only man to see
that we are wrapped in celestial embrace for lasting good
until death lands the kiss upon our fragile lips
with the salty taste of the sea that once gave birth to love
now gives birth to an eternity greater than man can love
there is written in the sky
only love can guide us through this night
and deliver man to womans thighs