Note 35

footloose

i feel these hands that carry the world
i feel the clouds of dust that swirl around things
moving, shifting
you fall to the ground, feeling the tracks as
the pebbles bleed your fingers,
and the train moves.

So the milky current,
like the best food you've tasted,
or the waves that seem to wash and clean,
salting your hair as it breathed
from the cool dark belly of its ocean depths
unlocks threatens like a loosing promise
sliding like madness in a dream
but the trees ring forth spring
like an absurd parody.

You dance. Footsteps on the receding floor,
the rhythms grow louder as the head
swirls in a cloud of dust.
Witness the madness! The sickness!
You say, as the fifty pence ale
gurgles like a purifier in your throat,
turning brains into wishing wells
and coins into lies.

The dirt on the floor.
Bent and broken glass stuck in your shoes,
you reach to vacuum them away.
What? It weighs a ton, like the matter in
the brain, the accumulated
sickness of thousands of years of life,
stored in a citrus moment,
burning away like acid,
emitting a sparkling glow,
a molotov personality crashing into the fashion-shop windows of truth,
before some father-figure appears and tells you
what you needed to hear but knew didn't work anyway.

Those switches!
How do you work them?
I need some transistors
these veins bleed like BIOS overloads.
He poured milk over them
like a salve, cruxifying
soaring like a pebble throw at the skydomes
hitting the ceiling of a dream.

Now the hydrants open,
and the circus spotlights are switched on.
They shine on the busloads of tourists,
children, grandparents.
Someone eats a fire-stick,
pours kerosene down his throat,
a small fire breaks out, threatens the tentage as
it shakes in the breeze.
The firemen arrive - but the lungs have been burnt beyond repair.
The clown-business fails, and the magician is severely injured.
So the illusion ends.

I draw a few cards.
They slide from my cramping hands.
I do not know what they mean.
Do they know what they mean?
I take a few red pills that seem to
laugh and chatter to themselves
with secret, knowing truths
as they rub against my throat.
And the cards seem to flutter
they speak of love, life, danger, misery,
in cliffhanger tones,
that is, universally, generally,
and i am reminded of ants that swirl around
before they are crushed by a playful hand,
or killed by cigarettes.

The music begins
that is, the piano music drawn from wrinkled hands
the flowers in the flower pots begin to sing
and so the leaves droop to listen.
What do they hear?
Only music muffled from the dust in the carpets
trapped in some room on the hundredth floor.
While I hear the joyful sound of motorcycles
stuttering and stopping, speaking,
like animus mundi at the roundabout,
while the caged hens in the buses look out of the windows.

Listen, listen?
Do you hear its spirit aching, singing, sighing?
Remember, breathe it into you.
Oxygen for the dead! Oxygen for the dead!
Put it into tanks, and use it for resuscitation.