In the very teeth of the lie, emptiness bites at sound
an apple yacht lying at anchor, a ripple in Eden waters
a sea-and-moon flower in the mist, no one aboard
to be or to associate with
(it is picked and discarded, discarded and picked)
and in Hades and carnelians in the Crimea
a pirate fragrance suffuses the universe
a heavensent sweet decay, in Keats' fingers, dining on us
a swift terror of reason arrives, speaking of this and this
the walls of all things, one by one, falling open
leaving a bare summer before your shadow arrives

Ladies and Gentlemen I am the one and I've always been the one
at the Mecca–periphery of the buzz the craic the swing
digging mechanistic spurs into the soul like an acid cowboy
arriving at the border of two millennia in some one-horse town
the prairie messiah of a new cool and this is my sign –
wasted early Sunday morning the schnapps clasps of my attaché
opening a space where music should be
and the symphonic coffin of my friends
but where instead the burning vehicles
of destroyed metaphors await a war
between two orders to fire and refuse them

The lonely gun of the flautist solos in languorous drooping silver
shooting down a metal dove I pay by some Picasso plastic
and the Houdinis of Armenian olives escape our attention
as I eat Beethoven and lotus all afternoon, oozy ill and warm
in a PC–swinish condition a slipped disc and ductile
interfacial unlike the space between the mirror and my watching eyes
the Tibetan murder–wing within the house outside
as I make the gaseous pieces of the puzzle sleep complete
my enforced rest a place policed by dreams
the solid absence of a dozing head
the things I miss, the peace that would not fit

My credit is good my memory is sound when I am the Masterbuilder
and my nuclear ego laughs at half-lifes
I trace my lines like an actor and rehearse myself all day
myself–myself a strange reactor some fabled Hamlet of the solitudes
and by this unearthly light a death baker bakes
and the ash–bread I bite into
crumbles into being, and the burned figures rising

Poor pieces of shit, skyscrapers of lowdown
[I, a body adorned with signs, a restless tramping on speech
I, a deluded soul endlessly issuing its writ of habeas corpus
(a machine with a fever of eighteenth century reasons)]
we're not here right now, can you please leave your message
in the aftermath of clubbing all night and pulling a stranger
to come to on bad wheels pushed squeaking on to the stage
a spectral crocodile of eyes leading to this fixed position
a spirit–ammonite whorl of incarnations
queuing at my head like a crowd waiting to get in
and to be here now tuned in turned on and dropped out
airbrushed in führer images, my whole party one scene
folk-credited to Mastercard, elsewhere-sanguine with apathy

I am a Perseus of apathy, I wear etherised sandals
my wardrobe's full of an antique war and stuffed with characters
and a secret authority waters my flower
my fame is in cyphers my stock is deep
Restless and footloose, like a fragmented figure in The Wasteland
I read much of the night and go south in winter
confecting myself from affects and lines
the sweetmeat of the poet hung up on fumes
and drifting mosquitoes the sweetmeat of the poem
the offering–throe of a word filed under leisure
forgetting and talk, the soft babble of informants in a prozac notebook

Yes the ego–ego score of the Masterbuilder is a steely music
empty of traitorous mixes the supple alloys of the new semantic planes
a method for consumption like the Stuka-consumers
of the space in a hangar and pure brick
by pure brick (discretely) via definition do we go
making the walls of philosophical houses and the glycerine villas
of vanilla suburbs cases and casas mansions and terraces
free from the strange fall-out blown on the gene wind
secure (we think) in a leadlined room
holding our shockproof watches, our mettle
well-tested and our time always come
in a one-to-one state, but subject to the shakes
I'm always seeing double these days
my still dreaming from stone, a ladder from my head
leading up to my heart, the last place to run to
with animals and angels fighting upon it
with animals and angels fighting between it

This is the defence of the realm the status of Habitat chairs
the warfooting of chilling out, doing just exactly what I want
hardly troubled in my roundhead way
in making my tower of heavy stoned ivory
walls light as a bubble, so portable, quotable, connotable and potable
so fluent and delicious it melts on the mind™
like a memory you will never have
or a slogan you're too quick to kill with

In these strange exchequers with their menthol phonemes
my economy is short-term beyond belief
and the Cartesian chancellor is one day iron one day ice cream
and I can see why you must be so tired working here
in the metaphor factory with its ungainly equipment
how the Royal Mint of your senses must simply be reeling
in light in the scales, the turning goldfish
flashes an ever-renewed ID
which admits of no pain (because pain needs a memory)
but me, with my 3D pop-up gilts
lover I am high, oh, honey, I'm out of it
and the steel–steam of my laundry
cleans this currency of all creases and marks

Yes the slow sure Transcended of the abolished skyscraper is mine
a see–saw groove in some Liechtenstein militia
a uniform lingo of fabulous brasses and braids
to some Julius of the molasses, moraine and neuroses
with the river we surely translate as 'Rubicon' infinitely to be crossed
the stubborn warehouse of conscience set alight with possession
and love ground to succubus and incubus
only the floating direction of the coming song
seminared and detoured participled and sidelining —
for this is my consummate work a penthouse in the air
as outside an ill-tempered history rages on
Hetero sapiens like poor Humpty being put together again
in a jigsaw room the evidence of a massive crime
an aurum potabile of stolen teeth
alps of spectacles hair suitcases and gold
the weights of ancestors plutonic leaden or steel
and in the godlike looking away
the division of ignorance by wisdom's light
— what Ariel did next — what Ariel did next —
what Ariel did next — what Ariel did next — what Ariel
did next —

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.