What shall we do with the people?
What shall we do with them,
who make an alien of our time, my love?
Whose axle is a dinosaur star
faking light from lost, abyssal blue?
Who flinch like sea anenomes at even a tiny
bit of thought? Who put their eyes inwards
when it's raining, and who hold
the diamond of their blindness tight?;
who are lazy like murderers,
whose purpose is molten,
and who lodge their affections
in places which are not worthy of them?

What shall we do with the people?
Who make a gaol of their own liberty,
and who are aggressive and desolate,
defending themselves from enemies
people are: what shall we do with them,
my heart?, these people who work so hard,
who are stressed, and burdened, and driven,
and who then sell their souls
for a handful of trash,
thinking it can get them
through even one more moment of their own life
when it can only ever take them
through the thousand empty moments
of endless other empty lives.

What shall we do with the people?
For whom my love is a nothing,
and my heart which I have spent so long making
a comprehensive thing
is a bit of tittle-tattle or a mocking remark
or your next footstep
inevitably away from me.

I imagine soul destruction can be quick or slow:
or perhaps the soul destroyed takes time
to realise it is destroyed
turning on itself in habitual apathy
it takes for rain or moments of desire,
or the possibility of a new love,
a better or a different love,
when it is impossible
although the rain is still beautiful
and it falls.

You disappoint me, and I know I have disappointed you.
And what will I do with the people now
we have disappointed each other?
Look for another person?

The light, well, I've seen that before.
What can I do with a people
for whom my voice is a variation of silence,
and who know better?
And what can I do with my love
which is probably just a variant of hate,
proud like a kind of pain,
and sombre, useless for life?

I could raise my voice at this moment,
and speak as no one else can,
but even as I do it, I choose not to.
I only believed in souls when I was young
and could imagine someone with my name
lasting longer than a footstep
or a moment of desire in the rain.

I disappoint you, but the way
you are disappointed is so trivial
and alive, like a lie
which you know is a lie
but is far more exciting than the truth
which takes time, and kills everyone
right at the moment they're born,
at the moment they become one
of the people.

When the clouds drift down on King Street
and the sky is on the edge of rain
iridescent blues and greys
I have time and I take my time
the pearl and the mother
of pearl; and you laugh, and we drink some beer,
kill an hour or two before an appointment
rain on the edge of the sky
and you on the edge of my eyes
iridescent greys and blues,
and a kid playing among the cigarette smokes
and the mouth a fuzzy zoom of words, forming
on the rim of tenderness:
I did not let you go, Ihave never
let you go,
and then we split the shells of pistachios
order more beers,
under skies uneasy with their own beauty
and you with teardrops in your lobes
the slowly dropping tears of pearls
shining for their mother
as I let you go, and I let you go
forever
as the clouds drift over King St
itinerant with rapid showers
easy with our beauty —
too easy with our beauty…

Scuzzy rains on petrol shoals
shark fin and accelerators
my lips dried flowers short toxic summers
fed to light of alcohols:
I watch your mouth and I kiss your mouth
and the words you spoke, I kiss them too,
and all that literal
intimate history
of your lips I kiss,
the word Daddy, the word sapphire,
grease with radiance spines and skulls,
locust, flesh and petal, deer,
to all that ancient wire of sand and towers
I go connected like a mothering child
spiralling in overture
a music like an electric wish
to feel the pulse of the shy universe
a vertigo of unknown life
lost in lips to kiss the kiss
to kiss the loss
and fall and fall

Two moments and a jolt of years,
train carriages, like soul commuters,
the hodgepodge and the bother of it,
the fudge and the erosion,
the eroded honey of it, and the numbing,
ice transfusion in a snowscape May,
the yaw and yelp of it,
the backtracking and the long disgrace,
the eke of sidling and lies,
the fulminating spark of it,
the passionate stubborn bloody dismay:
I dream of such lucidity
the world is zenned and floating loose
the snowdrop and the ant
bear up the sun
and they are both exactly
one universe long…
Fall in loss and fall again,
a Coil remix, James Stewart's eyes,
that blue of dizziness and July
panting lovers locking
butterfly elevations
and drags
slipped into muzzy cocooning, you know
I used to care for you, but now
I just don't care anymore —
Christ on a wafer to a quick cough lozenge,
yes, Christ on a wafer to a quick cough lozenge —
darling, I guess I just don't care…

Maybe I could say
hold on to a word, hold on
to a word once spoken: hold on!
But even then it's the pale, aphid green
of cold snap frost and then ephemera
imperative like a heart, and like a heart
imperative and ephemeral:
ant, snowdrop, universe,
they take their time and they take my time
as the clouds drift over King St
still with unmoving showers;
and I say your name —
it's just a word but it's enough
to start a dream; well,
and maybe I could say, hold on…
When the clouds drift down on King Street,
hours roughened me to this,
ziggurats and cluster bombs,
rains and overseas,
grammars of flesh dispelled
to a spray of ghostly atoms,
pistachio shells and oyster showers,
and their lucidity dreams of me,
of one, of us, of one of us:
I use a match to light a cigarette,
it's just a flame, but it's enough
to start a fire —
love, it's just enough…

What shall we do with the people, my word?
And what shall they do with us?
Who are loved, but do not need love,
who are served, but only want a slave?
Who wear the pearls, and forget the mother?
What will they do with us, my word?

Smoke winds above Middlesbrough,
city where it will always be December,
December where it always snows:
smoke rises above Middlesbrough,
the flower of a desolate heat.

Middlesbrough made us; and now we are leaving.
We are turned backs. We are closed eyes.
We are already memories.
Steel is poured in Middlesbrough,
the heat of a desolate power.

Snow falls over Middlesbrough,
city where it will never be December,
December of a metallic fire:
snow falls over Middlesbrough,
the petals of a desolate flower.

Middlesbrough made us; and now we are leaving.
We are turned back. We are old fires.
We are not even memories.
The wind blows in Middlesbrough, and your eyes
are the colour of desolate flowers.

Grey smoke rises into grey air,
meeting snowflakes falling.
Smoke and snowflakes in the wind
drift out to sea.
The sea is grey, like a metal,
and the sky is like a metal, too.
Steel is made here, in Middlesbrough,
and steel is strong.
Smoke rises over Middlesbrough
and I am like a metal, too,
I am strong,
and you must be strong like a metal
when the sky is grey like a metal:
you must be strong to bear
snow falling on water.

Middlesbrough hurt you, and now I am leaving.
We are thrown back. We are cold fires.
We are losing our memories.
Smoke rises over Middlesbrough,
the flower of a desolate heat.

Middlesbrough made us, but now we are leaving.
Steel grows on beneath the rising smoke,
metals cool beneath the falling snows,
strong, strong, strong.
Middlesbrough made us, Middlesbrough bore us,
and now Middlesbrough leaves us
as easily as a gardener throws
to the wind the wet ashes of a burned rose.

Lily-of-the-valley and not another flower:
lily-of-the-valley and not another flower.

What shall my word make of these, my people?
The clouds drifting down on King St,
twelve years and an instant away
and Jack is in his corset, and Jane is in her vest
on one of those days I'm dust-free
and superhot, so
anything can be done to me
by you,
my love. What
shall my word make of this, my people?

When the cars drift down King Street
they're enough to star a lust,
the graceful keg of a pregnant girl
gazelle and grief and labour
to make a radiance between two graves
carries the flower of life
like a teenage daydream suitor
Ziggy on the radio
and urban cherry blossom in the air
a high street glam stomp of fairy godzillas
she is his thought and he her will,
he her pain and he her hope,
necklaced on a naked bed
Pinocchio and the donkey boys
in idle goldmine darkness
potencies and latencies,
all whirled up in telegram kisses,
soft cables of ourselves
sent twisting sexually in flight
and the city drifts in pollen light
and skyscrapers are fireflies

Dustless and wracked by stars
I climb into my corpse and go
snap my fingers at those kiss-red lips
start a car like a mafia scene
the dead in garbage to the gorgeous lines
of Layla liquid and visceral
the gunshot wounds like roses:
the hero is a bitter one
the axis of a decaying wheel
turning on itself like lies and flies
while all the time
as cars drift down King St
people with small thoughts
are busy making smaller worlds
smaller and smaller still
ground the spiritual to
material horses' hooves
pounding in a funfair ride
are merry dizzy making machines go round
grinding coffee beans to a caffeine jag
round and round a universe
of asteroids and nebulae inside your head,
galaxies and planets
of gold and lemon in the dark
where I have ox-eyed daisies like a sheath
of dragonsblood and orange supernovas
and I'm peeling paint, faded off a wooden post
on the ramshackle fence
of a deserted coastal garden
positionless and supercool
beside my friend, who is the beautiful
one who suffers and is kind,
the flaking coat, washed-out azures
of what was made to protect
but was not protected, and hence
did not protect
against a breeze made of salt and time
against the futility of the people, my heart…

The battlements of symbols, Dharma, wheat
of theories, needs and stone
as the clouds drift down King St
I guess I just don't care.
There's no one at the wheel now, love,
there's no chauffeur, no driver,
some people think of the public good,
some chafing of their own desire,
but me, I just don't care.
The cars are greedy on a phantom power,
a metal father, half Oz woodcutter,
half cybermotive child,
I have time and I take my time,
light a cigarette and dream:
the core is to endure but no one dares and no one does
flower to the ghost of a tyrannical summer
it is too hurtful not to be
better fold dying petals back into the bud
shelter me from abrading light
and summon thorns like dumb crusaders
thorns for dawns, then more, more thorns,
growing dragon miser, to ring in fear
a great city of our wish
to be with towers and walls of rampart power
stout and mute to be real but
how do you defend yourself against the nothingness inside
guarding the void with all your might
in case it moves,
it's not enough to make me care,
abutted and redoubted, visored, kept and crenellated,
against the rat gnaws of people
grain which rots to a rich starvation
I watch them as they feed and squeal
skating aloof on frozen pharmaceuticals
across the darkness where a soul might be
seeking a beauty which I may be
but find instead
a boredom with virtue and society
a disgust for things so coarse and greedy
our pain deserved who swilled in luxury
and wept for more while a world went crying
who used up their world, then wanted another,
one was not enough,
but there is no other world,
and it's not enough
to make me care, until

one day stupefied I drift into your life like rain
where clouds tumble slowly over King St
and the sound of my voice closing on your name
or of cloudbursts glimpsed from a moving train —
it's enough
to startle us: it's enough
to start a love —
sweetheart, it's just enough…

I imagine soul destruction can be quick or slow.
Maybe the soul destroying takes time
to realise corrosion,
acid what it took for balm,
glancing on a dinosaur star
taken for still burning,
rusts and flaws what it takes for strength,
fatigues what it needs for care,
and goes out, surprised
to be dying in a summer shower,
with everything around it green,
although the rain is still beautiful
and it falls.

In shining graves of limousines
the powerful on patrician cool
make their stately way, dependent on petroleum,
the shared narcotics of opinion.
Me, I have my time and I use my time,
to oxidise and to atomise
my soul, to find
myself startled by a Tyrannosaurus light
glaring in my skull and teeth —
how sudden-seeming collapse occurs
though it has taken millennia to arrive
its fatal sap slowly arising
to burst in loneliness upon the public streets,
the streets a flowering loneliness.

Fakes and fools rule this world,
as they always have, as perhaps they always will.
But no one rules the people.
They are too full of soul.
To destroy that, I imagine, must take
an infinity of words, or maybe just
a single one.
Snatched up in a dinosaur star
in April, in scalded azure,
some may strive for a Lucifer hour
dropping through themselves like fire,
some may build immense towers
to justify the sky to other men
or merely to impose their will
upon the inanity of horizons;
some may cry for love or water,
for pleasure or salt, to be free or to be real;
me, I just don't care.
I've seen that light before
and I know: it's beautiful
and it falls.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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