Song: Let me do dishes

Verse:

Sweet moon and June is only part of the tune,
The first flush that possesses your brain
There's more to romance if we'd just take a chance
And celebrate all that's mundane.

I want to . . .

Do the dishes for you.
I want to mow the lawn.
I want to fix the hi-fi for you.
To be your shelter from the storm.
I want to do dishes,
Please let me do dishes,
I'll grant all your wishes,
To make your bed comfy and warm.

I want to . . .

Peel the spuds for you,
I want to sweep the floors.
I want to tune the TV for you,
To draught-proof your windows and doors.
I want to peel your spuds,
Please let me peel your spuds,
Soak my hands in soap-suds,
Get to like all your in-laws.

Yes we can trip the fantastic.
Yes we can walk hand-in-hand.
But love isn't only such drastic
Waves of sweet love's magic wand.

I want to . . .

Make the beds for you,
I want to burn your CDs.
I want to paint the walls for you,
To be just as busy as bees.
I want to make the beds.
Please, I'll make the beds,
I'll do all the housework you please.

Please,
Let me not only
Make love and love only,
To worship you from near and far.
So please let me do
All a true love can do:
Wash dishes,
Peel spuds,
Grant all of your wishes,
Soak my hands in soap-suds,
Sweep all your floors,
Get to like your in-laws,
Do any or all of these chores,
So you'll know that I truly love you,
Doing all that a true love can do.

27/08/08, 9.40am

I started composing this song in my head while doing the dishes (for myself)

and I thought how I'd much rather be doing them for my beloved.

Broken petals

I name her rosebud,
but really she's a whole garden.
She dances through the desert of my hungry heart,
and flowers blossom from her every fruitprint
like dewfall, like starfall.

Sometimes her pathway takes her over the hill
and I can no longer see her blossoming,
but the wind carries her perfume to me,
and I breathe her in like the Spirit of life
which inspired me on the day I was born.

Sometimes I discover broken petals in my pocket,
rich as the day she shed them into my arms;
I bury my face in them
and she is with me once again,
as if she had never gone away.

I lie abed of a Sunday
meditating upon the reality
with which she reddens the evening skies of my days.
I need these times of separation
so I may discover her anew.

And then to close my eyes in sleep,
knowing that whatever I may dream of and forget,
the sweet scent of memory will never be forgotten.

17/08/08, 3.35pm, Wortley Hall

Unchanging

The masks come off at midnight.
I am revealed,
“braw in cramassy”,
a scarlet sentinel'
my pen an unsheathed sword,
weaving a basket of light around us,
protecting you from all comers.

Where are your ass’s ears now, my heart?
The light from the street stripes me like a tiger.
The roar of a car echoes the image.

The night passes slowly.
There is truce in the war between us,
between the mannish woman and the womanly man.
My balls are scrotum-tight in flight-or-fight mode.
I shall be who I am.

This shape is my only shape.
The sexual warrior, peacemaker, lover.
Three-in-one.
Shapeshift me how you may,
this is an eternal truth.

I see a rainbow in your eyes.

July 30, 2008, 1.15pm

“Braw in cramassy,” brave in scarlet, a description of Mars in Hugh McDiarmid’s Bonnie Broukit Bairn:

Mars is braw in crammasy,
Venus in a green silk goun,
The auld mune shaks her gowden feathers,
Their starry talk's a wheen o blethers,
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin'
Earth thou bonnie broukit bairn!
- But greet, an in your tears ye'll droun
- The hail clanjamfrie!

“Broukit” means heartbroken – appropriate in this context.

A sad song for Rosebud

Click HERE to hear Abdullah Ibrahim.

Song: No Other Time

This is the only moment,
Time to find what each high and low meant.
Go well!
There can be no other time.

There have been vows unspoken.
Now when our hearts are still unbroken
Go well!
There can be no other time.

Just when we thought we'd never
Find a way to love for ever
Suddenly we are fancy free, and now . . .

There's no more time for waiting
We've spent too much time hesitating
Go well!
There can be no other time.
Stay well!
For this is the only time.
New words to Some Other Time, tune by Leonard Bernstein, original
words by Arthur Freed (from the film musical, On the Town.)

For tune, go to http://www.karldallas.com/someothertime.htm

27/07/08, 6.12pm
This is not a song of parting. Go well (Hamba Khalie in Zulu) and the
response, Stay well (Sala Khalie) suggest "until we meet again".

Alternate words for the bridge:

Time is a mighty river.
Drink from it now or never.
Suddenly it's time to see . . .

Link to a song, Some other time

A song that sums up my present mood

Song: Love don't die easy

There's a flower I've found in my garden.
It's been planted there under the trees.
You may call it Love in Idleness or Wild Pansy
But I give it the name Heart's Ease.
Now summer's passing and its colours are fading
As a cold autumn wind blows the leaves to the ground.
Love don't die easy though the earth may be freezing
As bitter the world it turns round.

chorus:
Love don't die easy, she don't die easy
Though flowers fade in the morning dew.
The seeds she planted in my heart's garden
Lie quiet in the earth below,
Love don't die easy love, for me and you.

Don't take the nectar from my eyelids
I want to love everything I see.
This magic potion breaks down barriers
Between us and them, between you and me.
I want to live the eternal truth
That life is lived within this Dream.
Our shapes may shift, our names may change.
Still things can't just be what they seem.

chorus:
Love don't die easy (etc)

I'd rather have flowers that fade in my garden
Than have no flowers at all.
The dew that waters the blossoming roses
Turns to frost in the fall.
Time doesn't heal, it festers,
Unless we betray not our heart.
Love's not bounded by anything
However long we're apart.

chorus:
Love don't die easy (etc)

Seasons that change come round again
Summer and autumn, winter and spring.
Moons wax and wane, day turns to night,
And flowers in my garden blossoming.
All life is in motion,
A dance of the hours.
Forward and back,
The fading of flowers.

chorus:
Love don't die easy (etc)

21/07/08, 7.16am

Note: This is a work in progress.

No tune has been composed as yet and when it has,

the words will probably change as they are fitted to the melody.

The sentiments are unlikely to change (though never say never).

Test

I do not need to test my love.
But I am testing a new way of posting from my desktop.

Still blooming

We planted seed
a lunar time ago.
Moon has waxed and waned,
rain come down,
puddles stream to wash our hopes away,
winds blown cold and mild,
some frost descended;
but sunshine also,
dancing with the joy of May buttercups
and daisies on our lawns.
The young shoot feels the pain
of forcing through
the earth chilled hard and unyielding,
but still our blossom beckons.

I'm a rotten gardener.
I interfere too much.
If anything I plant should flourish
the miracle is another's,
not my own.

But that is what it is:
a miracle.
Another's hand tends our lives
and brings our fruit to term.
Scarlet as the blood racing through our hearts,
rose petals scent
the gardener and the gardened,
the tiller and the tilled.

Seed time may be done,
these four weeks or more,
but harvest has long months
of climate change
to wither grapes upon our vine.
The sower sees
so many seeds blown away
or taken by the birds
whose voices crow like carrion.
We live on a small island,
ever victim to Atlantic storms.
We shelter in each other's arms.

I have had to learn
to let the growing follow
its own green logic.

God give me grace
to let it be so.

05/06/08, 2.40pm

Eurydice

My love is in love with death,
infatuated,
ready to jump this way or that
if he crooks his little finger.
She knows he is a destroyer
but she doesn't seem to care.
She longs to subsume herself
into this early grave.

To me, on the other hand,
he is an old friend
I must treat with respect.
He visits each October
and I stretch my hands
to the cold flames
of his autumnal fire.
We sit and discuss those who have left,
with love and regret,
an end to mourning,
a closure.
That is his function in my life,
for life it is,
his visitation the frame around
the seedtime and harvest
of the circling year.

This is the time of her time also,
but he stands at her invitation
between her self
and the promise of her being,
seeking non-being.
She is life itself,
and he should be just the janitor,
opening the doorway
to a fuller life.
She runs to another, darker door,
leading nowhere.

I have tried to charm her
back to the sense of what is,
rather than what could never be.
My harp jangles
with the wrongness of it.
My head is turned also.
And furies lie in wait
to tear our love to pieces.

If I do not take care
I could be lost
in this underworld
of abandoned souls.

He smiles.
The race is not to the swift,
but to those who disengage
from his crooked gameplan.
Les jeux ne sont pas faites,
and he loses.

She has bet all on black.
The wheel spins
and keeps on spinning.
In the dawn the sky is red.
A warning.

Pray God she heeds it.
28/05/08, 08.08am

The bank of time

She laughed.
He started,
opened his eyes,
looked around him,
and wondered.
She laughed again,
and brushed the heartsease from her eyes.
She looked at him with love,
and fondled his ears.
Oberon isn't a real person, silly, she said.
But I am real, he replied, irritatedly.
Are you? she said,
kissing him.
And laughed again.
28/05/08, 13.44

Thanks

Click this link, cos Ray Davies said it better than I ever could.

Fare thee well

Fare thee well, I wish you well.
Fare thee well my honey.
Although you're gone, my love lives on,
I wish you well, my honey.

I won't be sad but I'll be glad
For what we've had my honey
Fare thee well, I wish you well.
Fare thee well my honey.

Though nights be long my love is strong
I wish you well my honey.
I don't know how the here and now
Became goodbye my honey.

Eternity's too much for me
But now you're free my honey
Fare thee well, I wish you well.
Fare thee well my honey.

Love's liberty must set us free
From memory my honey.
What's been has gone
And life goes on
An endless song my honey.

I pray that you are happy too
In pastures new my honey.
So fare thee well, I wish you well,
Fare thee well my honey.

So fare thee well, I wish you well.
Fare thee well my honey.
Your memory is like a tree
That shelters me my honey.

Its deepest roots and sweetest fruits
Are part of me my honey.
Each passing hour I pluck the flower,
So sweet, so sour my honey.
Fare thee well, I wish you well
Fare thee well my honey.

05/04/08

I composed the words of this song back in April,
before there was a Rosebud in my life.

I was saying goodbye to a lost love,
for whom I'd been grieving for the previous eight years.

Perhaps I was addressing it to the wrong person.

I didn't have a tune for it until May 24.

Poem

A blood-red rose blooming in my garden
On the thorn, my own heart, bleeding.

22/05/08

Sun song

Sun came and knocked on our doorway this morning.
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
She dazzled our ears like the birdsong at dawning.
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

Who are these birds who are dancing so sweetly?
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
And who is the archer who's prancing so meetly?
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

Grass is my carpet and stars are my ceiling.
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
And you are the seasons around my head wheeling.
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

Now is the moon and the sky and the dayspring.
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
The sowing and growing and autumnal harvesting.
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

At last as we lay down our heads at night sleeping.
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
Love is the power above our beds keeping.
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

Hello and goodbye, goodnight and good morning.
Singing: All shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
Hope is the faith in all our hearts borning.
And nothing shall be but what's meant to be.

24/05/08, 5.45pm, Bear Wood camp, Addington, Surrey
(My mobile died so I had to write it again from my fallible memory.)
The refrain, All shall be well etc, is from Revelations of Divine Love, or Showings, by Julian of Norwich (1342-ca.1416)

The prancing archer is Sagittarius, Rosebud's birthsign.

Rosebud and Bottom

She flew over the snow
and, in the end, was consumed in fire.
He the unwieldy suitor, unaware of the heartsease on her eyes,
his long ears on her pillow,
thinking that at long last love,
and he'd got lucky.

Came the cold grey dawn
he looked around,
could not recognise
the unreal world he found himself in.
But then he saw Titania sleeping beside him,
a dream of the Dream flitting quickly under her eyelids.

Good morning Rosebud,
he whispered
as he kissed her enchanted eyes.
Then he crept away back
to Athens,
to work on his weaving.

Worked on for several days and completed 24/05/08, 10am

Or is she?

The true name of love is uncertainty.

Re: "We move on"

The previous posting related to what I thought at the time might be
the most probable of a number of possible outcomes.
For the moment at least, the dance continues, and no one's waving goodbye.

We move on

We move on.
The dance continues.
I see you skipping away,
your laughter blending with other partners who take your hands,
your steps no longer in tune with mine,
mine moving away also to a different drum.

Of course there is a sadness.
We cling to what has been,
even as it changes into what can never again be.
But there is joy also,
joy in the dance,
circling round,
never ending,
a sweet serpent devouring its own tail,
coiled around the Tree of Life.

Just for a moment we were enchanted by the nectar from its fangs,
our minds clouded by its blandishments,
seeking to be like gods,
believing its broken promises.

But Lucifer, too, is part of the plan.
How could anything not be that is?
But this moving away,
as much as our merry meeting,
that too.

God speed.
17/05/08, 9.29am

A blank page

Drawing a line

My heart is an illegal immigrant,
crossing borders I did not vote for.
I try to draw a line between what has been
and what is,
but it wavers and blurs.
It's not that my hand shakes,
but that lines you urge me to draw
are a bookman's fiction.

The guards between past, present and future
have deserted their posts.
I am detained indefinitely
in a limbo whose fences
allow me only to hear the thunder
of new dawns that are trying to awaken me
from a dream that has no frontiers,
no barbed wire.

But in this world of the real,
I take the barbs that would separate us
and plait them into a harp
whose music you may hear
when you are ready to.

Look into the canary cage.
The song you hear
is my joy
at yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Cover me how you will,
it will never silence my singing.
15/05/08, 9.06am

Loyalty

Who'll be sleeping in my bed?
I lay in it
and you lay on it
and we counted the hours upon each other's flesh.
We ate toast instead of porridge
and I licked the crumbs from your lips.
Who else can ever do this?
Others have lain with me
as with you,
but still the bed we lay upon
that night and morning
may not admit of another's presence.
The wild time of that bank is eternally, exclusively ours.
If this be jealousy
then I admit to it.
Thine and mine is the sweet wine of love's intoxication,
distilled only for us two,
soul seekers in this dawn
of a tomorrow none can tell the ending of.
10/05/08
I wrote this a few days ago, but didn't post it because I wanted to
see how things developed. Now I feel free to share it.
I have never felt jealousy before. It is a strange emotion to me, but
it doesn't feel too bad.

Bedazzled

If it ends here
then yet it never ends.
Like radio waves travelling out
at the speed of light
towards Alpha Centauri,
what has been sent out from between us
can never be recalled back from between us,
even if what has been between us is the reason
there is no longer this wonderful something
that once was
and never can no longer be
between us.

Like comets crossing their orbits,
like shooting stars burning out their very existence as they plunge to earth,
like fireflies whose light is but truncated foreplay,
we blazed so brightly for so short a time
that my bedazzled eyes are still purpled by the after-image of the light of our thousand suns.

Our time was measured out
as the world measures,
as barely days, hours, seconds.
But such clocks cannot measure lovers' time.
For us,
even words like eternity
fall short of the reality of this
man with that woman.

Fine words are only empty air.
A wise man wrote that once.
But I must inscribe
the love of this man for this woman
across the skies,
above the clouds that guard our eyes from the sun.
And see the far galaxies echo
with the Big Bang of our creation.

12/05/08, 12 noon

Happy mistake

I was coming out of a deep depression and I thought of a funny poem to celebrate my return to sanity.
I wrote it and thought I posted it.
And as sanity returned, I realised some of my funny lines were not so funny, after all.
Sitting in a hotel bar accessing wi-fi, I logged into my blog to delete it. And it was nowhere to be seen.
Someone up there is looking after me.

Kane's Rosebud

How do they know?
No one was there
(apart, that is, from the film crew),
when Kane collapsed,
dropping the snowstorm paperweight globe
to smash like broken dreams,
murmuring the gnomic word
for us to hear.

And how did anyone know
(for instance, Gore Vidal)
that this was William Randolph Hearst's pet name
for the clitoris of his mistress, Marion Davies?

I am no Kane,
no Hearst,
and I cannot have a pet name
for what I can only guess at.
But I shall publish to the world
my love that has a name,
reserving for your own ears
the secret title that only lovers know.
13/05/08, 8.07am

A red seed

I thought to pluck your blossom
and make it the centrepiece of my table.
But I caught my finger on a thorn
and now the flower is blooming in my heart.
12/05/08, 6pm

Bonfire of the verities

My words are mere shadows
of the substance of what we are,
of what we have been,
and ever shall be.

I would burn them up
into a bonfire we can warm our nakednesses before,
and nothing real would be lost.

I am a man of such shadows,
striving to pin down like butterflies
dancers from our peripheral vision,
who open a portal between what is
and what is not,
and what could be,
if we could but cease seeking to stare it down.

In this fantastic world
there is no should,
except the long-ignored imperative:
défense de défendre,
it is forbidden to forbid.

So I may banish these wordy phantasms to the flame,
but their ashes leap out and dance around us,
taking our hands,
reminding us that all this- too may pass,
but words of love are eternal.
12/05/08, 1.40pm
In the grounds of Bankfield Hotel, Bingley, waiting for time to
rehearse, while tiny blue wings flutter by, and a thrush bubbles in
the trees

Disenchanted

What rude mechanical am I,
seeking to flap my ass's ears
in Titania's face?
How comes this dream of May day dancing
into this magic forest?
I wake at dawn
and the dream refuses to let me waken.
I am dressed in trees
and the green sap fires my leaves.

How did I become translated into this plaything of an elfen queen?
She trails her fingers over my chest.
I become human,
translated.

She pulls my ass's ears.
The dream is over.
It never ends.
Her hand waves through the departing window.
A web divides and joins us.
The curtain falls.

There is no ending,
not even for a child's toy thrown into the furnace,
the floral transfer bubbling away in the flames
that consume me.
Do not what thou wilt not shall be all of the law.
We cannot fail to obey,
Even as I emerge from my mask
and become disenchanted once again.

Is that heart's ease nectar I wipe away from my eyes,
or tears?
11/05/08, 12.43pm

Separation

Antaeus is dying.
And Bottom is waking up to reality.

Love in idleness

Love in idleness
Please don't let me awake from this spell.
I didn't know I needed hearts-ease
but let me never be uneasy again
about love or anything else.

I am lost in this enchanted wood,
and I don't ever want to find my way out.

Please say the spell again,
with your fingers scrambling elf-like across my breast,
writing your secret name into my mouth.

Midsummer draws near.
I scent a Mediterranean zephyr crossing the Pyrenees.
I want to plait camellias about your mount,
and ride with you up to the high sierra
where a golden eagle circles.

And then heads home to the north again.
10/05/08, 1.46pm

Antaeus

You are my ground.
Sometimes I try to fool myself
it is possible to fly
without touching down
to renew myself from your earthy kiss.
Only to fall, like Icarus,
into the dark deeps of lonely despair.

True flight
is this:
to dance from your mountaintop to my mountaintop,
and back again,
communing with clouds
and angels.
Then there is no Herakles
powerful enough
to hold me from you.

But a time of separation looms.
How may I be sustained?
I shall dive into the place
where our hearts never can be separated.
And bring up from the depths
pearls
that are the words you place into my mouth.

08/05/08, 9.39

On the poem "Worship"

These lines were inspired by two remarks: "Methinks you are in love
with love"; and also something about it being a religious thing for
me.
As I have written elsewhere, to me "mind, body and spirit are one
flesh". And there is no profane love. All is sacred.
I am at one with William Blake in this.

Worship

The man who loves you
is more than just the man who loves you,
as you are more than the woman in my arms.
Yet there is no life beyond love.

We shine like diamonds,
and the light through all our facets
is what makes us human.
Truly it is the name of God.

We take what we are together
into our uniquenesses
and the world's enriched by what makes us one,
and two,
and many.
How can we be ourselves
if we are not everyone's?
Or anyone's
if we are not our own,
our individual,
separarated selves?

I seek to possess you
because only then may I see
the you and I
that is you-and-I.
Which is why I seek to be possessed.

There is one love
as there is only One who loves us,
legion in the many shapes he shows,
male and female as he created us.
Yet One as you and I are one.

This is a mystery,
the mystery of life,
how one can be One,
and also two, or three,
or many?
We choose to be all these
for we can do no other.

I long to subsume myself within you,
swimming down into the depths where you comb your seaweed hair.
Yet as your ocean surrounds me,
and I drink you into to my innermost being,
I become still more myself,
different because identified
not only with you
but all things,
including this man who swims away,
out into the upper air,
bearing the salty kiss of your shipwrecked thighs upon my lips,
the eternal I,
the one who may not be subsumed,
the one who is you and me
and everyone.

This is Worship.

08/05/08, 8.35

I'm glad I am in love again (on the web)

To hear this song, go to http://www.karldallas.com/Glad.htm.

Letting go

Letting go

Of any power we might have over each other
Of any plans or hopes for the future
Of any memories that could imprison us in the past
Of any idea that love could be anything but all-inclusive
Of your womanhood and my manhood
Of who you think you are and who I think I am
Of who you think I am and who I think you are
Of anything that shackles us together
Of anything that might seem to split us apart
Of the boundaries of our flesh
Of fantasies of place or time
Of anything that limits our freedom to be anything we were created to be
Of everything but love

06/05/08, 1.51pm

Mornings and evening

She came knocking on my bedroom door
with linctus for my gritty throat;
evening drew into a sweeter night
and the morning was the beginning of the next day.
The next day dawned with memories of a sweet dream
that had a truth greater than the lies of day.

She came knocking on my bedroom door
with toast and marmalade and Spanish orange juice
that lasted us most of the day for sustenance.
We walked hand-in-hand through the city streets and squares
pondering on the whole of Aleister Crowley's Law
and defying his curse
(though I, for one, knew it had already come true.)
And the evening was the end of the second day.

Partings were sweet sorrow,
I to the north, she to dance with her true lover in London town,
we perhaps never more to meet.
And the evening was the beginning of all the days to come.
05/05/08, 11:30pm

Courtship

I want to

plough the fields of you
plant the seeds of you
taste the smells of you
slip on the sweat of you
drink the juice of you
hold the flesh of you
digest the core of you

I want to

feel the anger of you
share the joy of you
enjoy the presence of you
accept the going of you
welcome the return of you
become the being of you
get lost in the otherness of you
take away with me the eternal memory of you

I want to share with you

the essence of me
the dark and the light of me
the love and the hate of me
the age and the youth of me
the laughter and tears of me
the noise and the silence of me
the coming and going of me
the beginning and end of me

Or shall we just say goodnight?

For Halima, 5/5/03 10:46

Though this wasn't written for Rosebud, it's quite appropriate to this affair, I think.-KD

I'm glad I am in love again

New words by Karl Dallas to a tune by Richard Rodgers

(view the original words by Lorenz Hart at http://www.lorenzhart.org/wishsng.htm.)

The dreamy nights,
the daily flights
the soaring higher when I reach the heights
I love the kisses and the sweet love bites
I'm glad I am in love again!

The hoped-for dates,
the endless waits,
the lovely loving and the hand of fates,
the re-discovering euphoric states
I'm glad I am in love again!

Love's sweet pain
Once again
I'm insane but ...
I'm glad that I'm gaga!

The wham and bam
of a maid and man
the kiss goodnight and thank you ma'am
I've should know better, but I'm glad I am
in love again!

The happy sigh
the blinded eye,
the words "I'll love you till the day I day"
the truth that lies behind the lie
I'm glad I am in love again!

What true love feels
it soon reveals
the whirring sparkle of Catherine wheels
the late-night cookouts and the midnight meals
I'm glad I am in love again!

I don't care
I've been there
It's truth or dare
But I'm glad I'm punch-drunk!

Believe me ma'am
Each new grand slam
Makes me remember who I am
My life's been boring now
I'm glad I am in love again!

May 2, 2008, 8pm

To hear this song, go to http://www.karldallas.com/Glad.htm.

Gypsy Davy

It was late last night when I came to your door
And the moon shone bright and clearly
I knocked but you would not let me in
Said I love the Gypsy Davy

Near thirty years I've been your friend
And never asked a favour
All I seek is a bed for the night
And you will be my saviour.

My bed has only room for two
That's me and Gypsy DavyI
f he should find you sleeping here
I fear that he would leave me.

Gypsy Davy is my friend
I know he'd never turn me
Away so late this chilly night
When cold Jack Frost could burn me.

Well come you in this chilly night
And if my love should scold me
I'll tell him you came to my door
And claimed a bed so boldly.

Well then this maiden let me in
And made me warm and comfy
And in the morning I was gone
Away like the Gypsy Davy.

It was late next night when he came home
Enquiring of his lady.
She said another has stole my heart
Away from Gypsy Davy.

There's many a gypsy claims the love
Of many a lovely lady
But he would better stay at home
When the moon shines bright and clearly.

For who knows who will come along
When gypsy is a-roaming
Someone who sings a sweeter song
Like me that night and morning.

02/05/08, 5.10pm, on a bus from Bakewell to Sheffield

Succubus

He tried to spin her into his poem
but she had her own writings.
His wordwebs conjured her with glassgreen silk
that clothed her small breasts and skinny arms with transparency.
But she danced away to the rhythm of another's melody.

The palms of her hands were a taste of unpromised joy.
Her belly was a cup from which he began to realise
he would never drink.
The perfume of her vulva filled the air
and he could not breathe for it.
She bathed her flesh in the scents of an Arabia he had walked before
he knew her secret name,
but still its savour was seasalt on his lips.
He whispered it into the soft sweetness of her neck.
The desert night was black with stars.

The closer she came to him
the further away from his heart's centre she became.
He sang louder,
until his voice croaked like the dark-winged morning tugging at the sky,
thinking to wake her.
And she smiled at the spell he was weaving,
her mouth a casket of ivory grains
harvested from the grassy depths of his mouth.

She invited him into her bed.
Then shut the doors between them.
He slept then.
And she came, a taunting fantasy
lying beside him on the covers,
to populate his dream.

Morning was a caged bird singing.

01/05/08, 9.15