Sir Patrick Moore's Monocles

I watched 'The Sky at Night' on BBC:
lunar oceans, year-long storms on Saturn...
Into the blinking rectangle I typed
'patrick moore monocle'. He owns three or
four. 'I never wanted to wear glasses.
I can just pop this in when I need it.'
How on earth do they stay fixed to his face,

wedged in the socket ridges of his eye?
But then, what holds this planet in the sky?
What if it's his monocles holding us
steady - some primal co-dependency
between these unearthly halos of glass
and our primitive sphere? I think we should
listen to what they are saying to us.

~

I am Sir Patrick's oldest monacle,
and have witnessed your insatiable thirst:
your thirst for knowledge to conquer your fears.

You wield the red biro of right and wrong
over children who recite Gospels of
modernity: you shake them, sift for dreams,

cleanse them of instinct, all but rigid fact -
they are blood diamonds and you bleed them white.
Your oak galleons scour the distant globes:

you are the Conquistadors of Science.
Holy Wars sets creed-scrolls ablaze upon
stakes, strikes nails through the spines of holy books.

I see lost youth, I see slaves, genocides.
I see fear of the beautiful unknown.

Can you keep a secret?

My business is forgery:
I forge a thick-proteined
armoury of steel.

I salivate for metal:
molars grind the bullet.

At night I play the scented
masseuse, oiled up, alone
with my lavender candles.

My business is forgery:

I forge a thick-proteined

armoury of steel.

fragments

youth: like sketching out
life in pencil, a fear of
ink indelible
~
down the stones I claw,
lurching on hind legs: morning
freeze on arched bare feet
~
eyeing-up queue jumps,
latching onto prosperous
currents, bleary-red
~
no harvested heat,
the duvet pulled from us in
the cold steel of night
~
the morning caress
of your kiss on my lips: a
double caffeine shot
~
my shoulders sag like
contented hammocks: she is
dispelled to my dreams
~
they trade their limbs for
poppies: the glorious men
in wasted Glory.

Provence

When thunder hollows lungs
the moment's past -
a fastened chain;
when lightning strikes the
cedar tree to puss
she's rust in my gut:
dead among the sheaves
in the wet meadow turf,
tears raining down the glass
of my reflection.

Lightning lights the leaves, Autumn fire
burns to dust;
a murdered breeze
dead upon the stump -
wings flailed, slumped
on ash.

Milk In Fridge: A Journey To Elysium

While I die
I practice being dead in the dark -
there's not much else to do here.

All around me death encroaches.
The cold stems it off
but I wish it wouldn't try to:
I am ready to separate.

Sometimes I tremor with the
shudder of something distant:
it passes right through me, then
nothing but darkness -
the waiting goes on...
(Isn't there more to life than this?)
...But the waiting goes on so long
that I tell myself I was only
imagining the tremor, and I
return to my thoughts, placid...

I don't think you'll
believe what just happened:

one moment I was
pretending to be dead,
and the next there was a
sudden peeling of suction.
I lost my balance in the
shake and sway: this was
death coming to take me away -
then the light came and drenched me.

Was it a miracle? What is a miracle?

Another quake, and a squeeze of
air, and all was dark again, and I
sloshed from side to side, slowing,
until I was still - which was when I
realised that I wasn't dead after all,
just back to waiting for death.

~

It's all gone very quiet since the light
came and went. Sometimes I wish it
hadn't come at all - there's so much
more for me to worry about now:

What was the light? Where did it come from?
How did it appear? Why did it appear?
What made it appear?

With all these questions I can't
pretend to be dead nearly as
much as I used to.
The light doesn't seem to have
affected the others - they're still here,
dying slowly. I suppose I am too,
but somehow it feels that I've
more to live for now I'm thirsty...

There's something else: when I saw the light
I knew it was light the moment I saw it.

How did I know it was light? If I
knew it was light then surely I must have
seen light before, right? Which means I've not
always been here in this dark: I came from
somewhere else... Now I think of it,
I can remember my birth - is that unusual?

'Life-giving, I was teased into the world:
I mirrored the morning moon, divine, as I
struck the bucket-basin with a splatter.
It was a wet baptism.'

Wow, that was vivid!
Did I just have an out of body experience?

Air, sky, the moon: I am the
colour of the moon. I've never
thought about what colour I am before -
I don't think it matters.
Anyway, I transcend the colour of skin.

~

'We've all become so good at
pretending we're dead that we've
forgotten how to stay alive.'
I've been meditating on this
and have had my epiphany:
I don't want to pretend anymore,
and I don't want to live
surrounded by others
who are pretending. I'm not
content with slow death, so

I'm clotting - speeding up
my end: crusting over,
churning myself into the
smell of a corpse. Please,
I don't want you feeling
sorry for me - I love the
feeling of rapid change.
The others don't seem to
understand - not yet -
but I'll have the last laugh!

I am separating: stagnant, potent.
Now there are stages of dark within the
darkness when I know nothing. I drown in
myself, clogged to the throat. Heavy, bleary
shadow... A familiar convulse of
thunder rips through my death: light has returned
at the brink: divine illumination.

Weightless, I am hoisted from my sleeping
grave - I fly the flight of bliss; I dollop
into searing heat, am stirred into my
Elysium. She takes me to her lips,
blows the kiss of death...a sudden choke, and
I am propelled, airborne, through light, towards
my destiny, laughing my final laugh.

From the Costume Rack

I am a final layer of skin: his arms
fill mine, his chest is my heartbeat - we pause
between worlds, we muster breath on the brink...

We step into the white glare: I transmute.
The forever drizzle of dust, arid
heat and blur of time; forbidden fruits seep
from divine light: the juices soak us through.

Exiting right, I feel him bleed into
shadow - death is in the slow of his stride,
his shoulders crumple. I know the sag
of lonely bodies only too well - the dull

ache of reality. He paces black
wings like a prisoner in his rib cage:
an eagle mourning the loss of its flight.

Edge of a World

He waits for me, threadbare on the costume
rack, lifeless in the bustle of fabrics.

I stand alone on the edge of a world:
a clean-cut cliff-edge above darkness - but

he is there in the mist... I seep myself
in the sweat of the lights, I breathe the dust

between thoughts. Air hangs heavy, laughter spreads
in a wave of tremors, dust hovers in

angel beams... then back to a midnight of
secrets and wires, the re-absorption of

shadow and pulse. Is this body alive?