Book D

I secretly want you to read this, but I'd never tell you to

[barbaruvian]

The Need

We are stranger, lost in time And space and place, and body and mind We float like flotsam, or like ghosts We work to live, and live to work These contracts, train tracks, fatal gifts The bars we build our prisons with We need the evil.  The need is evil Fight the tide, we have to paddle We are the oil in the machine, Ground down.  We talk of our escape Till death comes like a great black gag To choke us in our sleep

[barbaruvian]

Shock

I will, you know.  Stay still till the choke shows And I get red wheals below my jaw bones When you’re near me.  Must be an allergy My heart races, my cheeks flush, I can’t speak I start welling up, I start swelling up And it can’t keep happening, but don’t stop I’ll either die happy, or start to be Able to cope with it.  Immune to it That’s the horror, there.  For me to be numb Might be the only way to get things done. And yet, tonight, I watched the thought march out Like a vicious pillager, to your heart Raid it for tears.  That I, like a savage Might not hold the fort, for or against you

[barbaruvian]

No Man

I can see you fighting, tight as bow strings So I believe.  I don’t want you to win You’re not enough like me: Where my warfare Is guerrilla, yours is pitched infantry Where I lost, you might create victory And carnage, putting poison in the very air We will need for the survivor’s breathing Be hurt by the aftermath, of all things. That’s what makes your joints freeze up, doesn’t it? You don’t want to rock the boat, sink the ship It took long enough to make, all flotsam And you don’t feel able to start again But your man-mad island won’t move, just drifts And I can only watch you strand yourself

[barbaruvian]

Knock

I would, you know; the bolt of an arrow. As straight and true, and just a bit brutal. It’s a thick fog.  Under these hooded eyes Love and loneliness cast the same shadows Like a kid with an apple, I can’t tell If the hilt of this short, straight, steel trouble Pricking my throat might land killing blows No temper is a fitting way to lie. Each walk I take back to sanctuary Chills me.  I leave these street slabs whet with tears Sharpening this wicked knife of a life. The moonlight, quiet, sometimes strikes it right Now, these smokey silhouettes all seem yours. Like a blanket, you might calm or choke me. 

[barbaruvian]

E144

The Berbers are coming We are our forefathers great-great-grandsons And the Berbers have come They care not for worldly things Like banks and businesses They are tribal: The white warpaint of Bolton Or the solid red of Arsenal Riding to battle on little blue birds Foaming with anger, or from terror

Where we are soft, inward We ride the waves, ignorant If the storm that sent them Blind to the tide, cold to the currents We will come undone Us, this fifth generation Will be drowned by the great unwashed masses

[barbaruvian]

9/1/1401

Foreword: Two people who have always captivated my imagination met outside Damascus in 1401.  One was Timur Khan, or Tamarlane, a Mongol general, and the other was Ibn Khaldun, an intellectual completely out of his time.  I imagine their meeting might have gone something like this:

Ibn Khaldun, or, Damascus:

That day, aged seventy He abseils off of The walls of the city One man, facing an army He calmly eyes up the Mongolian cavalry Asks for their general He’s dressed like a Moor So they’ll know he’s exceptional They believe him, he’s lead Ahead to the warlord’s tent They make him wait there Stewing, impatient, In the night desert air With a translator at last He meets Timur Khan, Makes a supplicant gesture He offers him homage To share him his thoughts, Or to furnish him knowledge Conversation begins, Philosophy, combat, Great kings and religion Khaldun shares his masterpiece Explains asabiyya Timur is impressed And keeps questioning deeper

Then, in one moment Khaldun Does something amazing So brazen you’d never Expect him to utter The challenge he’s making He wants an assessment Of a man who has taken The whole of Persia to conquer He goes and plays chess with that leader Khaldun doesn’t say who the winner was either That means it was Timur

The respect is enormous Khaldun stays six weeks He gets himself passports Then returns to Damascus At the fall of the city Khaldun and his followers Are heading out safely When Tamarlane meets them He offers to purchase Ibn Khaldun’s grey ass That he’s riding away on As a mark of respect Khaldun offers to gift It.  Timur refuses Says he would be worthy Of money, rides away To plunder the city

Khaldun rides to Egypt Having met the deadliest Man until Stalin Disgusted at the bloodshed But not he who caused it He’s happy to have met It makes his biography The scholar, warrior  He’d wished to educate All his life, in the flesh The student he’d yearned for Was this great Uzbek This Turkic superman Lame and frail but still As strong as any man Who came before, and surely As strong as any man Who will come after Both of them

[barbaruvian]

E143

Meteoric, we arc In great graceful curves Against the edge of the world Content comets, lone wanderers Until we aren’t

Like now, on this parabolic tail I can feel the free fall See myself burning up All goose bumps and cold chills Into the night

Down there is a crater And I’ll hit it, stranded In a land where the horizon Is all grey sand and no sun All desert

Its a long walk home And the candles and matches Are few and far between Like the light and heat And I’ll need them

[barbaruvian]

KOOS

Is there anybody out there? Who knows, why worry? We’re all just atoms bouncing around In this great soup of relationships And I might meet someone, but I can’t control it Speed dating in Brownian motion It’s completely random, so honestly If you can’t predict the future, why bother? Life’s too short to worry So you cast your net, stay reactive Pray there’s enough fish in the sea And maybe with some of them you’ll have chemistry? Form bonds, share electrons Make molecules. Anyway, yeah, Who knows, why worry?

[barbaruvian]

Kestrel

We live in this, the fox barks and the city buzz The closest promise of open space We ever get to set our hearts on Never alone, and alone Crowds on a train platform, and yet Nothing but bodies and faces On a train platform This space we connect in is shifted, No longer street corners and markets But texts and groups and social networks Chat rooms have become our forums

It’s no loss though, these threads Tie knots through every thought we have Make all viewpoints arguments Like a great global melting pot A place of true invention and imagination And connection and isolation and bigotry.   It’s a funny fallacy, I’ve thought That being individuals spreads discord Not harmony

Yet, here we are.   Breathe while the air’s clear And hope they don’t choke it.   The fumes and dog-ends of petty chat Mouthed out of smoke stacks.   The trite rattling of “how’s your day”, and “how’s the weather?” Like followers at a morning prayer.   Followers, perpetuating life’s prejudices In their little likeminded villages, Each one its own island.

Look, the sun’s out, and the beach Is full of sunbathing sycophants Decaying like beached whales, The stench is racist, or its fascist, or it’s sexist, Or its eugenics, or it’s gendered.

But to them, in their private living rooms Watching the TV behind their eyes, They don’t have a conscience, they’re fine!  They’re happy! Because they’ve curtailed the rest of the world, And they’re just listening to channel me.   Sitting listening to channel me. The discrimination against everyone by one.   Bloody egotists

[barbaruvian]

Tawny

Stop it!  All of you, Cut it out, it’s puerile!   Tell me, what sadistic fantasies Make it fun to taunt me?   Gang up all you want, Bored and blunt, Wont for any real entertainment.   I do not consent to be your whipping boy!   I came for a nice night out, Not this childish abuse, Least of all from you.   All you’ve done tonight Is bait and bait and bait, and for what?   What scab are you picking?   What’s your itch?   Because it hurts when you scratch.

Unless my scars are the same as yours?   That’s all I can think of, That you feel the years have had you robbed. That there’s no love lost between us, And yet, nothing but lost love.   Well, if it’s all slight and spite,  I might still be here tonight in spite of it, Remembering friendship through each etched savagery.

[barbaruvian]

EM127

You imagine you’ll get a sweater Or a pair of underwear I got bedsheets And cried into them for a few nights Until they needed changing

[barbaruvian]

Birds of Prey

Its small things, like music Or something you wore An old drink’s new flavour. My mind mends long burnt bridges And missed connections And you’re in all of them Your face, double-taken On an advert at a station Or the faint smell of the nights spent Tail to head in your bed When friends were still things And before we got weird I always resented when my mum said That I should date you I think she knew And I was just tongue-tied Trying to hide How much I had a crush on you

Well, I’m here now Regretting my adolescence Misspent in ignorance I couldn’t bare going, not knowing If I’d see you soon, or again Before I was on a plane to Bern And I just wanted to say Will you spend tonight with me? Making up for past mistakes?

No

[barbaruvian]

EM136

You hold my mind, still This glass is half full Half full of Rosé The good, bad, settle Like fish in the bowl Two lost souls Warped through the curved surface, so? Hindsight is a harsh mistress But, like a worn road Or the halls of home Or a scene of horror You hold my mind, still

[barbaruvian]

E135

I’ve always been a dreamer Told I’d grow out of it, I never did I remember the indignant moment I was admonished for being childish How can one give up imagination? I would rather be deceased

This great state, at its most adult Is the invention and conception Of completely far left projects Of setting attempts at one-hundred-and-ten percent. We succeed, mostly

At its worst, this existence serves The greatest escape To a simpler, happier place in space To astronauts and battles fought Between fantasy armies To dragons, and vikings And carbon fibre racing things And a snow covered wilderness’s bliss

And for all life’s companionship I’ve found no-one to share it with

[barbaruvian]

EV133

Why are you here? Whatever you want, I’m not I am older, colder More confident, less wise And no less thoughtless

To think, How far I’ve walked A freshly cut deck Pink Floyd All staged We learn to fly But not really

And yet A snowy night Or sunny day

Listen, lost kitten I’m rotten But I don’t know how Be careful

[barbaruvian]

E131

We soar and roll like birds Tying knots in each other’s lives And it’s funny that, Because in him I saw the glide Of a majestic hawk And it made me weak. I wanted to be his prey It would be pride to me That my body as an offering Should make him satisfied

And as he’s flown onward I’ve swum in his shadow Buying friends and time And spent it here

Strange, in the flesh he’s no falcon Just glue and feathers Strung on the corpse of some cartoon villain Plunging in panic towards me. Its a tranquil sea, And I think he knows In me he has drowned a young girl With his waiting And at his coming, nothing stirs

We rise and fall like terrible fish Tying knots in each other’s lives Like a catch of eels We slip from each other’s grasp I was his to take once Well, now I’m the one that got away

[barbaruvian]

M

Deposed of direction By losing the reigns You must learn how to hunt ‘Fore the gods make you prey Make foot-fall not foetal Some giants stand tall You must learn how to stride Or they’ll force you to crawl

I haven’t got answers Least not ones you’ll like Just stand in your corner And beg you to fight And when you get seconds You don’t have to toil Don’t lie stagnant in sadness Lie stagnant in joy