Acrid moments

I.

Let us go then, you and I,
Through these streets –
These certain half-deserted streets –
We used to know so well.
Take my hand –
Your icy touch, iron clutch –
So familiar. I knew
Every inch, I could
Navigate with my eyes shut,
I knew it like (excuse the cliché) the
Back of my own hand, the
Room I sleep in.
You and I,
We loved and lost,
And loved and lost, and
Lost and lived again.
We had it all.
Little gods we fancied ourselves,
You, with your halo, and skin like glass –
Nothing sticks to you.
Me, with my helmet, and skin like iron –
Always struck, but never wounded.
We drank the life-blood of stars,
Bitter and empty though it was.
We did it because we could, and there was
No one to make us stop.
There was you and I, and that
Something, something that made ‘you and I’
Into ‘us’.
Every laugh, every glance, every kiss, like
A shaft from Apollo’s bow,
A blow form Hephaestus’ hammer,
A bolt from Zeus’ own hand.
The whole Earth sighed for us,
And I flew higher and faster,
Higher and faster,
Like Icarus,
Soaring on the wings we made.

But we all know what happened to Icarus.

II.

Let us go then, through these streets,
These alley-ends,
Unhappy bends,
Where the yellow smoke lies
In the corners of the evening –
Not so much like a cat
Muzzling at the window panes,
More like a great serpent
Sunning itself in the dying shards of the day.
Reviling and unsettling, it opens its great maw,
Not to cow you with a terrifying display
Of fangs that would skewer you as easy as look at you,
But to yawn, and slip into that listlessness
That only comes at a twilight such as this.
Threatening and insidious,
But ultimately rather harmless.
In these alley-ends
The Hollow Men,
Their shirt-sleeves rolled,
Look out from their towers –
Fortresses built from the inside out,
Walls designed not to keep invaders out,
But to keep the inmates…
Well, “in” I guess.
We’ll run through these certain half-
Deserted streets, where muttering retreats,
Going with intuition
Rather than with any real purpose.
We know this jungle like I know your hand –
Like finding a cherry-blossom,
Its resolute delicacy too good to touch,
But too alluring not to touch –
The same every time, but every time
Yet more thrilling than the last.
It’s just you and I
And the bitter stones, unfeeling as always, and
You and I and
The pavement, cracked and tired,
And you and I, the little gods
(Or at least, ex-gods),
And the emptiness left by the Hollow Men,
Their disappearance like an earthquake –
For centuries coming, slow and implacable,
Silently, secretly, unknown,
Ever so slowly, until… Until…
Well, you know what happens next.
Now it’s just you and I.

And the wolves.

III.

Like you and I,
They stalk these unhappy bends.
They pad gently, careful not to disrupt this
Fragile environment.
The snake does not belong in the tank, and
The rose does not belong in the greenhouse,
And the people do not belong on this earth, and
The wolves do not belong in this city.
But they’re here, and (like the rest of us),
They make the best of what they have.
They have a bad reputation,
But they hardly deserve it.
I mean, people talk about them “overrunning the city”
But it was people who left the gates open,
And people who left the carcasses out,
Blood dripping like great, thick globs of pine sap,
Running freely in the streets.
It’s hardly the wolves’ fault, really.
But it’s their city now.
And, between you and me,
They do a much better job of living in it
Than the Straw Men ever did.
They pad gently, and speak in hushed tones –
They hear the groaning of the Earth,
The sighing of the dying city,
And they respect it, listen to it, learn from it.
They don’t howl at the moon – it hasn’t risen yet.
It’s just twilight,
That almost intangible moment between
The dull grey of the day,
And the inky blackness of the night.
That instant when the whole of creation explodes
Into every colour it can imagine, and more.
The sky pours out its soul
And the earth is bled dry.
The universe marvels at its own magnificence,
And basks in its own glory,
Short-lived though it is.
Everything is heavy,
And smells rich and sweet –
Like olfactory velvet,
A heady mix of spices that causes the eyes to water
And the head to spin.
This twilight, this instant,
Is a headache,
But that dull sort of headache that comes
From not having enough sleep.
That pressure behind your eyes,
Not optimal, but not uncomfortable either.
The wolves don’t howl.
They spend the days tearing down the Hollow Men’s castles,
And will spend the nights dancing on the corpses
(Both ours and theirs).
But for now, in this moment,
They are still.
And they
just
breathe
sucking in
the blood
of
the universe
burning
their throats
cleansing their
souls.

But this moment cannot last.

IV.

Perhaps the wolves are right.
What is Man?
The fallen angel?
No. Man is the risen ape.
He is (was) mighty, a self-made Man,
Carving out his niche with a chisel
Made of his own exposed bones,
And a hammer made of
His sheer will to dominate all life.
Yes, his flesh is ceramic.
Yes, his bones are hollow.
But his heart, what is left after everything else is
Worn down, scoured away –
Everything a Man is, is twisted and ruined.
But for his heart –
His heart is Adamantium, harder than diamond,
Impenetrable, invulnerable.
The miracle of Man is not how far he sank, but
How magnificently he rose.
He is known throughout the stars by his poems,
Not his corpses.
But not forever.
You and I will see to it that he sinks again.
Although we cannot (try as we might)
Destroy Man’s heart,
We can burn down everything else.
Sooner or later Man will be Hollow.
And he’ll build his tower
“To protect the soul,” he will claim.
But you and I know the truth.
We know Man doesn’t belong here.
This world, its boredom and its glory and its horror,
This breathing, sighing, aching, bleeding Earth,
With its vibrant greys and dullness with such clarity
To stagger the mind,
Adventitiousness like clockwork,
And that ordered chaos that can scarcely be recreated,
Was never meant for Man.
It was an ill-suited match,
Perhaps made hurriedly, and without much forethought.
Man knows this too. So he will build his own world,
One that is meant for him.
His world is always warm and dark,
Like a sitting-room in the small hours of the morning
When the fire has burned low
And the clouds hide the moon’s face.
It’s comfortable and palatable,
But lacking that ineffable sting
That reminds you that you’re alive.
Man has let this world go to the dogs –
The wolves, in fact –
And rightly so. It was theirs all along.

Perhaps you and I have always been wolves.

V.

I don’t write much any more.
I used to, so often.
Every day, for a time.
I lost a lot of blood back then.
I was cut open, the lacerations deep and long.
My vital spark splashed out onto the ground,
And soaked into the Earth.
All I had to do was hold my page under the flow,
And the poetry just happened.
Not any more.
At some stage I ran out of paper
Or perhaps I ran out of blood.
I don’t remember exactly.
Whichever it was doesn’t really matter.
Now I just let them slice me up.
I'm dislocated,
Like hair on the barber's floor.
Cut off, swept away.
All anger, no passion.
All melancholy, no charm.
I'm drawn out,
Stretched too far.
Like too little butter over too much bread.
I burn, like the days, and both ends -
A self-sustaining cost.
Now I just
Drip
____Drip
________Drip
Down these acrid moments, these
Indisposed days.
I’m bleeding again now.

But I think this cut was self-inflicted.