LES BIJOUTIERS DU CLAIR DE LUNE

Leaving the Rex cinema, hand-in-hand with Stephen Boyd,
walking home in the pouring rain.

Soaked tee-shirt clinging to every curve,
accentuating bra-less nipples.

Panda eyes sliding southwards,
gradually darkening pale pouting lips:

a sensual mingling of grease paints.
                          Later, I am Brigitte Bardot
singing in the bath,

a world-wide phenomenon
in her lily scented steam spotlight,

and someone else is reaching through the haze
of imagination's infinity, someone intimately known:

Ursula, my cinematic alter-ego
plugged into the undertone of lust

where all-absorbing obsession is the norm.
Suddenly alive: Lambert in my bed

in the dark. Oh such passion! There,
on the outer limits of experience, dying

for the sadist, the cold-blooded murderer.
Ursula and Lambert...that night Heaven fell.


I am currently staying in the heart of the New Forest. Connection is rather poor, but I will try my hardest to visit you all...:)

THE MACHINIST'S MONOLOGUE

The room is silent, only these thoughts
inhabit it's unpeopled stillness.
The machines are turned off, the long day done. Now
finally, blissfully, I can relax.
There is actually time
to listen to the clock ticking;
to study the nude model on the calendar,
her blonde hair so pale in comparison to the blue sea.
A distant islet rises out of the horizon
and as I gaze at that distant mound -
so faint, so misty, in it's ethereal splendour -
I will myself there in the midst of that solitude
where there is no clocking-in machine,
no constant BANG BANG BANG assaulting my ear drums
day-in and day-out, while my yearnings flow
a million miles from this concrete prison
with it's electric and steel torture implements.
Five-thirty on a Friday evening is all I live for.
It brings such eagerly awaited blissful reprieve
from a life sentence of dull monotony.

Often, it seems a supercilious mindset is mine
for I crave so much more from life
than do my co-workers, most of whom appear content
to slog without question under blinding strip lights,
while cheerfully discussing next year's
eagerly anticipated holiday in the sun
that they've been saving for all year.
Such enthusiasm stuns my mind into vacancy,
makes me despise even more
this artificial environment that sums up my existence:
the sight of coveralls and eye protectors, the constant din
of cutters slicing through sheet metal - all combine
to subdue my spirit into aching despair.
Being so cut-off from tree and field, from Nature's open spaces,
reminds me how unattainable my own dreams are:
these most private of deeply-felt hopes and aspirations
that keep me going, that I feel unable to share with anyone.
Yet, as if to taunt me, they intensify daily
into a virtual reality that I can no longer live without.
But alas, these glowing images are nought but vain fantasy!
They simply fade away and I find myself back in this dismal place.

Oh how I long to lock these doors and walk away
from the future I see beckoning more ominously each day -
a lifetime of wrestling with cold steel, followed only by retirement and then death.
But what if I should attempt to break the mould
of family tradition and follow my dream?
What then?
Would the machinist turned latter-day Hippie
regret his farewell to society and descend
into isolation-induced madness?
The choice appears a simple one:
stay and stagnate, or find the courage to embrace the unknown.

This was never the role I envisaged for myself
when a younger me used to sing
of freedom of spirit and escape from convention,
while strumming on his brother's guitar
with nimble fingers and an innocent heart
that had no notion of toil or reality checks.
In those days, they were just songs - pleasing melodies
accompanied by beautiful words
that planted within me the seeds of idealism.

And those seeds have been growing ever since,
transforming into a kind of crazy hope
that there could be a better life out there
if I only knew how and where to look for it.
And how long I've mentally searched!

But, today, I seem to have lost my singing voice
and my quest has gone cold and died,
along with the last rays of youthful hope.

There is no wild distress. It has been
more a gradual surrender to inevitability:
a succumbing to the hopelessness and subservience
of a severely limited self-image...

OBITUARY

In memoriam,   Christopher Lee


Last week I dreamt of death's dark void
in a nightmare scene of wooded mountains
and Gothic castles on moonless, starless midnights.
In trepidation I traversed narrow passes over bottomless ravines
that seemed to mean so profoundly much.

And on waking prepared to face the division
of myth and man and mourn the latter,
whose commanding presence conjures up
vivid images of black coaches, shrieking bats and baying wolves
that without him would surely revert to mere folklore.

Next day your face was full of farewells.
Then as the Veil parted and you stepped through,
oh how I longed to follow - a more than willing victim,
bare-necked and spread-eagled beneath the full moon
with not a Crucifix in sight. But you never came.

Will the great Hammer now become meaningless logo:
a quaint hieroglyph of antiquated long-forgotten legend?
But before it fades to nothingness,
please, please teach me the language of the Vampires, that I might
occasionally call you back and so dispel dejection's heavy shroud...

Peripheral vision registers something blackest black
and cloaked lurking in the room's darkest alcove.
"I've come to say goodbye" the wind outside murmurs.
Oh my shape-shifting friend, what are you really?
Whether man, actor, or diabolic fiend I am no longer sure.

And will mere tomb contain such a creature
who has ventured so far into the abyss:
whose very name evokes images of blood,
sharp fangs and literal hell on earth?
Perhaps the Angels, too, are confused (you were incredibly convincing)

so will keep you at bay, suspended for all eternity
between Otherworld and Earth in some ghastly half-life
where Dracula presides over his archetypal realm:
where your origins and my future converge
in cold stone and ornately carved letters

that never were, yet ever shall remain
in memory's poignant domain - and in my Soul.
Oh what an obituary! It hurts my eyes to read
such misunderstanding. Your passing makes me say
something entirely different:

I shall not mourn, I shall not weep
nor bid you "rest in peace".
Oh Master of Horror, I shall not miss you -
why on earth would I, 
when you and I both know
an Undead cannot die...

INTO THE FIRE

The candle flame dances in a sudden breeze:
a crazy tango, frantic, urgent.
Her heart joins in - leaping, spiralling,
while she lies there frozen rigid,
crucified by guilt.

She hears his footfalls on the stair,
wants to run, to escape the inevitable.
Yet there on the bed she remains, transfixed, unable to fight it.
Oh she knows how wrong this is,
but her body so desperately craves his.

As he's framed in the doorway, the candle flame
grows to encompass the sun
and her eyes, her lungs,
are burned to cinders.
Dear God, what can she do?

The room turns golden. She's somewhere else
in ecstasy. Separation of mind and body
somehow makes acceptable what happens here
once a week, every week.
This is what she lives for.

Oh she knows what he is - all those other women.
But it's OK, because she's only an observer.
When she leaves this hotel room,
tonight's liaison will never have happened
because she was on a girl's night out, miles from here.

And tomorrow he'll make love to his wife,
while she'll be with her husband,
assuring him she would never even look at another man.
Two strangers will again be living separate lives...
but deep inside her the fire rages on.