PURSUED


The Grail pursues Me
The Magic makes its play for my attention
Religion sucks me in through its unplugged drain
Love, a volatile ghost, haunts me
Two sailing ships coast through loneliness
barely missing one another in the traffic, sea or air
Libelled by wind and the air traffic control
Lied to by the compass and the weather report
Assembled by the elements and a reporting media
Drawn and photographed, quartered and emulsified

I stand on the deck
Captain of a damned soul
and think about the ten-foot pole
my countrymen deny me

Conviction without habit needs the anchor of the closet

His complexion changes as he moves forward in time
There's a change in the line of his hair
Breast and belly heave and sag
Feet don't do their stuff quite so actively
And the gonads are nomads who wander sullen dunes

There are tunes we could sing to cheer the air
To clear the aeronautic haze that plays tricks with our minds
disproving all those theories about Continental Drift
which is a great name for a perfume in a mongrel society

As life is more measured by what we produce
the heart becomes an object and the genitals commodities
Feelings are a target market, needs the feed of economics
Budget something beautiful on the supply side
Full bloomed and unscathed by frost
revealing the colour that unsheathes my eyes
allowing me to rediscover light

We've been here in the dark wood so long it's time
to redistribute the weight.  We hope to achieve
some balance, some gain, some laughable profit
all the way to the bank where blood
is pried with credit notes that strangle

Cutting the arteries of the active poor
who feed the cruel machine of commerce