Rimbaud's Last Letter

"sacrificed by a dark religion which almost no one understands"

If I were to give you this that is in my hands, pass to you the liquor of my childish heart - would you carry it in time, build it up without repose, the maker of all ways good, unblasted by tomorrows, not yet washed out with the flood?

     I am white and shivering in this hard daylight, on an unmade bed, two streams through the window from different directions.

     And we all rest alone in the floodlights.

     So I tip the scales this way, that way, and as much as I want to give, I take away. And want as I must, I cannot subtract the heart ache from all the tentative equations we call love, I cannot sweep the sorrow from my door step, nor from any other's. I can be a survivor, but that's the easy bit. It's jumping headlong into certain death which takes a bit more practice. Which takes the superhuman.

     You don't need to bury yourself under the frozen bodies of children to know the endless corruption of life, the terrible blast of loss and feeling, the wake of dread. Just look into the eyes of any single person, at any given second. The tenderness of that will split your heart forever.

     And this is the first mistake, to try and make that torn place good again, to seal it back up and pretend it never split in the first place, that you never really saw what they were showing. Or if you did, to tell yourself that's in the past and well, you'll learn to hold it better next time.

     No no no. We can only ever lightly touch that tear for the tiniest of moments, finger its edges as softly as windfall on a late autumn day. Press our lips to the cut, breath slowly and whisper gently "until again, until again..".

We all long for that moment of love in an endless catastrophe of living. But we all know love is impossible, and that a moment is never enough, we want the pain to stay away forever, we want the river to be always free flowing, we don't want the scars upon our chests, we don't want that reflection in the mirror, we don't want the red to keep spotting the lino flooring.

     And as much as I will hold your hand in the forest when the animals are prowling, I'll leave you to the wolves and the lions, I'll run out screaming. I'll be your pillow to rest your tired head upon, but I'll cut it off at the right time, when your tenderness is but a flapping thing, a scrap in the arms of winter.

     And you'll hold me in the morning, and cook me breakfast and read me stories. And you will leave me in the rain, when all the taxis have sped from the streets, and the lights in windows have gone out. You will cut me with a razor, just to see how I bleed, which way the blood flows. We'll swim in a sea of flowers, roll through fields of poppies, come to the cliff edge and go over together. And I'll leave you hating, you will break my fingers for a long time.

     I've seen seven bulls die before me, awash with blood, and piss, and vapour. I've seen those hooves in the air, I've seen the tongue rolling. I have felt the calls for suffering amid wine and revelling. I've watched dignity destroyed, I've heard the jeers, fallen beasts reduced to toddlers. I've seen them dragged lifeless across a ring of sand by horses.

     And I've seen the man, in the centre of that ring, on one knee only, his head bowed, his back straight. And I have wept at the unbearable, intolerable, unquestionable beauty of that gesture. For the beauty and the grace, as much as for the tragedy, for the cruelty, for the goddamn barbarity.

a threatening disease

 
 


There is a terrible feeling under my breast, like poison or mourning, can't tell which. It's making me feel sick, there's a queasiness in my heart, a rat in my veins.

They call this 'existential angst' i think. That feeling that there is nothing between you and the great black void. So i'm supposed to go up to it and stare it out, shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball. Take it's great black soul into my own and laugh about it. Well it's alright for those dead philosophers to talk like that, maybe the sadder truth is all you get for such courage is syphilitic genitalia and a bad case of the heebeegeebees.

I am realising that time is a life threatening disease.

And junkies filled with light may bring the souls of the dead back to life, but they are still junkies.

These are my two thoughts for the day.

Life is monumental and feeble at best, but always self-referential.

So I would now stuff down something wickedly creamy made with chocolate, if i had anything in my kitchen that was wicked and creamy and made with chocolate, and if I didn't feel so sick. An enormous chocolate eclair, oozing with comfort and badness.

Instead, I think I'll sit at this seat of purgatory I call a desk, and write out into public my microcosm of deep and not so profound suffering, in true ARTISTIC style, that is, the stuff of every day fucking life. What's the Sylvia Plath line.. " dying is an art, like everything else,I do it exceptionally well.."?

tally ho, one day i may well see the lights of home without always looking for a body in the basement,

and Pete Doherty may not be pushing up floorboards as quickly as he is laying them.


ps. this picture should be banned under the obscenity law

there is something wrong with me

there is something wrong with me.
i can't wake up in the morning and sing a little song.
there is something wrong with me.

dinner is done, noodles from a pan

So tell me: how do I go down into that place where we are simply nothing? Where lights are flooding?
I am confused by the simple, and long only to ignore the stares, sit in a dirty flat with scattered pages and shame gone.
Dinner is done, noodles from a pan.
I watch the London skyline. There are unknown vultures creeping sidelong into wisdom; I cannot follow them until I am eaten black and worldly. So I stand against the grey blocks like tenements, I crave the citadel without blushing. But I am in torment and I know we are dying..
I never braved the rich world, but fancied it some (banality is too dangerous not to believe in, fashion shows our weakness for smallness and fur lining.)
With you I collide the wretched ocean brought to me in the gaps between ears and throat, simultaneously gloating. I am whimpered, and you won't give all my sustenance back to where it is missing, you say we can be pretty some other time. Drowning, delicate, in this brine
The sun is a devil today (can’t stand this heat, it’s driving me to colder cities, yes the blue bridge on cathedral hill, a banished monk bleeding like rancour in the wee hours of morning.)
Get back to the crest of the fallen wave again, we must climb higher than people, find lost shipwrecks and tow heaven back again.
So give me back this bony eye of mine.
And the book on your lap.
I am not satisfied with satisfaction, but aggrieved to find the fullness of daylight at their wing. I want to live in night. Out of the shade of green, below deck. Such incurable heartache in such endurable weather. I can't wait anymore for the final bleaching of this poverty we claim life, for this smoky city to drop into the Thames.
I watch him with a knife.
And I want suffering if suffering kills the pain; I want trouble when there's a war on.
I want the sex to sniff out clean air and make it rattle. I'm tired of being a servant.
Take all my panties and shake out the feathers.
My head is upright, a peacock.
I salute you forever.

sunday service

Sunday, i watched the waves at Cuckmere, looked for fossils in the middle of the rocks. I was reminded of Dungeness, with it's glow in the dark country, it's power station blues. Those pink grey vistas kill me, they eat into your skin with their glory, leave you bitterly fed, broken and alive. And that is how it should be. Beauty like the corpse of an angel.

The sky line that blends from all those blackened sea side towns - Brighton, Peacehaven, Newhaven, Seaford, Birling Gap and all along to Eastbourne, flickers with death. The colours are all too dense, heavy, bright. I love that stretch of coast, and the pinnacle is Beachy Head, rising like a white cut demon from the sea. The straightest cliff before Dover, and you don't have to look too hard to find the tiny crosses in the grass, dessicated flowers for those who fell, jumped, and were pushed, over the edge.

We got our boots wet, and heaved stoutly with cold. The light was fading, but not too fast, and i could still see the houses on the cliff edge. We talked about black and white photos and what you think about when you are eleven. We tried to talk about infinity and the cosmos, but I just got confused, stumbling over my words and feeling silly. So we talked about a funeral instead, and animal rights.

I wonder if beauty can ever come without a price. Or was the price always already there, before beauty was even a twinkle in our eye?

The hills are soft, the river winding. But fences show us where we can and cannot go, these green spots hide the tears and fighting, the nearby country pub is full of fake charm and malice, they built "Tandoori Cottage" on the homes of badgers.

I love charcoal skies, barren beaches. I love walking with someone you like, when you can feel alone but together, together but alone. We were both happy as we greeted the bus to take us home. The moon was rising behind our heads as we sped off up country lanes, and i saw a shooting star. Away from Eastbourne, back to the living town life.

That evening, we ate Thai food and warmed our toes in the half light of L's bedroom. She had an altogether darker glow about her than us, upright in front of the window like a wax chinese doll, wanting Nick Cave, not happy sea side stories. So we all talked about why everyone we knew was fucked up, and it dawned on me that meant I must be too.

I was filled with sea breezes and mulled wine. And I love the people I am with. And this is no country idyll.