Here's a collection of poems! I've been slowly finding ways to link my music and my writing, so a lot of these have a musical connection: they might be a portrait of a musician, written to accompany a piece, written whilst listening to something, or written about something I'm listening to. Others are lyrics for pieces for juice. Others are something else entirely...

mokoondi (with bourbon)

(not a spell/Tom Waits portrait 3)

a broken clown catapaults
from a hollering nightmare
of a jazz prohibition
in a land bled dry of bourbon
where trumpets are caged like lions
and pianos have spit out all their
bashed-in teeth

into this drenched world
hissing sweat
alive with whispers
the air gushing like water

- the bark is humming -

with a cold junkie jazz shiver
he stumbles through the forest
with his antique bag of bones
lipstick melting on his cheeks
heat groping him like a broke hooker
music like insects in his ears
(from god knows where)
and inside his cut/up breath
there's a softer seashore

- what is that?

the trees are singing

no -

sending a warm weave of voices
ahead as they come towards me

a tango of song-shreds rising up
amongst the trees like paradise birds
his ears are boiled whole
and he gulps up their whooping
lungfuls of jungle worship

groggy on leaf juice
ears turning green
he lurches back to jazztown
clothed in sound

the forest doesn't want me today
but I'll be back tomorrow to play*

(*cribbed from The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today from Tom Waits' Bone Machine)

NB This poem accompanies my chamber orchestra piece of the same name. The musical influences were Tom Waits' homemade 'bone machine' percussion and Central African Pygmy vocal music. So imagine Tom waking up in a Central African rainforest and stumbling upon a group of singing Pygmies and you kind of get my piece. I wrote the poem to help me write the piece. I think I like the poem better…'Mokoondi' is a Baka Pygmy word meaning 'forest spirit'.

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commissioned by the composer David Breslin, used as lyrics in his piece for juice

urd

ii am yesterday's dawn
i hooked the fish hoops from the lake
and stooped to unpearl spiderwebs
i combed the ground for daisy chains
plucked limp worms from blackbird's beaks
and drew out morning yawns in strings

verdandi

i am the sundanced day
i lace the lake with figures-of-eights
and spin in breezes hung with song
i braid harp wires into hammocks
knit showshoes from a thousand trees
and make the ribboning rivers converse

skuld

i am moontime tomorrow
i will stamp on the earth-long lake of ice
and collect spent hairs from violin bows
i will come when the songlines hum
in your skin, to wind death in
i will stretch your tongues taut and
cut

all (chorus)

we weave your breath
you breath our thread
you tread our web
we speed your death

NB The 'Urdr' or Norns are maidens who visit everyone at birth to determine the shape of their lives in Old Norse mythology. The first Norn is Urd, meaning 'Fate,' or 'Happened'; the second is Verdandi, meaning 'Happening' or 'present', and the third is Skuld, meaning 'Future'.

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here he is again

for kelly joe phelps

him and his guitar stayed out
in the sun too long
that voice been languishing
in the dust and dead heat

the blues brew themselves in the hull
of his guitar, in his blackened fingers
burnt electric, stubbed on steel
stories collected like mud under his nails

with a yellowtooth snarl and the heart
beat in his feet, he gets his fingers
to fandango on the railroad track
and tiptoe on a poor man's grave

skimming light off the water
with a sweepshine of metal
he spins those dirt lullabies
the spike in the apple lives

weaving hammock strings for the moon
he plays his ruby-eyed rockaby
twists its tongue into a new creole
sweet garbled somethings

swamp in his lungs, eyes fulla ashes
rusted longing his stinging song
he scoops the grit grind slide guitar
into the last taste of sunset

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golden rain

time to ring the rain chimes

the square of prayer-people
brew up a blue monsoon
in ember-coloured pots
grace spoken on skin
the first thirst struck in bells
as big as pregnant bellies
a ponderous invocation
for the sky to slowly yawn

they breastbeat their need
play glowing cutlery
make a brickwork of their bells
lay their palms out for the feast
layer rainbows of rhythms
striped slow and uptempo
slow slow and uptempo
uptempo and uptempo
and slowslowslow

a throb and a pulse
from way down below
which rumbles and rises
and leaps onto shoulders
as beats become people
and people dream water
and heat grows heavy
and water beats nearer
heavy in the heat and the
promise of water and the
beat and the heat and the
rhythmwideweb spins wilder

and then the dead come out to dance

the skies' royalty
descending in a clatter
of golden bones

the rain gives its answer:

a deep gong
giant's tongue-thrum
unfathomable earthhum
the sound of thunder being born
burning blood sonorous
arousing earth's dark corners
with its bruise of an echo

after listening to a recording of 'Golden Rain'
by the gamelan group Gong Kabyar, Bali, 1960

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lullaby for the witching hour

lyrics for juice

lu
lla
lulla
lullaby
lullabybye

it's the hour
witching hour
we come to glide
on the night
we come to bite
on your sleep

it's the time
dreamfeast time
we wait until
the light is a lie
we are your dreams
your night paintings

lulla llaby
lulla llaby
lulla llaby
lulla lla
lla by
bye

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sufjan/trainpoem

trains sleeting through the low dark
clouds dragging their night-full bellies
along the prickly copse-tops
sufjan on the stereo
planes to Michigan overhead
streaking dazzle-candy colours over the
tucked-up villages and spanglebell streetlights
and look! there's the moon
a perfect pennysweet
glowing glockenspiel gobstopper
suck it all night long
whilst the sky paints over and over
and over itself

like Pollock and Riley and Heron
are having a mash-up

listening to Sufjan Stevens' 'Greetings From Michigan'
on train to London, 4.20pm 17/11/04

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Fhira' bhata no ho-ro eile
Neil's Harbour

Mist as
heavy as a memory
hung with Gaelic song
lisping syllables a shell
in your ear:
Mo soraidh slan leat's gach
ait'an teid thu

Gaunt black spruce and balsam firs
dwindle in a haunted dawn, torched
porcupines on the hill sighing down
to the harbour; great black-backed gulls
are smudges of newspaper, almost lost.

The sea whispers at the salt-smoked
boardwalk and the rowboats, parched
tongues startled on the slats.

At windows foggy with coffee, we
wait for the light to be stirred in.

The sea has sucked the flesh from
Black Brook Cove, a long roll
of sealskin swarming with landlife.
It has bled wood, bleached houses to bone,
gathered faces into creases and heaved
the hearts of sailors' wives. Anchored,
they breathe brine in their sleep.

With sirensong, it called to Ardnamurchan,
to Lewis, to Mallaig and Iona

and now the sea
whispers Scotia

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tonguehoney
(on watching afternoon ragas by Ravi and Anoushka Shankar,
with extracts from Ravi's programme notes)

a raga is the projection of the artist's inner spirit, a manifestation of his most profound sentiments and sensibilities expressed through tones and melodies. The musician must breathe life into each raga as he unfolds and expands it…

The traditional recital begins with the alap section - the stately and serene exploration of the chosen raga.

honey on tongue
afternoon tea pondering
notes swell like ink on tissue paper
or hot fat rain
blots
on a bloated lake

After this slow, introspective, sometimes sad beginning, the musician moves on to the jor, in which rhythm enters and is developed, and there are innumerable variations on the raga's basic theme.

painting with honey
in gloopy afternoon rain
butterfat-coloured spools
bungee jump off the spoon

a cinnamon heat
ginger-rashed cheeks
elusive poetry upcurling
the unstruck sound of heaven

ink ferns and feathers
limbering up ladders of thought
clusters of honeybirds high on the neck
wait for words

The alap and the jor evolve into the gat, the fixed composition of the raga. Here the drums enter with the wonderful rhythmic structure of the gat and its beat cycle, the tala.

a flirt of bracelets on a long arm
tea dregs loll in the well of the sitar

slow tapping on the throats of trees
that lie around the lake
rubbing the bellies of boulders
until they moan and speak
they beat questions at the sulky sky
fat rain on hot skin
woodpecker and deep breath in

a fingerflash, a dart of spells
an elastic bend of light
phrase-frills arching, dodging strings
spin off and up and -

This step-by-step acceleration of the rhythm in the gat finally culminates in the jhala section as it becomes more and more playful and exciting. Sawal jabab, the dazzling and rapid dialogue between sitar and tabla, has the power to enthral even the most uninitiated listener with its thrilling interplay.

a metal shimmer shakedown
monsoon of shouting palms
vertebrae rattling off the bone
and the birds erupt in rainbows
armfuls of wet words land in leaves
you dance on your future underfoot

Often at the conclusion of the recital, the musician may choose to play a thumi or dhun. This semi-classical style is much freer and completely romantic, sensual and erotic.

midas man
magician
siphoning his sitar
bleeding the sun
letting the liquid steep
the listeners
row by row
infused with the golden
syrup of afternoon
sleep

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5/11/00

leaves crumble like old books
snap at our heels with a foxskin crackle
and the cold slips a hand under my skin

dampened by distance, snipers
inflame the horizon, a flashbulb army

I left the Balkans behind, an open grave
winter a blade tip in the back of the neck
blame a hot rock

now with my wife imprinting my side
and the mulled wine like a teenage kiss
old friends run from spitting sparks

old friends ducking from brick rain
and explosions that expanded the skull

the moon is a breath on glass

each firework a flare on the memory
two exacting shots to the temple
kneecaps split like bottletops
the thud of bullets into the already dead
echo
less

you shift and the ice folds in, a waterfall
of shouts from mouths frozen by dust

the past should be a fist of leaves

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off beat track

(Tom Waits portrait 2)

he's a whisper in Wino's Alley
a stinking lean on a lamppost
piano frills sputtering out from cuffs
of a suit lined with fake bank notes

he's the scratch in the record
on the corner dealing stories
the rasp between radio stations
pimping poetry to strays
cheeks red-bikinied with drunk hookers' kisses
lisp as heavy as a steam train's sigh

he's spit hawked from a pawn-shop trumpet
waltz-partner of streetwalking bass
lolling in a corner with a well-oiled trombone
feet peppered with drum pitter-patter

he's the clown waking up
with his make-up still on
he's a war-whoop from the grave
telling time with bones

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Canoe Lake

Silence is a loud oath.

The air is the lake rising in grains,
lake meeting crumbled rain.

The lake is moon metal
stinging with the promise of light

cementing to peat and moss-sweat
at the edges, a fish-mouthed bog.

A waxwing's rustle gashes like a cymbal,
hissing sparks gulped up by their
own damp echo.

The canoe ghosts through,
a stripped bone, encrypted.

Numbed electric with the secret:

the mist, nose to the lake's skim
keen for ringed hints of fish
who lie glued to the gloom
a chilled shudder in liquid steel;

the sour yellow birches, harbouring rain
sponged bark, shared shrouds;

the plant tendrils, licked
luminous and snake-charmed.

All saw
the lake sliding over his skin,
the oil of sleep
welcoming his mouth

All keep
the painter's eyes
turned in
the fingers dumbed
the body welled with mud

The Canadian painter Tom Thomson mysteriously drowned on Canoe Lake in July 1917. He was the first of the new naturalist artists, and the immediate inspiration for the Group of Seven.

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(untitled)

It's time.

Done for the day
the moon slinks out of the river
her discarded silver skin
a mercury petticoat
dancing in the deep
oiled by the slip of fish
which hone their path to the river root.

Birds seek sleep in the glistening underdark
of their wings.

In the dark, insects chew more loudly.
Their gossip rises like steam.

Inhaling, the moon draws up
the lisped hisses in a long stream

and the earth rolls in her wake
slowly falling off in flakes
floating mementoes
translucent reminders to return
before morning.

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sedna texts

Sedna is the Inuit goddess of the sea. There are various stories, all equally gory, relating how an ordinary girl sank to the bottom of the sea and became the Inuit people's temperamental, petulant sea-keeper, including some finger-chopping, eye-gouging, fighting with bird spirits, etc…. These texts form part of my visual-music-theatre work sedna stories.

winkblink (sedna portrait)

sedna
nerrivik
arnakua'gsak

ripe emerald
woman mountain
the sea wrapped round her
like a sealskin

in a tent of manta rays
she dribbles salt in her sleep

wink
blink

electric eel hair
seaweed smeared breasts
foamy thighs
soapstone fists

murkmouth
flesh gobbler
oilspill yawn

seasnakes dance out her name:

sedna
nerrivik
arnakua'gsak

tide and moon

dreamheave sea
undertugging snore
spitflecked sleep
undertugging shore

tongue-tide
she pulls her skirts
over her thighs
up down
wanting
not wanting

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sedna's song (adlivun)

down in the dregs
of the dark deep sea
scowls a girl a fat girl
emerald girl sulky
mouth swollen eye
sullen swollen sulky song
sedna's song

for her deaddad
and her deaddog
and all those mouldy ragged souls
who disobeyed did bad
got drowned in her bed
oily blemished hellblack bed
sedna's bed

the other eye
like a plum
with the stone wrenched out
and fat fists
but no fingers
'cause her daddy dug them out

they talk in gulps
dad and dog and old rotten souls
backwards seaspeak
bubbling tongues

sulky mouth swollen eye
sullen swollen sulky song
sedna's song

you betrayers
blessed with the double
language of hands

I will gut your boat
and suck you to me
I will scrub off your flesh
and swallow both eyes whole

you hunters
who have tended me

you will braid my hair
and feed me earth songs
I will belch up riches
to smileshine your bellies

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