RadioShockTherapy

Fairy Tales of Byzantine I The Leper and the Jew Long ago in the Holy Land there was a man who was afflicted with the hideous disease of leprosy. His face was sallow, his limbs looked ragged and tired, and his bones jaunted out from underneath his grey skin. His entire body was slowly decomposing, slowly becoming earth. All day long the Leper walked the roads outside of Jerusalem, the Holiest of Holy Cities, eating the wild roots and berries that grew on hedges by the sides of the dirt paths. His teeth wore down to bleeding gums, and his eyes watered with tears at the misery of his existence. He was a wandering outcast, unable because of

i. There is grass that grows here In my Mother's Kingdom; Tall weed that coils itself Vinelike As a parasite to the trees; The Camphor that lines The way to My Mother's Kingdom; the Place made of Gold Where the nightingales sing Sweet platitudes to Lords and Ladies who Asphyxiate on The grass that grows here In my Mother's Kingdom. ii. Sound rings hollow in my ears, and I am wont to scurry like a rodent across the kitchen floor, to the place where the body lies broken. There are so many voices, so much talking, and the motionless figure begins to smell with an alluring odour. I would like to stay and be part of the conve

i – a marked bush filled with arrows Under fluorescent lights and broken bridges A great number assembled, grey and haggard, Bent with years of labour, toiling under the Harsh sun and singing Negro spirituals With all their voices; all of them mute, But with a great voice unified in a chorus, A choral arrangement to those long gone And long dead, long silenced by the Long arm of the law, the unblinking Eyelids of the unceasing Dictators who Sit in palaces made of bone and give their Daughters lessons in French vocabulary – Hours of infinitive verbs that stretch eternally As they wait for the Night’s time and Her

I. The Calais Hound At Calais, in the Winter, we ran like dogs, Carrying our filth between yellowed teeth, Diseased by the teat of that wizened woman Who comes enshrined in dead roses, and who Knows Death; He, who at her ardent Bequest, Watched us in the fitful semblance of sleep. To suckle the Milk of the asp, Clutching hands To life’s last rasp: A swift cry – nothing But a broken bottle Lying in the broken Street. Barking “retreat!” At Calais, in the Winter, we prayed like monks, For the rain to come down from the bruised sky And wash away the mud from our eyes so that We could see the devastation; we

Hellish sick lights that flicker dimly Underground, a subway filled with Hollow people, with lidless eyes Bleeding tears, holding newspapers Filled with wars and politics and stocks And every so often, the rush of a train Startling the old men with shopping bags For their palaces, humming to their Harmonicas covered in the rust of Maritime conflict, horns blaring with A shamanic tonelessness, champagne Bottle staining lightly against the flesh Of great ships, flickering with hellish Sick light, like underground, in a subway Filled with Hollow People with lidless eyes. Said He to the Undeserving Serpent:        “Silence i

The echoes that whisper softly between grey stone walls; In houses made of hollows and slanted doors; Poltergeists that paint sanguine reflections; On childhood, on empty phone calls. And outside, softer still, the rain lightly falls. The running impatient red blush of a child’s athletic cheeks, Around staircases that give questions as their answers; Toys left unused, unwanted, broken and sombre; Dolls with fashions outdated for weeks. And inside, standstill, the bloodless corpse reeks. I would sit there with my paper And wait for the ducks to go by They never sang, even in that harsh Abrasion common to their people That th

The footsteps that creak on wooden boards; Breath held still and presence ignored; Silence! She sings through the screams Of lost boys with lost dreams And the Dead applaud. The beauty of chains wiped over by blood; Chainèd prisoners who bathe in mud; Silence! They whisper through the seams Of a world made of dreams And the Dead applaud. The music of a seedy bar soaked in chesty gin Bullets coated to kill, cast out of tin; Silence! He begged her through the beams Of Light, shining in his dreams And the Dead applaud. Those wretched demi-devils, Born of startled wombs Skinned raw and red Made motions to reach guns Their

I have no ideas And, as is unusual have run out of those words that usually run in seamless fashion and paint pictures in watercolour. Sorry. Look there! The sailor on the harbour the whore on the street Those visions of visions in grainy fields of wheat. I wonder what became of the Paraclete? Does he still wash windows on the twenty-third flight of stairs and look into the washrooms and those sordid affairs? Does he still stand on the street corner and peddle his wares? Those fast falling Nike shares? O! In a trance, in a trance, in a trance, I saw Alice on a table, and performing a dance; her eyes would not give me

The red stench that works itself upon the streets; The red wrack that epilepsies upon the road; Tongues that ply God without cessation; Blank stares. No repeats. Liquor coughs to steady beats. The black bile that tastes itself upon their throats; The black heart that cries upon the shoulder; Eyes that look to God without cessation; Vacant gapes. Sailing boats. Bridges guarded by billy-goats. Where are those red ribbons that touched the sky? Those Chinese silks that fluttered in the autumn air? And the people turn face in despair. I went for a walk in a Broken City, Where women wailed cantos for their dead And the smog of the t