Lunarium, Anne Eliot & Peaen to Codeine

Lunarium

Life is a compendium of sorts,
Unsorted in a miscellany of leitmotifs,
Each prefiguring the unimaginable next
Which we intrinsically fear because we cannot
Keep, in reach, on hold, atop, sustained -
The next part, the next act, the next album -
Photographs and tunes aromatic in our lunarium.

Eclipsed from a future self, or two
Selves entwined, or naught, selves
Misalign, or forgot, selves in time,
Or begot, selves of mine, and yours,
To rot, selves sublime; I love self-
Lessly, selfishly, our crimes, shelved.

A hue glowers crepuscular, our
Eyes enflamed with mirage coronas, our
Bellies filled with the sperm of Strindberg
And Nietzsche, Copernicus and Le Fanu, our
Contents making up some strange simulacrum as
We build our tower to the moon, or fish it
From the sky, to put it in a room.


Anne Eliot

Seems strange to own this book:
- T.S. Eliot’s poetry.
Cared for by another;
Anne Sutton, and one before her,
Name crossed out with a strike.

Bound by a fading spine
There’s a sad, old, musty odour
From cover to cover
And page eighteen is sellotaped
By Anne; other lover.


Paean to Codeine

I.

Codeine, holy codeine, excite my heroin glands,
Play sudden, beautiful, musical, into my open hands,
Codeine, holy codeine, help me read Ezra Pound,
Join synaptic ashes burned out years ago with sound.

Codify me, Kodeine, cod godhead,
Preen my feathers with thy beak;
Codeine keep me still, and focus my
Wavering mind, codeine keep me from
The temptatious kind.

II.

I look up at my woodchip
Ceiling and think: ‘O, but
Ten to fifteen, ten to fifteen.’
- The Grandiloquent Truth of Gestures

There’s woodchip on my ceiling,
There’s Rothko on my walls;
Rothko is shapes that moved
Before cinema.

Faults:

I’m not that clever, I put lit
Cigarettes in my pockets,
I can’t sing in tune, I wish
There was some method to my acting.
I have problems with love, belief and
Happiness as philosophic predicates;
Do I believe love makes us happy?
Can I see the man who looks
Like a square on stilts?