the holy river
This is the holy city
where the kicks are abstract
and the activities strictly low level,
where accidents take care of the spent forces
arguing there rights to renewal.
A city of chimeras
the whispers assure me
is the land of opportunity.
Dusk and the suburbs are restless;
The guards service the vague enquiries
of those who have lost contact,
a weaving chain of murmuring blind men
follow the one good eye
that serves them further into the journey.
At the starting post
a family, all ragged up
and armed to the teeth with grudges
await their rivals in the tattoo wars.
Charging from one pool of light to another
a transvestite tangos with a dummy.
Everything is ready:
the wildlife is moving up,
the big tree sucks the sky
and prepares to share its instinct.
The air is loose with desire,
the static noise of nightfall,
the parade like an exodus continues
down the avenue of doomed reunions
where the petrified stone general stands
his soul trapped inside a cast of eternal gunfire.
Those waiting for sex assemble
and survey the opportunities,
calculate the danger, smoke and prepare.
When the band starts up the name calling begins.
There is a queue outside the bloodbank,
middle aged men infested
with slack jazz and mid life crisis,
young girls haemorrhaging mascara,
and there�s madly wounded loser of a fight
no one believes ever took place.
There are soldiers in love
with people you dare not trust.
Taxis like spirit guides,
claim the big night survivors:
the snake charmers and medicine men
and deliver them to the river.
Past midnight and the bailiffs are out
evicting the bloodstained contents of cheap hotels,
they clear up the broken mirrors
and replace the stolen light bulbs.
Migrant labour dismantles the night.
And there it is the holy river
sullenly stirring its tide
with the discarded dreams and relinquished rights
pilgrims offer their god in full view
of the profit margins glittering in midstream.
You can see the lights on the other side flickering,
the occasional surge driven
by the treadmills of the exhausted poor.
This is the land of opportunity
living off the offerings
of spent return journeys,
a breakthrough that never occurred.
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