A Parting Wave

Brighton Beach 1953

Coleridge

One night you fled to high mountain passes

howling winds adrift with snow and ice
body broken betoken of empty fields 
In the valley below
The ‘lights went out one by one,
and darkness all around’
bad dreams phantoms screams.

Your powerlessness that night
acknowledged

set the flame to burn unchained,
your wounded angel-wings
    carried you
            above
               drifting
cold ashes

of a friendship finished 

that night
you embraced the divine spirit
in the full moon.

* * *

Highroad Blues
             (what price the passage?)

this road I’ve travelled with you

had many blind turns and twists
the beginnings long gone
          with the dead
beginning back as a young buck
sometimes it seems
           its all 
       just dreams.

fear was a coat I often wore

        (for protection ?)

as if I needed it or maybe I did

but that’s context dependent yeah
you know that better than anyone.

what can I say but only what I know

no oblique allusions of sensibility
even if I was so inclined
no boasts of refined affinities
no bullshitting of how much I care
when often all I want to do
              is get through the night  
and into another day
fighting nightly
for my life in dreams.   

 

Me Too
      for Dick Mendola, dec '13

desolation angels
holy ghost
bind my days up
I got them black snake
           blues

* * *

Blues for Shelton

you were like a beautiful flower

the colours faded a little
bringing out your delicacy

magenta of the Tibetan steppes
that was the garland for you
though of course you were Welsh.
there was a fragrance about you
that lifted the senses in company
awakened the lyrical soul  
seemingly effortlessly
like an eagle cruising

perhaps
who knows
maybe
up there with my other bro

from down Lake Condah way

tonight we wont say too much
of the Dark Angels proximity.

* * *

Night

been feeling good lately

but not without neurotic episodes
scanning bottomless subterranean streams
of mind
and phantom connections
hidden in nostalgia.

a breeze carries the night air

through open back balcony doors
sharing the silences
feeling solace in distant sounds
In the darkness the breeze
feels good against my legs
I’m doing ok I could say
hard times and joys along the way
my mind wanders lazily
down old trails of memory.

the radio plays

          ‘All You Need Is Love’

beyond the hills a jet plane is landing
stirring old familiar pain
the way old songs will play a movie
in your brain.

 * * *

  

Dec 8 2013

33 years ago

I was sitting alone drinking

in a bar in Carlton

There were three or four others in the bar

It was a Tuesday afternoon, a quiet day

I was only just starting on the day’s boozing.

Me and this other guy, a hippie tradesman type

we were watching the cricket on the television

Neither of us had spoken to the other

I got off the stool and went for a piss,

When I came back he said

             "Some turd just shot

             John Lennon dead!”

agh FUCK 

Karl Gallagher . . .