Author: James Lindesay

Where shall we live? The newborn, grown
and grown old; the poor
the travellers, the dispossessed;
the children of war
the alien, the overthrown;
where can we rest?

She, in answer, points
a blackened finger to the sky.

More bad weather has blown in
rainfall out of a blue sky

it lifts the skin, filleting
flesh, nailing our children down

a nulling, as tears torn from
our faces, our lost futures

puddle and clot about us;
it is here to stay, this cold

and remorseless anger, this
agony no care can fill

How these angels these cannonades
of starlight can break us
focus and furious release
of the refining arc

And how the after-image burns
as flashbulbs
                        a strobe flare
over the trenches
                        the headlamps’
glare on our bloodied work

Drawing the line; a black and brilliant
conceit: death brutally unearthed and burnt
reborn as a thought, as a word, a chant

Charlie. In pencil here, and in the streets
much is defined: je suis, nous sommes, vous êtes;
this be-ing is a verb of many parts

A small country   a shoreline
strewn with wreckage of their boats
and bodies   bodies   bodies

Despite all our appeasements,
troubles multiply. The screens
on our trading floors turn red,

our currency is tanking,
and war is now a real threat;
the people are out for blood.

Clearly, we need a smarter
branding for the sacrifice:
Us or Them, something like that.

We need to send a message:
we feel your pain, but these are
difficult times. There are bills

to be paid, mouths to be fed
here also. For Heaven’s sake,
we try to ease your passage

but our freedoms must come first.
Please understand: life is brief
and brutal. Get over it.

A small country   a shoreline
strewn with wreckage of our boats
and bodies   bodies   bodies

Scent of a further country where worse
Furies promenade and bask their claws.

Father, be in
no doubt: we have seen
Hell. The stain
is clear and spreading.
Our hands are clean
enough, the urinals
flush well,
but there is still
at the end of it all
this disgusting smell.

Forgive us, Lord.
Some things are hard
and our words
failed us. We heard
little, misread
so much. Scared does
for sacred now, showbiz
for psalms and proverbs;
so, sex it up please
oral pro nobis

Spotted on a recent country walk:
torn polythene bags, a family-size
Coke bottle, packets of old dogshit
in the hedgerow, a cylinder block,
some tyres, a box for takeaway fries:
dumped, and going nowhere, all of it.

World of our making: the new Sublime
of ocean-choking plastic, shrink wrap,
warming and wars, and cryogenics
for the 1%. Fucked up big-time
this time, we are the Aztecs of crap,
the Bleaker People, Agents of Nix.

Sweat and strain in the garden,
moving the grave goods from hole
to hole as we unburden
the bins of this year’s compost;
mulch and humus, magical
decay to nourish and host
the life of a new season:
the dark miracle of soil
warms to the voice of the sun.

Earthworks astride ridge and furrow,
smeared at the margins by dredging
and new ditches. Water flowing
cleanly over sand, the hedges
much tidier now. In the spoil heaps
we find bricks and some old glass.

After Albrecht Dürer

Here we are: look at it, a mess
of leaf and stalk and root,
of plantain and smooth meadow grass
of daisy and cock’s foot

yarrow and hound’s tongue, speedwell
and the dandelion
just in flower, and creeping bent; all
tangled and mingling

in this nondescript scrap of earth.
Just think of it: a piece
of paper and a muddy path;
a way, a world, a choice.

Another pause for breath.

Flame from the maple: a violin
a long dolcissimo lament
upsetting the saloon; a veil and
its violation, sentiment

and a raw distress. Tall as a spruce
and black as ebony, their shadows
move across the lawn. More bad news
from the front, more hymns for the dead.

One among so many, caught
on camera; no gurning
or performances, no grief
or shocking injury; just
a turn of the head and a
backward stare into the lens,
to me, to say look: before
being swallowed, I was here.
I know, because you saw me.
At history’s mad banquet
I happened by your table
and our eyes met. This moment
is ours alone and will live.

11.11.18

one man has gone insane with thirst and drinks
from a filthy shell-hole   the stink rank as

the pits of mud and piss in which we fight
even our bread and water smell of it

we have tried chlorinated lime to combat
the blocked latrines   our gas masks help a bit

a little cacao to stop the diarrhoea
but the sweat-reek of death is everywhere

in everything   the taste of scorching bone
at the back of the throat   the constant rain

of putrid flesh   we are carrying the dead
on our hands and feet and clothing   indeed

this is worse than any hell   the foetid
clay devours us as the world goes mad

Witnesses of Verdun: wereldoorlog1418.nl

A very Low Countries hell:
kingdom of the pipistrelle
and nightjar, and above all
the harrying watchful owl.
A city burns at her call:
buckets rattle in the well
as people panic, dogs howl
and midnight in a nutshell
rides the storm. And as tanks roll
over the plain, and bombs fall
out of a black sky, we swirl
the bowl of mayhem, fettle
our demons, and drink our fill
of the filth. As our hearts fail.

Weißt du, was du sahst?

The West Front

A spectral and pastel man
à la Puvis de Chavannes;
a nosferatu; sucker
fuckwit, raven-haired, tattooed
and pierced Sebastian;
beset by needles and by
notions of the infinite;

Or maybe a huge Deco
nude, pneumatic and roughcast
concrete pecs, cup-winner, eyes
on the prize; Führerprinzip,
Triumph of the Will, if you
will, a thick and relentless
chryselephantine phallus;

Or this war child, homeless king
of the streets; lord protector
of bomb sites; hoarder of all
their improbable treasure:
shrapnel, snapshots, dragons’ teeth;
a planespotter, gone to earth;
our troublesome feral dream.

The Lantern

Transparencies and slides of
our venereal disease:
Montsalvat steeped in, gorging
on our blood: On Purity
our text for today as eyes
are purged by chlorine, our hands
worrying at bandages.

Such clashing colours: khaki,
scarlet, browns, the bully-black
of boots and bad news, the whites
of marble and bone; rust-red
this rut of iron and mire
bathed fitfully in Klieg-light,
phosphorus, the follow-spot.

We have a knack for relics,
for coffin-gas transmuted
into the clearest ether;
high in their chapels of ease
the stained glass warrior-saints
are trenchant, carry their wounds
dearly, stand for our belief.

The Crypt

And here wé are, immured in
the meatiness of clays and
ochres, roasted haematites,
the earth-tones of Lascaux and
country house dining room walls:
the war paint of our presence
and persistence in the world.

A touch of burnt sienna
on the brush; the shadows of
sfumato virgins roiling
in the dark; here we revive
the gothic arts of torment
and delight, all flesh reduced
to the stickiest of jus.

A promise of tongues; the kiss
of incandescent charcoal;
solar flares; asphyxia;
the body seared and backlit
by a falling flame: here be
certain styles of ecstasy
beyond the Dresden Amen.

The Lady Chapel

This bread is tasteless, the wine
won’t clot, and has no bouquet;
above us a great white worm
is writhing on its cross; please,
somebody, laugh at this joke
of a hammered-up Jesus
flashing his pits, for God’s sake!

It’s ewig the Weibliche:
Trümmerfrau, suiveuse de camp,
Jewess, impossible flirt
with her crack-houri nails and
rouge dragon weirdo-hairdo;
still a player, still making
an effort, skin in the game.

Blood, fish and bone: let us now
speak the language of cut flowers:
the unsexed lily is trim
and user-friendly, no stains
or inseminations here;
the crown of thornless hybrid
teas is a real tease – a scream.

The Graveyard

More and more we find ourselves
visiting the rose gardens
and pale ecumenical
woods of crematoria,
our endless rites of caring
and convenient despatch
etched in their condolence-books;

Rubric and writing that bleeds
a flattened sort of griefwork,
lost for words; as if the crawl
of bullet-points on vellum
were enough; as if these lines
enrolled in eternity
could summon the flesh, the ash.

Need for air becomes pressing;
absence weighs upon the heart
with its phantom limbs and its
acres and acres of stone;
still this earth blocks our release,
and still overhead the skies
are loud and heavy with wings.

The Baptistry

Our harps are tuned to mourning
for the grave’s oblivion.
We are badly soiled; our world
on deathwatch, wounded, winding
down and circling to what end-
this shower of glittering
fluids now shrunk to a smear,

The suck of mud, and the wear
of leather on skin. Smoke fills
the corridors; we recoil
from the barrages of heat:
out of this blackened city
comes a clamour for healing,
clangour of numerous bells.

Hell is what we say it is:
perhaps this firestorm, or this
frozen, arid wilderness;
our wish and our will. At last
we are truly clean, the fields
unharrowed, salted and sown
with the ordnance of our tears.

The High Altar

Burnt offerings. A man of
sorrows and a perfect fool.
Angels are come among us,
glory in our rout. This is
where we queue up for the Light,
and listen to the tuning-
out of neurones, one by one:

A life caught briefly; flickers
and clips as we go out of
the body, under the knife
and into the blue; we are
awash with the poppy; we
watch as the gilded petals
of this altarpiece unfurl:

Fungus and gangrene and pus
undone in the loveliest
of oils, a heavenly float
over broken soldiery.
Here, at the pedicured feet
of holy men, we are screened
and found worthy after all.

A journey began here, in this gilt
apricot-silky cabriolet
gondola to the Isle of the Dead,
to Valhalla, to the garden grave
they planned together.

A transport of the soul, its relics
and its marks of passage; a death mask
natürlich, as of the house rebuilt.
Behind glass, an empty vessel sings
of the lost presence.

…the whole sinister glittering faëry of gain…

DAS RHEINGOLD

WANT = HAVE
is not love

is the logic
of theft

is a forging
of charms

that know the heft
of money

DIE WALKÜRE

As warriors as daggers
to the heart they come

their children singing
disobedient   asleep

SIEGFRIED

How to be a man   first kill the Jew
then profit from a dragon’s tenderness

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

A thinning bloodline curdles into human history   this hope will self-destruct

An open window: sunlight
falling through the bars: music
to sweeten and corrupt us
utterly. Stiffening flesh,
skin still as warm to the touch
as the face of this coin:
rich, giving nothing away.

I: PHARAOH

Colossal hillsides, chisels in the womb
conceived you; igneous, eternal blocks
have husbanded your waiting form; the shock
of mallets gave you definition, room.

Black basalt panthers, porphyry baboons-
these are your kind; belonging more to rock
than to the men who sculpted you, your stock
is one with that of fossils, mountains, moons-

the mineral gods. You are, like them, alive
in every stone. In every stone a sea
of faces where the carver trawls his knife
to net your busy shape. Others go free;
they are still dancing underneath the dive
that beached your lifeless angularity.

II: MACBETH TO THE MANTIS

Alive in woodwork, breathing beneath stone,
you are a shuttered exercise in power-
beloved mistress, dear automaton,
how well I know that vegetable prayer
of helmets. Eyeless, as the skull’s edge
falls on your husband’s thrusting trunk unseen,
I am the rock face, split by the driven wedge,
the angular, carnivorous machine.

Cannibals worship you, and no wonder;
you are carving come to life, a charmed
voodoo Galatea. The head hunter
knows; his magic runs on masked alarm,
rituals to contain (as if they could)
the terrors of your crawling, hungry wood.

III: A VAN DYCK PORTRAIT

Proportion here is kept by fantasy
and artifice. From nests of plaster cloud
a masquing monarch looks, but will not see
the bones beneath their cultivated shroud.

This man has an oyster’s innocence;
his Maker covers him, a sheet of pearl
defending Virtue, making gorgeous sense
of irritation from the busy world.

Only on canvas could that head control
this intricate robotic armouring
of limbs and torso, only painters hold
together the exquisite patterning;
elsewhere, there are no heavens, earths or hells,
no magic- only steel and silver shells.

IV: PERSEUS

Emerging pinkly from the soap, unreal
and unapproachable, the face displayed
in shaving is not mine, is many-rayed
and fleshless, mirror-skinned, mercurial.

The silver fluid trembles; I can feel
vessels beating underneath my blade
behave like strangers, and I am afraid
of this reflection’s restless, smoothing steel.

I sense the blood’s thump in the skull’s great
basin; the veins across these temples snake
and bulge, ballooning nausea, fear, hate

o sever their expanding skins o break
these coils o hear the music of debating
voices rise from red enamel lakes

V: ANTINOÜS EMBALMED

More precious in rare minerals than in life
a face that once looked lovingly now stares
out of set diamonds and in high relief.
The brains are sealed in alabaster jars.

Heaven is lapidary, beyond grief;
salvation is the salvage of past years
lest ye forget. The truest words of love
are graven headstones, metamorphic tears.

At last the incorruptible are free;
their cults are emptiness, the shield-and-show
of bodies locked in rigid ecstasy.

For theirs is a kingdom only statues know,
where veins don’t knot, where skin, a spotlessly
marbling membrane, thrills in vacuo.

VI: SALOME

Always the same and everywhere unknown,
lust’s thirsty acres are as hopeless as
unreachable horizons curving alone
to no coast; no exploding waters crown
these vulturous, flesh-heavy distances-
only the dropped sweat, all of it my own.

I have heard rivers run in undertones
below, though none rise here; no spring, no cistern
in this hot arena. I have known
the gasping sands, all that exhausted stone,
endured illimitable surfaces-
from skin to silk to skin to bronze to bone;

I need an ocean’s plunging silences
to bless my undiscovered face- to drown.

VII: CORAL

Not brain perhaps, but what a brain might be;
alive and dead, persistent after death,
slow-gathering towards eternity
its tiny cells and skeletons that breathe;

a living rock. Safe-keeper of the sea
behind its huge and continental hearth
its shadows cast are limestone sanctuary,
blue pools where we may innocently bathe.

Beyond its keep, mark how the sea rages!
The quiet place is patiently defined
amidst uproar and the unappealing bells.

Its bastions are soundless; images
of a lost kingdom surface in the mind
as goddesses are born aloft on shells.