Let us open all the doors
And invite the ghosts in.
Let us empty the cupboards,
Dig up all the bones
And lay them out: let there be war.

Let the wheels turn;
Enough of this stagnant peace
That is no peace at all.
The thundering lie torments me;
I am disgusted by the deceits that
Underpin it.
Better the honesty of war
Than the deceptions of a false peace.

Line up my enemies;
I will cut them down
And bow to their deaths.
I will honour them like brothers
Who meet me on the battlefield,
But for the cowards of this war
I bring only your burning house,
Your ruined fields,
Your broken family.
Be brave and die well;
Hell has a place for the coward
But the noble dead line the halls
Of Heaven, rejoicing.
Now, come, let my sword feast
On your nobility.

War on falsehood;
War on the idiots;
War on greed;
War on all that divides me
From you and
Myself.

Let all my enemies perish.
Let the dark and the light alike
Be equalised in victory or defeat.
But let there be war.

I will cut the wings from angels,
Pull the horns from demons’ heads;
I will wade through the blood of
Good and bad alike,
Because the war is endless.

Constantly arising,
Falsehood blemishes the page.
There is always the Foe,
Always the battle raging all around me.
For others, peace and the green field.
For me, the slice of sword
On shield
On skull
And bone.

(And now we sit here,
The silence growing vines
About our tongues.
Poisoned water in the well
And the list of crimes
Between us.
Let there be war.
Let the land burn.
Let the forests fall,
The mountains echo with
Blade on bone
Steel on stoney face
And all the armies of us
Exhaust themselves in a tide.
Let there be war.
Let the rivers run red
For a season;
Let the borders close
And all the songs be of
The bloody fight.

Kiss and make up?
Let there be war.
Turn the other cheek?
Let there be war.

The air is thick with lies.
The forests are tangled with briers.
The mountains are full of thieves
And the rivers are choked with weeds.
Let there be war
And purging
And the redemptive fire
Of death and glory.)

Fight me.
I said, ‘Fight me.’
Do not be understanding.
Do not yield for the peace.
Do not bend yourself
Any more
From the shape you were born to.
Who are you?
WHO ARE YOU?
Show yourself, truly, or not at all.
Stand on the dusty battleground
And fight me, as you are.

Screw politics.
We are warriors,
Or could be.
I cannot sit yet on the porch
And rock myself to senility
Telling tales of former glory
And the comrades I once knew.
The war goes on
All around us.

Fight me,
Then we can turn together
Towards the innumerable foes.

How can I know your strength
If you will not show me?
I do not yet trust your sword
Beside mine.
Those who have not fought,
Do not know one another’s shape.

How can I love a man I have not fought?
How can I love a woman who fears me?
Fight me.
Let me feel your strength;
Let me measure you,
That I may then love you,
Knowing who you are.

Let the heavens open
and arrows rain down;
Let Hell burst on the Earth.
So long as I have a sword in my hand
and an enemy before me,
I will never be displaced.

Do not curse me with peace.
I would fade like the captured tiger
Or the dark, cut flower.
Fence me around with Peace
And I will make War with it.

Bring me a war!
There must be a war, somewhere!
(For how can I know who I am without battle?
Though I have seen boys become Men,
Become corpses
In an hour,
I have seen such a flowering of life
Before Death
As I have never seen
In all the village halls
And householders’ days
I have ever known.)

Come here!
You!
Come to me!
I am not afraid to die in front of you,
Only afraid to die without living.
(And if I should die by your sword
Or your powerful word
Or your look at me askance,
I will die happy
And real
And full of blood and laughter and fire.)

Oh, do not let me die in bed!
Unless I was fighting there
A battle worthy of my death.

I know.
You think I am a thug
To speak thus of War.
Admit it!
Speak true words!
You see a brute, a warmonger.
An iron fool.
Listen to me.
I am playing my part.
I am playing my part.
Play yours!
Without fear.
At least I know what mine is.

Are you a child to cower in deception?
Be a man! Be a woman!
Ach.
Bring me someone real
To spar with,
I am sick of your foolish illusions,
Your pretensions of mortality.

I have nothing to hide.
Do you understand?
I have nothing to hide.
Nothing.
And so I am
A God.
Now fight me.

Those who have been crushed,
been broken by tasks too great,
who failed themselves
and all their people;
Those who aimed at the sun,
but fell to Earth, then deeper still;
Those who were caught out,
got their hand trapped in the door,
missed the vital clue
and slipped on the beanstalk,
the banana skin
or the serpents’ poisoned blood.
Those who didn’t know the answer,
for all the riddle’s clues;
Those who were seduced by fairies
and did not wake up;
Those who did not tie themselves
to the mast,
or were tied, by uncunning hands
and clumsy knots
and fell, cursing, into the sea.

Here we have all the names
that are not heard in songs;
Here we have all the forgotten sons
and daughters,
who did not return and
from whom word was never heard.
The streets were not paved with gold;
there was no golden fleece;
the unicorn was not there;
the giant truly was too large
and too much to handle.
The rooms of this place
are stacked with broken swords
and crushed skulls,
ankles twisted at wrong moments,
fingers snagged on clothing
and second-rate shields
split by the first-rate weapons
of too many foes.
Luck was not on their side,
and not enough back-up
arrived too late
to help them.
It was just another day
for their enemies.

The weary and the crippled;
the lost and the unloved;
the unshining, undazzling,
the almost-adequate
and the woefully inept
(though not those whose lack
is legendary and have sneaked
into fame through infamy.)
Those whose feet slipped,
stepping from boat to shore;
Those whose sword-hand
wilted with fear,
whose determination
was lost in a bottle
or a bed,
whose allies were
badly-chosen
and left them to burn
in the dragon’s cave,
divided up the gold
and all the fame
themselves.

Here we don’t have
Hercules,
Odysseus
or Gilgamesh;
Here we have
those who thought that
Icarus was a good
role-model for success,
those who thought that
dragons were smaller,
gorgons more susceptible
to flattery,
giants clumsier
and fire not quite
as hot
as the stories tell…

Their songs were not tuneful;
their stories were artless
and badly told;
their battles were messy,
simply skirmishes in the war;
their love-affairs were quick
gropes in the dark and
dissatisfaction and a stain
here and there;
no demigods were born
of their unions.
Their great declarations
were made whilst drunk
and quickly forgotten,
or never heard,
for the din of the bar
around them.

Their names are not written.
Their deaths are recorded in lists
and tally charts;
Their monuments are empty spaces,
the thread of grief in another
unrecorded life;
They are the food of Death,
not glory.
Distracting fate with their blundering,
their tasks were immaculately served.
Without them,
the heroes would not stand
a chance.

All along, it was growing in you;
Teasing your limitations,
Searing your heart,
When you turned away from love;
Reminding you,
In dream,
In joy,
In the cataclysm of despair;
“Look,” it said.
“I am your soul;
“Let me grow and I will take you home.”

Did you learn to listen?
Did you seize the moments of grace
When they were offered?
Did you risk it all, again
And again
And again?
The Gods are not arrogant;
They simply do not fear.
What is there to be afraid of?
Only the stultifying death of things.

You are not only human!
Stop pretending!
The Gods can see through you;
Renounce your allegiance to the
Conspiracy of the dead;
One day, the moment will come
And you will be asked to step forward,
Say your true name
And put your shoulder to the wheel of Destiny.
What will you say then,
If you do not know who you are?

Friend;
That moment may come sooner than you think.
Already the Gods have noticed you;
Right now, they are whispering in your ear.
They are kindling a fire in your heart;
It will burn everything.
Already, it is too late to evade them.
Do not be afraid,
Though your limbs shake
And your mouth turns to dust.
Do not be afraid;
You are surrounded by allies,
Waiting to pull you deeper into love.

If you know this,
You heart will begin to call to them;
If you try to hide it,
How will your allies know where to find you?
The Gods will find you anyway:
They are a great predator, made of love.
Surrender, now,
Before the battle has begun;
To lose that battle
Is the greatest victory
You will ever know.

Fuck Apollo and all his weightless radiance.
Fuck Zeus, Aphrodite and the rest;
I’m going to Hades to hang out in the darkness.
I’ll find Ares and put barbs in the swords,
twist the tips of spears and
maybe crack a can around
Hecate’s crackling, cackling fire.

They can look for me in the whore-house
and the gutter-lined bars;
I’ll be shattering myths,
breaking bottles over Eros’ curly head
and fucking guileless nymphs
between sheets of blood and whisky
and poisoned dreams of hope.

They wanted a messenger,
but wanted to pick the message;
I’m going to stalk the motorway
with apocalyptic declarations
strapped to my glorious body;
I’m going to wait by marriage beds
and proclaim the supremacy
of infidelity, deceit and the
thousand petty deaths of the soul.

Fuck the healers
who dare not heal;
Fuck the orators
who peddle lies of light;
Fuck the winged messengers;
Fuck the heroes
and their muscle-bound
impotence;
They can come gold
for all I care;
They’ll all die in their time
and I’ll be there,
laughing.

I’m going to torture poets,
break musicians strings
and chase the Muses to hell.
I’ll break canvases,
shatter stained glass
and poison the well.
I’m going to make vinegar
from the golden apples of the sun.

Today, I am the dark angel;
The god of boundaries
has his face turned towards the shade;
I will usher souls into darkness
and they can fend for themselves;
I am sick of the light
and all its insubstantial promises
of salvation.
Saved, from what?
For whom?
You are all free, already;
I am tired of your constant, mortal
misapprehension of your life.

Look for me in the shadow,
the gutter and the nightmare.
Today I am the dark angel;
If you want to wake up,
then do it yourself.

She wanted to know how the ‘in’ felt;
so familiar with the ‘out’
that a glass wall of her own making
hedged the air around her.

She wanted to feel the warmth of ‘kin’
but did not know the words
for ‘hearth’ or ‘kith’ or even ‘aah’
spoken in the golden fireside.

She looked through the window
and saw Baba Yaga & dangerous bears
where there were only porridge bowls
and a sliver of butter.

She who does not know how to turn silver into gold;
She who knows too well how to turn herself
inside out,
but not right-side up;
She who has eaten too many forbidden seeds
Is not sure about this upper world now;
The familiar claws are absent, and so
Must be imagined anew…

That there cannot be a hand out-reaching.
I knew the Lord of the Dead.
How can you expect me to think
that you are not him in disguise?
Again.

She wanted the warm embrace
but turned towards the cold
damp bark
and wondered why it did not
warm her;

She wanted to know princes, but
could not help slaying them
wondering where the love went,
as their blood stained her delicate feet.

She wanted simplicity and the firm ground;
when she asked for certainty, the earth
split open and swallowed her again
and again
and again.

2.

Too familiar with darkness to kindle light;
Too weighted by the heavy cloak of days
to lift her feet in dancing;
Too expert in the ways of the soul
to let her spirit fly;
Gravity had told her: I am your only ally.

Now she fell back into the Earth
and neither ‘in’ nor ‘kin’ nor ‘kith’
could reach her.

This is my country;
Here I am the Queen and
royalty may be a fair exchange
for the lives of other worlds
and the ‘aah’ and ‘hearth’ and ‘kith’
of them;
They were never my kin
and, besides,
the Lord of the Underworld
is the only one who ever
really
knew me.

3.

But, though she wanted the dark,
the light kept haunting her;
In the familiar, comforting nightmares,
shafts of sun appeared through grimy windows.
Withered trees began to blossom
and though she chased them with a crushing foot,
snowdrops began to grow more quickly
than she could press them into death.
All her silver jewellery
and her Plutonian riches,
glimmered with impossible, golden light.

In the centre of familiar despair,
treacherous hope was born and born
again;
though she tied it tight to stones of grief
and dropped them constantly
into the intimate well of sorrow,
hope sang its song to her,
betraying her monarchy with
whispers of insolent possibility.
Though she commanded its execution,
Its corpse would never rest;
no grave could keep it.

Songbirds were born on her window-sill
every morning
and however often she visits
the river to forget,
she cannot wash love
from her hands.

4.

She who is tied to the wheel,
cannot help but turn;
She who is not dead,
cannot help but be alive;
For all her dark garments of shadow,
she cannot kill the light.

Though she veils her eyes,
they are beginning to shimmer;
Though she decries laughter,
it bubbles from her
while the dark guard of
her determination
has its back turned;
a spring flows,
for all the concrete she pours
against its birth.
Though she is the Queen of the Underworld,
everybody knows she was born in Heaven.

She wants the ‘out’, but ‘in’ is taking her again;
She wants the cold, the dark, the brooding,
but warmth and light and dancing
are reaching for her;
Soon, a crack in the sky will open
and she will fall again,
but upwards;
What messenger of Heaven will
pluck this fruit of darkness
and initiate her again into light?

5.

Can I never know home?
Nor exile?
Can I never know kin?
Nor isolation?
Can I stand neither
enfolded at the hearth,
nor in the stricken heath, deserted?
If I cannot be in familiar darkness
or light,
Who am I?

She is the one who crosses constantly;
she cannot reside, but
make temporary camp;
Not in heaven, nor hell;
Not in soul, nor spirit;
Not in the embracing arms of home,
nor in the wild and
desolate ecstasy of solitude.

One day, she will learn;
Though she asks for constancy,
there is only her coming and going,
the tide of her washing the
light world
and the dark;
One day, she will remember:
she cannot carve herself
a monument that lasts in either world,
Only pile stones as she passes,
temporary testaments of being.

One day she will remember how to sing;
whether it is sorrow or joy,
the rising or falling chord,
there is always the music of the movement;
it is the only constancy
she will ever know.
It is the messenger that lifts her up
and reminds her to descend.

One night or day,
for all her defences against sufficiency,
it may just be enough.