Muse

cat woman

a poison green dystopian sign

mounted on a modernist crime

tells me, should I be lost

I’m in Zentrum Kreuzberg


cat woman gave me a purr

invited me up wrought iron stairs

to some back street tenement

with dog kennel rooms


in a chamber of permanent night

metronome plumbing dripped

granulated forms glided

across granulated walls


she curled and purred and scratched

the spread of her hips

her pubic mound in cherry motif pants

the smooth curve of her breasts


her feral cats arched their backs

rasped their claws and wove

a spell around her ankles

until her smile turned feline


the shape of her mouth

kissed into a promise

her musky breath, stupifies

dissolves your resistance


she’ll scratch you for your cream

later she will serve it up

in coffee with pfeffernusse

and fingers that smell of sex



the dead centre of the universe 


heavenly express  


in Bad Bentheim, a man

caught the train to heaven

why that particular train 

on that particular day

when the summer sun

gilded the town

and temperate greens

were lush and tropical

a day too perfect, even

my atheist eye saw angels


 but one man’s tragedy

is another man’s inconvenience

the platform, an irritating causeway

we strode up and down


pulling on cigarettes and speculated
 love, betrayal


how dull drudgery can lead down

into the tunnel’s black drain

where windows turn opaque

then turn mirror

reflecting back on yourself

looking out, into the darkness

the morrow, rain was forecast

a return to dreariness


a more appropriate day

to hijack the train to heaven

explaining women & other nonsense



the first line drawn (excerpt from Explaining Women)

when was the first line drawn

when the first caveman

eyed the first cavewoman

and felt the animal inside

welling up through knotted gut

dispersing his modicum

of abstract thought


then taking a charcoal from the fire

he began to draw, to nullify

the madness in his head

exaggerating those parts

that obsessed him most

breasts, rump and thigh


but the shaman’s graphic plan

for all it’s magic artistry 

to possess what he didn’t posses

illustrated his hands’ emptiness

his need for a cunning plan

the need to render her helpless

to succumb to his caveman charm


with club in hand and honey for bait

a prehistoric ars amatoria

delivered his desire to his lair

where his fevered hands explored

rounds, clefts and orifices

an anatomical lesson for tyro artists

to draw what is perceived with touch


dressed in nothing but her skin

she’s a parchment for his graphic hand

to wander with a line across her naked downs

spread her out like a trophy mat

deep in the cave of his imagination

where his totem is enlarged and proud

he decorated the walls with her nakedness


objectified and made concrete

the transient experience of her form

mapped out in radials of a compass

a star chart of metaphysical connections

the geometry of her horoscope

he assesses with his accusatory eye

how his earth spins on her axis


she was an equation to be solved

a complex of tangents mapped in time and space

the dumbstruck caveman gawped in awe

as she arced across his sky

heavy and swollen with pendulous breasts

parturient belly and prominent pubis

from which cavebabies crawled

old man's poems


the Enlightenment being some white man's

conspiracy of dark oppression, all people

being equal, while all people are unequal

privilege being genetically inherited

an indication of transgressive thought

there is no escape from the accusatory

finger, sharp as a dagger


I keep my sins to myself, the vigilantes

being on the prowl, ready to shoot

from the hip, should I show signs

of being less than administratively human

bureaucratic oppression, a questionnaire

where the questions are never asked

my answers, genetically inherited


my status allocated, I'm an old dog

barking, never properly trained, I'm a stray

I root with my snout, in the undergrowth

poke around bins, scratch the flea behind

my ear, lick my balls and cock my leg

more dog than man, I have no collar, no leash

I see what I see, smell what I smell


if there is a bitch in heat, I mount her

my attitude puts me beyond redemption

my transgressions noted, filed as evidence

I am categorised social remedial, handicapped

with the inability to process truth, beyond reform

I wear my shame, with puffed out chest

like a soldier wears his medals


if truth is so plastic, I'll manufacture

my own, unknot reality, weave my own fictions

deliver assertions as fact, reshape my brain

explore the world as a dog, respond to stimuli

instinct, all thought redundant, some would say

I'm already animal, yes and I'm too old to care

just don't woke me up, before I'm dog