NACHTZUG

Elise took the floor and
We sorted out a way to tie the door shut
Since it wouldn't close otherwise.
It was a red scarf, tied a certain way.
We shared wine and chocolate until
A Russian man got on at Spandau
And Elise had to leave and go back
to her own compartment.
The man didn't speak very much but
smiled nicely and had dark
blonde hair, blue eyes.
But the door kept opening because
Elise took her red scarf,
And he played classical music on
his laptop.

I gave up on sleeping early on and
Decided to worry about work later.
Germany got dark and lights were rare
And the other lady slept
Somehow.

The Russian kept trying to fix the door
Which involved a lot of slamming.
I tried to explain the previous solution
but it was pointless to tell him that.
He just wanted to fix it.

Again he'd try as the German lady
tried to sleep and I offered him a chocolate
for trying anyway.

The door opened again,
But this time he ignored it.
I turned on Bryan Ferry.

Later on he gave me a clove
cigarette,
The first one I'd had in six years
Since Memphis probably.
This one was golden, kind of,
And in the back of the train
With two French boys
smoking Camels.

He said I could take up two seats
If I wanted.
The German lady kept sleeping
The door kept opening
Then everybody slept
'til Paris.

FALL

You push me down, I start to wonder why
I like this so much more than safety, softness,
love and easy
All the things that felt the hardest,
Felt the death of doubt and blindness, seeing strength
All ending light. Not hard but easy, easy rest
Just rest just rest, my head by yours
Just rest, hard floor, soft fall, soft fall

BALCONY PARIS

We talked about movies and I
Pronounced things wrong and we laughed
About those things and his impression
Of actors, and another man said,
Look at the stars,
We all looked up but there were no stars because
Of the fog. We laughed more, his
Game was up. People in the bar
Down the street started singing and
Someone brought out more rum.
The Sacré Coeur was lit up and
He said, Have you taken photos and shown
All your friends? And laughed at me
And I said Yes, but it makes
Me feel guilty. I wake up every day and it’s
So big and glowing and all.
But why does that make you feel guilty?
I thought about it and
I didn’t feel guilty anymore
After all. It was gone.
The church was just beautiful, if looming,
And we turned back to the party
And decided to go to some exhibitions
Go visit the painters who had
Always been my true gods really.
Their gold leaf and new perspectives
Were my loves.
In mourning people I had been so taken with
Their grave stones and talk of hell that
I forgot about the elegies
And art works and the light
Still on.

STROPHE [Toby Zeigler's new show]

Biblical figures fade
Beneath pale rose spheres
Past obscured, then lightened, briefly
As lands empty out beneath

Women sulk behind their graphics
Monks bleached almost to negatives
Of photographs
Of how they were once captured by the Masters,

Or to clouds – forgotten
Details of past attempts at art:
Revolution – provocation,
(Now remembered)
Between circles of light and pale pastel
Paint marks.

Virtual reality nostalgic for
All it is obliterating:
Compelled idea, tempting canvas.
Beauty and death, at endless play,
Recreated on spent card.
Computers and Old Masters'
Pornographic off-prints with delicate graphics –
A coup, of a kind.

New voice and light to near-dusted subjects,
Blank spaces, lost titles –
“Dying artist defeats another’s” past by
painting over it
With appropriations of
Computer graphics.

Viewer, judger, Saint:
Be taken in and pushed aside
By pattern obscuring
All’s that’s near-been taken down.

DANSER SA VIE

Blue paint and lost limbs
Wine sprayed with the movement
All over closed eyes:
Dark paint, smudged life.
Burlesque with a lasso and
Health, to good health
Come die little moment,
‘fore dancing's rebirth.

"Yves Klein, we love you!"
So sprinkle gold dust
With your worldly sky
Figures on walls
Their moments of leaping, and
Nietzsche’s lost love,
has bound breathlessly with
us too.

In thrall with your death –
white lights, black eyes, green wine,
strung words, and hold:

Keep dancing, keep falling
“Pretend it’s a dance”
Keep falling, keep catching,
Distortion, relax.

My birthday, you caught me,
Then threw me around
All the bad things I'd heard
Were untrue
Happy Birthday, not Deathday,
Keep dancing, sweet girl
Keep losing your limbs and
Your head to it all.

MONTMARTRE 2

In the flickering leaves and the
Tiny wine glasses, stories spark up
All over again, and lying on lawns
Pale coloured as absinthe
We fall apart
So happily gone

Thoughts beat at the coat-tails
And golden-haired lost
Things, cerulean nightmares are
Shrouded in fire
And you say it’s a drawing
But it’s really the future,
Two hours from now we’ll be
Watching for land.

Pére Lachaise

Some were alcoholics, others it was opium or
Maybe cocaine for Jim Morrison, now with
Bubblegum stuck to the tree next to his
Grave, by teenage girls.
Whiskey bottles, too, taped
To the trunk, and dead flowers.
“Maybe they were tired.” Someone says,
after hearing all the stories about the artists
dying young, all the
affairs, jail, disease, work,
dance. Tired enough to die of it.

Victims by choice and gambling
Souls, lovers of all and each other
Now withdrawn beneath life, oblivious
To the glory days of their Parisian spring,
Of love in hindsight and selected histories
And undeclared love in vague elegies,
In requiems for the ignored.

Wine and sleepiness, despair becomes
just neat dissent
and stories to tell.
Erect that grave, dig them in. We
Walk on, past dead flowers
And candle lights
Floating on, bearing back
Lights and crosses, bars, rebirth.