SCRIPTUS INTERRUPTUS: diciembre 2021

"Getting on to sundown''"

Sniffing a sunflower

in the middle of Piccadilly Circus,

ah what a grandstanding gesture.

No one stares.

No one cares

but the knowing smile of Eros

in the fountain at the crack of dawn.

Another hides his grin behind the clouds.

Early morning flaring in sodium light.

Juvenile crows flap and hop

from a linden tree to my boisterous laughter.

(Just after copulation

-said Schopenhauer-

the Devil's laughter is heard)

And nothing can mitigate

the lusciousness of this hour.

Why the icecream van is chiming

Mozart's Requiem at such a sunny day?

I am the flotsam of meself.

At home in any walk of strife.

The mirror inside the cigarette case

reflects not my face

but the emerald smile of a raven

fluttering by.

A beggar also smiled with a chipped tooth

of biting the hard cold of hours.

A red fox licking a pool

of yellow spit red vomit

from the wrappers of a Chinese takeaway

alongside a famished Victorian ghost

and a seagull that never sleep.

III

Why the icecream van

still chimes the Requiem?

In a blazer blue

like Chatterton's breeches

a Piccadilly rent boy

produced by the fog

is beaming upon my shadow.

And I beam at you oh Silvie

still running away with the wolves

in the woods of Senlis.

My travel-stained notebooks however

have no traces of her last perfume,

her last teardrop...

Oh Silvie

A black busker in the corner

rapping about the colour of sadness

at dawn

(it's purple)

near him a slavic woman sleeps rough

by a trolley suitcase and a wooden box

with her mother's ashes.

A traffic warden zipped up the fly

stopping his three colour pee

against the lamppost.

Men of cloth pass by

impassive on trottinettes.

And a West End cocotte

riding pillion on a red motorbike

waves goodbye to her own shadow

running away to the other direction.

Along the towpath in gloaming light,

on a Raleigh bike I saw Helen smile

at a homeless drummer just before

heading for Troy.

I checked the reality

bamboozled by the light,

returning to the shadow

to turn it

(as Eliot did)

into a transient beauty.

With my cracked monocle like a god

recently sacked from his duties,

I checked the reality.

And entrusted my sanity

to the last nasturtiums

standing in late summer.

Mary Magdalene-wise I

the unsung hero of myself

still have seven demons to be cast out,

and all of them are poets.

Always bridging abysses, pothering

abysses to nowhere.

"The moon is 240 000 miles from Charing Cross"

Quicker one would reach to the moon

than to any soul down here.

The final stanza of my best poem

is always missing, and allus will be.

VII

Like a shoeshine boy the red

leather boots he dreams,

I polish the moon reflected

in a shop window

weathered, fly-specked.

A chirpy dustman whistles arias

attuned to the pouring rain.

A glass of vermouth

is my agony aunt by night.

She bids me to take a swim

in the bath of Venus

but I end up kissing the porcelain

in the bog near an insomniac sparrow

looking up to the stars.

VIII

In the middle of a vacant square

a gramophone with green trumpet

blaring foxtrot that echoes in the night.

A woman glitters like a flapper muse,

dances with her own shadow.

And a fat cop in the corner

also spins around himself

hugging the nightstick

The amber light at sunset glimmers

off the council blocks.

The apricity of the happy hour

when bank clerks from the City

rush for a skinful a fish and chips

a pole dancer.

The melancholy joy of a funfair

on a pier like a trembling rainbow.

Coconut slices receive the trickle

of waterdrops reflecting the sunset.

In the bouncy castle

jumps alone and guffaws

the Devil in blue.

The moon is still having a chinwag

with the stars.

Even the moon thinks less of me

because I only can shine

on a few words.

A mist of rain perfumes my sunflower.

And a solitary hooker in a corner

plays a hurdy-gurdy

I stand her a coffee

and she stands me to pluck a rose.

The mudlarkers along the river sing

ballads of love.

Crumpled newspapers

fly in the wind, melancholic herons

over the gantries, a leaden sky.

Moonstruck foxes sniff each other

in a graveyard's shadow.

XII

In Hyde Park Corner on a soapbox

I shout and shout,

mumble and mumble

to an audience of dirty pigeons and gulls.

It's raining galore.

My grandstanding gesture

-a Keats book in hand-

to save the world

with a thing of beauty.

I am the golden trumpet of God..

(Every nation of strumpets

has its golden trumpet)

XIII

Like Peter Sellers whistling

the soliloquy of Hamlet

I stroll along Regent Park

shrouded in early fog.

Fed up with being an understudy

in the play about the endless

war between God and Devil.

What is it like the boredom

of the stars when they are tired

of brightening the universe?

On overcast mornings

I try to summon up my inner light

but all I can get is the flickering

beacon of my last defeat.

XIV

Streetwise, ambling off the empty avenues

like a hoofer rehearsing a tap-dance.

Raindrops tinkle over my bowler hat.

A flick knife has glinted in the alleyway

or was a friend of Dorothy's glance?

Whatever, I scoot off to my favourite bench

in the Embankment to sleep.

At dawn, very often, the spectre of Lord Byron

wakes me gently for a fag.

The night smells of jasmine rice
and a waft of sour sweat from lovers
making love somewhere under the sky.
Out of the blue, a feral cat nuzzles
into my legs glancing me with pupils
like fog-lights at the morning,
my head is away in another dimension,
my heart is beating in another country.
My hands just about to play wanton with a pipistrelle.
The night smells of jasmine rice and gun powder.

XVI

A wayward crow pecks at the eyes

of a drunkard kipping on a bench

under the red skeleton of a brolly.

A man walking his invisible dog

on the leash looks at the crow,

laughs off.

XVII

Under this mild sunshine of May,

playing dead like the opossum.

It takes courage to keep oneself alive

at this early century in London

hugging a dustbin...

Comedy is eating fruits

from the dustbin,

plus time.

Swallows, swallows take me

to Shambala

on your golden wings:

far from the worsening cost of loving

far from the worsening cost of living

far from the worsening cost of leaving.

XVIII

Some concertina is mellowing a jazz

in Leicester Square, rather a song of mercy.

Auden said the song of mercy is the Devil's waltz.

I dance just in case, with a hangdog look

to the Shakespeare bust, just in case I am

the abscond God who muted

the Devil's laughter, the wolves of word.

Comedy is to be sipping a cold latte

at Highgate cemetery in a cold morning

plus eternity.

(God really exists. Just

he's working undercover)

XIX

"Be my guest, crestfallen clown,

in this barrel of mine where I - sleepless Diogenes-

will live out to my last bread or breath.

Sit down there near my white dog who never

barks to anyone but the sea.

Let's partake of this bowl of green lentils

by the smouldering fire a la belle étoile..

Don't spill your tears over my shoulder

like your slapsticks all over the big-top.

Let's laugh off the world tonight on end:

I, juggling feckless words; you, the stars.

Forget the trappings of wealth and power

and look how my dog frisks about damselflies

on the hedges and two wenches lezzing up

in the corner. Did you suss that the magpies

giggle when I ritually pick my nose?

What a dust-up of sparrows for a crumb,

can ya hear the canned laughter of ghosts

in the ruins of that Odeon cinema?

Don't mind my odorous feet and clobbers

and take a swig of my last brown ale.

Don't sob anymore, slip off your blue clogs,

that rubber nose of dimmed red reflecting

my toothless smile...What dragged you along here

in tearful sadness, far from the joy of your trade?

A bird you love? Getting the boot? Vernal melancholy?

The exhaustion of daily making laugh the ones

who later sink into doom and gloom?

Whatever grinds you down it's already past,

and present and future doen't exist inside

my barrel, my big-top. We are only the dreams

of that slumberous moon in the sky......

.......The clown suddenly fluttered and flew away:

maybe I was just wittering to a herring gull

who came to steal my grub in tinfoil paper,

my soul."

This is am I a sparrow

blasé to the peacocks fluttering at dawn

blasé to all the golden feeders of this

odorous town,

the blasé man about town

only patiently writing

the memories of rain into

the blossomed waterlilies.

Pecking at any windfall of the sun.

Sub specie durationis.

This am I a sparrow

perched on the first sunbeam

gather ya rosebuds while ya may

Let's smell the day.

It's not really expensive to have a soul.

Let's be spry even if we're doomed

to be fumes in a dunghill.

I do my best.

Like Childe Harold, unworldly,

I wend my solitary way

sub rosa.

Farewell.

XXI

Skirl of bagpipes

by a jetty. The moon

yawns on the horizon.

Swaddled in a hanky

the wilted last rose

she gave me in dreams.

A flummery of thrushes

in snowed-up elms

forebode the springtime.

On gathered rainwater

mirrors the acacia

its yellow smile.

Cocooned in a raindrop

the nightingale still sings

after falling dead.

A goddess by the sea

gave me a lap dance.

Just a blue poppy remains.

The dimmed light of dusk

veiled the violet waves

breaking into a landfill.

The moon wetnurses a fiddler

tipsy on a bench. A bat

smiling over the moon.

Raindrops as ladies smiling

alighted gently

on the scorched grass/

A Dover-white sky

Lit up the pond

Rippled by my tears.

I saw the Constable's

white horse galloping

away into the horizon.

XXII

Stripped bare to the winds of March,

swimming from pier to pier, from star to star,

I squired nymphs to a frothy pond at midnight.

They didn't depart after all.

Like a white horse that canters along the sea

lust was lurking in their glances.

The blackbirds over the Heath mimicry

the echo of my voice steeped in water.

The thymy air is redolent of some Paradise

lost and found in a split second of reveries.

A freight blue train along Highgate blew

its husky horn.

I dared to eat the peach.

I was the unsung hero of my own salvation.

Bathed in Tiepolo pink at dawn I woke up:

the nymphs still simpering

near my dew-glowed shadow.

XXIII

I looked myself into the glass

of that shop window blinking in red

and told to my own reflection:

you pal

reminds me of Eliot's

brown God

All Gods at midnight

are browned

off

XXIV

I smell the days

like an idiot savant

smelling the numbers.

I scavenge the nights

like vulpine figures

searching my own shadow.

I traded my shadow

for a bottle of wine.

In the Salvation Army hostel

I slept and dreamed...

I dreamed...

The last solo flight

to the last me.

XXV

The banquet of Trimalchio is over

and only paltry shimmers of reality left.

The last twilight has rendered

its last epiphany.

Everything gives off the odour

of fatberg, durian, dirty backsides, rain,

the inimical pea soup fog

of a London morning.

There's no sun anymore at the horizon

but the smutty smile of a mortician

his pot nooddle steaming the vesper lights.

I have wronged the most

and been myself the least.

Spirit-wounded vagabond

(the sea the only bosom friend of mine)

What'll be like my parting words

from this world on my way

to the next one?

XXVI

The green eyes of cruelty watch me

staying put at stoplights for very long.

An eternity of meditation,

rather in pure picnolepsy,

as if getting into the wood of madness,

reveries foaming in the clouds.

A Damascene moment.

The almond eyes of kindness also

keep staring at me. At stoplights.

A black cab pass by slowly

like rehearsing to be the god hearse.

Aswarm with blue crows the morning arrives,

a gauzy mist pearled with rainbow drops.

And the whitest birds

over my blackest thoughts.

Words petered away like tears and years.

Here I am upon my mettle.

Here I am upon the nettles

of reality stinging up and down.

At stoplights.

Off the Strand to Shepherd's Bush.

Here I am the village idiot mumbling

like an angel on the brink

of falling from grace.

The green eyes of cruelty shut for mercy,

see me no more strolling through the rain.

XXVII

An old lady at her cottage window

writes sonnets into her pension book

and through an opera glass observes

the planes in the blue sky dropping

warheads like flowers and pigeons.

An ale-poet looking for fleshpots

("la douceur des sirenes") found instead

a talking crow perched on the moon,

they did parley all the snow-scented night

about God, wenches and alchemy.

A rough-sleeper is cleaning his arse

with a swan neck. His cat stretches

its yawn up to the sunshine.

Feeding just on the smell of wet

cutting grass, the rough-sleeper

made his ablutions in a Mary-blue

pool of rain.

The wind tossing about the long lost

red cap of Holden Caulfield.

The raindrops tapping over the long lost

monocle of Tristan Tzara.

A woman opens a bento lunch box

and found a golden egg

laid by her dreams.

In the corner, near a blind violinist,

still sulks Raven, the dog of Caravaggio

expecting his arrival from Hell.

A voice over the tannoy

announced the Apocalypse

instead of the next stop

XXVIII

A sun-browned man

with a wooden leg

a whiff of bacon rashers

and eau de cologne

began to read poems

out loud louder

under the dimming light

of sundown

in a corner of Soho Square

peals of thunder

trickles of blue rain

in the hood of his duffel coat

a blackbird on his shoulder

the minatory gesture

of his finger to the sky

clashing with the amorous

lines of Sappho

(in Greek)

people nibbling sandwiches

listen and nod

nod and listen

like hushed cows

to a passing train

the Old Bill sealed off the area

just encircled the literary man

with a wooden leg

now blaring lines of Catullus

(in Latin)

XXIX

He goes round and round the ducks pond

like a lost luggage on the conveyor belt

with no one to pick it up. He stares at

the koi carp shimmering in droves.

Cherry blossoms fall over his bald pate.

The raindrops shaping pearls of silence

over the murky water, over his brown coat.

Trying all my life to be square in a round circle,

to be a round circle in a square.

XXX

As an hourglass pouring musical sand

(the passing of time suspended)

I hear the hum of milk floats, seagulls,

blue tarpaulins beaten by the rain,

the wind playing around with toilet roll scraps

the thunderous drill of daily bread or dread,

the heavenly sound of waves

kissing the wharves

the autumn leaves rustling away and back

over my drizzled gravestone.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

XXXI

Time whizzing by

like a bullet train to nowhere.

The moon reflected on

a golden puddle of sick.

The bluish high-rises of London

fading slowly into the dazzling

momentum of sunset.

The night finally bared its teeth.

XXXll

The revolving door

at the entrance of Heaven

winds me round

on end.

(London, 2021-2024)

"I would buy the flowers myself.

It's a beautiful morning of June,

the war is over

my shattering bout of migraine

ebbing away.

But I don't want the flowers Richard

uses to bring me home:

hybrid tea roses.

so run-of-the-mill,

so bourgeois.

I would buy the flowers myself:

dahlias, cyclamens, violets, hollyhocks,

the wild bunch Sally used to pick for me

under the moonshine in Sussex..

Aeroplanes,

red and blue balloons,

doves flying over London.

The war is over so my war

against moths and nightmares.

I would buy the flowers myself

at the florist in Westminster.

But not that hybrid tea roses

redolent of boasting men

always talking about Wagner,

money, whorehouses, and armistice.

Dahlias, cyclamens, hollyhocks.

I want to get inebriated

with the wild aroma of Sally.

I want to get drunk with Sally

like boasting sailors

in the beer gardens

of Wapping Old Stairs.

I would buy the flowers myself.

I am off, Richard!

be back soon.

Maybe to finish my novel

about someone called

Virginia Woolf."

SCRIPTUS INTERRUPTUS

lunes

DESPUES DE LEER A DOSTOIEVSKY:

LOS ALAMOS TIEMBLAN...

BARCELONA

SANDRA

UNA MUCHACHA

martes

I WILL BE...

CERA UNA VOLTA IL WEST(SERGIO LEONE,1968)

sábado

SUNDOWNER

miércoles

MRS DALLOWAY