A London Bedouin

The background story interests you more than the poetry, to be honest. The poetry is lush, lyrical, wild and nervy. I suppose you have to be of a certain temperament, have to be able to 'fly' with it, because if you pause to think about it, you can end up asking yourself: "what are you on about?" 

So, yes, there is something hugely fascinating about someone who decides to pack their bags and call it quits. There is a sense of expectation, the clearly perceived life panning out: years of continued engagement with higher things stretching into the distant future, the commitments, the carving out of a life that rises above the mundane; immortality, of sorts, perhaps second-rate but still, a bronze evening that endures in the memory. The possibility of being a cultural icon, the staged readings, associations and 'movements' and the like-minded travelers along the way.. all that provides a warm glow against the lonely evening chill. 

The rush hour. You take a step to the side, darting out of view, finding..you're not sure yet, but not the chartered mind, the hour of fame then oblivion. Why not die first? Become invisible, obscure, avoid speaking straight or straight up. You come to realize what needs to be said is very little. The rest can be written on scraps of paper kept in deep outer pockets or pointed to. (Shades of Wittgenstein?). In the inner pockets, a Bible. Faith under the left nipple.

Harrower. Walser. Keep walking. Go to the sea. At the edge of the world you can sit still and reflect-an oriental skill. Become so small that nothing is left but broken sentences. Maybe something will emerge from the ruins. Nothing can from the false wholeness. 

The fragmentary life that was full of disappearances; never still, restful, always half-lit rooms of the heart, street, bed. Always half-dark. You're one of those persons. 

There's something extreme in your voice, of that you're sure. These dark clouds in your life, brought on by a thousand-year old bronze cat from the East and its dead eye. The graven image that prevents a second life, a weird inheritance, like mixed-blood unsettling the lines, making me a bedouin in my own home. 

I rush to the desert, which has always been with me somehow, like a hole in my pocket. My story can't be written or read, an unpublished manuscript thrown on the flames, the ashes fluttering and spilling onto November's frozen mud. The oases, the mirages, never far, slip down to them in mid-afternoon, beyond the gaze of men in pointed hats, forgotten, adrift, drift now in the distances of the Venice-blue streets, with drifting yellow-sentences down Soho for a shilling, knowing like no-one in this arab hour. 

The time has come. Make arrangements, head for the sea, back to where you know. Get on the wrong train, go in the wrong direction; the carriage is, for a brief rickety moment, suffused with light, envelops you . You stagger and stand still like no-one else, pass through tunnels and then into the open light, right into and through the heart of a shadow-less space, only to realize you are lost again.