Saraphine

I remember her lips
as smooth as amaryllis
how they swelled to bless my lips with kisses
and the way the sun glowed in her hair
the blue of the sky in her eyes
the touch of gold on her skin so fair

as summer threw it's golden arms around us
we smiled and rejoiced in the sun
and our love spread out like a wave or a song
from us to touch everyone

And I see her form still
in the shapes of these hills
see her face in the flowers
hear her voice in the fields

through forests so silent
and villages waking
it seemed like a heart being born not breaking

And now my regret
so dark and as deep
as the dreamless depths of a dead mans sleep
is my constant companion
a phantom lover
who waits with me here
while I dream of another

but the world is not wider
than the love I imagine
the love that I search for
with patience and passion
no the world I could fit
many times in my heart
my heart full of hope
that burns like a star

No Rest For The Weird Kid

It's a mystery, really it is.

The last five months have felt like a million years. They've crawled by with mineral stealth. Have I been living each millisecond so fully that time, from my perspective at least, has been stretched almost to breaking point?
It seems so but, then again, I haven't slept or eaten properly for about a month and I've had not any sleep at all for the last three days. I mean it. I haven't slept one wink and that kind of thing can play funny tricks on an otherwise healthy and sane mind.
For instance: This morning the sky scrapers that loom over my hotel seemed to take on a gentle, rubbery, pastel coloured appearance, swaying softly as I lay on my disheveled bed staring at them with my dry bloodshot eyes.
It seemed like there was a world war going on out there. Choppers and construction equipment firing off in a staccato artillery attack. It sounded like "democracy" was coming or the Venusians had arrived in their huge plasma ships, emitting sub-sonic sound waves that would level the city in one final orgasmic pulse.
I was almost ready to dash to the subway and assume an heroic posture, but I took a cold shower and slapped myself in the face a couple of times instead.
God! Was I still really here? Had it only been eleven days? I felt as though I'd been here since the eleventh century or that I'd been smuggled into Kowloon inside an oil drum to be hidden away in this hotel room for collection later.
What was I? Was I on the run? Was I in hiding? Was this a reality TV show or was I a collectors item, a lost relic of some kind?...questions..questions...

And then the Jehovah's witnesses arrived.

I'd gone out you see. The stench of my own sin had gotten too much for me, so I'd staggered down to the Star Ferry Pier to look into the polluted water for signs of intelligent, but soft bodied life.
That's when Gupta appeared with his burgundy tank-top, stay pressed trousers, plaid shirt and black leather satchel.
I knew immediately what was coming. He had those tremulous orange flames of religion flickering in the depths of his zealots eyes.
But when he saw my eager face he backed off slightly. However, I wasn't going to let him get away that easily.
I opened the conversation with: "What do you think happens when we die?"
The roles had been reversed and he was thrown off guard. I could see him reaching into his heavy bag for a bible but I pulled out my notepad first and read him "The Miracle Of The Midnight Child," which he seemed to like...we're all looking for the truth the light and the way, aren't we?
In exchange he gave me some of those thin pamphlets that they hand out. You know the ones. The ones that have those awful, sickly illustrations of paradise, where heaven looks like a golf course in Palm Springs or a safari park. But he went away happy...I think.
About five minutes went by and then the Hare Krishna's turned up, two of them: Praveen and GoptiKantdas.
I like the Krishna's. They don't give a fuck. They just dance around and sing and you don't find them knocking on peoples doors at all hours trying to catch converts. They're party people, a real cymbal jingling caravan of love.
The food is great as well. None of those dry and dreary wafers or that watered down cooking sherry that the Catholics fob you off with. No. It's honest, wholesome soul filling food, served with a smile and a song.
It's not a religion. It's a conga-dance of consciousness..a cluster of karmic clowns.
And God does, after all, have a sense of humour...a wicked one it seems.

Hare Krishna.

Miracle Of The Midnight Child

Down on the street it sounds like a Kung - Fu fight in a fairground. But it's not. It's just Hong Kong sliding slowly off the greasy pavement back into the sea...

I left my heart in Hong Kong, by the Man - Mo Temple, where I did something so shameful that I find it hard to talk about it, even here.
Now, in my hip pocket I carry a small stone replica heart. It was a gift, one that I cherish, and I'll be taking it with me wherever I go from now on. After all, it's come this far already...
Here, I've been wandering aimlessly, heartbroken and humming with insomnia and jet lag, passing unnoticed among the crowds like a phantom or pale shadow.
Everywhere I went I caught sight of myself reflected in shopfronts and taxi cab windows, that look of hollow eyed animal shame upon my face. And my face was always there, inescapable. Right under my nose, as it were...
In and out of my hotel room, half awake and half my time spent waiting for elevators, or in elevators, unable to turn off the engine of my mind that drove on along the same pathetic self pitying lines, crackling like a broken radio.
I wasn't even sure where I was or where I'd been most of the time. My eyes were naked, aching flames, blind and barely flickering.
I found myself back at my hotel at around midnight waiting, again, for yet another elevator, trying to get to the thirteenth floor, when I was suddenly aware of a tiny face looking up at me with beautiful, dark brown, almond shaped eyes. A tiny oriental angel, probably about three or four years old with her smiling but watchful grandparents. She just stared at me innocently, this flower, and I couldn't help but look at her with love and I was surprised to find myself smiling, my mood suddenly and completely changed.
And seeing her made me think about what I had done and I felt truly ashamed of myself and saddened to the soul.
I imagined that beautiful child there seeing me in my rage and wrath and how she would have felt, how she would have been afraid of me. How that wretched scene would have disturbed her and in my minds eye I wandered back further into my own past and reflected on the things I had seen as a child, both good and bad, and how I they had affected me, how they affect me still.
I realised that a change was coming. A line was being drawn and I would have to make a supreme effort to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. Because we have to prepare the way for those children, those gifts of heaven, who's lives may be hard enough without our pride and stubbornness making their way any more difficult for them.
What a lesson I learned there, caught in her honest gaze. It was like a hammer blow to my conscience.
The incredible responsibility that we have as human beings and the amazing and sometimes frightening power that we have to make each other feel either pleasure or pain.
It's not something to ever be taken lightly. It's something to be thankful for and to be used wisely, always remembering that those children will inherit the world that we make and mould and assume this awesome and continuing responsibility for themselves one day.

Running For My Love

I haven't slept and dawn is coming now, in between the skyscrapers, as the last bright lonely stars blink out, one by one. A high and unbroken stretch of cirrus cloud covers Hong Kong Like a dome of raw silk. The air is chilled and full of the sounds of early morning city life. Car horns are calling to each other as engines rev and choke, filling the sky with invisible vapour - petrol fumes and sulphurous breath.
The city exhales as I drift in and out of insomniac apartment windows, a sleepless phantom that stirs in the soft breeze, like a wisp of chain smoke.
And there, high above us all, soar two eagles, perfect and serenely detached from us as we scurry about our narrow business, like seven million ants.
And my happiness is indescribable. Impossible to put into words. It can only be expressed through actions and deeds, through smiles and looks. Smiles for strangers, smiles to myself. Smiles in the noodle bar and smiles to the sky. Smiles at passers by and smiles in my eyes....the eagles are soaring in my heart and soul...

Fragrant Harbour Musings

Hong Kong is coming. I'm flying into a thunder storm, once again, and somewhere beneath the majestic flash belly clouds are the myriad lights of the fragrant harbour.
I check the weather and I'm on top of it. The lightning, like the electric daggers of a raw and primal god, rips the sky and threatens to burn out all the circuitry on this tube of flying tin...and all I can think about is someone I may never see again.
Flashing forward in time, unravelling events as yet un-happened, I imagine myself searching the crowded streets of Hong Kong, trying to catch a glimpse of gold in a mountain of coal.
How did I fuck up so badly? Was I cursed at birth to be frail and fail in love? Nobody really knows the answers to these questions, least of all me. But if I keep looking, who knows?
Like most searching in life I may only end up coming face to face with myself, which could be good and it could be bad...I'm flying into thunder. I was made for nights like this. Only a true believer and romantic optimist like me, with his pockets full of air, could ever be up to the job. Richer and wiser would walk away from all this unnecessary stress and ask, wearily;
"What's the point?".
But not me. I know full well what the point is, but I cant go into that. You either know what the point is or you don't. It's either in your blood and bones or it's not...

Jesus! When she told me I howled in my heart. I suddenly felt like I was in a falling elevator, one that would never find any solid ground to hit, one that would just keep falling forever. My heart broke and I turned inside out...exposed and vulnerable - but so incredibly alive.
Do I thrive on these emotions? I'm not sure. It's a bit like walking through fire - you just can't stop to think about it for too long or you'll burn, so you have to keep going. Suddenly you find your calling, your mission. The world takes on a fable like quality and meanings and reasons appear everywhere where once there were none. That's when you realise you have a destiny and flying half way around the world to buy Jasmine tea for someone who appears to detest you seems like the most important and valuable thing you could do. Just to see her face, just to be in the proximity of that hair that you once touched and breathed. Just to stand politely far enough away form the smooth, perfect, golden body that I once held in my arms and loved passionately and now may never love again.
The whole thing is a folly, a mad endeavour - doomed to failure on so many levels, that only a prime idiot would even attempt it, which made it all the more appealing to me because...because..only love is real. And if just by attempting the impossible I could find some way through the hidden veils of this illusion we call life then it would all be worth it. And, of course, if I didn't try there would be a whole shit-train of regret to cope with.

The impossible is improbable until it becomes inevitable.

At last! A cigarette. In fact I'm smoking two; a tailor made and a hand rolled. All I need now is a cool pastis and I'll be able to think seriously for a moment.

(There was an eerie mist over the airport. Visibility was down to zero as we made our approach. I felt sure that we would belly flop into the sea. Some people actually clapped with relief as we landed.)

In the midst of Kowloon I feel as bright as the neon lights that cascade in abundance from the tower blocks like the electric foliage of a fluorescent hanging garden and over a bowl of shrimp and noodle soup, I reflect on the strange twist and detours that life has taken me along in the last few months.
I seem to have gone from being simply happy, living in the south of France to being extraordinarily, ecstatically happy and in love, returning to England and plans, followed by setbacks then disaster and heartbreak and then to shrimp and noodle soup in Hong Kong.

Melting pot doesn't accurately describe Hong Kong. It's more like the place is on a rolling boil. Life comes bubbling to the surface in the form of Pakistani tailors dishing out business cards and handmade suits along with hashish, opium and fake Rolex watches. It's like an electric aquarium in which we all swim about avoiding the sharks and looking for bargains on which to feed.
You get the impression that traders are almost ab-sailing down to the street from the high and dishevelled towers of light to sell you anything you could want sir.

Ouch! Last night I got pirate drunk and tore around central with my fair weather, one day friend, James, form Oz.
Everywhere we went was crawling with Phillipina whores and chubby drunken city boys in sweaty suits.
The Phillipinas picked through my cigarettes as I told them about my purity. They didn't care or even understand. They just wanted money and soon drifted away when the realised I didn't have any.
James danced around to the music of the "HongKongJovi" tribute band as they wearily bleated out the hits of the 80's. Tequila after Tequila arrived at our table as peanut husks gradually formed a crunchy carpet around and under our feet.
"Why don't you just forget her mate?" Said James as he crashed into a mirrored wall, leaving a steamy streak behind him.
"Christ! None of them are really worth it are they?"
I tried to focus on him but my brain was swimming around in my head like and ice cube in a shot glass.
I came to in the back of a red cab that was speeding it's way to Kowloon, a hundred dollar bill sticking out of my shirt pocket.
I started to tell the driver about my love and my life. He listened carefully and wisely told me that there are plenty more shrimp in the harbour but I knew this wasn't true. Pollution has killed them all. There are only strange mutant ones left now and who would want one of those?
He had a wife, he told me, they'd been together for thirty-seven years but she'd recently had an enormous stroke that had left her paralysed and completely dependant on him. He had to do everything for her. He also told me that he had a fancy woman but that was just about sex. It was his wife that he really loved and she meant everything to him. I wondered how he could tell such lies.
As we pulled up to 'Mirador MAnsions' I broke down and openly wept, putting the fare into his hand as streams of 40% proof tears rolled down my hollow cheeks.
I'd seen a seedy side of Hong Kong, one that I didn't like, one full of sad-eyed hookers and callous, moneyed thugs. Where was the love? Out there somewhere with tobacco red hair? Oh where, oh where...

Just along the road from the Mirador were three Africans, sitting on the pavement. So I walked over and sat down next to them in the now deserted street.
One was a Somali, the other two were Nigerians, all were Muslims who had strayed from the path and each was drinking a beer trying to forget their fall.
"God is everywhere", I said. "Even in this beer, even in this cigarette".
We got along fine and spent about an hour and a half just talking and watching the world go by. Talking about God and Love. God and Love. Two hard concepts to explain.
Another lady of the night appeared. A Mary Magdalene in scuffed red leatherette stilettos and a frayed black mini-dress. She was beautiful actually. There was something incredibly kind and tragic about her dark, almost black gaze but only my heart went out to her as she offered me her body for the night. I just wanted to put my arms around her and protect her from all the shame and evil of the world.
"You good man" she said in a voice as soft as a breeze.
I took her back to my hotel room and fetched some money from my bag and then walked with her back out onto the street, the sun now rising gently through a haze of smog. She seemed confused as I gave her the money and kissed her lightly on the cheek, telling her I wanted nothing form her but a smile. I turned away and walked back to the Mirador, another weary, early morning tear welling in my eye...