At 5am the attic door becomes a waterfall
of cloud-pallor and silver-grey and electricity
flooding me - impossible to think - air full of bells -
and ripples and vacuum and hysteria -

The children wander their unknown dreamworlds
their hands birdlike, warm and light and urgent
as all that brightening pushes its way in
and my skin tautens - I am a kiln - I am a cathedral -

I pray in myself, rats hunt in my cellar,
light presses into me from on high -
with closed eyes I am an infinite space
of many bodies, a mind of mirrors and glass.

My eyes sting, I have to sleep -
but it's worth it to be renewed
at the altar of early morning
and the funeral of the long night.

I have to start from where I am and work inwards. noise of voices. lunchtime conversations and value-neutral music. latte machine hisses and shrieking female laughter. smell of coffee and bread and damp fabric, chair-covers soaked in weeks of sweat and milk-steam. pine veneer furniture and polygonal carpet patterns. retro-sepia photographs of forgotten places and times. outside the glass walls, perfectly rectangular blocks of hedges in brushed steel containers. geometrical mazes of steel roofbeams over a shopping mall like an airport terminal. what we call natural light: distant winter sun filtered through dense cloud and reflected off surface of dirty river. streaming thinly through clean glass. colours mute and washed out. we are only passing through this place. on either side of the river, a rage for order: the endless right angles of apartment blocks and offices, girders and concrete shafts and stairwells accreting gradually until we only see the skin of blank windows and sharp-edged balconies. no trees no grass no creatures. out near our horizon, mist-faded and grey, the tops of trees in a coastal park. an island for wild seabirds. a few scattered patches of green. we don't go there often. it's too sad to go there and return here.

>>

the dark god I saw in Las Vegas is here too. Belial, the demon king of this world. the lustful goat, the judging predator, the merciless accuser. the creator of history. in Las Vegas he danced demented on the spires and spotlights of the hotels and casinos, he sang in the slot machines and bathed in the baking midday sunshine. here he is slothful and depressed but still in power, and growing with every blank grey building and brushed steel windowbox. the god of this world is in love with prisons and repetition. he despises the weakness and stench of organic things and would destroy them at the same time as he slakes his lust upon them. his own lust disgusts him. he is lust and disgust mingled, eternally self-divided and dark unto the death of all beings, himself included. insane, therefore. to be pitied, but not to be saved. a cancer in every heart and every cell. Lord Foul, Beelzebub, Satan. the negative of every photograph of your dear memories, telling you that after all, your life is meaningless. the incarnation of measurement without value. power without wisdom. money separated from products. the final victory of blind chance and entropy against consciousness and life.

what they told me would come to pass     what I promised myself     a mind of glass     and shantih shantih shantih     the peace that passeth understanding     I promised you I would be so     sitting underneath library windows     long lonely afternoons     friends and classmates in lectures     rain gentle on chestnut leaf and windowpane     butterflies in stomach     mantra poised on recently kissed lips     lonely all the time     even in bed even at parties even in kisses     mantra in a library chair     2nd floor dark corner bare concrete walls     books no one ever read     lost in frozen time like me     lost in broken light like me     happy voices from the stairwell and the study desks     mind of glass     body of feeling swelling into the crevices     all my life just a story     called "lonely all the time"     written by my parents     and their parents before them     back all the way to curious monkeys     beached fish and bacteria and cosmic dust slowly condensing to stars     glitters in the sky on cold winter evenings     outside the library waiting for friends and lovers     for words and embraces passed in code     for minds of glass and minds of metal     for an end to the story "lonely all the time" to be told     and next day all embraces and joy and words and linked hands lost in time     lost into memory and memory to become glass     mind of glass lonely all the time     and next day to the library to sit alone     pine needles and sycamore leaves collecting near base of window     washed by rain and wind     grey walls and fluorescent light     and I am just a shadow you passed on your way to a lesson     what I promised my family     that I would turn them into glass     precious sculptures drained and peaceful     lonely all the time     blood washed from the doors and walls     blood washed from the car keys and the garden tools     blood washed from the bunk beds and the playroom     what I promised you I would become     something more than a silly monkey     something more than a selfish asshole     something to justify all the hurt I gave and all the hurt I received     a mind of glass and rainwater     joy in our hearts     where we stand and watch the moon fade and glow behind breeze-blown clouds     where we lay down and kissed underneath the trees in the schoolyard     lonely all the time     especially together, especially together

and then on fire     on fire in the cold sand     on fire in the conference centres and the musty cellars of the holy houses     on fire in the woods of stolen car shells and bluebells     every sunset and every shopping trip on fire     the creak of the front door in the early hours reeking of smoke     the dark hum of the painted hall before dawn     on fire the incense and the leaves     on fire the car engines and the quiet mind     as we walk away weeping     or as we walk away blind and burned and breathless     as we walk away into another life     as we throw away one of our most potent destinies     as we discard one of the universes that brought us into being     not understanding what we chose     all things remained true that were true before     dances still ended in peace     poetry still bled out of the mind     the light was still clear and blue and soft     only that we chose love over death     unlike Nero we cast aside our rod and dove into the mind's dark waters     do what you have to do

now lost in the mind of glass     rainwater the only everlasting thing in memory     what I promised myself forgotten     that I would not let it slip away     and what was I for those thousands of days but a window     between the mind and the world     reflections to each other     while I do what I have to do     sparkling river pulled through circuits of great machine     for generating the future     "lonely all the time" the story read to all the children     born into cells     here I am too     now that the confusion seems greatest     I might be as close as I have ever been     staring out through windows at trees or rivers or walls     staring at empty chairs and empty screens     all of it without end     what I promised to say     something to make you happy     something to help you to remember that you are happy     to do what you have to do     but all along I only wanted to become more than I am     more than a self and more than a window     and in the end as it all burns around us     we will see the flames caught and dancing in the mind of glass     caught a billion times and sprinkled into confusion     we are caught in a peace that passeth understanding     knowing that all of this is nothing     in the mind of glass

woke up making a choking sound because of a dream where I had swallowed all this hair and gunk strung together like the gunk down a plughole, and I was pulling it out strand by strand from my throat

dreamed I was in a huge, enclosed city with a glass ceiling, on the run to or from something, and saw a huge amount of ice from the ceiling detach itself and tumble on to a crowded part of the main street, squashing and killing dozens of people and flattening them into a red mush - I was horrified and kept walking with my hands over my face, eyes wide.

I was on the phone to a client from a job a long time ago and he wanted to talk to David, but David was out of the office and wouldn't be back till Monday. Martin didn't want to talk to him and made me fob him off. This made the client angry and he accused us of not knowing what we were doing. I got annoyed about this and asked him if he had a problem that needed solving and he said not right now, so I asked him what was the matter then. He said that to explain he would need to show me a demo movie from his company. My computer was in pieces on the floor and by the time I had it almost put together again the movie was over and it was time for the client's lunch. He was angry that I hadn't managed to watch it. He was just angry. Is this a metaphor?