Home
Sign In

Shop

BiographyofRed8 › Songs of the City

Songs of the City

where buildings echo and ghosts reply

Una Corda (one string) by BiographyofRed8

With a feverish pitch the city refuses to sleep tonight / Left to a wandering lyre gazing upon the ancestry of violins / Bellowed out from a staggering drunkard traveller- / Marching in rhythms of di… 211 words

salud por el fuego y la lluvia (joy in fire and rain) by BiographyofRed8

tomorrow is passion, where hot bread with a soft centre / and crunchy on the crust, is cut up into squares to drop into / vegetable soup. a cat will purr in delight at the fresh kill / of a wood spi… 199 words

Beautiful by BiographyofRed8

She stands in front of the bathroom mirror / The spotlights of sun stream in through the tiny gap / In the toilet, water-marked window, mould / White tiles, black lines. “You are beautiful” he said /… 145 words

Untitled by BiographyofRed8

And on the way, the traffic coming over the bridge / Takes a wrong turn-off, the council workers / Forget their organic orange witch-hats / Diverting the ants / Away from the obvious signs 281 words

Tourte Bow by BiographyofRed8

The coffee boils in its steel pot / The milk rises bubbling and frothing / The rain keeps raining / As the rivers loose their banks / And on the news / They say more bodies will be found / When the … 91 words

Centre Stage by BiographyofRed8

She sings the loudest / When she isn’t really there / She thunders the wire stage / With electricity and takes the centre cross-mark / She throws her sparks onto the audience / Who know in themselve… 115 words

The Beggars Orchestra by BiographyofRed8

The choral revolution / Begins with the third / Movement of the first symphony / The composer and the composed / Came to clash, over / The way his young lover / Fucks and the Hookers of the five star… 162 words

Que Dios Duerne (God is Sleeping) by BiographyofRed8

The City of Night / Is cleansed of the day’s sins / In the throat that swallows-back / The tears of beauty’s bed and / Tosses and mumbles in his sleep. 171 words

The Last Angel of Buenos Aires by BiographyofRed8

All the rubbish, plastic bags / Would fill the sky / With a blanket of gas-mask smoke / And the fish would fall from the clouds / The earth would open up / Like a poppy-flower opening in slow motion 215 words

Arrival by BiographyofRed8

Not in the words that are written here, not in the words / That aren’t written, or the emotion / Buzzing in the broken bottle head in hand 231 words

Transito Al Fin (Passage to the End) by BiographyofRed8

She has gone though / Many a year, holding her breath, holding her stomach, / Holding babies, holding hands, holding wooden spoons / Holding phones, holding car doors open / Holding on 220 words

Con Ella by BiographyofRed8

With her, the sun makes his presence known / Shouting bright rays under the door, / Between the floor and the step, with her, anonymous / High heels tapping on the stairs, she stands / Out on the str… 128 words

Las calles se pavimentan con la sangre y los diamantes by BiographyofRed8

you know you are coming home, when you know that your / tongue longs to speak in the words of your childhood. 186 words

Suburbia by BiographyofRed8

Slowly drowning in a cesspool of sawdust antiquity / To be reborn into mulch / For the dead-wood plantations. 132 words

While we do not speak by BiographyofRed8

A child stands on a dry hill pointing at the sky / Asking with his insistent finger / The why of the words that are never spoken 158 words

San Lazaro by BiographyofRed8

In full view of the well worn freedom / Coming at such a price, he would whisper to the stranger passing-by / “Come into my arms, into my arms, I am ready / I am ready to begin a new day” 200 words

Synchronicity by BiographyofRed8

As morning brushes the waves of hands reaching for other hands / Signaling the end of night, the end of beginnings not begun 267 words

The Island in the Middle of the Sea by BiographyofRed8

Safe in their little cocoons, whilst the refugees were left / To fend for themselves on the island / In the middle of the sea. 441 words

Proof of Life by BiographyofRed8

The highest price of her head / Wondering: how could I have been so wrong: / And knowing, no one gets out of this / Without blood on their hands. 183 words

Purple by BiographyofRed8

Peel the skin from the orange light / She whispers husky wine stains / In the shape of psychologists cards, whisper the lips / To the ear, whispers in the dark, when night / Opens up the silences, dr… 170 words

Chasm by BiographyofRed8

In the quiet times when tears fall easily / As the hand that they each let go so easily / Only it was not so easy after one finger had memorized / The imprint, the unique mirror of the other fingerpr… 169 words

His Shoes by BiographyofRed8

His shoes, sit neatly on the front porch / His brown leather shoes with the laces / Draped negligent over the holes, just a pair of shoes / Discarded, set aside on a front porch 218 words

Suicide by BiographyofRed8

For we have all the intelligence we need / All the intelligence in the world / And yet / Do not choose to save ourselves._ 354 words

Black and Blue by BiographyofRed8

Plundered mistake, pressing your hand / Into my hand, your body insistent, demanding / A way through into the other-side, / Where no-man’s land waits with a torch / Hanging over the gate 106 words

Locket by BiographyofRed8

Weighed in a palm with eyes / Whispering against the hint / Of cheekbone, the reply echoes / Down the hall way / Leave the light / He moves softer than the palest shade / In colour book pencils, / W… 66 words

Kung-foo at midnight in Seattle by BiographyofRed8

It must be something about the moon / Or the alignment of the stars / Adjusting to the lunar calendar / That brings out the ends / Where the beginnings meet / Those loose ropes of wires / Twirling in… 63 words

August by BiographyofRed8

The rains slanted sideways / The crowds slanted forward / The wind slanted backwards / And the elements won the battle / The sky underneath spoke in tranquil blue / As the big booming grey and silver… 211 words

Syllogism by BiographyofRed8

The taste of aniseed / Wild dark nights / Stay longer than they are welcome / Running from the scene of the crime / Further from the centre / Out of the core / Adverse judgements / Falling on the h… 86 words

The Chapter's End by BiographyofRed8

And you stop, half way through a sentence / With the pen dripping onto the page / And you think how on earth that went by so fast / All that time, just gone / Like dust particles on the wind 448 words

Survival by BiographyofRed8

Watching, inquisitive / But never touching / Its shadow to touch / The flames shadow / The flame is rushing 110 words

The Ticking Clock by BiographyofRed8

The expectations limp in / One by one, one after the other / Like domino pieces / That fall, / Each one a calculated strike. 104 words

The Money Day Parade by BiographyofRed8

Hit the wall / Hush the game / The soldiers in green are coming again 203 words

Syrup Delirium by BiographyofRed8

Let the men with hatred / In their hearts / Go / We let them get away with it / In this Syrup delirium / Of plastic body parts and midnight fears. 191 words

Mother Television by BiographyofRed8

In ancient times / They left them out on the open plains / And whoever survived / Being ravished by wolves / Or falling off a cliff 173 words

Incision by BiographyofRed8

One day you will wonder where I went / The last remaining stitch / A thread on your coat. 77 words

Good Morning, Sunshine. by BiographyofRed8

I would paint his fingers, his elbows and his smile / Coat him in fine white flour, dip pancake mixture / Along the inside of his ribcage / To make a cast, to freeze him in time 219 words

The First Taste by BiographyofRed8

The first taste of movement-space of a borrowed night on a borrowed body nothing can be that morning sun coming in too quickly the day being resented for existing- time being the boss standing over us 472 words

The Tin Man by BiographyofRed8

Taking the straw bundles / He stuffs the straw inside his shirt / And his black pants / Polishes his black clown boots 164 words

Child's Play by BiographyofRed8

In the pause, you will remind me / That the river was your dream / Recited to me that morning long ago / When my ear pressed against your chest / Listening for the drumming of your heart-beat 345 words

Two Love Poems by BiographyofRed8

Where it makes other people feel better / If they think of you as a man / And not see you underneath me / Withering in pleasure, in surrender 320 words

Resistance Is Futile by BiographyofRed8

“I am alive, isn’t that enough?” he asks / “What more do they want” he asks / “A side show act, / A grand performance of existence 245 words

From Neptune to Portland by BiographyofRed8

Then knocking / Knocking / Rattling the bars around my heart / The undertow / Comes and takes me / Away 98 words

Urban Myths II. Amnesia by BiographyofRed8

Stealing another culture from another tribe / Who raped and murdered in cold blood / Selling and buying their sacred lands / We trade in stolen beliefs 520 words

The Death Card by BiographyofRed8

Each age of man must live its course / Pulled by the strings of invisible / Hands, reaching out from the cosmos / Into the very heart 132 words

Urban Myths by BiographyofRed8

The music doesn’t take away the pain / Cutting through the crowded bar / So I found myself a place to sit / Outside in the cold / Even though through the wall / I can hear the sound of the beat / Thu… 125 words

Piper Nigrum by BiographyofRed8

Ancho, poblano, habanero, Fresno, jalapeno / Like chilli’s I need to handle him with care / I must avoid rubbing my eyes and face / In his armpits 124 words

Down Below by BiographyofRed8

Through the empty corridors and stairwells / Down below the building / Perhaps buried under years of rubble / The truth lays waiting / To be set free. 233 words

The Black Mark by BiographyofRed8

The black mark a roar / A roar loud enough to bring the white cockatoos from their trees / Loud deafening screeches…. / Drowning every noise from throats 298 words

The Empty Room by BiographyofRed8

So I come back to your room to look for meaning / To search for reasons / Over and over like a broken jumping record / When what I should say 147 words

Human Bodies by BiographyofRed8

A human body / Is not a breathing heater / And cannot extinguish the cold 132 words

Night Edges by BiographyofRed8

For tomorrows and tomorrows rolling across the hills / As the clouds roll across the sky / No longer whispered between swollen lips 113 words

The Tombstone by BiographyofRed8

Somewhere in the debris / You lost your heart / It didn’t happen over night 308 words

La arcada de la tentación by BiographyofRed8

Desire and challenge / If only we could have wrestled on those mats / All night instead 137 words

Your City of Dawn by BiographyofRed8

I turn my head and press my ear against the door / Press my eye socket to the peep-hole / Inside the lounge-room behind the curtain of African beads 412 words

St Micheal' estrella del oro de s by BiographyofRed8

where the shop girls have too much make-up on and snarl as they talk over the radio that blasts out “Hits of the 80’s”. 402 words

The Serpents Tongue (a poem hidden within another poem) by BiographyofRed8

I read the graffiti on the train walls that say: / -This was supposed to be the anger poem / If you’re new lover read / Some of the things you write to me 217 words

Jade Pennies by BiographyofRed8

Her mouth opens pink and moist / This girl with her platoon of killer kisses / Sharp as cuttlefish smile 150 words

Conversation with an angel by BiographyofRed8

“No, no, we can love and we should love as many people as / possible and we can have as many soul mates as possible 188 words

That Morning by BiographyofRed8

If you speak to me in Spanish I will know you want something from me: a confession, a peace-token, a bridge, a word, a shuffle of silk rounding the corner 177 words

Untitled by BiographyofRed8

But I know so little about the things that matter / Or seem to matter / Or seem to be the yard sticks in order to measure / What matters and what doesn’t matter 361 words

Gender Rendered Tender by BiographyofRed8

She laughed and said “you look good from the back like a real / Cowboy and you can even wear a suit and tie tonight” 99 words

I refuse to be Red by BiographyofRed8

You will remain behind one of these doors / With a life of people, places, things written, things discussed / With a life of plans unmade, maps unwritten 118 words

Silver Hermaphrodite by BiographyofRed8

Gazing over her body and claiming her as theirs / They will come with offerings / And they do, with more passion and love 163 words

Biography of Red by BiographyofRed8

First foot on land and the candy is pink / Here the packages are right to left / There they are left to right / Here they too came on boats a long long time ago 314 words

In the Moment by BiographyofRed8

He sleeps, the warm beads of perspiration matting hairs on his chest / Lashes long and curled in a perfect half circle- / The rain / Falls / A swish of cars splashing through road puddles / Mingles … 131 words

Circle III by BiographyofRed8

We will not forget you: / You will be the only one with a pulse / Dinning on the feast of the dead. 138 words

Vanilla by BiographyofRed8

In the taste of the potion proportion of poison / Scattered over ashes of lost knights honor-forgotten- / The white skull and cross-bones pirate flag, / Pierced, thrust into the fragile human skin. /… 122 words

The Reader by BiographyofRed8

When you’re gone, / I will hold each one of them / And read each line that your eyes read / I will see what you have seen / The voice in my head will be your voice / And these books / Will be m… 246 words

Of Men and Doves by BiographyofRed8

This is not a game of men and doves / But you’ll find this out when I slip backwards / Into the shadows at dusk, when you come / In shivering from running / Leaving wet, muddy foot prints on the carp… 209 words

Fire Moon by BiographyofRed8

At night / The mice run away / With the tin-colour lights / And are we are back in our room / Twilight stars and comets / Scattered over the ceiling / Cuando la luna entra e ilumina el altillo (when … 178 words

The Lost Feather by BiographyofRed8

His heart is being plucked / But that does not stop / His lungs from expelling air / So the tune can fly / Bereft of one lost feather. 197 words

The Desert of Her Eyes by BiographyofRed8

No trees one year he leaves / Talks of no one meeting no one / Only books she will never read / And never understand 151 words

The Last Coyote by BiographyofRed8

We may have seen the last of your kind / Backs bent down as low as the ground / Don’t look for poetry in the hard-copy pages / It’s sprawled across the lane-way walls- 134 words

Her White Shape by BiographyofRed8

Finding cinema stubs, photographs, souvenirs, keep-sakes, / Pressed flowers-leaflets from AA, red ink smudged letters from the bank, / A bottle stowed behind the cupboard, love notes and cruel letters 177 words

Possession by BiographyofRed8

Dawn brings a line of homeless people with Hands outstretched / Feet Shuffling the impatience of a weight of the wake of daily bread / Coincidentally making patterns as rain-drops do / From the edges… 154 words

Amaurosis by BiographyofRed8

The universe unfolds and implodes / It is the flicker of millions of stars dying / The human eye blinks and is blinded to time / And the snake gets to see everything but cannot cry. 161 words

The Rhinoceros (or an Ode to a Great Landing) by BiographyofRed8

where people had to dry their new washed clothes on the azure / clothes-horse in Battery Place, I am here drinking sun-juice on a hill / made of landfill, contemplating a city and it’s confessi… 234 words

Buenos Aires by BiographyofRed8

What luck that I was in the world to see a bolt of lightening / But not to have known what it is to be struck / Be at peace. There is nothing you can do about it anyway. 315 words

Standing Still II by BiographyofRed8

That is obsolete when my bones scatter / Tea-cups shatter, limbs brittle batter 151 words

Standing Still by BiographyofRed8

Nature sits too quietly for you to notice / Even in those moments of searing solitude / You are never completely alone 201 words

Neglect by BiographyofRed8

so many secrets / litter the pavement / brittle brown serrated maple leaves / crunch / wireless humming / undetectable sound / still, the earth turns daily in vain / the moon, waxes and wanes / unnum… 111 words

Transubstantiation by BiographyofRed8

In his own time-at the last trumpet blast / He awakens to understand all languages, all acts / Of treason and all signs left behind. The complex / Race of the blood and the weeping of / Brothers in a… 163 words

Untitled by BiographyofRed8

The flat expanse of white orphaned emptyness / Beckons with aged hands to unbind the chains / Screaming a cry to the ancient enigma / of flesh, blood and desire 330 words

Autumn Weave II by BiographyofRed8

Alone in a foreign city / A strangers smile is like finding a lost word on a page / Or the comfort of rain as it fills up buckets of lost tears. 169 words

Puzzles and Paradoxes by BiographyofRed8

The knocking noise your tongue makes / Pauses of the silence, spit-back to open a weary insessant scapula bite / Riding a nightmare of twin razors-your refusal to sleep / A glass artifical lake lappi… 173 words

Autumn Weave by BiographyofRed8

Sitting stiffly in her second-hand dress / On her patchwork step, neighbourhood cats / Gather for a regular feed tripping over her ankles 136 words

"New Atlantis" by BiographyofRed8

The ocean’s roar comes back to haunt / The balance of memory fallen / From another saline sea-with land legs / Still shakey, grappling to gain / Foot-hold on a miners blood and fame / Puzzle… 114 words

Fire by BiographyofRed8

Hidden in the body of adolescence / Caught in spot-lights, car-lights / stunned / At the houses burning running across / front lawns / Picture photo albums, the archetecture / of fleeting fear / The … 105 words