Postcards from Budapest

 

1.

 

 

I’m being entertained by the melodies

of an incomprehensible language:

To the foreigner’s ear Hungarian sounds like French

and here by the truly appalled and destitute Astoria

where the unfurled fan of boulevards out-paris Paris,

the voices and cadences says so.

This city attracts a different kind;

lovers of the big wheel

in their very own coup de foudre

searching for serendipity.

 

 

2.

 

Today in the most elegant ruin in the world,

my inner tourist died in a coffee shop.

The weather is glorious and museums

are for the rain and the didactic.

After my last event, THE WORLD’S LARGEST SYNAGOGUE,

I came across a passageway that led into a courtyard,

the deep well in the centre of an apartment block,

ten storeys’ worth of mysteries, dilapidated and baroque

where Budapest typically shelters its lot.

I had found the wavelength that discusses secrecy.

A seductive world of stairwells, passages and portals,

a newsreel conjured out of smoke and mirrors

and the frisson of apparitions and their sudden disappearance.

A cinema for the miserabilist.

A gallery for the colourist.

Paintwork untouched for decades

flowers into burnt and raw siennas,

olive greens and ochres, that erosion

cultivates within the conspiracy of its chromas.

This is time’s palette,a work in progress,

oblivious to the empires that come and go

and the artist’s they brought with them.

 

3.

 

How many violinists does a city

of over two million people really need?

The well behaved dionysians of the 8th district

would over-man the orchestras,

open schools for the designers of swimming pools

and baroque domestic appliances,

decree that the auditoriums are everywhere, improvise!

I can tell already it’s going to take me

a long time to get over this.

 

First the trams and bridges, on every street corner Spirits

the unkempt intelligensia of second hand bookstalls,

hallucinogenic flea markets and the past:

the energy of its argument,

its oil stained evidence, the distance

between opulence and austerity.

 

You know this is all about sex.

The truth is the orchestras have defoliated,

there are violinists everywhere,

they manifest like a cult on public transport.

They come in waves and rhythms

they appear to own the stations.

Most of them are women,

Hungarian women.

Virtuosos.

​

​

A Station in Eastern Europe


This could've been no man’s land,
storytellers work the hard yards between
the gunsmoke of omerta and the full confession.

Now the Republic is resting between invasions.
Unoccupied ,the partizans are out of work,
days of struggle and concussion long gone.

They congregate in waiting rooms
of their very own free world stations
propping up the ironies for all to see.

Meanwhile the departures board
shuffles and deals another journey
selected from the names of over-invaded places.

The Republic is resting between the inevitable.
It’s past midnight in a world without toys.
Through the gusts of old locomotives,

and the footfall of chimeras you imagine
an old radio broadcasting its raven language,
the caged poetry of propaganda,

The voice from the old iron kitchen

​

​

Welcome to the West


We watch the skies for mood systems.
syphon the limelight off night schools
to animate the prussian-blue protozoa
choreographing chimeras in our peripheral vision.

It’s third phase of the industrial revolution
reaching its conclusion in a casino of universities.
But this is where the unemployed study concrete for chroma,
where second hand natal charts are used to cure depression.

Film makers conjure cinemas from torches and puppets.
When I play the slaughterhouse you play the abattoir;
I test the loyalty of raincoats and write footnotes
for libertines to leave by the gene pool.

You clear out all the disused words left inside
the great clock and reassemble them
in the jaws of a dialogue.To which we listen
and sleep in conditions of everlasting doubt.

​

​

​

Life in Brno


As an architect nature is good at ghost towns.
Here in the cradle of modernism,
Bauhaus and the Brno chair,
the ghost of Lilly Reich plays
a mad soprano in a shift of white smoke  
stalking the ruins of this free market fleshpot,
demanding recognition for her chair.

When Erotic City moved out to a town
they knew for certain had some sex drive,    
they left behind a shop floor carpet of pornography
to greet the accidental footfall of the lost
that stayed and became the entourage of winter.
The old factories fall piecemeal into the future

donating the object d’art of their dereliction
to a museum for the forsaken
to curate exhibitions of the abandoned.

A radio with amnesia tries to reassemble the news  
for a colony of creatures that once had eyes.
An Academic argues with an Electrician
on how to re-wire a disconnected metaphor.
Gods of cosmic unimportance pay off their legal fees
by writing job descriptions for mirrors.
The Architects and Planners, their pockets full of the dirt
you need to start gardens with, sold their story.
Carrying on as if none of this concerns them,
the Romani move in to build their emporiums of de-schooling
from the over travelled luggage of the unlucky.

​

​

Hungarian Nights

the unbounded dreams
of an imperfect love,
scattering the dust
of its rockets and stars
on the path
where we bowled
untethered full moons
into oblivion,
replete and so sure
we were alive,
so much so our art
and its sithouettes
were forever dancing
on the horizon

​

Goodbyes: Kapos International Arts Camp Barcs

The last day of Barcs, seven days of strangers
assembling and creating art the best they can,
leave piecemeal on whatever their road home.
As artists we draw the insides of ourselves,
convene around the nightly bottle then scatter
like fugitives bearing our booty in portfolios.

Each capturing the difference of the other.
I go northward in an old Hungarian rattler
Its percussion of wheels like blunt hammers

and the slamming of carriages
preventing sleep and its forgetfullness.
The train crawls through the woodlands
that follows The Drava until Croatia disappears.

On a perfect straight line the Budapest bound
so slowly distributes its cargo of travellers in settlements
that petition their existence by the arrival of a train
and those in attendance as if it was the only event
worth watching that day. I’m drowning in goodbyes,
I hold my heart as if it too might leave.

For one more reprise of you my fondest one
waving your white handkerchief from the window
of the westward bound train. An hour later I go north
the needle of my heart's compass spinning out of control
its simpatico in denial of my foolishness, my tears.
They're useless,I know which way you’re going.