01 - You say to the boy open your eyes (Blue, 1993)
You say to the boy open your eyes When he opens his eyes and sees the light You make him cry out. Saying O Blue come forth O Blue arise O Blue ascend O Blue come in
I am sitting with some friends in this cafe drinking coffee served by young refugees from Bosnia. The war rages across the newspapers and through the ruined streets of Sarajevo.
Tania said 'Your clothes are on back to front and inside out". Since there were only two of us there I took them off and put them right then and there. I am always here before the doors open.
What need of so much news from abroad while all that concerns either life or death is all transacting and at work within me.
I step off the kerb and a cyclist nearly knocks me down. Flying in from the dark he nearly parted my hair.
I step into a blue funk.
The doctor in St. Bartholomew's Hospital thought he could detect lesions in my retina - the pupils dilated with belladonna - the torch shone into them with a terrible blinding light.
Look left Look down Look up Look right
Blue flashes in my eyes.
Blue Bottle buzzing Lazy days The sky blue butterfly Sways on the cornflower Lost in the warmth Of the blue heat haze Singing the blues Quiet and slowly
Blue of my heart Blue of my dreams Slow blue love Of delphinium days
Blue is the universal love in which man bathes - it is the terrestrial paradise.
I'm walking along the beach in a howling gale - Another year is passing In the roaring waters I hear the voices of dead friends Love is life that lasts forever. My hearts memory turns to you David. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul....
But what if this present Were the world's last night In the setting sun your love fades Dies in the moonlight Fails to rise Thrice denied by cock crow In the dawn's first light
Look left Look down Look up Look right The camera flash Atomic bright Photos The CMV - a green moon then the world turns magenta My retina Is a distant planet A red Mars From a Boy's Own comic With yellow infection Bubbling at the corner I said this looks like a planet The doctor says - "Oh, I think It looks like a pizza"
The worst of the illness is uncertainty. I've played this scenario back and forth each hour of the day for the last six years. Blue transcends the solemn geography of human limits.
I am home with the blinds drawn H.B. is back from Newcastle But gone out - the washing Machine is roaring away And the fridge is defrosting These are his favourite sounds
I've been given the option of being an in-patient at the hospital or to coming in twice a day to be hooked to a drip. My vision will never come back.
The retina is destroyed, though when the bleeding stops what is left of my sight might improve. I have to come to terms with sightlessness.
If I loose my sight will my vision be halved?
The virus rages fierce. I have no friends now who are not dead or dying. Like a blue frost it caught them. At work, at the cinema, on marches and beaches. In churches on their knees, running, flying, silent or shouting protest.
It started with sweats in the night and swollen glands. Then the black cancer spread across their faces - as they fought for breath TB and pneumonia hammered their lungs, and Toxo at the brain. Reflexes scrambled - sweat poured through hair matter like lianas in the tropical forest. Voices slurred - and then were lost forever. My pen chased this story across the page tossed this way and that in the storm.
The blood of sensibility is blue I consecrate myself To find its most perfect expression
My sight failed a little more in the night H.B. offers me his blood It will kill everything he says
The drip of DHPG Trills like a canary
I am accompanied by a shadow into which H.B. appears and disappears. I have lost the sight on the periphery of my right eye.
I hold out my hands before me and slowly part them. At a certain moment they disappear out of the corner of my eyes. This is how I used to see. Now if I repeat the motion this is all I see.
I shall not win the battle against the virus - in spite of the slogans like "Living with AIDS". The virus was appropriated by the well - so we have to live with AIDS while they spread the quilt for the moths of Ithaca across the wine dark sea.
Awareness is heightened by this, but something else is lost. A sense of reality drowned in theatre.
Thinking blind, becoming blind.
In the hospital it is as quiet as a tomb. The nurse fights to find a vein in my right arm. We give up after five attempts. Would you faint if someone stuck a needle into your arm? I've got used to it - but I still shut my eyes.
The Gautama Buddha instructs me to walk away from illness. But he wasn't attached to a drip.
Fate is the strongest Fate Fated Fatal I resign myself to Fate Blind Fate The drip stings A lump swells up in my arm Out comes the drip An electric shock sparks up my arm
How can I walk away with a drip attached to me? How am I going to walk away from this?