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I am a man who doesn't
know how to love
no matter how many times
I try. I write poems
hoping my heart might be
captured by one love at last.
I am still not able to love.
I love impossible hearts.
Thank God those
febrile nightmares of
youth are gone.
I long for the
numbing fog.
The dust of dreams
linger when I awake,
like a fly in
a glue-trap.

My mind is nebulous as
I try to recall
the nocturnal visits.
Legs tired from running;
**** sore from *******.
I've played doctor for years
trying to reverse this curse,
prescribing: women, drugs,
***** by the barrels,
searching for that ambrosia,
that nectar of the gods that
makes life less vivid and sharp,
and puts the sleep back in
my eyes.
We come from hopeless histories
  to America with hope in pockets.
  We work like madmen tireless to
  earn our keep and feed we Irish.
  I feed coal to iron furnaces and
  load cargo in ship's hot holds.
  We won't starve to death here.
  My great grandson scratches
  my story into your memory.
John Donovan came from Ireland. County Cork. He was a beast and worked as a stevedore and iron worker and I never met him but I thank him for his perseverance and his ******* to get me here!
5am we crowd in the rickety cage
   to take us down to hell's cold entry
   into the mines. We stoop and dig
   claws into the rock to drag coal
   into the carts we roll to a rich
   man's greed and we end our days
   in poor man bars swallowing the
   dust into our angry hearts where
   we keep score and wait for God.
   We sleep with our sacred wives.
..day 49..

my walk yesterday was rained upon
so hood up head down we saw the stones
sheltered under gorse
noted the sky changing

were the markers always there
left by some other
wanderer?

i had this angelic person on paper
down the studio
that was so precise and quite particular

a long winded affair
with prehistoric music
and crouching from
the weather outside

prepared to mess her up
yet all i achieved was an
extra pair of sleeves really

oh

i hope to revert to an earlier
idea of smudge and carbonate

james

you see
there is no control
only that we think we have
which is probably all imagined

i drew in early
as it came the
national thing day
which some of us avoid

not wishing to be controlled
and not thinking it helps
anyhow

note 1.

being a bad personage
not doing as instructed
again
I so dreamt
Music

Untamed
Agrestal

A boundless arrangement
Estranged from

The whispered waters
Confining

This sullen cathedral
In thoughts hushed

As anxious lips quenched
Their thirst

From the passionate
Oeuvre

Trapped within
New rhapsody
My mirror hates me.
It never lies it shows
my horrible imperfections
at every angle with lights
hard or soft or darkness.
My ankles are fat and my
feet are caveman's feet.
I hear my lover's voice,
"You have a flabby ***".
Your face is wide. You
have tiny eyes. No lips.
No hips, like a boy.
I'm 10 in Daddy's room.
Touch. I remember touch.
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