Cherry trees pale winter,
Slush bark hushed by pink and white,
  .  .  .  Joyous spring formal.

Late night at the Bar,
The neon sign said time to go,
Funny, when I got there it was all
Welcoming and overenthusiastic,
Garish, like a parade of clowns
With balloons that just got lost
Loosed, to the winds.  I had a few—
Too many and wrote a broke poem,
All alone surrounded by the clank
Of wood from a pole and clicks of levers
As the glistening 'patrons' shimmied their
Tithes to the used machines of *****
Pinned and the green tables pooled
And the women, who desperately looked
At only you, after you looked at them
And the indifferent, tallish Barman,
Who kept pouring smallish dreams
In a shot glass.  I stumbled, swirled out
And kissed the tar as was my want,
Every newcomer slogging in
Simply ran with not even noticing,
As I laid on the ground, they knew
That their time was soon coming.
That's called simpatico, or is it
Solidarity, maybe, whatever?
Anywho, I dusted my self off
And hightailed it back home
Before the broad, my old lady,
Jezebel, caught me on the sly.
The 'Queen of Sheba' was already
There— prostrated on our bed
Waiting to nail me.  My only excuse,
The muses— she wasn't buying,
I said baby, 'I ain't tryin' to sell
You no lie.  The words, they come
And they go, like a train that never stops
But you bestbe going, you best be jump in'
On that steel Goliath and ride that son to the gates
Of pearl and peace, them goldilock rays and then I said,
Hush, my little 'rock-a-bye' lady, you shush now,
My fresh night moon of lilly flower, we's gonna
Make like nubile creatures, all naked and free,
There ain't no clocks little darling, there's
Just you an' me and all the rest of herstory,'
She bought that line!

In disused field is a blooming temple.
An ancient apple tree waits eternal,
This stone bold sculpture was forged
With nimbus hands and windy eyes.
In hushed airs, Shiva dances to light,
Waves, sacred arms without swaying.

Bearded ones come to pay homage,
The solemn chickadees, the ranging
Sparrows, red robed robins— priestly                                                         ­    
Doves, all who see are one enveloped
In graces of the New World Bodhi tree,
Waiting for blossoms so dearly come.

Edge of boughs brim under heavens
Landing with mystic verges of spirit
Into the mind of the eyes of nature—
Kali-flowered ears of lichen are pale
Green in their devotions, pummeled
By seas of seasons, foggy to the fray.

Finches, yellow, reflecting in a star,
Devout wee lamas golden with halo,
Are kneeling above berm, this nobby
Trunk, stave, inside bodacious stupa
Bell who sings clear, without ringing,
Body of elder grace, wisdoms, ages.

In cast irreverence, seldom do crows
Visit, when they do there is menace
Of the Jinn, dark giants in the levels,
Mercifully, out of shame, they do not
Stay, black wings due, die in luminous
Day moon, rain soak sun, balmy mist.

On pilgrim journeys, whirlings, prayer
Wheels, guide shy flocks riding gnarl,
Indie goddess, to overreaching love,
By sores of hollow in the steps, open
To being, brindles of myriad meadow
In temple blossoms— numinous suns.

Of both earth and sky, shines a beauty,
Whose form is written in blistering bark,
The ciphers of tongue to Sanskrit leaves
And lost fruits, given over, unforbiddens,
Within old apple tree a great wilderness
And all the branch of wings are knowing.

Man— master of earth,
Productive dust swarms in sands,
  .  .  .  Anthills in desert.

.
There once was a shadow who thought he was a man,
He made his empty bed in a shame of familiars,
For years if not an eternity he never did one single thing,
He contemplated creativity in all its smoke and mirrors,
His only credo was padding his unknowing, limp ego,
Got a gig, speaking before a throng of other shadows,
He rewrote the crook about his own insignificances, suddenly
Nothing's became every things, all was sorely well in the bleak
Under toes.  Shadowman had found his stage, had rearranged
Chaos and insignificance to the point of no enlightenments,
No regrets.  What a sage!
Shadowman aped, traced, spewed in studied literature,
Experienced, faith, trust, fidelity, danced numbers,
In a cellophane pack with all the added extras included,
Found that reflecting words only got in his narcissistic way,
Left the California sun for the New York lowlands
Of the east, that only shine after the hurricane's
Deluge.  Shadowman has reams of flesh plastered
On a mall of wallowing sites only Shadowmen frequent,
Modern is the moly man who makes his own myth.
Shadowman has traveled to the great southern climes
Where hotels of shade tell tales of locals and enlightenment is in a drug
Called something South American or other?  A drug so smug it is a plug
For his dun holy soul.  Shadowman is only a silhouette of himself.
He freely gives seminars to the lame, chained to themselves freely,
Where all the vain echoes are chambered, embodied, entombed.

So many faces  .  .  .
There is a troll on HP—
  .  .  .  What a psychopath.

Glow bugs chew up home  .  .  .
**** branches climbing to sun,                                                    
  .  .  .  Bark at base of tree.

Without you, my heart,
Sun is bleeding as it falls,
New moon is broken.

Seabirds swaying out,
Toile ocean mist rolling in,
Ballroom of the Sun.

Where have all the days gone by?
What once was new, now is made;
Night is falling, close my eyes,

Now, the moments softly cry,
The light has clouds racing away,
Where have all the days gone by?

Fresh and verdant the gentle tighs,
Summers sweetness up in blaze,
Night is falling, close my eyes.

What once was truth now is lie,
After rains shear loss of May,
Where have all the days gone by?

I hear the hush, leaves that die,
I fear what the swan has to say,
Night is falling, close my eyes.

Awakened to such sad surprise,
Spring was such a fleeting haze,
Where have all the days gone by;
Night is calling, close my eyes.

Stars in dust wasteland,
Seen once, every seven years,
Desert flowers bloom.

Bright moon, perfect, full,
Her *******, unbound in starlight,
Heavens outnumbered.

Snows on winter lake,
Downy drops, water landing,
White swans flying in.

Ruddy and worn,
Dusted by turf and salt,
Sun rose cheeked and blue
Clouded eye spurt in a gait
Ended by mute journeys and toil.
He breaks the long day with a shove
As the old pocked door is waiting to be
Opened.  At the crowning stand of the bar
He orders his Craic, some froth of tar, his black
Medicinal and when the tales of tall pints grow, sinking,
Live, flickering light slows and smoulders, shoulders with moist
Embers of smoke trailing by with an impromptu céilí and all is brilliant,
Blind, awful and right, cast in the sprite, spirited dance of the verbal swirlings.

1

The chards rising.  Am I the praying bird?
In the gleaming sun my bones are negative,
My flesh a cypher walking through the plains
As ghost I move, my dark lord, above me
Flocks swirl and spike. I stand accused,
Your pointed face divining oblivion,
And no redemption in the rains of my
Cliff walk days.


2

I see my shroud pinning on the wires
His legs are razored forks spinning my
Compass from True North. Your dark brush-
Fire wings, the swept wind, wheels and strings
My fate. Such black rhetoric in a burn,
Your caws, loosed perches, on the stakes, picks
My crowning grave. Black dove, your feathers finger
As they slice.


3

Smoke, the cardinal blood caries my teething
Bone, spades my hand without a flight.
Taut, the pulled noose my hooded one
I see my scarecrow’s reflexion, the scar,
Let blood, the seeded droppings end trailed
To my door. Feathers, ferry to carry on
Dowsing downward, black knight of down, to sticks
On extended wings.

Schooled in crass vanity,
Pointed scales of pufferfish,
Blowing up themselves.

Johnny goes to war,
Red snake house republican,
  .  .  .  Now he has no limbs.

Water nymph, you are the gentle wind
Bursting the daisy, your eyes, are bells
Of blue echinacea spiriting the light—
Echoing sound which water makes, ring
The laureled forest leaves in cathedrals
Newly sprung of pews, meadows, spark,
The dance of bees, who trace your honey
Scent in combs of ambrosia and sunshine.
The miraculous waters are floored under
Your white, lily petals of feet, your nests
Of hair are embracing tendrils of the wild
Grape, wine and sweet, long forgetfulness.
Maid of the wood, daughter to the moon;
Are you of Elysium or temptress of doom?

.
Frozen in rains, cloistering,
So severe in the dark of day,
Is the walled clutch of garden,
No one escapes, a gilded reaper,
Born of fears, promises beyond,
Of joys on the oak nailed pews.

Above the lost naves, who stand
In worship to a ghost, bones bent,
There are cast arches of old sorrows,
Veiling the lighted eyes of the cosmos,
Shutting out even mercies, heavenly
Lights duly smoked of incense.

And slated roof, so statuary cold,
Of aged rock and moss under spire,
That even the doves, as they coo
Are grounded, up muted hollows,
Chimes that merely echo guilts,
By shadows of faithless pride.

Dear Pablo, as I look over
my soaking body, wet, with patches
of dirt, blotched and raw bleeding,
the clouds turn in my yellowed eyes
in order to love you, my Pablo.  
You, who made me feel radiant.  
As I am the sea,  I fish for you,
rolling in mud, and becoming
mountain, I topple for your toes
who'd dig in deep and itch my aching

breast to sleep.  My dreamful-drowsy
birds, rake the skies, rush-out like nets
wanting you on their wings, my poem.
Pablo, I loved you so when you said,
my flowers were little stars to pick,
and that loneliness was a train who waits
in a far-away station, and how, my most
minuscule attributes — a cat, a pear,
the atom, you praised, in odes, heaped
like showers hailed from heaven, as fresh-

water you reigned from the other side
of tears, and temper'd my salt, my green,
murky life.  Dearest Pablo, since you've gone,
my breath has the emptiness that hides under
stone.  And the blue-winds crossing, my life-
less age, they are nothing but long waves,
keening,   —  Nay   —  rood   —   ahhh!
Since you have left me.  And my trees,
they forget how to grow,
my song, my only,
Pablo.

Late night at the Bar,
The neon sign said time to go,
Funny, when I got there it was all
Welcoming and overenthusiastic,
Garish, like a parade of clowns
With balloons that just got lost
Loosed, to the winds.  I had a few—
Too many and wrote a broke poem,
All alone surrounded by the clank
Of wood from a pole and clicks of levers
As the glistening 'patrons' shimmied their
Tithes to the used machines of *****
Pinned and the green tables pooled
And the women, who desperately looked
At only you, after you looked at them
And the indifferent, tallish Barman,
Who kept pouring smallish dreams
In a shot glass.  I stumbled, swirled out
And kissed the tar as was my want,
Every newcomer slogging in
Simply ran with not even noticing,
As I laid on the ground, they knew
That their time was soon coming.
That's called simpatico, or is it
Solidarity, maybe, whatever?
Anywho, I dusted my self off
And hightailed it back home
Before the broad, my old lady,
Jezebel, caught me on the sly.
The 'Queen of Sheba' was already
There— prostrated on our bed
Waiting to nail me.  My only excuse,
The muses— she wasn't buying,
I said baby, 'I ain't tryin' to sell
You no lie.  The words, they come
And they go, like a train that never stops
But you best be going, you best be jump in'
On that steel Goliath and ride that son to the gates
Of pearl and peace, them goldilock rays and then I said,
Hush, my little 'rock-a-bye' lady, you shush now,
My fresh night moon of Lilly flower, we's gonna
Make like nubile creatures, all naked and free,
There ain't no clocks little darling, there's
Just you an' me and all the rest of herstory,'
She bought that line!

She came upon a meadow, then she undressed;
And when she was naked, the meadow blushed.

Softly she tread, floating above the clover
Seas.  Suddenly lost, bold honey bees forgot
The scent of flowers blooming.  Iridescent wings,
Humming birds, monarchs, dragons, flying in
Procession and the mushrooming dew now rising
Began to swell, raining upwards into the mystic
Blue heavens and the trees beyond that clearing
Stood longingly amazed, so green their spying
Gaze, when all the myriad flowers loosely fell
And all the gathering of colours faintly dimmed.

She came upon a meadow, then she undressed;
And when she was naked, the meadow blushed.

Showers of promise punctuate your days,
The waters creek, mumble rise and swell,
Flowers, spark of youth, marching in the rains
And birds sing anew, bright pages, bursting-bell,
An earthy coronation, cleanse and glisten,
All the wood, shorn by Winters’ wane and fan,
*** and waltz in balmy breeze collecting
Ferns and Falls' forgotten blood red hands
Renewed, the grass and trees, heavens missal,
Wing-lipped leaves exploding green, just listen;
The washing rains parade, all resurrection.

Bounders drawing lines,
Last days lowered like a boom—
Chalk of rising moon.

Gray gathering  
Signs fell on the musty register.  Two pallid  
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,  
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in  
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings  
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.

We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you  
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day.  Our love was castaway  
Our love was time bomb.  Crossing stars, we trembled  
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some  
Lost ocean’s horizon.  
  
                          When first we met,  
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest  
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on  
The paper as it now burns in my mind  
Like Brigid’s fire.  At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.  
Anointed under the votive stars violently  
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart  
A rail.  Our love was charmed, our love was time,  
Balm.  To what end this new beginning?

You come around
And make me feel,
Like I don't want to feel,
As if the only way is your way,
What am I to think?  How can I heal?
Are all majestic colours impishly yours?
I walk alone on glare streets of harsh silence,
In rushing crowds of coldness, darkest and deep
Loneliness, you have made mourn of sun
My punisher, you have stolen music
Out from under my fumble hands,
Your eyes are like confusion,
My heart has nil defense,
I wait for you to let me go,
My hopeless prayer,
But I am undone
No, I never will
Be known, nor
Your only
One.

One day gone in the long great forest
Of the ancient world, wolves alone
And mighty hungered with true kin
Stalking the tundras of the snow drifts
And all their prey, with cautionary eyes
Moved in heards and flocks swaying
With the sounds of the forest floor
And the spearing grasses.  The wolf
Was his own master, free, unbounded.
A great spirit, brother to the moon.

One dying day, when the bushes burned
They came upon the garbage dumps
Of early man.  Their smoke was laden
With the smell of fresh ****, small skins,
Animals, ended trail, and salted death.
Many wolves circled in fear, their pits,
Only one or a few tasted the left overs
The easy scraps and bones, tailings,
The elder pack would not stoop for.
These few unguarded wolves morphed
And mated with each other, their mane
And fur, soon was tamed, soon became
Mottled and brown no silver remaining.
This was the fall of the wolf, not man
And the moon turned white, when wolf
Became dog.

Weighty lightness, solid levity,
Primordial soup,
Some ancient rite, draws me
To the foam.
Its celestial colour,
Its effervescent overflowing,
How it teases my buds,

Not like water,
Like honey
As an insect encased
In amber
I am within,
The tears of sunshine
And Olympian folly.

On dry days
I seek the incendiary agent,
Brooding bout,
Pint-sized, el niño
And his brews
Come soaring
After the downpour,
As high-tiding winds,
That **** contented days
And spin spirals round
Cups of complacent
Hours, the whine
Eternal,

Only seems
Like spilling
Blood.
Draw me, the dram.
The dram of what?
Ale's the thing!

Falling,
Overboard,
No drowning man was so ever
Esteemed,
Ever so buoyant.

How the vessel becomes
His captain.

Showers of promise punctuate your days,
The waters creek, mumble rise and swell,
Flowers, spark of youth, marching in the rains
And birds sing anew, bright pages, bursting-bell,
An earthy coronation, cleanse and glisten,
All the wood, shorn by Winters’ wane and fan,
*** and waltz in balmy breeze collecting
Ferns and Falls' forgotten blood red hands
Renewed, the grass and trees, heavens missal,
Wing-lipped leaves exploding green, just listen;
The washing rains parade, all resurrection.

Sweet stonewall princess,
Tear down impossible walls,
  .  .  .  See me as I am.

Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,

My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.

My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.

My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.

My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.

My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.

.
I row beneath you on the ancient lake,
Before sun arrives and after he is gone,
I will still be rowing even in my dreams,
Great yellow hills, my work is never done.

— for Seamus Heaney*

Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.

He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.

I came to the pavilion of the big cats
And in the center was a palace ruin,
The walls were stone and feeble mortar,
The great, golden monarch was the lion.

With wisdom eyes, he gazed upon me,
I lowered my head as was my station,
He did not move, nor deign to care,
In His royal chamber I was under thrown.

I thought, you are caught my over lord,
But his stance said, these bars are scepter
And I heard him say with a long lost roar,
'Hear my horn, I am he, the storm of Jericho.'

In the palace of the mighty, indifferent, king
His thundering voice crackled the lambing
Stables and even heaven closed under ceiling
Dome and I was caged when the walls fell away
And the whole, blown world, remade, a zoo.

.
He walks in stolid darknesses
At days zenith, hears whispers
In the dew dusted fens, lights
Leaves into sun candle flames,
Drew a lake sword by maidens
Hand, alchemic shaper of water,
Air, old fires and earth, bending
Cold elements of moly and lode
Rushing forth, in extra emotions.

Rain, thumping down,
Pressing grey prints,
Ocean, tears the sky,
Drowning with drinks
Of blue eye and salt
Taste, rude earthling
Song, takes too long.
Must I go on walking,
In gurgle paths spray,
Soaked, silted, ******,
Drabs colours running
In days raging of rain?

Winged caterpillar
That frees my soul,
Sets my mind to dreaming,
How the hand of man
Out plays the God,
Makes love
To its master.
With fondled fingers, you paint
A dumb firmament, the way
Light dazzles as it breaks
Or how the itching rain
Taps a teasing melody as it falls
To the lover ground.

Beloved of Orpheus
Whose wove you coiled in-
Vents a garment of bird song loom,
Content my breath
The way that water wells
And lolls into puddles
Nesting not before the hot,
Harpy steam.

O melodious pool,
Undulating lake, frame
To emotive vapours, without
Ship you ply in wakes.
The oarsman plucks the main,
Your body is the sail,
Drunkard winds and warblers,
Blow hard, but fail my ears,
Atone as well, the wretched sounds of day
For they are sour spells, and but a fools
Trash canned movements, in a state
So needy of weeding,
Mere sound is soiled
The way you rake.

Evolution spreads,
As stones do,
When moves the river bed,
Grace, in violence,
Sparkles as it blooms,
Like an ears creation—
Rose on the tomb.

Winter snow hares gone,
Hunger rules— just giant goose,
Stooping white falcon.

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

.
And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   ­ .

Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the ninth wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­­­                     ­­                                      — after Eliot
.