Only good ****-head,
Who votes republican, wants—
The devil to win.

Small Napoleons  .  .  .
Deep thoughts of narcissists,                                                     ­   
  .  .  .  I, ME, love me, ME!

In a drearing height on grave dead bones of branch,
Where leaves conspicuously kept craven distance,
Forsaken lovers set about to roost on topple-
Down sprig to break each side of their own family
Tree.  With a clutch of ruff stones, pulled hardly
Rare, with green hearts a-glowing from gizzards,
They fed six hatchling harpies, all tooth and wail
But one, whom they feared would not take to tearing
Flesh and to them appeared a foundling, not a rock,
But some down weathered creature, without lift,
All weight and no sun, savage grace had shaped
A new bound Prometheus, still dying for sleep.

                                                         ­         Provided
At birth, with nest and wings, each lashing rigged
In wax.  My father, who from a race of lions,
A king and the last of his kind, built, whilst mother
Destroyed and she, the culling raptor, by incestuous
Murdering, would pick and scrape to clean the marrow
From our souls, preening, like a clip winged eagle,
Would screech throughout all season, suffering close
To the essence of faith, my father, who with her formed
Two halves of a wounded gryphon, un-noble in pride
With a bent on fatal flights of his own undoing,
Marveled at her eyes, gray and gay as accusers,
She cursed in sight of angels, all wings below
Heaven.

My brothers, exotic birds all, limbo dancers,
Preferring the colder climes, flopped after me
And never became fliers, for feathers to them
Were but fantails for a harpy, or for gathering
Dust or at best, something to support their own
Lying.  And I found myself, the mid-heiring brood,
In a state when the soul is after dreaming to its body,
Hobbled-de-boyed at the abyss and I saw through
That air and my fold, I dreaded like omens and echoes
Of extinction, like mixed messages of flightless birds
And managed to pierce the innards of ovate shrouds,
To spike that filmy firmament and the yoke, fell away
And the seep hole ground was spurting and the sky,
An ocean of bloom, in all direction, winked—
With a maelstrom eye, for amongst my family, full
Of strangers, I heard that soul lifting love only God
Could send, sleepwalking on thresholds of faith.

I awoke from a dream and felt that I could fly,
Not like the yearning Icarus but, like a rash
Of spirit or that Arabian bird— simply leave
This earth and make my way through its mantle, blithely
Fallow, shedding my harrowed bone, I dropped off,
Sprung from my ashen bed of down and rose—
Out of doors, splintering from the smote that cut
Down the youth of my days, almost smothered away
And I blazed above the icy coal pelted perch,
My wings spreading far from gross flames as they died,
Unfettered in judgements, scaled so feathery, they conceived
That weight was a lie and the waste I kept, from eyes,
As leaves, became a parish of open palms as I spred
My plume and breath now bore an atmosphere
And lungs, they powered the wind and streaming rays;
My frozen veins, burst, blinding an earthen sun
And fled my shadow, transfigured in flight, into
Being, some aerial creature— not a pure spirit,
But like a child soaring, whose wound was as a wing,
On the heal.

Under the celestial heavens,
The sceptic, is so small, slight—
In a dull room, filled with gloss, vacant,
Unbelievers, hayseeds, who unbeknownst
To themselves, are all in an incestuous love cult,
A construct so vain, vacuous, of spineless comfort
And smarmy snugness, a tribe of loose, yawning tripe,
A spew of runny phlegms, a scheme of useless blue things,
Festering.  What rational and clear clods, of beheadedness,
Cluelessness, in clefts of lobotomy, plain and clearly sightless,
Without seeing, they proclaim, all that their dull drivels, the dear
Elders had once spoon fed to them, preached, said— now, how,
They are sad, righteous and solemn in their preordained, oldness,
Incongruous, indifferences and prejudices.  To have completely lost
Any warm, decent, actual feelings for emotion is foreign— the stars,
Do not align, the waters will not part, yet they are blind to the lies
In themselves.  To have experienced— any real, beating, ******
Thing is beside the point, is beyond their ken, is not knowable,
Yet, kowtow-able, quantifiable, not actual, but unbelievable
They—the smug, slugs, under rugs, are dead, as dust,
Under celestial skies, deep, darkness inside  .  .  .

With looks she is keeping, so rare,
Fruitful eyes in red boughs of hair,
Hands for reaching into the winds,
Breaths gasping of new beginnings,
With looks she keeps this time at bay,
Of new days dreaming, slipped away,
Here the strung, fey huntress will go,
A flung goddess and her quivering bo,
When flowers greet the sun and wave,
In bright meadows of blossoms made,
With looks she is keeping, nows alive,
Heartwoods of longings boxed inside,
How many suitors for beauty to hold—
When gusty old age so soon enfolds?

.
In the lowland fens at the worlds end,
Like the ferryman, a blue heron waits,
Eyes of dragon fly, hover, over still water,
His legs are the oars rowing to the dead.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

My window frames me in reflection,
I gaze out to the snowy mountains
Beyond myself, yet before such places
You have run to, it has been so long,
Now comes another new winter, I see
Snow drifts reaching, winds to the sky,
High atop the autumn white mountains
Paler than loneliness, white as my hair.

Your face,
Tender, round and dimpled,
Framed with gilded, carved, tawny curled
Whirlpools of hair, long, lighted, and sparkling,
Your face is the face—
Of Ireland.

Your lips,
Full, moist and deathly deep,
Are wells, not well for me, not safe, taboo,
Tantric, tall told tales of brave Odysseus
Under Circe's alchemies
Of forgetfulness.

Your *****,
The zenith of blossom in fabled
Elysium, gateway to the forbidden gardens
Of sage and sinners, warrior-poets, Aphrodite's
Envy, Poseidon's drowning
And smoldering Zeus.

We beach walked at night,
Invisible waves knocking,
  .  .  .  Driftwood under soles.

The sea gulls— who fly in wanton
To the horizon, are a spirits
calling, are sea songs falling
To my mind they falter— as I
Have known such cozen to the sun
That falls each day nor do I see
It rising.  My world is weighted,
Under, pass the lining of the quick,
By the mounted cloud which hangs silver
Over the plated night. The owl,
Whose eyes of Janus tails, when wanes
The lids, tied to crescent holey
Whelm of malevolent moon,

Praise over me, with wooly wings,
Is silent as shadow.  I may strut or run
But they do come as the shadows will
With cahooting sun, and the blotting
Bald faced moon, chiaroscuro—
The days feign and heaven pales under
The wake of the luna sea.

       In darkest daylight
I shamble toward the flat horizon
Where the seabirds fly, till their ends,
I take two-faced my faulty comfort
As I see them, falter, falling, yet never
Do they touch the gloaming ground.

All the new flowers have gone.
I see flocks of birds flying away,
The waters of blue mountains 
Fall, rush and scold, are running 
Cold— wind, whispers and goes,
Lonely as a tree without leaves.

We came to the wild beach
To picnic,
But the waves 
Were breaking and rushing in,
The wind was gusty
And cold,
Was moaning a faint
Dirge.

In soft and plain
Footfalls,
Over the slide of sands
We made our way
Into the covering
Dunes.

The dull pressing sky,
The white gloved waves,
And sharp grasses,
The call of scything gulls,
All things were grey
And hovering 
Dark and faded that day, but not as much
As the few, ordinary, words we spoke,
To each other
We cried,
To each other
When our tears dusted the sands,
We were saying 
Goodbye.

I hear echoes that have no voice,
Sad before the vaulted tongues
Over brimmed, who spill on shunted ears
The sour milk of pressed pictures
And sooted lights of lime
And the golden knobs taste
Jarring-dry to their saw dust toes.
Must the babe be chosen
By its mother?

The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And ***** the dirt, call not them the spades.

I hear echoes that have no choice,
But to skim the moated land
And wash well eyes with leaven walls
That tease and **** the sum to crushing
Columns lifted shoulder
High by zeros of kneeling numbers
Worming in bedded slumber.
Must the maker of builders
Be dismantled?

*The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And ***** the dirt, call not them the spades.

.
Words, so many words,
****** of meaning—
Flailed at admirers,
So much pulp and filth
On the ****** page—
O how the vain can spill
Blood in an ocean drained
Of salt, in a vast vacuum
Of listeners who only
Aspire to sully themselves.

Is there meaning in followers,
Deaf, drinking in a whine?
Are the stars only gaudy dots
To spill on a black canvass?
The feigned, would be human
Stars fall in the cold, reigning
Drivel of wet, grey words,
That dry in the sand box desert.                      
Spare us the shallow veins,
The caved insights—
Of your shadows.

Soft breaths, her long hair,
Sweetest unrest under sheets,
  .  .  .  Moist wind that itches.

By my sea cottage  .  .  .
At sunrise mourning doves coo,
  .  .  .  Gentle waves breaking.

Estuary birds  .  .  .
Fresh water beads on feather,
  .  .  .  Earth and sky in love.

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

— 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.

We gathered tinder,
Faint slow burning hearth growing,
  .  .  .  Together waiting.

Backward-man loves his dog.
Ties him up before and after
His walks, likes to goad his pet
Too, speaking as the weather wails
And howls then dog looks down,
Sad on his master dumbfounded.
A chain is worn as it scrapes
The ground connecting dog
To his master.  They both love
The sound of it hissing as it strikes
The concrete pathways, sometimes
Man and dog feel free, not a part
Of each other, the chain may break,
And fear is for forks in the road,
The rusty pockmarked grip of his links
Have always been there on walks
Ahead and behind though it makes
Things confusing as if in a dance
And sometimes they wonder which way
They might end up after all—
And when the dark and golden
Rope, as always, is finally tied
To some old fruit tree, the man
Is happy his dog has both sun
And shade, but also has joy watching
Dog beg for ripe apples he cannot
Reach.  Some people might come
To think that dog thinks those apples
Are not for eating.  Everyone loves
Fruit, don't they?

Backward-man built his dog
A house as cold as a three-
Storied barn, out of things
He could not afford, things much
Too good for dog to not care
About, maybe man built dog's
House for himself, he cannot
Really impress his dog.
Backward-man likes to think
He knows what dog is saying.
Barks and whimpers have deep
Meanings, 'world is a good place,'
Dog says, but when pooch says,
'World is cruel,' crying, disobedient
Whines gets him a serious kick
Out of old anger from backward-
Man.  And man can be a hell-
Hound on his own, the way
He twists and unravels the things
He needs, like truth and food
And love— that goes without
Saying for backward-man hates
His woman, but loves his dog.

I will not die for you
Woman fey of flesh and home,
I linger but to see you unfrock
The holy, set rogues to roam.

Why should I thus be consumed
In breath like coldest fire?
Shape of rising waterfalls
That state, I surely do not desire

The downy *******, the runny skin,
Spark of cheek, notes of hair in shower,
The gliding step, the gusty tone,
Fools have died for much less a dower.

The lancing pools, the hemlock mien,
The highland sheen, the dawn-bird voice,
The Safire eye, over step of pyramid
Merlin gave Arthur a safer choice.

I will not drown for you,
Flood of hair, red as the lye
In parted Jordan, that sea, not me,
Shall pine as ever, slowly dying.

Your healing humors, your subtle sovereignty,
Your blood, noble as seven-seas are blue,
Little mirror who paints the sky,
Though nearly, I will not die for you.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
When I was too young to do many things
Well and fishing with my father's
Father, I discovered all kinds of stuff
I wasn't good at, like how to read
Ripples, or tackle slippery eels, or even how to clean
Spiny perches.  'Where are the hungry fish?'
Grandfather would spout at me, all the green pools
Were liars and cheats and patience,
Was another one of my shortcomings,
Not only this, my father hoped his trades
On me, but like a conflicted carpenter
I was in love with trees.

This all left me wondering just what
I might do, that is until I plumbed my first
Blueberry.  In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)  
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!

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

If I said I want you,
Would you run and tell the stars
To close their eyes and ring dry
The clouds of tears?

If I said let me hold you,
Would the earth crack open,
To shudder the rolling lands,
Not cradle the hatching seeds?

If I said I am yours,
Would your name soon dissolve
And be lost in the revolving
Night that candles you in light?

If I heard your voice,
In twining dream and woke
Beside you talking in your sleep
What would your question be?

If I called your name,
Before the first sunning year
And heard you, Echo in the wind,
Would time guide us to the door?

The soft rain is drumming with the brook
And the owl is moaning with the loon,
The early sun shines on the lake waters,
Each of these things distant — I am happy.

Time is teasing along with lush earth so pleasing,
The minutes of our youth are spent in toiled days
And sands are blowing the weld of our sold means,
Foundations of dust, the cries unheard, of the aged.

And then, as dream, you came from the starry skies
Blue and small as the ocean dot, forever fixed—
Reigning over the frozen, revolving moon that lies,
Dimly wakes in your fabled orbit, my fated ellipse.

Now, time tables and splits, renders me to eaves
Undone, my squandered youth was but a sad play
And I am clocked with wind, the geld of my dreams,
Had shiftless hands been more solid than my days.


                                                         ­          — after Yeats

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.

.
Grasping to the sky
With ever reaching
Branches, leaves spirit
Themselves to sacred
Airs.  
           Old tree, a star set
Truncated with sprite earth,
Stolid, touchstone spark,
Place, feeling all waves
Dripping by like clouds.

In some underworld,
Bathing with Gods,
Are immortal roots
Divining water, laid
In ceremonious soil,
Digging out golden,
Unfallowed tombs.

Old tree in the sun,
Great soul barking
Skywards each day,
Joyous arms clench,
Lansing, higher out,
Embracing heavens.

Just as sun presents  .  .  .
Time saunters on the cool pond,
  .  .  .  Gifts of dreamy swans.

Mourning dove, set on black wires above
The cool, garden lawn, looks down on cat,
Who is burning blithe birds in greenest eyes,
He tastes them as he chirps in trouncing trance
Fixating upon fixing them, his pious patience
Is job like, steadfast, gracious as lifted wings.
Early next day, all that is left of fallen mourning
Dove, are a bed of feathers strewn on the lawn.

Snowy egrets, pure,
Stoic, white statues of grace,
Digging in the muck.