The world
does not care
if your days and nights
are torn asunder
by the crimes and tragic mistakes
of yesteryear.
I hear, now,
the traffic of time
speeding on into
the gaping black-hole
of the avaricious
and all devouring
night.
Land of pain
and complaints
teaching it's young
the miserable lessons of failure
and injustice that went cruelly mad.
An island
with rugged shores
that turn in
on it's own populace.
Rising.
genuflecting
and falling 'fatefully'
again
into the puddles
of it's own demise.
All that remains
is an emerald sadness
filled with living ghosts.
Distance stretched
the length of our nearness
that time in the park, the Phoenix Park,
when the deer fled from our coming
and you, silently with the sound of thunder,
walked over there knowing that I, being unsure
and trying to think the reasonable thing,
would follow when desire was to strike out
and savour the wounds of a false pride.
But then the November darkness came quickly
where you had come to stop
and swirling leave shoals
rose and fell like souls
praying for the next rush
to lift them higher
before a distant bell
rang out my destiny.
Come into my heart forever,
horizontally and vertically
to the greatest distances and heights.
Come and be with me in every step
and breath I take.
Come and share all the toil and hardships
of this mundane existence.
Come and divide it all
in pain with the occasional
scent of heaven.
Come, my love, into the womb
of my future.
Come, my love, come.
Come and stay for infinity!
When I am as
a rusty frame resting
in the dump
of it's own miserable present
I can but hope to become
dung
for a new spring.
With the ever increasing tempo
of time sprinting forward,
like a thoroughbred gone frantic down the course,
the years of yesterday
dress in both the most alluring colours
and the most heart-rending sorrows.
A girl up the way
has entered puberty.
One day she wears
the most outlandish clothes and colours
and the next
black, gray or blue.
Fond of protecting
the little ones, in one breath,
she stands separate from adults and everyone,
in the next.
Perhaps,
she talks with classmates and girlfriends
about the changes to her body
as she throws fierce energy into gym
and pursues intensely with pimples and glasses
her various and numerous studies.
Recently,
she was halfway up
the Everest of a lamp-post
before her mother came out
and roared her down.
There is a woman,
so kind and great of heart,
who visits our church.
From Eastern Europe
she is tinier
than even the smallest Piaf.
When she sings
in praise and adoration of her Creator,
you can almost see
the pillars tremble
in harmony;
as her voice
totally and powerfully
pervades the innermost depths
of the entire congregation.
The cue - the cue - the cue
for a joyful entry
Django on your radio
lures him dancing through the door
and your face plays and portrays brilliant colours
with the laughter of a spirit
being momentarily freed
from the sadness of it's earthly shackles.
Typically reflecting
the soul and taste of your race;
poignant in the moment
but eventually flowing
to the heavens,
the unattainable
and the ideal.
Your joy is in fighting for dignity;
the well-being of nobly conquering
all jokes made at your own
and others' expense.
Yet within you
there is the sublime humour
magically transcending pettiness
and hates of every gender.
You ascend
into celestial understanding
and sweet compassion.
However
in the end
you are a tired compromise
of love gone wrong
while bearing fruits
for insecure futures.
Nothing more can be said
to describe your beauty
in all it's temperamental
indulgences and lack of self-restraint.
Handel
played on a concertina
in the dreamy hours
of a June night
spent
on the shores
of the far reaches
of Connemara
as we confessed
many sorrows
and ample joys
with a northern glint
in the sky.
Injured to mutter in mad ways
(a town's sneer won't let him scream)
his eyes settle for blind sights drawn
from painless but poisonous prods -
their targets a scrapbook of wheat and chaff
in this womb where no one watches
the self-embraced death of desire
that blocks hidden tears from surging
to a valley tomb.
Another day will pass unnoticed
by this stranded and shoved out being
who, from a soft chair in the night-shade,
sits churning up the past.
The spider in his heart
weaves dreamlike webs of ancient death
and hangs them high above the stonegray vapours
that pour from the Vesuvius of his mouth.
Rapidly rising rosetinted images
explode into the infernal fire
that soon consumes the insipid blood
made passive by someone's contempt.
And the shell survives the light pricks
that issue from a bathroom bulb
through holes in threadbare shut curtains.
Cigars from Summatra -
100% tobacco, strong in flavour
and catering for the hungry tastebuds
help
in between
putting on one's thinking cap
and an unadulterated
course of action.
Feelings -
tugging
at my heart strings;
pressing
all the buttons
at once!
Written in collaboration with Marie Shine.
Our local publican
comes from Amsterdam.
Because of his heart
he has to watch it.
Yet,
once in a blue moon
he gets very drunk.
His
favourite trick then
is to shake
every customer's hand
and tell them
with an assinine grin,
insultingly,
to disappear
and never be seen
again.
Ah!
Nobody
takes offence
and
the next day
everything
is back to 'normal'.
A world of splinters
embedding themselves in the flesh;
the spirit surrounded by a crown of thorns;
pangs of received and on-others-inflicted wounds
tormenting any hope of durable reconciliation -
the birth of wisdom is suspect to mockery.
Maybe, it should accept and succumb
to ignorance and impotence.
3 brown, tall, large and stately bottles
of Trappist monks' beer,
each with their own individual and historical label,
stand quietly, sentry-like on a shelf.
Craftmanship in
3 colours and 3 tastes,
7, 8 and 10 percent strong:
from dark robin-red - fresh, soft and a little sweet;
to dark blond - fruity and sweet and sour;
and finally amber - fullbodied and sweet and sour.
Religious beer
celebrating
the festive season
of Our Saviour's birth.
3 times a heavenly treat, indeed!
There are no stabs of conscience
as memory, understanding and will
all work together in constructive harmony;
yet the spirit's sad gaze
looks out from the window of it's heart
at the transience of passing flotillas
of sleep-invoking clouds.
