Cleave mind from neck.
Cut just above each joint - get rid
of feet and hands.
Slice clean,
hold tight and tear.

Swipe from skin -
prise apart and portion limbs.

Please share.

The earth is hungry for me.
I feel it in every step,
in the way the green
morning sun grabs
at my sleeve on the platform
when the metro train arrives,
in the gnashing maws
of blooded cloud
that conceal the moon
like a mad aunt.
I've kept it waiting so long,
forty years now;
it caught my father
under the wax-window,
& removed him
to a place in the air.
The lithium salts laughed
& laughed when I found
a shadow at the bottom
of the night-bottle.
I no longer lean out
over the sick, slick hands
of the river when
I go to the waterfront bars.  
I'm still a step or two ahead,
but let's face it -
the tree leers in leaf,
the stones are snide,
& my eye looks so dark
in this whisky reflection.

The moon wears a dull brown gown,
& the stars seem braced up there,
a few tired Christmas bulbs
pinned to a threadbare pine.

Dublin is just as far tonight
as it ever was,
& again I'll sleep alone
in an alien city

where fleets of black-bellied cars
crawl among the funerals,
over the fur of the earth
roughed and matted with rain.

In this last push before sleep
I'll choose instead to remember
your susurrating hair,
fanned across the pillow.

Cherry florets
volley the branch-ends
in a new rain -
the attention of this world
seems endlessly divided
as I patrol envies of holly
and hyacinth, hands full
of Thursday.
You call me,
your hair grown long,
we chat a check-up
over your pasta.
Out the bearded window
infant blossoms crack out
into the wet drifts -
forgive me,
I am so bad at goodbyes.

Wednesday night drunk,
the sun lays so still
in its gray sarcophagus;
the sandy mid-rise
across the way
spits yellow blandings
into dead clouds;
the Aberlour bottle
raking its way
towards recycling.

O, that casual dismissal,
how it decimates -
"Thanks, Ev. You too."
But what do I know
of the little surgeries
of her evening?  
More whisky spills -
the sun's canopic heart?
I drank it,
it's gone.

Larkspur rose with azure head
in that blondish vacancy
by the metro line:
you were a summer.

But now those withered faces
are mute, closed for business,
peacock's burst plumes:
you are a winter.

The empire of the morning
is falling, falling.

The cold wavers a little,
divides, and collapses in colonies.

The sun feints behind acute corner,
advances west at a bicycle's pace.

Crows wag in the mulch,
scrabbling at petals,

cawing at the noon
that stands any moment.

I sit with the book
you plucked from the air,

joyed by it. I hope you call -
I will shave.

My thoughts of you eclipse
every domain of the hours:

the morning's empire dies, but
a confederacy of afternoon is raised,

& already there is a plot
putting forward a kingdom of night.