“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” -Edgar Allan Poe

We're all sick animals, tied together
on this clouded ball. Wet snow erupts
on a Sunday night, a gray flake navy,
mobiles above a black crib -

snow loosens into shaking sleet.
There is no one here - not even me.
The night is pink and orange,
under an anesthetic dome.

Don't we deserve more, better?
The streets are filled with taillights,
red rivers of light, salted, frothing,
as the freezing drips spray the pane.

Maybe we don't. Look out there,
at the wet world. We're just seeds
that open a root to the flood, swept
away into the teeth of the past.

We look for solutions to this problem...
in the cloud rush, in the oven gas.

I found a medicine that I drink,
it clears the night wreathes away.

Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur" plays
while the rain stomps in the black road.

That was us.... we were then,
among the cobbles and tombs,

hand in hand, absinthe and sugar
searing the air. We were; we were.

You held my thigh at night,
a bone against the insomnia.

The dark didn't come until later;
it had such a broad wing.

The hours grew late. The purple vine
clawed upward. The walls crawled with taste...

I lost my hold on things. Do you remember
how we watched the old Dean Martin

movie on TV in Rome? I drank beer
from a can while you laughed.

You laughed - it was the sweet middle
that sustained the world.

Now... now... the hour is long in the tooth.
My chest is a grave. There is nothing after this.

No, nothing - I'm sorry.
Dig this earth for no purpose, friend...

My ash collects around the fingertips,
waiting for the grand canal.

Most of the snow has melted now,
gray dough-banks ****** on curbs
under a wind-lacquered gloss.

The Thai salt sits in me, hours after,
stirs thru blue yarn veins,
sharp in the stomach's wax-pit.

Night declines when lamps snap on:
dead, reclusive salmon eyes that broadcast
onto the cold screens dotting the walk.

I haven't seen anyone for so many days -
my tongue is still as a lake skin.
Lost hearts voyage in whitened dunes

of all my yesterdays. The winter pattern
is so quiet. I am a crease in the fabric,
a black ache in the ruined prism.

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." -John 1:5

I find whisky grammar in the cold sluices,
in the curve of the thickened glass-ash.

The bourbon cask gave its woody soul
to the barley spirit, to the amber shadow.

The New Year comes but I reject it;
the sun-ball drifts yellowing like an old page,

the moon rises like a bleached skull.
Ireland came and went, full of green iron secrets.

My life was full, but now it is empty.
I live in a high room full of guitars,

full of alcohol, full of deathly ulcers,
full of Plath and her sweet ether.

The air is seared. The water boils.
The witch shakes her hazel wand,

& demons sigh in resignation - why bother?
Humans move the darkness in little pieces.

Somewhere in Sicily, in Silesia, in Kent,
my blood is moving without me. My blood -

it's loving another. It's never had a headache.
It actually lives a full life, somewhere else,

that good red life. But not here: Here,
I drink in the old cemetery, with the blurry pebbles.

Bruisy clouds slouch across a grayed glower
on a brisk, anesthetized Tuesday.

All these people, coming and going on the walk,
ignoring the sobs of the frayed man who digs

squelched cigarette butts out of the mulch
packing the dead-headed elm at the bus stop.

I cook a small lunch that threads the studio
with citrus fingers, above the coal painting

that dries flat on the Sicilian game table,
but my mind is elsewhere. I am thousands

of miles from this bricked-in niche where scotch
and stout stand sentinel on the granite bar:

I am walking step by step through Lansdowne,
past the silent salt-nose of each slate-slanted house,

on my way to the sand where the power plant
reaches upward with muscled black arms

so that even the froth withdraws into a curtain
of coming rain... strange, always a gray rain,

that comes so quickly. It heavies the sweater
of the yellowed dog-walker, steadies the rasp

of the cigarette digger, peppers the mirror
that spreads its silver shell across the asphalt.

This littling rain calls me back from Sandymount
and its endless bench. The black paint is dry now,

& the old year has died, flung to the floor like a rag
you cough into when you breathe the wrong way.

A year ago today,
I walked the dark canal bank,
water chopping the long stone
as we went to the grocery
& bought wine and meat.

We cooked, fed each other,
as the wind came down
to shake the branch.
My mouth was full of love.
My hands played cat's cradle with fire.

Oh, love: you were a camera,
shutter snapping my best days.
I posed against Wilde's grave,
when the magpie played
with your blue boot.

You caught me against the red trees,
you caught me in the flat green.
You caught me among the rare books
scented with old glue, you caught me
with a Guinness in my hand.

It happened a year ago,
but it could have been this morning.
It could have been twenty year ago.
My life has not moved on, at all.
I see other women and feel nothing.

My Irish and Turkish girl:
What did you do to me?
The swans in the canal glanced my way,
the distillery cooked their malt and grain,
& my life froze forever in a high, foreign place.

A year ago I stepped into the green coffin.  
The Grand Canal was so sweet beside my feet,
by the one-winged bridge. Then the ocean
receded, a long sand-salt, beckoning.

Now, I am in the long black river city.
The leaves fall to their little deaths
on the illuminated sidewalk after five.
The twilight bull charges in on deadened fog.

The Wharf's anesthesia blanks out
while new yuppies roast smores in fake fire.
A blue tree shines from the reflection.
Cars park in yellow spots, music dies away.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day
that I flew to the emerald. Now I just air fry
sweet potatoes, listening to old Bowie,
shedding blood into the dead rug.

I miss my green coffin. I laid there so still,
so quiet. I heard the birds and the drunks
in the early morning, crying out; I miss them.
I took the train back from Phoenix Park,

where the cross recited a towering prayer above me.
I walked among the O'Connell shoppers,
the Georgian families, the sweet swans...
I have become nothing at all. Nothing, at all.