What do I need to know you?
Only what I'm looking at right now.

Not just so called surface either;
Your dark and light bewitch like night.
Your mind of many colours, shades
The anger, frowns and fists of feelings,
Rage
And cutting edges bearing down.

But still the glorious shadow
And the light:

The adolescence of old age.

A moment not long ago life was perfect,
meaning, you were permanent.
Feeling like the world and what might control it had done justice.
Making everything less important,
being just us.

Once quite a while ago life was about living.
Living life longing for no more than needed.
Its memories, fogged by what grew from underneath it.

Between this chaos a whisper calls.
This voice, telling me it wishes time stalls.
To find within this pandemonium, a moment about me.
A moment, for once, to seek some clarity.

Lost in a playlist put on shuffle.
My life, not rough, but kinda dull
My longing for peace, my need to heal,
it's now I start to feel.

I need a moment.
Just one.
one for me.
for once.

what must i do,
to break free,
from the suffocating shackles of this mind.
To truly live,
to silence all doubt,
and end this lingering worry.
What must i do?

It was on October 19th
in 1953 Dylan Thomas
took to the stage at city
college NYC. An usher
asked if he could take
his coat, the poet said
no, adding that it was
many the good bottle
got lost because of that.

Today, sixty two years
later at The Marina Hall
Cork City close to where
I am performing singing
reciting and busking I had
occasion to avail of the
disabled WC where I was
to discover no toilet paper.
Many a sock* I lost over this.




The Proscribed Poet
8th March 2025
Reciting at The Marina
Cork City Ireland.

i am a willow tree swaying in the wind
storms and strong winds have flown around me.
but here I stay.
for I am a force, and cannot be withered away.
no lightening, no thunder, no tornado or rain
could make me be any less than I am
for I am a willow tree.

I remember
a summer of water colors
softly lit
by the light of the sun
Holding hands
along the lake’s hidden beaches
Waltzing in the twilight
when the day was done