I wanna be able to sleep again.
I wanna be at peace again
I wanna feel your embrace again
I wanna feel secure again
I wanna feel alive again
I wanna be me again.

It is like I have been thrown into a washing machine and put into an endless cycle
You sing me beauty but feed me poison
I yearn to hear your voice but am tormented by your actions
You push me just enough so I don't fall, and leave me on a cliff hanger
Maybe it's because a straight line doesn't give me a heartbeat.

I wore his hat backwards,
And laughed at everything he said.
And my thought hung in the air,
If he'd be taking me to bed.

Put your heart out there,
Put your whole self out there,
Just leave things, let them be,
Cause goodbye kisses are the sweetest thing to me.

And see you soon.

Bridget was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.

What's known of Nellie's early years?
Da died before her grieving tears,
But burn her eyes in later years.

She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her visage blurred,
Her eyes look distant,
Yet recognizable
In an instant.

She attended school for six short years,
The three R's, some Irish,
And a Doctorate in tears.

Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God, Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.

At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie
To relieve their worry.

War flared up, and men were few,
So the work in Coventry
Left Ireland's thistles to bloom.

Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin were carried.
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
To work the flax mill again.

The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself a generator.
And powered the lights and the wheel.

Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Father's angel.
(Is this what turns
A father strange?)

Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no family borders
For brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

We left for Canada.

Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland in familiar songs.

Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.

Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.

My sweet angel I fear with the stones I shall remain,
I am doomed to repeat this unhappy existence,
Where my memory lives on when the vines and the leaves are gone,
And I become inhuman, merely an energy

My love the warmth of your skin and the melody of your song,
Will haunt my being while I haunt the living,
These brick walls, this concrete jungle, this manufactured light
From where I come I shall return

And I may never ascend in this lifetime
I may never leave the next one

My summer seraph who guards the one who wears the crown,
Who smiles at the trumpet Gabriel plays as she makes her way back home,
And gates open, pearly and golden, and to those trapped in this cycle unknown,
I shall be caught in a never ending story when my ability to speak has gone

My sweet angel, soft voices, feather hair, and love,
I only want to hear what is better left unsaid,
How can I know that when I die, my body, my blood
I will not become a ghost, still with desire to touch you?

And my memories live on imprinted in stones, and cobble walkways, and iron-wrought fences
When I wish nothing more than to be forgotten, and to forget
I may never ascend in this lifetime
I may never leave the next one

I've grown disheartened
Maybe light that shines so bright
Will only leave you blind
And all my words like all my feelings
Are misunderstood

I've grown tired
And in the five minutes it took
To write this poem
About how my mercury is in libra
But my Venus is scorpio

I've grown disillusioned
Because all my love is wasted
It's only water
It's only reflecting pools and hurricanes
And waterfalls

So
Do
I

I've grown
To be broken
And I am the water that smashes onto the rocks below

There was a river, near  my village home
a perennial silver memory of my childhood
in which my mind  still in hallucinations swims,
a life line once ,no more exists,  because of our sins
alas no one recognized her might,when she was
alive and full, roared  tigress like through ravines.

From above the hills, a girdle of gleaming silver
comely like a village belle on her way to the market,
in that jungle village they never noticed her charm
or the amble through rocky paths and an occasional prance

From the hill roaring aloud she jumped down,
ran through the sand bed in mirth, on  both sides
coconut groves and rice fields performed welcome dance,
but times changed, they daily removed sand in truck loads
as we watched in pain  the river turned to a mere rivulet
one day the river became a myth, a tearful story to tell.

There was a river once for our childhood whims to swim
for beauty in the form of lush green to come, stay near the stream
a river of plenty that we thought was ours  for all the times to come
it's now a distant memory, seems like an unreal  sad dream.