Lumpy fields of fox hole heaved by a harrow,
Boulders drawn, lifted on break weather stall,
Bundles of crops strewn, wall stone shrapnel,
Within lines so drawn, only a few have fallen.

Sad kings would have themselves
Be known as Bard, tho without music
They sing, song, clang along, bleeding
Ears in their sycophantic, bull kingdoms,
The horns, hardly trumpet in the barnyards,
For it is writ, because they have so inscribed,
All must now be audience, and used witness,
The spotted fawn, is all their sorrowed brilliance,
Yet, the tower raven mocks these kings crowing,
How they vainly display their sorry proclamations
On flea broken, loosed, rusted, disused abacus,
Their tabulations of worths non are mounted
In a mirror by their chambers and hands,
But all the knowledge of fallen Rome
Are simply pleasures to dream,
As their dim wordy dreams
Know praises so hollow,
As fools on a throne.

I came to the pavilion of the big cats
And in the center was a palace ruin,
The walls were stone and feeble mortar,
The great, golden monarch was the lion.

With wisdom eyes, he gazed upon me,
I lowered my head as was my station,
He did not move, nor deign to care,
In His royal chamber I was under thrown.

I thought, you are caught my over lord,
But his stance said, these bars are scepter
And I heard him say with a long lost roar,
'Hear my horn, I am he, the storm of Jericho.'

In the palace of the mighty, indifferent, king
His thundering voice crackled the lambing
Stables and even heaven closed under ceiling
Dome and I was caged when the walls fell away
And the whole, blown world, remade— a zoo.

The first ones they killed were the poets.
They crowned themselves, the sterile
And sexless acorns who fell from the felled
And split the air, writing with bark,
Would have us not desire experience
But describing trees.  To the naked kings
The word is a wonder, a tool to be used
Like any other.  With a forge, they called
An altar, they pitted heaven and made miners
Of the Gods.  In high places they read
Their grounded works, sogged with rain
Water from a red wheelbarrow, they list
And bludgeon us with their hammered similes,
Scribe their poems, they are the painters of one
Colour and high priests of alchemy, turning
Salon into echelon.  When the falcon stoops
They name him hawk.  Standing ****, flat-footed,
In bumpy skin, their honks go unanswered,
For they are no kin to the swan that glides
And sometimes they remember that,

The first ones they killed were the poets,
When the sky is etherized, prose made
Verse and their subjects yawn the great
Slaving maw.  Steeped in stale erudition,
They man-scaped the garden, pulled out
The weeds and by their words, they decreed
That only grass should grow, in strident
Chorus they are ringing in the sheaves.
But their poems are only like poems.
The naked kings are clothed in word only.

In the thirsty kingdom, water spills
Stagnant from the stein and the droplets
Echo, "there's no there  .  .  . there."
Incestuously they christened
Each other, one hundred years of virgins
Making love with a dead word
They know not of— Poet!  Asters
Among the daisies, yet on the fields
Of praise, they shall deflower
Themselves and though they strut
And prance as stallions and mares,
You will know them by their brays.

So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.

The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.  

The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night.  Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.

O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.

The sea gulls— who fly in wanton
To the horizon, are a spirits
Calling, are sea songs falling
To my mind they falter— as I
Have known such cozen to the sun
That falls each day nor do I see
It rising.  My world is weighted,
Under, pass the lining of the quick,
By the mounted cloud which hangs silver
Over the plated night. The owl,
Whose eyes of Janus tails, when wanes
The lids, tied to crescent holey
Whelm of malevolent moon,

Praise over me, with wooly wings,
Is silent as shadow.  I may strut or run
But they do come as the shadows will
With cahooting sun, and the blotting
Bald faced moon, chiaroscuro—
The days feign and heaven pales under
The wake of the luna sea.

       In darkest daylight
I shamble toward the flat horizon
Where the seabirds fly, till their ends,
I take two-faced my faulty comfort
As I see them, falter, falling, yet never
Do they touch the gloaming ground.

I am alone with you.
A fire burns in the distance
It lights our faces
As before in the empty cinema,
Where we arrived, at some beginning
To watch a foreign film. Our eyes,
In new utterance, murmuring subtitles,  
What words could never speak
The tips of seats, rows of air
And the moony screen,
A tableau of feathers and cloud
Two of us, alone, as one
Rapt in the spread of wings.

Later, alone we dine in the Café  
Campagne. Our conversation  
Deafens a burgeoning crowd
Coffee was nectar, our words  
Were whispering petals.
Dearest Blodeuwedd, I saw the sweetest  
Sorrow on your face, the green ocean
In your eyes, I was cleansed  
By your tears.  I have always
Known you.

Across the border on the far island,
You stepped into the waters with me
And when you disrobed you lit the stars
And the stars and my eyes kissed your skin
Your slender legs, columns that taught  
The Greeks in Helens age, touched the water  
And the sky. I saw the milky way that night.

Síneánn, I am your Pablo
We are two white birds sailing
Over the foam of the sea.
Solvent to my stone you are the hinge  
To my casement world.  Rain petal
Voice, lithe, alabaster woman,
I am lost in your Sargasso eyes  
I hold your skin, my Selkie
Sweet Niamh, I have lived  
One hundred years this week.

It is warm in the distance
In the country of the sun
We end at the house in Umbria
In the autumn, there is no word
Siberia, my light Rosaleen.
Now is harvest time.  
At the great table we feast  
With family and friends  
And I am not alone with you.

Raven haired woman—
Bathes in lake with sinking moon,
Black swan drowning light.

I feel the shrug of the passing winds,
That gather beyond my solemn place,
Where indifferent birds fly to and from,
With only lost dreams, real as her face.

In a flower field—
Blue irises, tendril hairs,
Saw her disappear.

Coastal mist and mountains blue as ache—
Troubled waters in midair, streaming across
Such mirage of openness and tangled range,
When will the gathering skies sing me aloft?

In the dark room
Sparks fire—
Whispers of the sun
And silence blankets the sky,
I was born amongst the ruins
Of gentleness and wounded love,
By the dug kurgans of the Amazon,
The brands of rains ever burning
And foils of hope, fated, turning,
An outer beast eyes and howls,
The merciless stars ever sweep
And cowl in coldest sparkle flame,
Merest minded words, fainted, stab,
Drop in the down volumes of space
Evaporating under the brooding
Mortal emptiness.