After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun

last night
as I soaked my feet
       in hot water and fragrant oils
           put on some
              Bollywood tunes
           and let my hips
         start to sway
my head began
to swoon
and the binding
threads holding me so tight
inside myself
      began to fray
          my chest opening in
             rips and starts
                 to reveal its valves
             in engorged release
       of dark magenta shadows
of teasing, gnashing inner beasts
while this was going on
the moon lit up
around me
      in its eight different phases
its halves and crescents
        shimmering    
in incense-scented cadence
my fingers reached out
to stroke each one,
          unique in its own heated glow              
                          as I realized that
               they will never cease,
these sequined
streams of joy
in embroidered flow
as long as we are connected
            to the root point of self
the love pumps quiet fire
                         in our veins
           even when trapped    
in slamming undertow
     pressed tornado slab
                              of pain
and I have had my face
pressed under watery surfaces
for such a long time
that suffocation
almost feels like
        breathing
so it's time to
move these hips and thighs
                and get this soulspark
                                                 reeling

One fleeting chance to catch you between trapezes
Yet my head was bowed, my thoughts immersed
In another dream of another life that i longed to live
A moments lapse careers you to that downward spiral
Through all those safety nets, all those webs we wove
Once so secure borne from our labour, love and toil
Exposed now like a promise of night through a civil dawn
As you fall through each of my declarations of trust
You blow out the candles and knock out the lights
Of celebrations and occasions now shattered like glass

Blackness descending through this never blinking eye
As those moments and time perpetually relive yet resist
The blood still refusing to flow freely through my veins
As i sit and wait for this evening coffee to run cold
That i may embrace the sanctuary of night once more
For I was one that could never dream in the dark
No more than one who could ever make amends
Between those two trapezes that signaled our end