PINK HIGH HEEL SHOES

I remember drinking
pink champagne

from your pink
high heel shoes.

I remember making love
with you

wearing only
your pink high heel shoes.

I remember
how your pink high heel shoes

became

candle holders
ashtrays
(where you stashed your hash)

deadly weapons
in an...OW!...row!

& you ask me
do I remember

your pink high heel shoes?

Do I?
I do!

OG

'...og! '

You command
the language

&
it

obeys you.

Providing you
with a dog.

A sleepy dog
who when he hears you

wakes up
trundles over to you

slumps
at your feet

& then
goes back to sleep.

You
the Queen of Words.

'Ahhhh...og! '

you stroke
the word

& it obeys
your every whim.

'Dog! '
I say.

He opens an eye
&...looks away

as if to say:
'Who's him...then? '

Ahhhh....my little cave girl
I love

your little explorings
of the tongue

and how
the world comes

when it is bidden.

'Dada! '
you pronounce

& I
too

come at once
tied to

the invisible string
of your

voice.

CREATING YOU

The seconds flock
about me

nibbling at the Who I Am
time devouring my existence.

My dreams walk around
naked.

A sky lies asleep
in a window.

My shadow crawls
up the walls

as if it longed
to escape  me.

The mirror shows a stranger
wearing my face.

In the candle's flicker I
live frame by frame

in a black and white
celluloid  world.

I can only touch you
with language

hold you
with words

create you time
and time again

as you come alive
walk about in my sentences.

As long as I write
you are living.

I dreading the final
full stop.

I see you
walk away

into an ellipsis'
footsteps

you fading into
its dot dot dot

on the snow drift
of a page

MUSIC HEARD FAINTLY ON THE EDGE OF SOUND

The air looked
startled by the thunder

lightning ripped
the sky apart

easy as paper.

Later the evening
wore an ugly bruise

as if Heaven
had been badly beaten up

& left for dead.

The horizon remained
tight lipped

even the crows
refused to caw.

The trees said nothing.

The man
nursed his pain

like a drunk
over a slow gin

retracing his footsteps
to the car

sat inside
as darkness fell

& cried
softly to himself.

WHAT THE FIRE SAID

the voice of the fire
cackling with delight
as we feed it twigs

twigs & sticks twigs&sticks
the fire eats 'em all up &
still wants more

the fire whispers
felling faint with hunger
we give it a log to gnaw on

"MY LOVE IS AS A FEVER..."

All that long hot summer through
I shared a summer cold with you

that seemed to last forever.

Whether, sharing the same germs, dreams,
bacteria or whatever

it seemed to bind us so...very close together.

If this was love...it couldn't get no better.

And all my heart
could say

even to this day...is:

'Bless you...bless you...bless you.'

BAREFOOT

I follow the road
of my father’s voice

journey with him
along white roads...over green fields

barefoot
to school & back

(shoes if at all...worn only to church)

picking up the cuts & scabs
stubbed toes

his going to school
would entail

in the early years of the 1920’s
only so much history to me

real
to him

his toes
knowing the wind
in the grass

for what it is

his toes
clasping a rock
fording a stream

Irish & poems
bubbling through his head

babbling along
the tongue

words thrown to
those lost summer skies

startling a blackbird
spouting his poetry

with poetry
of his own

(3 miles to school...3 miles back)

his mind a skimmed stone
dancing along a river

over unforgiving
stones

thorns attacking his feet
with undisguised relish

the vehemence of glass
glinting greedily

for the next footstep

the menace
of the twisted rusty nail

& its treachery
betraying the next footfall

as he walks over
the unremitting years

into my eyes
wide with wonder

listening to him
tell of himself

as a little boy

to his little boy
the me of then

my eyes now

following the road
of my father’s voice

as it wanders
barefoot