LIKE MUSIC MADE VISIBLE

you forever always
like music
made visible

running through my thoughts
memory's shaky
home movie

here a grinning granny
with half a head
most of the time

or an uncle
with a cloud
upon his head

there the camera elects
to look at
only the grass

or an aunt
always on the edge
of a frame

quiet but not quite
one of the
almost theres

an uncle
merely represented by
his shiny new shoes

and a sudden falling
shot of skies
and a passing bird


these black and white people
in their black and white world
moving through silence

as if they were swimming
through time
flirting now

or shying from
the camera's
gaze

as the footage comes
to an abrupt:
stop

but you forever always
like music
made visible

WHAT THE CLOUDS ARE THINKING

"Huggin!"

"Muninn!"

We call our dogs
and they come running

black black
as ravens

faster than thought
and memory.

Excited they tell me
of all the many

smells
they have encountered.

What it is like
to just run

for no other purpose
than the running.

They see the world
through smell and speed.

Delight in
just being.

Outrunning the wind.

The sudden scratch
of a bramble across an eye

is a happenstance
that sees me

wearing a black eye patch
with a diamante twinkling.

I see the world better
with my one eye.

The other was too lazy.

"Yeah yeah...it's the world!
So what!"

Lazy eye easily
bored with perceiving.

Looking, but:
not seeing.

The dogs see me
as the reincarnation

of Odin.

The land is lost
in mist and myth.

The mist devouring
a man

with every footstep
the world erased.

Yet, I outpaced it
gazed once again

upon a moon madly
in love with its reflection.

Look up into the sky
the inside of a skull

that once belonged
to the great giant Ymir

whose death
made all life possible.

Odin and Vili and Ve
make soil from his flesh

bones become
mountains

blood becoming seas.

"See the clouds..?"
I tell my little girl

( already far more
ancient than I )

"They were once
Ymir's brains!"

She accepts all this
with great aplomb.

"I wonder..."
she ponders
"I wonder.. . .

what the clouds
are thinking?"

WATER'S LAUGHTER

She laughs like water
pours herself
into my embrace

takes
whatever shape
within these arm

I kiss her
with a love that
cannot harm her

me
the container
of who I am

holding her
love
like water's laughter

THE SOUL GOES FOR A STROLL

Uncle sleeps
with pursed lips
as if kissed  by a dream

perched upon
this kiss
a butterfly sits

as if an Uncle's lips
were the most natural
place for a butterfly to rest

or as if
it were an illustration
of the soul(a symbol)

in a magical book
that explained
such things

outside the trees
breathe gently
inhaling

& exhaling
a soft whisper
of wind

bees carve a map
out of the air
for other bees to see.

out on a limb
two birds
sit & chit chat.

a fox(unseen)
passes by  as if
it had never been

a big big bug
topples off the top
of a tiny stone

onto its back
wriggling its arms & legs
as if it were trying to

swim
through the currents
of its fear

one of the gossiping birds
sees him as a tasty treat
eats him

Inside the house's
El Greco shadows
a kitten

exploring the newness
of the world it finds
itself in

jumps onto
the sleeping statue
of an Uncle

with a butterfly
perched upon
its lips

kitten tumbles
ooops
into my Uncle's crotch

before climbing
the mountainside
that is his chest

takes a swipe
at the soul
pretending to be a butterfly

just as my Uncle
awakens
to this reality

& his soul
flits just
out of reach

between
the fireplace
& the mantlepiece

HOW GRAMPS AND  GRANMA GOT TOGETHER

she had an ego
that could be seen
from space

a mind that could strip
an apple of its skin
in one perfect coil

but today she was feeling
like a faded
carbon copy of herself

and it was this
vulnerability
that so unnerved the others

not knowing whether
it was a ruse or a trick
on her part

could she really
have a heart when
she was not biting heads off

I not being afraid of her
I dared to take
care of her

she too surprised
that I simply
walked around her defences

as if they weren't
there and won her
with a simple "You ok?"

BECOMING LADY MACBETH.
( "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" - Act 5, scene 1 MACBETH )


dawn chorus
switch on kettle
for first cup of coffee

but what's this
white kettle
streaked with blood

I have stepped into
a gory horror
real life movie

an hallucination
but how can
a kettle bleed

and now I see
my hands
bathed in blood

glistening...shining
more readily red
than can be imagined

I have become
Lady Macbeth
the play come alive

I can still smell
my own blood
"Oh, oh, oh!"

****** my ****** hands
under the running tap
discover the deep cut

my right hand thumb
it would appear
the culprit

"All the perfumes
of Arabia will not
sweeten this little..."

how come
I cannot yet tell
and yell

now that
the pain
decides to turn up

I act the part
to the hilt
discover that

pushing plastic
into an overflowing bin
cuts to the bone

who would have thought
indeed that this old poet
had so much blood in him


*
A plastic container that once contained olives and feta until devoured  squashed down into the bin not realising that its rim was super sharp and I didn't even feel the cut. Then turning back to the coffee making and lo and behold the horror unrolled the 'how can this be so' moments. And *******...so much...so much blood. As if the whole 12 pints in the human body had chosen to take up residence( squatters rights)in the thumb and to to a runner when the fisrst cut was the deepest.

...MO MHÁTHAIR...
( ...my mother... )

See? I walk... I exist. . .
in this new sunlight
despite your death

this morning
you will never know
somehow I persist

the world has turned
on its axis
leaving you behind

Death sits in your chair
I long to
**** it

everywhere I see you
cut out of the pages
of today's world

I enter this
moment - in a second it had
closed behind me: NO EXIT

**

First ever known  picture of Dónall the Dempsey. Yep...that's me all right...in her tummy! She said I was a gentleman and didn't show...but then I was a tiny little baby weighing in at only 2 lbs. Now my belly button weighs that!