LIGHT ON WATER

Memory cuts up the past
sticks it back together

this the wrong way up
that the right way down

this year
to that sky

the tear away thrown away
callender that lies

here a voice
with no picture

here pictures
without voices

just the sense
of what has been

the real and yet
the not real

stranded now
in whatever year

time refusing to be
pinned down

your laughter stitched
into a burst of bird song

written upon a sky
that will be a forever

a patchwork quilt
of days

the constant writing
over what has past

a  palimpsest
of the mind.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Walt Whitman
walks by me
somewhere in 1892

I nod to him...he nods to me
lost in himself
Clinton is being inaugurated

Brooklyn Bridge
saunters by
dressed in the summer of '67

the subway
wears its best graffiti
the music of trains and Coltrane

the Flatiron Building is jaywalking
the Empire State
chats him up

a child's hopscotch
almost washed away
a moment's masterpiece

Robert Moses
looks across Long Island
longs to build the city only he sees

he gazes into my future
I look into his past
I pass Robert Mapplethorpe

a man in a white suit
nailed to the darkness
by so many stars

an old saxophone player busks
Rogers and Hart in Central Park
"...I didn't know what time it was..."

two obese Chinese
take up too much of the sidewalk
both speaking fluent - Irish?

"Leaves of Grass"
lies scattered across the road
read now by the wind

a car caught in traffic
blares out Joel's
"New York State of Mind"

I laugh at such
a happenstance
a walk-on-part in my own movie

escaping the borders
of the body
I walk through times

I am all the times
of the world
they intersect in self

Walt and I
sitting on a park bench
waiting to go somewhere else

an 1990's rain
falls on an 1870's NY
they are beginning Brooklyn Bridge

I meet my self
coming and going
an older and a younger me

time held prisoner on the wrist
I turn and walk away
into this the newest of centuries

BRIAN DEMPSEY'S BROTHER

so - I see
you are the future
people of a 1000 years

beyond me
my words see you
even though I can not

I am the long dead
how curious it is
to be so

and to have you
read me
or of my ever

thinking that
you would
hear my paper voice

finding it hard to believe
this scribbled scrap of paper
could outlive the mind that. . .

never mind
never mind
so you are the new

here and now

and I am
not
am nothing

my only merit
being this
somehow survived

an ordinary
human
from 2017

paper I
must assume is
an outdated mode

of transport
for thought
or word

I am as precious
as papyri to you
my future archeologist

maybe now
mind merely talks to mind
and so you are amazed

to find me
wandering about in country dark
the wind roaring in French

as it prowls and howls
about a house somewhere near
Saint-Priest-des-Champs

I mock the storm
howling at the death
of a loved one

to a night that does not care
It is like I have
never been. . .

so people of a 1000 years
from now
all you can know

is that I was
Brian Dempsey's
brother

and that a night
finds me here
in my despair

calling out his name
the only thing
I own

I am
just this
side of sane

perhaps by now
you have
abolished death

and life goes on
and on and on
without end

or even eased
despair
to such an extent that. . .


here there is a tear
and words alas lost
to what men

used to call time
and to a creature called
a mouse

fire...
a fragment of a mind
reconstructed from

what documents
could be
found

all we know for certain is
that he was
Brian Dempsey's brother

and that seemed to be
his only reason
for existence

and what
we can only
wonder

was this thing
the writer calls
"...despair"

A TIDY MAN

My  ghost came
to see me off.

"Just thought I
would introduce myself.

"You see...I'm you
in a few hours time

when you've shaken off
( as the cliche goes )

this mortal coil
as it were."

"Is this the done thing?"
I enquired politely

"...not too sure of
the protocol...so to speak?"

"I'm not used to being dead..."
I excused myself.

"Oh it's the new Heavenly Scheme
introduced by Him Above!"

I tried to catch my breath.
Found I couldn't.

"Oh well...let's
get on with it!"

So I hung my soul up
on the back of the door.

The wardrobe was packed tight
with all the selves I'd ever been.

I folded my life up
neatly.

I was always
and forever

a tidy man.

LOVE REMEMBERED

all that remains
her cigarette smoke
crawling lazily to the ceiling

her footsteps
echoing down the hall
the angry slam of a red door

from the pavement floats up
the clickity-clack of red stilettos
the Morse Code for loss

a Focus LP
caught on a scratch
caught on a scratch

the same pale pink
lipstick kiss
on cigarette and champagne glass

rain falling now
in the open window
wetting the still sleeping cat

a church bell
scatters crows
a drunk staggers down the road

the end never appears
to be the end and then
it just is

I stumble against the record player
Focus get back into the groove
"...'round goes the gossip...'.round goes the gossip..."

BABY! I WAS BLOWING WITH YA ALL THE WAY!

Daddy's sax
croons to the baby
only thing that sends her to sleep

Daddy's sax
unplayed for years
given to the newspaper boy

Daddy's sax
alive again
in the hands of the newspaper boy

God that newspaper boy
can make that sax talk
"Swing it daddy...swing it!"

newspaper boy
becomes sax player
Daddy's sax in heaven

Daddy's sax
making the young girls
cry

Daddy's sax
its long journey
a litany of notes

*

Famous sax player came backstage after Billie Whitelaw's riveting performance in Sam Beckett's NOT I and said: "BABY I WAS BLOWING WITH YA ALL THE WAY!" I was looking after a little old lady and she used to play all these jazz records endlessly w
hich is where the story of the journey of her Dad's sax emerges from the darkness of time and glows in my mind like a glorious sax solo.

LET SLEEPING PTERODACTYLS LIE

rusted scythe
perched on a nail
high up on a wall

a sleeping pterodactyl
I can't stop myself touching
it to see if it is - real

smacks its lips
laps up my blood
from my foolish fingertip

deceived by shadows
it's grin glinting
the smile come alive

the ghost of a horse
whinnies in the stable
that's gone long gone

the then
merging into
the now

or maybe
Mr. Death
too tired to go on

hangs up
the instrument of his trade
time to retire the old bones

“No way
to make a living!”
I hear him say

I back slowly away
blinded by the sunlight
that screams. . ."Run!"