Reviewing: THE SITUATION

somehow
summer
was losing it

forgetting her lines
missing
her cues

putting on a well
below par performance
having to be prompted

becoming
a bit of
an embarrassment

then: one day summer
just didn't show
the day panicked

Autumn, who had been
understudying summer
declared to God

she could play her
she knew
the part by heart

word perfect
could play her
in her sleep

so Autumn
far too early
in the run

put in a performance
that was - well. . .
just  not summer

stars began to look
more brittle...colder
leaves bled red

couples cuddled closer
more for warmth
than...the other thing

me who
had a front row seat
up at the old lake

put in a tired review
"They just don't
make a summer

like they
****** well
used to!"

LOOKING FOR A GOD
( for Shyam )

I pray only
to the God
of this poem

for free passage
from word
to word

as I journey
through the vast space
between thought

& thought
speak to the sound
trying to translate

syllable by syllable
what the moment
is saying

what the moment
wants to say
and see that

it says it
in its own voice
or as near as

I can
get it
...******!

WORLDS AT ONCE

I watch you
sleeping
in the mirror

& touch
your image
& you echo it

only your laughter
inhabiting both
worlds at once

on the other side
of nowhere
a dream away

the mirror
laughs
in its sleep

"IS MISE DÓMHNALL SALACH!"
("I am ***** Dónall")

"Dómhnall Óg!"
he always call me
by my name in Irish

and indeed
young Dónall
I always was

until chased
by a giant
dragonfly

into a pool
where cows
moo and drink

a cow lifts
a tail and
does what it does

on my astonished
head as it too
laughs at us humans

Uncle laughs so
hard he falls in
himself

"Dómhnall Salach!"
he now names me
"***** Dónall!"

a dragonfly sneers
"Do you feel lucky
well, punk do ya?"

"MARBLES...PYJAMAS AND JAM!"

wake up at 3 of the clock
eat jam in my pyjamas from the jar
play marbles with an imaginary friend

he wins...again
this the grown up world
of a four year old

acting like a grown up
time mine
to play with

*

"Marbles...pyjamas and jam!" I chanted to myself to announce the new me I had become.

I remember getting out of bed in my striped pyjamas and  going downstairs and eating the jam out with a spoon( forget the bread) and then having a game of marbles by myself...first taking one shot and then moving over and becoming my invisible opponent and taking his shot. My imaginary friend winning all the time.

This was at 3 in the morning and felt very scary and daring and so grown up because I was deciding what time and what to do for myself even if it was 3 O' ****** clock in the morning.

I had envied grown ups and their not having to go to bed by nine and be able to stay up and be themselves. I could hear them laughing downstairs...having I supposed....the time of their lives.

So now I sang myself into my four year old adulthood with "Marbles...pyjamas...and jam!"

Because that's the kind of kid I am.

Now the wind wails through the ruins of the house howling that "Home is...an absence." My new mantra.  And outside the house (that isn't there no more)( invisible to everyone but me) I would have ghost girls jump to a skipping rope chanting my "Marbles...pyjamas and jam!" as a rhyme. Skipping in time.

"And this one's OUT!" they all shout and scatter away like little marbles being hit by a sacred scared twa.

THE SHAPE OF HER LONELINESS

she looked at herself
as if she were someone else
looking at herself

"I'm me & not me!"
she thought on her third whiskey
soon she was nobody

she stared intently
into nothing
Nothing stared back

song on the jukebox
colouring in
her sadness

the song her song
poured itself slowly
into the shape of her loneliness

she cried
without crying
great big invisible tears

she was playing at Life
as if it were a game
she didn't know the rules to

"Oh feet..!" she intoned drunkenly
". . .take me home!"
the street seemed to know the way

her female footfalls
echoing into
his male footsteps

she stood still
under a street light
"Beam me up!" she smiled

*

Under the influence of the drink and the song she took stock of her self and found herself incredibly lonely and that she didn't know her self and that somehow she had mislaid her life. Walking home with her husband she suddenly thought she wanted to do something with her life and that she wasn't happy. When they came to a street light she stood under it and with a whimiscal notion shouted out the old Star Trek line...."BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!"

She said this was the moment she made up her mind to leave the marriage and start life again on her own and on her own terms.
The song by the way was Elkie Brooks singing WE DON'T CRY OUT LOUD.

I CHAMENI STIGMI
(THE LOST MOMENT)

the mountain
places a cloud
behind its head

dozes off
into the blue
of an afternoon

the father's shadow
watches his child
pedal a trike

chasing a chicken
in circles
laughing hysterically

this a moment
that will vanish
into a Greek sky

that only
a passing poet
will notice enough

in his head where
words will
re-enact it endlessly

even as time
fades and
years vanish

and the French lady
states that reality is
'les mensonges et les larmes'.

*

Finally got around to these fragments that came together in a moment after 40 years! But as the Greeks would have it. . . "Αγάλι-αγάλι γίνεται η αγουρίδα μέλι."

"Agáli-agáli yínete i agourída méli"

“The unripe grape becomes sweet like honey slowly-slowly.”