Emerging like an aftertaste:
I only notice now
how sober a light
streams through
the curtains to
smear your cheek
In a milk white wash.

You far off there
wrapped in blankets
like a parcel,
limp limbs wrapped
around and about me,
the bent legs
and elbows jutting
in every direction.

A black trickle of hair
pillowclung,
Peppers its fragrance
like the soft tang
that gingerbread
imparts on the mouth.

We, wordless
and breathless,
were more than a little
ill suited to this,
like two sprawling dogs
on a hot trampoline.

In the city again
and it feels less novel than ever.

In the city again
waking up in my lovers bed,
she is still and soft like a loaf of bread.

In the city again
where people who are
busy, breathless and caffeinated
do not say hello.

In the city again
Where weeds wither on
a green roundabout,
where posh elongated vowels  
assault my ears
like a cold blue breeze.

In the city again
where political graffiti
and the same 3 tags
cover all like a blanket,
where yellow buses dissolve into the night.

In the city again
Where ancient corduroy clad men
stumble out of churches,
Where a secretary leaves a memo
for the manger,
where tinkers temp tourists
Onto a horsedrawncart.

In the city again
under the days dark weight again,
where we all attain
the usual filth under the fingernails.

In the city again
and it feels almost like a home.

They don't have our song
in the jukebox,
don't do that drink you drink,
the one with the schnapps,
                        just beers
that gush down gops
of crumbling men,
but who hark on
as if trying to empty
the contents of their brains
onto the sticky surface of the floor.

We were soon to dislodge
ourselves from this
embarrassing embrace,
though longed to be
as permanent
as the trees:
Arcadian spectators
longing speechlessly to let
our discolored ancestors
live in a fortified mound of leaves.

A cigarette burning
at her elbow,
he proposed
“I will give you sponge cake and cider
in exchange for alcoholic lullabies.”

Too late for that now;
the stars pierced the pale vale
spread heavily
over an August night,

Far too late
She rose gauchely,
brushed sawdust from her cheeks
                        and wandered
out into the open,
into a reality that she knew then
would soon become
a stolid simple thing.

I admire the cluster
of photographs
hanging perfectly askew
as you carefully
put our preferred ingredients
between slabs of bread
that you place on plates
then place on the table.

Right now,
as the cat does a figure eight
around my legs
under the table,
you are one billion seconds old  
and have left the tea brewing for too long,
you say, assuaging:
'It takes on a slight bitter taste, but that's about it.'

Outside a country cottage,
where the road trails off like a song,
and the paint of its pebble-dash walls
play off the sky's complexion,
your indifferent eyes behold
the curdling clouds above
and scrutinize the strangers under them;
the expectations met like
a faulty firework firmly
mounted in the Earth.

In the garden stands
a Spaniard perplexed
by the novelty of fog
stranded on the hillside
and the absurdness of it
existing outside of a horror movie.
In the course of
a near imperceptible drizzle,
it seemed that the clouds
forgot how to float;
At other times, elsewhere, a refusal
to be so gentle,
to became fused with other things,
to be born from
the seepage of smoke
of more than a million chimneys,
some slink home through it
holding hand-cranked lamps,
others: smaller, older,
wrapped in white sheets,
cough up a whole city.

But we are not there,
we are outside this worn-out cottage,
where all the white cats have blue eyes,
where a bike rests and rusts on an oak tree,
where incredibility is murmured  
in hushed tones of veiled dialect,
where the conversation tapers off
like a half-learned hymn.

We amble on in.

Hard stomaching my insides
even before
these dull black undulations
of Guinness inside of me.

Sequestered in the echoes
of disembodied chatter,
the flagrant words
splutter to the floor;
whereas those same words were before
streamlined in marble aqueducts,
dispatched like love-songs to G-d;
meanwhile a door has opened.

I felt you take my temperature
in a fever-dream, I felt
even in dreams, your quart-clear hand
on a pale damp forehead;

The cold silver stethoscope
counting percussion in my chest,
with no whale-song nor rainfall,
no sound at all save for
the sirens and the foxbark.

Then after a while,
a night of mostly true silence
that left you with nothing to hear,
                 only the ****** functions:

Internal blood pulsations
rhythmically throbbing you find
some cells dying, others being born;
the anti-bodies of body,
the anti-thoughts of my mind.

She will make it better,
at least alleged to,
when, while her nocturnal
might she, with brown bandages
might have still acutely concealed
lips (now purple),
and the same eyes: Blue.
And I knew
that whenever the daylight lit,
didn't I slouch toward it
to be born?

Me, then, knowing no better,
to be warm,
and not yet cold,
not knowing of coldness
or anything at all,
any of it,
this 'this'.

When we shook off the mud,
and all in all in all, with
a wind westerly breaking
foreshadowing shatterings
of antarctic brass monkey *****.

Still some mutterings of mite,
practically blue and purple,
still some mutterings of 'might',
wherever first you felt a light go off
and slouched toward me,
with that stigmata your palm caught
in the crux of a rose-bush.

Wilting on a winter morning,
when foxholes sighed like
moon-creators that have
never know sunlight.

When all things thawed
and turned towards daylight
and shook away the frost;

Windblown brittle bird-nests quivering,
same wind that lashed your
goose-pimpled skin
beneath your raincoat,
your spine shivering,
beneath our blue creaked
lips twist two pairs
of gnashing white teeth
again,
This.

Wanting you mouth upon me
as if sprinkled in MSG,
I kept going back to it,
as if smothered in sugar,
tongue, licking it up quick,
like on a flickering candles wick,
I'll handle the blame,
carry the weight,
'till all worries drained away
like coffee granules strained
into the bottom
of your French press,
'I'll die in Paris' you say,
'in Montparnasse, maybe,
in November,
perhaps I'll haunt
that tiny old cinema
that only holds
12 creaking seats,
and stick the springs
into their backs.'

What is left of late?
Uttered the mouth out
to a sky, dull,
deadened with clouds,
snagged by cranes,
like scythes slicing heavenward;
49 crying horns sound.

What has happened?
Unhappily not happened?
What is left?
               Only the husk
and the head,
strange with sawdust,
and the eyes glace through glasses
as if through fog
at the rain,
    the rain,
    the rain,
the clogged drain.

'I'm told the dumb trace passes.'
said yourself, through the
pencil sketch of a smile.

With a passing glance of folly,
we, like gulls
mull over broken brollies.

Fluttering like bats abound,
each a failure to the
dampening shelter seekers,
their soul soaked,
their intentions drenched,
returning (rained on relentlessly)
     to their nest,
to dry,
to try and rest.

Alone now,
so could now,
the face felt
unsure whether
to freeze or melt.

Surveying the sky
whilst falling to the ground,
down I knelt.

It was when my waking eyes
shank into the dent in the bed
                                that I knew.

Torpid, little tense in the neck
the phone dead,
my hand snaking through
       a mesh of wires
to get to the muzzy
                  crux of it,
it was yourself
I turned up tangled in,
found ensnared, redrawn,
in throws, and throngs
            of a clonic cupidity.

That was us
who mangled in the night
like cobras with empty stomachs
Churning round
small nocturnal animals
         in the dark,
even in the dark,
I swore your skin was pellucid.

Sleepy-headed still,
I skedaddled outside
to swallow the rain,
and slumbery remember summer,
when I hopped as light
as bird from brier,
up rises my spirit,
down falls the foot
caked in muck,
schlepping slowly
through the mire.

You've slept in my bed
it seems, for as long
as memory serves,
just one of the many things on Earth
I've noticed and subsequently
           can't unnotice,
like the way in one hears a clock
tick.....tick.......tock......
only when one is listening.

I have noticed
that dent in my bed
grow into a dozing silhouette,
noticed the garden-gate
creek in F minor,
silver cobwebs in the loft,
               distant dogbarks
and a pomegranate stain
on your mother's blouse.

Once, so thickly laden
with expectancy,
                     now I know
that I am
                        no longer
                           Waiting.

Guarding the door,
like a bulbus Heimdall,
a blank pumpkin sits,
internally unhallowed,
without gashed gaping maw,
nor knife-notched nose,
nor eyeslits: triangular and odious.

Its inertia, serendipitous,
not for a moment did it greet
children asking
"Treat-or-Treat?!";
Never a one did it glow for.

Encased within, like
those stringy pumpkin guts,
is the puckish Pagan spirit,
craving bones ablaze in a fire;
Lost Loves manifested as moonlit
flaxen apparitions,
finding them Angelic
(yet unchanged),
easily as a ring
found in barmbrack.

A return to the turnip.

Ambling along ferns
rusted that same shade of pumpkin,
pondering the dead, and where
I long for them to reside now;
Rose, with her heaven,
Ryan, his Valhalla.

To each their Kingdom
of eternal inviolate peace.

Under a certain light,
with calm mollifying gleam,
at the touch of a hand
aphasia sets in quick,
sudden and sweet, and
submerged in a pool of milk,
I become a toy submarine.

When candles did die,
burnt to their wicks,
I hear you sing,
holding up half of my skies,
convulsive muscles flex,
as if a broken thing
was longing to be fixed.

Surly time stilled passed?
Though from its presence,
we were absentees,
too preoccupied with
our arms stretched outwards
weightless as bodies
on the Dead Sea.

A shaky hand that
possesses paper cuts
and letters of lovers' past
is bleeding brilliant
as a sunset.

Bespectacled milky eyes
twitch in and out
of consciousness
like a revolving door
with no exit.

Misshapen ballerina feet
seize up and cramp,
often their hue goes from
the colour of raw meat,
when until becoming still,
settle into blue.

Warmth goes,
the whole of the body
like a pound-shop doll
after too much play,
is reduced to
an artifact only to be
handled by white gloves,
in a dim room smelling faintly
of dust and mahogany.

In such rooms
often there are
recollections of
the whole of the body,
dancing dances
of rapture and grace
on the tips
of ballerina feet.

We should stop
meeting on rainy days
and for once
soak up some of that sun
we kept hearing about.

I don't mind it,
the rain,
when you're caught with me
in it,
a revelation under a raincoat;
It only takes a few drops
for you to glisten like
a stain-glass window.

Sometimes,
all it does is rain,
all we do is laugh.

Dressed in gray and pale,
blending into the clouds
like how a Sunday stew
gets into the air,
like how
love gets in your bones.

We could stop
meeting on rainy days
and drink moonlight
like it was absinthe,
indulging in
serenades and waltzes.

We shall have rainy days,
we shall have sunny days,
and when
all it does is rain,
all we'll do is laugh.

What name can I give you?
Surely there are none
and it is pointless to try,
like giving names to
celestial bodies,
or quantum particles.  

I thought I could capture it,
that the gaps would be filled in,
like space between
crocodile teeth
clasped on a zookeeper's hand.
I thought
If I could paint like Wyeth,
I'd have my Helga.

What name do I give you?

Maybe Odessa,
laughing on the crest of a wave,
dragged by purple currents,
among gulls on Earth,
and storms in the sea?

Perhaps Athena,
with gleaming eyes
and an owl in your hand?

Or Queen Maeve,
raw with beauty,
buried upright
facing your enemies?

Infeasible,
but it must be something,
for the shake of necessity,
So as to call out when
loitering on lake's edge,
or from across a room
when I see you there,
uncanny as my reflection
in a convex mirror.

I'll call it out.

It's not that I want to,
but that I do;
Just as frogs jump,
just as the tongue
pushes on the aching tooth,
I see Venice in
cheekbone crevices,
smell Vienna in a tangle of hair.

This tropism is
an elephant stomping
the marrow out of me,
and it's alright,
it feels good,
and Wisdom is her name.

I ate the whole world to find you.
Yesterday, and days before,
these are just bohemian villages to me,
where a boy flies a blue kite,
sees the sun on your back
and rainclouds in synecdoche.

Today, tomorrow,
but mostly today,
when the clogs blossom
yellow daffodils that
hide bare hairy heels,
bold and black
as Twiggy mascara.

A thousand phone calls later,
there won't be an answer.

For all our intermissions
were like cancer
ward smoke breaks.

Purple hands stained yellow,
with a dark blue mouth saying,

"Hold me, please just hold me".

Even if just for the warmth,
warmth which was
lacking here,
as cold as inside Russian tanks.

We hugged,
with all the surprise and violence
as an acid attack
on supermodels face,
we hugged.

Then after that,
tried as Latvian money,
half-alive in a ditch
pining over you,
the way a cat's tongue
pines for milk and breadcrumbs,
Tasted like salt, they did,
The tears that were shed,
Giving drinks to the mice.

The sun first rose
when I set sight on you,
the one who crushed up
all credence
with mortar and pestle,
pulverized until
finer than milky
Spanish sand
under the bare foot
of a fat British tourist,
gazing at half-buried
Camels mouthing
the words

"fumar mata."

In a desert,
I waited for dawn,
I danced for rain,
I thought of you,
and that somewhere
there was a little stray
dog lapping up puddle-water,
a Polish beer bottle pressed
to a drunkard's swollen lip,  
like a hose filling up
a plastic blue paddling pool,
while the children stood in the sun.

At the day's final stretch,
while Sarah, our
lady of circumstance
with Cherub's complexion,
shifted through the multitude,
trying to lay her lips on
every boy in the room.

Belladonna took my hand,
ambled down the field,
skipping over
any affairs of the heart.

I thought of mono,
of cold sores,
embarrassments
of a hazy morn'
and of the mob's eyes.

With no apologies
she went on
feasting away as a
red-bellied
stickleback would,
then carried out
Caesarean section
on walls of plastic,
on walls of flesh.

Laying there,
intimate as rotting wood,
one of us asked
"Do you do this often?"
the other aching forward
"Hardly ever."

Bent over double,
my spine crinkling
and made from tinfoil.

Like an old concertina,
you wheeze from
the stress of it all,
so do I, quietly
to myself.

You're startled upon
an anthill's discovery,
as if it were found in
a lover's rumpled bed.

Beetles clamber away,
away from the sweat,
from the sighs
given freely away
to Mother Earth,
or anyone who'll listen.

An emerald frog
springs from
a verdant patch,
into a wet ditch.

Unkind to the body,
is this toil,
but the thoughts roam,
like a pig in muck,
laughing,
if it could.

White cotton flowers
coat the ground,
like peckish gulls
         on a landfill,
or a sailor's corpse.

After tracks are made,
here left for there,
blood trickles
down shins,
knee-deep
in brambles.

The nest of the lark,
the hive of honeybee,
the owl doesn't dare,
the sweet tooth,
nor bare hand,
doesn't dare.

I go on walking,
with Quasimodo slouch,
feeling the spring
of the cracked ground,
kinetic and tepid,
under my own weight.

I could sleep
easy and dreamless,
away in a damp ditch,
pillow of frogs,
(still soft emeralds)
blanket of muck,
stiffening under
the sun on high,
shimmering soft and
red as a Bolshevik.

Then,
in 2,000 years,
I'll join them,
those who I saw
in a museum once,
with skin like
bog oak,
jaws ajar,
with eyes of dust,
they couldn't
look away.

She’s filled with colours.
They emanate as if
from a beehive,
fill this head,
make smooth all edges,
and borderlines of mine.

An orange August sun at dawn,
Risies like a lid.    

Wake me, wake me,
show me now,
please,
show me
colours again.

Oh, to grow!
the quickest I did it
was in those
first few weeks,
away in the womb,
but
if I was to grow
as fast as I did then,
by 50,
I'd surpass
Mount Everest.

How often people must get hit by ambulances,
ones like me and you,
under blissful high,
grey stones skimming through
curb to traffic island to Westmoreland Street
only hearing it's rhythm over the city's dull beat.

In such tranquility,
oh how oh how
would you be to blame
for not hearing the cries
out of her,
out of he,
screaming your name?

How often people must drown in lakes
Those who couldn't wait the hour
to avoid stitches and aches.
Don't leave me alone
my friends, such rocks, you
could sink like gray stones.

Cease to skim and sink
as when Brian's life,
under water thick and black
as a squids ink,
Appeared flashing by,
he was near certain of the day he'd died.

Warm daze, when you wore flowers in your hair,
sleepless nights with your shawl wrapped 'round us both,
under glowing moon, paradise was there,
the blue of the night from the undergrowth,
down a dark garden, so far from daylight,
sharing the night with the sounds from the wild,
if the howls frighten you, I'll grip you tight.
With black flowing hair, in perfect mess styled,
take me to the beach, bury me in sand,
don't you know you are my approaching tide?,
the broken finger on the other hand,
for you, all of my doors lay open wide,
to places unknown and all things unplanned,
we'll hide there in golden castles of sand.

All along the cove,
a rare pretty sight,
the beach, hot as a stove,
barely a breeze to fly a kite.

When strolling down the strand,
no matter how far I go,
always a few shoulder deep in sand,
thankful the tide is still low.

Inevitable company found here,
Whether wanted or not, fine,
men slugging warm beer,
women sipping white wine.

Lazy Sunday afternoon,
Here, no worry at all,
we leave having done so too soon,
all along the cove, just having a ball.

Candles.
Must get candles.
Did I get them before?
Sure where was I before?

I was nowhere.
Biting chunks out of the doors,
lumps out of the floor.
Try as I might,
I can't leave.

Now?

Not in this.
The snow's falling sideways.
The state of it,
all nimble and white.

A lot of tears last night;
and tonight?
No great difference,
but perhaps it could be worse?
Worse than before
I was nowhere.
Among the thorns,
incorporeal save for the
trampling anvil of brambles
rambling, rumbling,
pricking against the flesh,
the skin, in it's
folds and ridges,
veins and arteries
underneath and within,
without scandal,
I wriggle and wrangle
Against those thorns,
their tight strangle,
and this incongruous
state of affairs of mine,
for now.

Must get candles.

By fireplace,
growing colder,
the instinct coffee,
a soiled sorry bath,
had a foamy continent
he struggled to slurp down.

Shuffle down the hall,
shuffle off this mortal coil.

Trousers clung to the waist like
an autumn thing ready to die,
my mother about to cry,
clung to brittle hand and
brittle arm.

Her and I, in
parentheses
escorting
A coffin,
lungs lousy
with sawdust,
coughing up
black maladies in
silver spirals
to fade
In the air,
Always, and ever,
It seems,
The Christmas air.

Through the gloom,
The air's brisk bite
Shovelled through and
Down my throat.

As I stood with them,
But alone
Outside your window;
Inside,
Memory
Came back to a mind,
This mind,
Scatterbrained and
Singing lyrics we
Once bellowed to eachother.
You sing and laugh in there still.

The things done in that room which
I'll never set foot in again.

Catharsis and chocolate
Coat shingles of my mouths roof.
This is what happens
When you run out of nothing -
When only a Viking funeral pyar
Would do
For you,
All of you,
Even the parts you couldn't get back,
When you smoked a James Joyce,
While the nurse let you out
For a cigarette.

Girls in tears,
Boys choking on bones of regret.
We're just children
Wanting, teething, weeping;
With a few more grays,
A little less grace, and
Every heart swelling with love,
Bursting into song,
tears, flames.

In nights with no sleep,
Only conversation,
The morning was years away.

Thoughts about you,
songs about you,
These people about you,
no worries in this world
when they're about you,
nither do I,
I try,
I try not to try to try,
but you've settled down,
gotten comfortable
as if at home,
alone, dinner for one,
all up in my skeleton,
But did I made you up?
No -
you took me down
to the underlying
side of a
melting iceberg,
where the penguins sit upon it
as the sun beats away
like a burning want,
strange animalist desire -
There's no magnetic field on Mars,
There
I wouldn't be pulled
one way or the other way,
There we would
just drift, like
melting icebergs
along red sand,
along mountains
the height of Everest,
almost as high
As I hold
you in my mind,
My closed first,
An open mouth,
could wait,
but it's
adolescent
fantastic fanatic fantasy,
maybe once,
not now,
not later,
but after later
at least,
at last -
45 minute blissful stints
better
the days
after days
after days
of the dull,
and nights
underneath
nights
inside
nights
Of null.

‘What’s there to love if not the enigma?’
They sung among crescent waves
Or might as well have.  
One moment in the skull,
One moment in the gut.

In a yellow shade, she glowed,
Luminary.
I knew her beauty,
It came onto me in a paroxysm,
An armada of destroyers.

Echo of you,
Fountainhead of this, all this.
I'd drink from cupped hands,
If there was water in the well.

This place that was perfect,
That could never be,
I saw in her, the same utopia,
A thousand miles from you,
So perfectly close just then.

I knew her beauty,
All of it yours,
Not all of it there.
Her lips, your lips,
Her smile; her own.

The elephant in the room,
where do I even begin?
the room is an elephant.
It's walls, crumbled skin.

This room has no room
to talk, or to think.
Only show your true face,
When the elephant blinks.

The element of gloom,
as insecticide seeps in;
Deep, deep into groves,
In the cracks in our skin.

I would love to be with her,
Under heat of sun, and
Not these gloomy gray clouds.

I would love to walk with her,
On a sandy smooth beach, with
No rocks or a sewage stench.

I would love to laugh at her,
Fixed against a fridge's open door,
Instead of the slamming ones here.

I would love to see her soon,
All suntanned and golden, kissing
Me, impatient and pale -

Jamie F. Nugent

The blood dripped like syrup from a Maple tree.
Your lips sourced the earth.
This was nothing new to me,
But you it must have been your Halley's Comet.

I could not see you, could only feel you breathe.
You wrapped around my fingers like a jelly ring.
On the dresser sat my eyes, sat my teeth,
It's such a shame this only happens once.

- Jamie F. Nugent

The seventeenth of March
Is like our own little Christmas,
Thanksgiving, Independence Day,
And Fourth of July
All drunkenly rolled into one

When us Irish and wannabe Irish,
Sing our same old songs
Will repeat our tired mantra,
And do just what
The Irish are expected to do.

To watch nice green parades,
While sipping on nice green milkshakes.
To be drunkards and happy-go-lucky,
Doing our best Riverdance impression to fiddles,
Because everyone wants to be Irish.

Today we'll act like we only drink Guinness.
Where in a place full of craic and merriment,
There's still so much blood and tears.
Where the only snakes are pets or in zoos,
There's still so much venom.

Of course, there was never any snakes
Only metaphors for Pagans and Druidic priests,
And St. Pat wasn't even an Irishman,
Just a boy made into a slave by Irish pirates.
But everything always gets covered up nicely.

Stories get changed and sensitized,
Until the truth becomes a theory,
And fabrication becomes fact.
The truth begins to wear a veil,
Because it's considered so ugly.

The truth is also a beacon.
A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as the confessionals
Where a child's innocence was
Crippled by
The lukewarmness of the priest's
Hand over their mouth.

A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as a septic tank in Galway,
Filled with eight hundred dead babies,
Throw away,
Like ****, because they were
Equally unwanted.

A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as a night flight
To an English abortion clinic,
Because here it's not your body,
The righteous all knowing say
"That's not how it works here".

So drink your Guinness,
Sing The Dubliners,
Watch the parade go by,
Have the craic and
Turn off your flashlight.

My eyes shut,
My arm over her chest.
I could feel
The beat of her heart,
The flow of her blood,
The convulsions
Of her ribcage, like
Some suffacating fish.
When she jumped up,
That way she does
When her nightmares
Get the best of her.
Her nightmare stood
Beside the pillow,
Perfectly harmless,
With eight wire-like legs.
She stared with
Her widest eyes.
I told her I'll get rid of it,
But when I reached out,
It crawled away between
My bed and wall.
It entirely vanished.
I opened the blinds,
The window, and
Strached my arms down
The side of the bed,
And throw the
Imagary arachnid
Out into the world.
She asked if
I really did
Expel the spider,
She'd seen this
Track before,
I lied to her and
She asked me
To promise.

- Jamie F. Nugent

Rested upon blankets of wild blossoms,
Into her arms fell a swan like a stone,
It saw fear introduced into her lungs,
Caught in moments by one moment alone,
In the white rush of past experience,
As white feathers seduced her in false guise,
Into an all far from heavenly trance,
Beneath olive trees amidst all her sighs,
As if by the roots of those ancient trees,
She was pinned up and held down by his wings,
Ignored was all of her begging and plies,
Only for this to be the fall of kings,
And then she was left like a twisted thorn,
Never knowing what battles would be born.

Who broke my dove's wing?
For she does not fly now.
These days too, she'll no longer sing,
Why did this have to happen; how?

As if a house on fire,
She crumbled to pieces,
Sold to the biggest buyer,  
The outstretched arm that reaches.

Like the last drops of a ****** nose,
She spilled into the lion's pit,
All silent and morose,
All bended and split.  

My dove, my dove,
You'll soon heal your wing,
My love, my love,
With a mouth open; Sing.

- Jamie F Nugent

Take this safety pin of pleasure,
And ***** it under the skin,
Feel ugly bliss trickle down your spine,
And the breath of your conjoined twin.

Then chase it once more, twice more,
Like greyhounds legging after a rabbit,
Forever to be outside of an arms reach,
Downright devoid of all energy and wit.

- Jamie F Nugent

Tie me up in daisy chains on the feathered bed,
Bury me in the white graveyard of your bare skin,
Let my bones melt in this morning rain,
Catching silver raindrop bullets between my teeth.

And at dawn, cover me in a veil of dust,
To keep me in false everlasting night,
Where no snow comes close to your body,
The enemy of icy winter.

- Jamie F. Nugent

The sun drags itself
onto the horizon,
as it does each day.

The smell of last night's rain,
still lingering mindlessly.

We are in your little black car.

I ride shotgun
      while you drive.

It's littered with papers
and opened letters
I always feel awkward
when there's no speaking
as the car's radio is broken.

Just the low rumble
of the weak engine
to fill the void of silence.

So I play out a song
in my mind and
wonder if you
simultaneously do the same.

We stop at a filling station,
where I buy breakfast and
you purchase petrol.

As you pump,
I tell the lady
behind the deli counter
what I'd like and
what you'd like.

She shoots me a
Cold glance,
It must be what
I'm wearing -
black brogues,
black drainpipes,
tweed jacket,
polka dot shirt -
Or possibly my hair -
It's too long for a boy,
yet too short for a woman - she'd think.

Country folk
like to stare,
they don't get much
to look at,

so when they do,
they want to remember it.

I say thanks
and pay
and leave.
We get back to the car,
you try to get in quick, and
end up clocking your nose with
the driver's side door.

As you sit down and
check out yourself in the mirror,
I'm surprised it's
not pouring out blood,
like a pathetic fountain.
You run a tissue across it.

-Jamie

I met her first
in the afternoon,
in May,
When the streets
were crowed with people;
living their lives.
She stood leaning
on an old green postbox.
She was a friend of a friend.
She said she had seen
my face before somewhere,
I was not so sure, I undoubtedly
would have remembered hers.
Her face was like
an actress' from the '50's,
one that was usually
reserved in black and white or
preserved in monochrome,
Bette Davis style.
But nonetheless it
was there before me,
in youth and charm.
The way she spoke and
pronounced certain
words peculiarly,
she was very like
myself in that way.
Its been said,
that if you get everyone
on Earth to stand in a line,
one by one,
that you will never find
someone just like you.
But I think that
sometimes you
come close, and
I surmise that
I came pretty close
that day.
I wanted to tell her,
but did not;
Knowing how absurd
it would sound,
I grasped it inside.
She moved
when she spoke,
just a child would
be all jittery and
unable to stand
still after too many
sugary things.
Always, there was
that that hyper-activeness
running through
her body like
electricity.
But all the while,
her voice was silk.
She had my humor too,
anytime I made jokes,
she would laugh.
It was such a
brilliant laugh,
the kind that poured out
and poured
out in big bursts
and did not give a ****
who heard
or judged.
Even when she was
slightly smiling,
you could still
see her teeth,
perfect and white,
like a toothpaste
advertisement.
She was not afraid
to look anyway at all.
Her face was
naked without makeup,
she did not paint over
any blemish at all.
She knew that people
had their flaws,
and it was those people
who laid their
flaws bare to the world,
they were the ones
the brave ones.

- Jamie F. Nugent

You hide your love like you
Store away expensive whisky.  
"I'm sure it's where I left it"
you say, unable to recall
Where that where is now.
We search low and high,
In places obvious and not,
Under beds, atop the presses,
In cupboards and sock drawers.
But no luck, and yet and I know
You can't turn tap-water into wine,
But I still would not go thirsty
By your side, water does fine.
Now is as bad as any time
To tell you that when
I stood high on the kitchen chair,
Nearly touching the ceiling,
I found your whisky bottle,
On the presses top, like
A dust collected Excalibur.
Not a drop drank yet. Suddenly
I told myself right then that
You would be better without it,
And my mind and heart asked me
What have I done to deserve it?
Just because I am the one who
Found your love, doesn't mean that
I should be the one to drink from
The well of yourself. I would not want
Those precious mouthfuls
Wasted to a mouth like mine.

After a while, all curious ears transfixed
On us, like rusty antennas tuned in to
The music pulled out by our hands, as if
Roots from the soil, the music that
Crawled from our lungs, like some small
Sea-creatures scuttling from under rocks.

They sang in our wake, feeding us a diet
Of Cork Dry, cheers and sponge-cake,
But then, and why, I do not know, but
The feminine insults thrown between punches,
The police arrived near 4am, we left at 5 past,
To upstairs, until all cooled off and over.

As the sleepless sun peaked in the window,
The guitars ceased to be strummed,
The bodhráns ceased to be thumped, and
Like vampyes, they hid from Sunday's sunlight,
Sleeping in careless places as I sipped on a
***** so I die a little more easily.

The morning poured me coffee and put it
In front of my heavy eyes. A breakfast plate and
A basket full of cold toast. We thankfully ate,
And talked about the healing properties of lizards,
The corruption of the Catholic Church and
Just what the Hell happened last night?

-Jamie F. Nugent

Love can be felt as
An open heart surgery
Done by ***** hands.

Love can be seen as
Torpedoes in a fish-tank,
Ready to explode.

Love can be thought as
A massacre on the soul,
Shot in slow-motion.


-Jamie F. Nugent

(For Ki)

Sitting in the windowsill
There is a small ornate
Dark purple wooden
Box of chocolates,
With frilly red lance
Binding the edges
In the shape of
A love heart, all
Geometric like
A Silphium plant -
You are the soul
Sleeping inside the
Chambers of that heart.
To be seen seldom as
You would melt
In the summer sun, and
Would break teeth
In the dead of winter.
Not often, but sometimes,
You could survive this world,
But the wonder of your taste
Is overshadowed by that need
For you to remain laying there,
In your chocolate heirloom box.

-Jamie F. Nugent

You wear shyness like a balaclava
At least we still see those eyes,
And all their infernal nirvana,
As they study the room clockwise.

Like a mental gymnasium,
You exercise my patience,
As I fill in the silence like
The staic, station to station.

Burning my fingers again,
It's just me and the ashtray,
Something of a Charlemagne,
Or least it's just feels that way.

A future full of plans defers
When you latch the door,
A completed mess stands
Disappointed in a downpour.

-Jamie F. Nugent

Am I a fragment
In your scrapbook of regrets?

Am I the damage due
In your bills and debts?

Am I the cracks on
The mirror on your dresser?

Am I the light drizzle
In the dull weather?

Am I the tear
In your stockings?

Am I the white lie
In our sweet-talking?

Am I the sand stuck
Together in your hourglass?

Am I a tunnel into your heart
Or just the tolld underpass?

Am I the joker
In your house or deck?

Am I the bite resting
On your neck?

Am I your paintbrush
Stuck together with paint?

Am I every form
Of lost restraint?

Am I the mess at
The bottom of your purse?

Am I a set of lungs
To be submerse?

Am I still just
A rainy day?

Am I your wet ashtray?
Or dead bouquet?

-Jamie F. Nugent

My darling,

My voodoo doll

My storm,

My calm,

My skyline,

My skin and bone,

My flesh and veins,

My April afternoon,

My Sunday morning,

My first breath,

My last mouthful,

My Spanish siesta,

My Irish coffee,

My deep wound,

My tourniquet,

My muse,

My fuse,

My nothing left to lose.

-Jamie F. Nugent.

We live in this cruel cold soap opera,
You name the drama and I'll play the part,
So when I hurt you, don't take it to heart,
Booming drums of ****** for our mantra.

When first I let you inside of my arms,
I didn't think you'd stay inside my head,
Or between the creased white sheets on the bed,
Laying under the broken the smoke-alarm.

Pulled out across like piano wire,
I dragged you from the room and all its blaze,
You slept deeply and sweetly for eight days,
You're the first breath after a housefire.

-Jamie F. Nugent

Take me where
The grass grows
Wild and old,
And wraps around
Our legs, our
Old grey towers,
Falling into grubby
Puddles -

Take me where
Beetle bites dance
On our skin,
Like little red
Flaming kisses,
And the bee stings
Taste like
Honey -

Take me where
Frogs crawl
Around our ankles
And slugs leave
Trials of slime
On our boots,
Like some sort of
Venetian Lagoon -

Take me where,
Our fingertips
Peel and bleed,
Like sap from
The Maple trees,
Swaying away
In the almighty
Breeze -

Take me there,
Take me in the
Mornings dawn, or
This red afternoon or
Blue evening, because
I might not
Want to be there
Tomorrow-


-Jamie F. Nugent