A girl up the way
has entered puberty.

One day she wears
the most outlandish clothes and colours
and the next
black, gray or blue.

Fond of protecting
the little ones, in one breath,
she stands separate from adults and everyone,
in the next.

Perhaps,
she talks with classmates and girlfriends
about the changes to her body
as she throws fierce energy into gym
and pursues intensely with pimples and glasses
her various and numerous studies.

Recently,
she was halfway up
the Everest of a lamp-post
before her mother came out
and roared her down.

There is a woman,
so kind and great of heart,
who visits our church.

From Eastern Europe
she is tinier
than even the smallest Piaf.

When she sings
in praise and adoration of her Creator,
you can almost see
the pillars tremble
in harmony;

as her voice
totally and powerfully
pervades the innermost depths
of the entire congregation.

The cue - the cue - the cue
for a joyful entry
Django on your radio
lures him dancing through the door
and your face plays and portrays brilliant colours
with the laughter of a spirit
being momentarily freed
from the sadness of it's earthly shackles.

Typically reflecting
the soul and taste of your race;
poignant in the moment
but eventually flowing
to the heavens,
the unattainable
and the ideal.

Your joy is in fighting for dignity;
the well-being of nobly conquering
all jokes made at your own
and others' expense.

Yet within you
there is the sublime humour
magically transcending pettiness
and hates of every gender.

You ascend
into celestial understanding
and sweet compassion.

However
in the end
you are a tired compromise
of love gone wrong
while bearing fruits
for insecure futures.

Nothing more can be said
to describe your beauty
in all it's temperamental
indulgences and lack of self-restraint.

Handel

played on a concertina

in the dreamy hours

of a June night

spent

on the shores

of the far reaches

of Connemara

as we confessed

many sorrows

and ample joys

with a northern glint

in the sky.

Injured to mutter in mad ways
(a town's sneer won't let him scream)
his eyes settle for blind sights drawn
from painless but poisonous prods -

their targets a scrapbook of wheat and chaff
in this womb where no one watches
the self-embraced death of desire
that blocks hidden tears from surging
to a valley tomb.

Another day will pass unnoticed
by this stranded and shoved out being
who, from a soft chair in the night-shade,
sits churning up the past.

The spider in his heart
weaves dreamlike webs of ancient death
and hangs them high above the stonegray vapours
that pour from the Vesuvius of his mouth.

Rapidly rising rosetinted images
explode into the infernal fire
that soon consumes the insipid blood
made passive by someone's contempt.

And the shell survives the light ******
that issue from a bathroom bulb
through holes in threadbare shut curtains.