I run to you
your rhythm, your beat

for a moment they're mine
and we breathe together,
breathe

I run to you
your hunger, your need

for a moment they're mine
and we cleave together,
cleave

I run to you
your sweet-wet, your greed

for a moment they're mine
and we feed together,
feed

white
black

blue

lifeline
noose

Glossy-budded hair,
unnameably Portuguese,
your hand-picked star anise
floats in my pear sangria.

You are of the moment.
You are a smile and a nose ring.
You seem curious about me,
but you can't be.

Thank you for the swift nothings
of little talk that helped me along
on a Friday afternoon.
You couldn't know it,

but such small items
as bar talk have become, for me,
strange freedoms that bubble up
& sometimes displace the sorrow

that encases me perpetually
on these long spring days.
Your stance between the beer taps,
by the good scotch and gin...

it brings a faint gladness
to an ulcerated gray
that sweeps back westward
across the parapets of new night.

The heart is a grave,
logic is buried there.

City of stones and gamblers,
trees leafed with playing cards,

old men skimming coins
from the fountain floor.

Here in Alphaville,
romance is the gun -

pull the hat down low,
rub your lips with your thumb,

drive in the neon-beaded night
to the swimming pool gallows

where you broadcast a red truth
before the wet knives come flashing.

The heart is a grave,
logic is buried there.

I am
drawn to the pictures

to
the new and the already-old

(to
the news and the already-told)

stories framed, set
rolling, rolling ...

maps and suits and flames -

and
the mother -

again

bare feet on concrete
skin pressed pink to cold plaster

sun-needles through roof-gaps
fall on rain-rotted rafters

(root and vine)
soles and spine -

tie me here

Deoch Bhleth - the fourth drink of the morning, taken while the morning oats are being ground

The heart is drowned in dream
as the body motions towards coffee,
whisky, water, pills.

November slouches in slowly,
all sharp shoulders
& muscular knees.

The black circle turns and screams,
the beacon spits morning news,
an island of misery emerges from the salt-froth.

The wet streets are slicked to a shine;
I've gained weight. The day moon
is pregnant with blue.

Blood is thin and slippery in the vein.
The razor leaves fine lines all across my face.
My arm is singing. Psalms drop from the sleek

yellow womb of the ****** sun.
Alcohol climbs within me: I fall back on the bed,
thinking of her again. Where is she?

Is she staring out at the magpies
that gather on the wet lunch-branch?
Is she by the Liffey, watching the slate glint?

I am trapped in this plaster tomb,
my head a bridge between past and present;
somewhere a chain is being broken.