home
is your
midnight lullaby
dripping like honey
from the back of your throat
and your
anxious tears
dripping like sand
from the top of an hourglass

home
is the
perfume of orange blossoms
passing through my lungs
as we run through the orchard
and the
rotting smell of garbage
passing through the streets
as we climb onto the school bus

home
is the
sweet taste of dates
mixed with sugary syrup
kneaded into perfect pastries
and the
metallic taste in your mouth
mixed with the guilt in my stomach
kneaded into a sticky dough

home
is the
falling of ocean waves
over our heads
as we scream-laugh through the water
and the
falling of bombs
over our city
as we sit together in silence

oh
how I wish
I could simply return
home
but
home
no longer exists
because home is
you

Here in the waiting room
it's beige and safe.
Nothing like the room
where I'll divide my trauma
into lean little cutlets.

When I can't take it anymore,
I'll watch the fish
living in the doctor's tank,
thoughtlessly ******* down
bright quivers
of lamp stripes.

You sent me a picture
of buildings wreathed
in Christmas lights,
shaming my city.
Maybe you are right -
& Dublin is the one?
Maybe I will walk there,
under the vacancies
between stars, under
the wounded moon,
under the aching
Christmas lights,
& be at peace.

Go for a walk
in the unbroken
Saturday, the trees
sling themselves
at the upper blue,
the ash wall rustles
and the russet fawn noses
the cherry branch snarl.

A stillness about the hands,
near where the wasp
was singing. A stillness
on your side of the world,
where the new stars
are out roaming again.
A stillness broken when
the wind strums us
with its wild comb of fingers.

...and so it begins,
rural against urban,
rich against poor,
change against established,
white against black,
privilege against opportunity,
proud boys against military,
prostitution against dictatorship,
both sides digging in
turning trenches to graves...

and so it never ended

We, the same from and of flesh and pumping blood,
our skin sweating in touch, together, the scent
was always the same,
you and I, one younger, one older,
the way it was meant to be,
in fights and tears and pup-tent shared lamp-lit fears,
we rolled our heads beneath the stars above
upon the grassy knolls, our pillows kept,
not ever knowing that one of us would be
covered beneath the soily breath,
the one of one of us, still left,
watering the fields of your footsteps,
now dressed up as dreamy memories,
the tossing heart of guilt and pleads,
for just one more day, ******! -one more
day...
I had still some things,
I wanted to say.
__
My schoolmate Tim and I both lost out brother Mikeys.
This poem is for them.

as time tumbles by
eroding its rocky bed
of eternity
in the shallows
we create
pools of stillness
capturing handfuls
to refresh us

on cold January mornings
the pools ice-olate
into frozen moments
we sculpt into memories
until the reality
of springtime
puddles them
drip by drop
back into the current

Brandy in my blood,
thoughts riding across
the pink plain of my hand.
M Street confessions
come cheap this time
of year, when
cherry flowers tint
the air with their
exploding heads.

Her version of me
seems better than mine -
I'm always out in the distance
selling rain back to the clouds.
Spring's coarse branch
clubs the brownness
of my unspooling eye.

Is she second-guessing?
Who can blame her?
I have burned all
my wild dreams
into flakes and cinders.
My art is hungry,
a nest of grinding teeth.

In January, sleep packed
its suitcase and left out the window.

I patrolled the rooms,
waiting for it to return.

I became friends
with the **** tin moon,

I found leaves of tears
inside pillow cases,

I sat with a flowering aloe.
Nothing brought sleep back,

not even the song I found
along my body in the broken bath,

not the poems that dripped
from my fingers after washing

with charcoal, not even
the green prayer of the couch.  

It was only when I rejected sleep
that it returned with laughter in its hand.