delirious diamond woman
bare milk drunk smell
one thousand screams
above

enormous peach
              I recall a black dress
                            repulsive goddess
              shadowing those who moan
              their language

ugly blue sun
raw honey
tough tongue
              mother please

I ask her to elaborate

"symphony of feet
together with the beat

spray
drool
smear
               or whatever "

Hosing Cigarette butts
and brain matter off the asphalt
in the parking lot
                 from those who painted blindly
from their third story windowsills

You kids, who mourn
the loss of some delusion
of art in memory
                  of yourselves
now seek the redemption
of a summertime soliloquy  

Mary Fahey/Michael Sinclaire. March 2013.

I was the canvas, as were you
One canvas to each other
and on the wall
with knees underneath
indecent exposure
naked mind of mine

Flushed out edges of this unique bedspread
a shower curtain used as a tablecloth
used as an ashtray

This was her only wedding dress
Wedding dress two dollars and seventeen cents
value market discount white sale

Found in the back when
suddenly everything was zebra stripes
and she was already ten minutes late

But what is time to a pack of teeth?
A high-ceiling filled with nostrils and bat claws
smouldering tar-stained enamel
fits nicely on the frayed corners
of her tablecloth underwear
and brushed away the ashes
leaving half-finished highways
and dark-stained alleys
and brooding courtships

She missed her basement apartment
and the way no one took her seriously
and the Grand Finale!
and riding high
and the blue ribbons
that sometimes came with last place
and windows and pillows
darkened sleep patterns with silver eyes
half-moon Iris

She isn’t home anymore
She left for a smoke
and the sidewalk took her

Michael Sinclaire/Mary Fahey. March 2013.

What an umbrageous day
Heavy downpour cleaning soul city streetlights
unburdened back beckoned bright eye and high
The cleansing of the spirit

New rain beginnings
relinquishing old dirt and washed
all resentment that peels away like rotten orange rinds
revealing the musty moth-eaten underside of the teenage psyche

It’s a beacon of light, a point in the celestial wake of night
The true-burning ember amidst the counterfeit
glows of the day to day drudgery of a mundane
Human existence

Who cower and hide from head to toe in plastic wrap
and duct their senses with sticky ignorance
Who wander and wonder upon the multifaceted
raindrop that caresses each fleshy pore with motherly love

Who drift effortlessly
up misty parking garages
up sweaty chimney stacks
down missing fire escapes

In the tundra of weary dreary winter bite
Cold suspects stand innocent on frozen street corner

What an umbrageous day. Overcast. Raining.
Like open wounds rinsed clean to be healed by
and forgotten in time

The fractals are hard to miss
even in the gathering puddles

[written about getting high. April 2010.]

The full moon that followed you home
crying petals of light on the shattered remains;
the rooftop of the last and lonely house
The shattered roof of heroes past
no longer holding the weight of the air

Atlas, alone on his mighty steed
sitting atop a fragrant world; The Earth
With hands so large to touch
the humble breast that fills the sky

And the great cloud whale
that devoured the moon that was its eyes
Cloudless night and unblinking Jupiter in Orion
that brought us North following
the great humpback hills of ice

The teacher collapsed
into a tempest migraine
rubbing her temples
in a clockwise motion
behind her desk,

presumed *******
her thoughts or bleeding.
She imagined her definite
white existence in a plane
of iodine and tumbleweeds

The children heard the moans
groans and the creaks
grouped tones
like old floor boards
kept secret in the attic

Turbulent lessons
creeping slowly up
over your shoulder
and into your ear
and out the mouth
a siren explosion

At least they taught us language
riding on the bus
they taught us how to spell
and table manners
the written word

They teach you how to smile
and that there are things
which have no shape

and how to kiss with open eyes
like pressing your face
against a mirror

In the back they teach you how to dance
and how to sleep outside
and a handful of names
of some now lost constellations

In the front they teach you how to drive
and how to talk to Cassidy
what’s beyond the window
it’s mostly dust, I suppose

And we drove across the country
riding on the bus
speaking words of bird
and beast and beat alike