How can we fail to see the ocean in our eye?
Since our first breath obsessed with death or how we will die.
Lie on your back in the grass and sky.
Fear at the joy you might fall in.
Don't feel absent.
The puzzle piece is passing by.

Let us recall when we were all Kings.
Immersed in the human soup.
Collectively tripping through the daily hoops.

****** forward and look at fool grinning.
Dipped in black, patting us on the back, singing, "We are not losing we're winning. Only the wise justify the pie and tell us we are sinning".

Its at that moment I prey the ghost whispers the truth so it can be written in crayon
When the time comes I will be the hunted. Will I too lie in comfort that every thing is at hand?

a guy sits here
hair a twist
no ordinary man
but a case
whatever prefix fits

he knows no limitations
seeks no thrill but fear
holds no memory dear
brains grasp simply too frail
such a broken outside
and gargoyles pier
however
he tranquilizes them
anytime someone comes near
yet the people abstain still
no shame, no cheer

they simply cannot see what purity
he has in his crypt
intimidated
severe

so let us move forward and glaze over the thick
move towards the misery which anguishes him

nonsense is sensical, whimsy at best
rational is of logic and dreary
detest

******* and thumbing
he frantically does his best
pulls his hair out
pulls his hair out
closed fist
punches chest

"where is she
where is her
name i cannot confess
for it escapes me...
not because
but rather-"

due to his distress

he stopped and sighed
violence
cried
broke down
then bled
red from his eyes

i want her
the sad one
shy

hurt inside

abused, accursed
diseased but undisguised

she'll love me

she will
there's nothing there to hide
she'll make me forget myself
sing or dance or
romanticize

"i want her...
a baby's friend
the neighbor's newborn daughter
the baby friend that came over
as an infant, i saw her
i kept the same heart
but its been through a lot
and now its done with slaughter

i kept the same heart
its growing apart
i need the neighbor's daughter"

it seems as though convinced
he truly had the heart of a newborn
ambivalent
knowing no complexity
purely hurt or comfort
either way's a shoulder
diamond or dirt
seemed to be bipolar

so he seeks the same
not the opposite
that would be a shame

because no one else can relate
to someone who feels the world
has turned its back on fate

he seeks out this girl
overlooking
all the beasts in his way

with evil colors they mask their face
appear to appeal, they may

but he knows better
their defenses fragile
they attract a plethora

to which they expose
like a sinister rose
the black rock in frame

the black rock so hard
shapely carved
to which its "blacksmith"
inscribes no name

a black heart
he sighs
which holds no light

might as well not exist

The Proclamation had met with silence,
he must have known the fight was lost,
But, Connolly, faithful to the Cause,
Was accepting of its cost.

They took the Green, The inns of Court,
the Post on Sackville Street
De Valera stood at Bolandʼ s mill
the place where five roads meet.

Their commander, Pearse, a scholar,
Apportioned his menʼ s lives,
To garrison each strong point
Till the British would arrive.

Their tactics were pure suicide-
They could not hope to stand,
But their strategy was brilliant
Meant to rouse a sleeping land.

Sure to die of a snipers bullet-
Or a British firing squad
These unabashed Republicans
Held out against long odds..

Bloodied by the Rebel guns,
The foe paid dear for ground
The general post office was in flames
as their gunboats shelled our town.

The week crawled past and Dublin burned
The post Office glowed White hot
Pearse watched his troop dwindle and fade.
Faint from shell and shock..


They surrendered to be crucified
In Imperial British fashion
And by dying saved their country.
Their deaths brought her resurrection.

The British with their firing squad
Could ready, aim and fire.
The Brotherhood by dying
Could persuade, convince, inspire

Upon the graves of these patriot men
Was the seed of a Nation sown,
their struggle at the post office
Still captured in itsʼ stone.

we were brave once

but we were told
to be sensitive
and empathetic
and walk a mile
in another’s shoes

and now ignorance
is mistook for brilliance,
and the only risks we
take involves which
flavor of cheetos
we get from the
gas station

we were great once,
I remind you

My professor told me to feel
as he slid his hand down my pocket
for charcoal.

He got charcoal.

I got a court summons.

I was asked to write about a girl I’d never had at all-
It was an easy enough task.  
I haven’t written about anything else since I can remember.

I’ve imagined her as the source behind all of Whitman’s Eidolins
And every young boy’s first faustian plea-

I’ve imagined her as the reason I sold my soul to a wooden box and torch songs-
and forty thousand thimbles full of tequila.

I addressed her earlier today when I should’ve been relating my own moral codex-
To Mitchell’s ‘The Other Bird.’

I had, instead, stumbled across the Blue Tail Fly and thought of how could I slip that into-
A simple (humbly shouted) mantra about getting her to step outside with me.

What a beautiful day to try,
To destroy the things that have left you ary-
You’re just as marvelous as you are shy
We’ll brush away that blue-tail fly,
It’s alright-alright-alright.

How could I address her without the least bit of Americana?

Though, I highly doubt trading spit with me constitutes marvelous dissent.
It might- but only in the context that she’d be as weary of those estival fumes-
Those threadbare summers.
The divulsion from stick wars to stick wars that end with-
a coral flush and real bruises.

That business of cruelty as William Carlos Williams describes it.

It’d be easy to talk about her throughout every-day.
I could tell you that she’d have the incantations to make nature act,

She would have never seen a tornado outside of a television,
but she’d say they emit a wonderful cobalt blue when they’re intruding on peace and plain.

She might even chalk them up to table-legs prone to constant spiraling and amorphous shape-

And up there we’d be- exchanging comments on the land beneath
She’d drink her coffee without any sugar
But, I’d offer it every time
While I focused on keeping my nerves from making the table shake-

Avoiding upsetting anything,
that might get to make it to her lips.

I’d tell her I’ve seen those blocks
Emitted those midnight-shrieks
Pulled from those basement-band symposiums
Tailored those half-alpha ***** tongues

If it made her comfortable with my lack of attention,
My eyes and mind having been reserved for that night-
When she runs in with a copy of The Love Song of J.Alfred Pufrock
Yelling- ‘Hey, isn’t this the only poem you give a **** about?’

And I slap it out of her hands.

In the hanging kitchen, the smell-
cut cayenned sausage, ejective tomato slices
the whole thing in the back of the throat, inflamed.
Olive oil. Vinegar. Billie talks about her "girl
friend." She lives in Mayfair. (Almost pretty;
don't look too long.)

At times I feel sick.

American man he
strikes the figure of a half-God
broad-shouldered, burned
he does Not exist, John Henry
split his bust long ago and we
are huddled small boys imperfect
in the dust of his legacy.

Our fathers stood from dinner tables kissed
wives were kissed by children one last sip of old
wines and walked into the night looking
for burned-up lamps, the memories of mountains.
Ate stone. Drank mist.
(A thirst for adventure is close to your heart.)
Fell into the grit, the failure, fell
into everything.
(Little else has taste once the spice of life is on your tongue.)

I have nothing but my understanding.
I want to be swaddled, paralytically blind, shamelessly loved.
Or to go out in the wicker
world, there to find whatever our best
died looking for, tigers or ruins or
a life after adventure.