No rout, they did not let out a cry,
With veins of flame in swelling eye,
No word, could semble nor shutter,
The bumpy flesh tore into the light,

In nimbles of silence, nimby smoke
Smouldered by sidle of spent fires,
The house of future days was open,
Their ***** it hearts eternally closed.

Bull frog in fish pond—
Loud, one day I heard last croak,
Raccoon washing hands.

Your eyes, flooding me,
Your anger, rousing the skies—
Rain drops with my tears.

Snow capped mountains,
Bald flights of soaring eagle,
Dual forms Godhead.

There once was a shadow who thought he was a man,
He made his empty bed in a shame of familiars,
For years if not an eternity he never did one single thing,
He contemplated creativity in all its smoke and mirrors,
His only credo was padding his unknowing, limp ego,
Got a gig, speaking before a throng of other shadows,
He rewrote the crook about his own insignificances, suddenly
Nothing's became every things, all was sorely well in the bleak
Under toes.  Shadowman had found his stage, had rearranged
Chaos and insignificance to the point of no enlightenments,
No regrets.  What a sage!
Shadowman aped, traced, spewed in studied literature,
Experienced, faith, trust, fidelity, danced numbers,
In a cellophane pack with all the added extras included,
Found that reflecting words only got in his narcissistic way,
Left the California sun for the New York lowlands
Of the east, that only shine after the hurricane's
Deluge.  Shadowman has reams of flesh plastered
On a mall of wallowing sites only Shadowmen frequent,
Modern is the moly man who makes his own myth.
Shadowman has traveled to the great southern climes
Where hotels of shade tell tales of locals and enlightenment is in a drug
Called something South American or other?  A drug so smug it is a plug
For his dun holy soul.  Shadowman is only a silhouette of himself.
He freely gives seminars to the lame, chained to themselves freely,
Where all the vain echoes are chambered, embodied, entombed.

Above woodland birds  .  .  .
Feathered cloud on mountain top,
  .  .  .  Eagle lands on spruce.

One for each of us,
I offered her little rings,
  .  .  .  Heard only silence.

The soft rain is drumming with the brook
And the owl is moaning with the loon,
The early sun shines on the lake waters,
Each of these things distant — I am happy.

I have seen her playing
With light, edging her hair,
In crescents so fair.

I have watched her fingers
Twirl and twine, beaming gold,
Threshing precious hold.

I have witnessed the taming
Of the sun's rays, captured,
Spinning in rapture.

And I feel for the pale moon
Who offers his frail, vestige light,
While she sleeps at night.

I am alone with you.
A fire burns in the distance,
It lights our faces
As before in the empty cinema,
Where we arrived, at some beginning,
To watch a foreign film. Our eyes,
In new utterance, murmuring subtitles,  
What words could never speak,
The tips of seats, rows of air
And the moony screen,
A tableau of feathers and cloud,
Two of us, alone, as one,
Rapt in the spread of wings.

Later, alone we dine in the Café  
Campagne. Our conversation  
Deafens a burgeoning crowd,
Coffee was nectar, our words  
Were whispering petals.
Dearest Blodeuwedd, I saw the sweetest  
Sorrow on your face, the green ocean
In your eyes, I was cleansed  
By your tears.  I have always
Known you.

Across the border on the far island,
You stepped into the waters with me
And when you disrobed you lit the stars
And the stars and my eyes kissed your skin,
Your slender legs, columns, tilting
Toward heaven, in the age of Helen,
Touched the water and the sky,
I saw the milky way that night.

Síneánn, I am your Pablo,
We are two white birds sailing
Over the foam of the sea.
Solvent to my stone, you are the hinge
To my casement world.  Rain petal
Voice, lithe, alabaster woman,
I am lost in your Sargasso eyes,
I hold your skin, my Selkie,
Sweet Niamh, I have lived  
One hundred years this week.

It is warm in the distance,
In the country of the sun,
We end at the house in Umbria,
In the autumn, there is no word
Siberia, my light Rosaleen.
Now is harvest time.  
At the great table we feast  
With family and friends  
And I am not alone with you.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)   
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

The Blue Falcon, cross the spire,
Waits in the gables of the white
House.  Wounded in youth by crush
Of air, spent, a wisp perched
In the aerie dark with a view of mountains
Blue as ice under glacier.  The wooden
Church from the other side clutches
The sky but the Falcon blue is lost
In a tuft of cloud that bobs but never
Kills.  On this strike he is sheathed in stealth
The dull talons slip as they dry
In the tented air, the songbirds at play
In the high-ground underneath warble
And chide but the Falcon cannot hear
The Falcon near.  His heart is soft
And muted in the breast, his ears
Are dumb to their tickling-songs.  

Before the Falcons time, over
The tilling fields, dropped his world
In the spoils where splendour burst in green,
Rain meant the feathers ran and the woods,
A banquet of game, were bounty's breach
Fording blue currents he was
A fisher in the sun, but the sun
Sank in his drowning sky no store
From plateau to quarry the drought of days
Moved a castle felled in the dancing
Dust, his wings broke in the shuttered
Eye of the sun and etched his form
Into grey silhouette.  

Now, the Blue Falcon, jeered
In the branches of the rooted air
Above the yellowed grass, under the pines
And a great blue mountain, stirs a Druid
Shape, vaporous, in the cauldron
Of the attic in the white house
A throw of stones crossways from
The sacred yews of the steeple spire.

I sit under the ancient apple tree,
My heart is low, my head in the clouds,
The day is slowly ending, I am sleepy
When visitors arrive, little buds come,
Raining down on me— a cadre
Of red-headed finches.

I sit on my porch, the sky is dropping
As I pour my tea.  The day was lit 
With paint and brush, now my face
Is lighted by the round full joy
Of the shining moon, I see
Him in my filling cup.

Her fine hands are gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.

Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.

Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.

Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.

Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.

Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.

Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.

Sea town from the bluff,
Early autumn snow flakes fly—
  .  .  .  Sailboats ply harbour.

In the house of the unsaid
Tears are glass beads that drop
The ***** on the bone china

Blood spittles the lips, hair
Raises the dead the cut
Rosary roils and dents

Harmony’s rumour spouts
In the sink. The clock’s twitching
Strikes a mongoosed hour.

And the scattered stations run
The rude wood splinters
As the unsaying are floored

Clouded eyes pain the glass
Outside the house, bare
Trees are leaved with ravens.

Today, a poem should be palatable, cute
As a Kiwi fruit,

Dumb
As a horse battalion's scudding run,

Strident as out of tune horns
Of basement bands where the gloss has grown—

A poem should be bloodless
As the slight of words.

A poem should be film of ocean brine
As the reel unwinds,

Cleaving as the gear greases
Spoke by spoke the light smearing breeze,

Blowing, to the temple outhouse
Exalting all the ****** functions—

A poem should be not true:
Equal too.

For all the history of vanity
An empty room and a bass relief

For lust
The keening masses and no light above the stream

A poem should not be
But mean.

.
In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?

Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,

Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.

Thunder roils the sky—
Under Olympus, bolts hail,
Angry cries of Zeus.

Otters slide down hill,
Gliding into snow melt creek,
Swimming in the sun.

Little sprite darting,
Wind, whirls, eddies in midair,
Hummingbird hovers.

I have a curled photograph
With waves that crest behind you
And your hair, golden veins,
Tangled in the sun that caves,
There you sit— my open secret,
Atlantic,
Frees my wrested heart
At the fortress—
Altar,
Dún Aengus.

In that place, that wanting place,
High— on the jagged edge
I captured you,
Your eyes were ocean,
Atlantis,
Never so deep, never so
Lost.

.
When I was a youth, I spied a bird,
She filled my field with song,
And sadly it was, my duties began
But we made a vow singin,'
Together again!

    And a way'l we go, as I hurry the sea and—
    She waits the land.

My true love I call a nightingale,
And I myself a lark,
Together we make, two turtledoves,
And we made a vow singin,'
Together again!

    And a way'l we go, as I hurry the sea and—
    She waits the land.

    O come will the day, that my true will say,
    When all my sporting is over,
    'Do you remember the days, I waited the land,
    And you hurried the sea?'

Now, the sea is my girl and I her man,
I hear a lovers lament,
An old seabird cries from the brighty main,
And I join with him singin,'
Together again!

    *O come will the day, that my true will say,
    'My heart, you've been the world over!'
    But until I rest free, I must hurry the sea and
    She waits the land.

Sea town from the bluff,
Early autumn snow flakes fly—
Sailboats ply the harbour.

Mourning doves landing,
Gentle branches— place for wings,
Hawk already there.

With cruelty he loved.
Now, life is measured in rains
Never baptismal.

Circle strands of life  .  .  .
Ocean sprays bones risen,
  .  .  .  Open conches nest.

Ring-necked doves resting
Coo, build below higher nest—
Red hawks in the eggs.

Ripples lead to bows  .  .  .
After fish breaks the water,
  .  .  .  A kingfisher dives.

Was there a word,
Plain or shimmering,
Cast of gold and mercy,
In the bathing light of forgiveness,
Tempered with down and feather,
Wrought of worthiness and pride,
The mellow flame of tenderness
And shearing morning sun,
One tabulation of saving flesh,
The tapping root of the knowledge
Tree, the forge of stainless metal
And touch, stone direction,
One healing humour, cardinal
As blood, forceful as the salt
Journey bearing the pines
Of lodestar coordinates,
Spotting the Xanadu ex
Of the lost lovers?

Helios ****** his seed of light— Phaethon's act,
Pleasures born of pain, in the balled glass eyes,
Frees a moat of grey matter cloud, light crackles,
And one blue silent flash— mirrors zodiac skies.

Spot of wildflowers,
Little pieces of heaven,
  .  .  .  End of the rainbow.

And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   ­ .

Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the ninth wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­                     ­                                               — after Elliot

Wings beat to overtake.
Now, above you like a fire shot
In a silent film the rush begins.
Wings fold inward, the air turrents,
Streams, as a ball swirling in a tube,
Grey bullet in the barrel,
The slide to the **** and the talons,
Make their mark before the hitch.
Soft plosives bearly sounding,
Crake, blood cupped in the claws,
From the breast and the rose  
Heart, now in a tail spin,   

Nostrils whine in the fall.   
No jury just but a sup of the faded  
Heart by one raging one.   
The wilted wings are stirring  
To the last as the pointed  
Wingman ferries, the wholly bred,
Quarry of perfection, jolts  
And jilts, and His scythe of feathers
Holds sway in the whirl.
As the God-made creature
From high heaven flies
The mourning dove must die.

His hands ring in the upper classes.
There, in the morning light, his will
Is forged, bent, as truth, on ruling  
This place, underhand, underfoot.

With shuttered ears divining his voice
The dim pupils see only what is said.
The top hand schools, topples all words
Ringing hands sing the song of fools.

How Headmaster trains on the heel,  
A dagger strikes, the paper cuts
Exalted, his close minded hands,  
See a Czar in the stony swagger,

And the student body, submissively lies
With his feet.  Outside the college
The headmaster is heard. Grossly,
He is their dream and only shepherd.

Seamed hands unwoven,
Small footsteps lowered away,
  .  .  .  Hearts torn asunder.

Rain, softly falls in old deer valley,
All the woodlands swimming underneath
The steaming fog.  What peaceful sound
I hear, softly rings out of the sparkling
Woods and meadows, chimes like a thousand      
Sleepy bells announcing the rising sun,
Who sings loudest, after the rains.

Undressed by window,
Her body enthralls the moon,
  .  .  .  I am left blinded.

On that western isle, bathed in gold-
Drenching sun, my only, giddy love,
Weaved a daisy chain and crowned 
Herself, above the clouds and purple-
Violet seas, her grace, topping yellow-
Sparkled weeds, to flower, marching
In fealty, round her red, reign of crown, 
Soon, after new mornings impromptu 
Coronation, misty, bluer, eyes felt slow
Distant dread, the subtle, burning fate,
The inevitable nights of overthrowing
And fade of love's noble, corona light.

Were I shaper of dream, I would build
A grand labyrinthian castle of granite 
Stone to contain that day—  I would 
Conjure a moat, impervious to shifting 
Time, the mute corruption of sorrows 
Waking.

Exposed kneeling roots,
Graceful boughs of ancient tree,
  .  .  .  Buddha in the sun.

Birds rush and are busy
Breaking the days, laden
Twigs have broken, landed,
White clouds sail in breeze,
Sun has spilt, over gleamed
Gold on crest fallen, blue mountain,
Leaves lay with browned, under
Grown green matted grasses—
Whispers of spring.

Caged hands
Fumble,
Eye teeth, nick
*******,
Toes, tumblers,
Unlocking
Combinations of two,
Nose to ear,
Fingers printing
Smear,
Tongues, tasting
Freedom,
Jailed
In clothing's
Night.