When once I saw creation in your eyes,
My heart a seed, a finger rapt fist of bud,
A box of chaos, daring to be opened,
By a gentle house of reckless child, my heart
In the bracken field of surrender, saw deaths night,
The fertile light of stars in your face, cradled
In your fleshy shower of holy stone, your flame,
Your fire, nestled in your hair, undone.

I Hear All The Outlawed World

                        I

I hear all the outlawed world in harmony,
The marshling stalks the green and gaunt
Destroyers who heed not sparkling deserts
Charged to the gill, nor candles pitching down
Like doom.  I note the scale of fossils
In cloud covered peaks, record
The seemly count of bodies by square root
And irrational number, I am witness
Bound to bounty to all who blaze in gray
And shallow grooves seeding their ends
In strikes on the ripe and smoldering fields.

                        II

I see all the outlawed world in harmony,
Barking wood bracing by the bud,
Where runs of blue, bury in vain
Down slash of mountain forest, cascading
Into august, rising after the fall,
As do kind-killers blasting from shells
To die as snails creeping under flower,
Who saw the past wasting away
In filed futures, slipping by blades in neck
Of wood, sightless as gallows of trees
Try ****** each time they make their leaves.


                        III

I know all the outlawed world in harmony,
By seamless song of stuttering gulls,
As in conches, waves of providence,
Cell from the center, beating musseled shoals,
Where wailing ghosts and wing-tips point
Printed nails to the silent capes,
And bumble hairs comb round the broken yokes
Stirring streams of babble baited
By flowering psalms, engaging arms to prey
On tales told by the rood and drown
In eyes turning like sands on the sea.

I have lost my sun,
Though I still orbit in a strange attraction.

I have lost my music,
Though I know my heart sings sound.

I have lost my vision,
Though I see in dreams an impossible beauty.

I have lost my sense,
Though this world has never tasted as sour.

I have lost my purpose,
Though aimlessly, I write in the pale drear of twilight.

I have lost my reason,
Though I chart dangerous courses without a crew.

I am the last falls of the loveliest red proscenium
curtain.

I am over, undone, a foundling, lost,
Without you.

Seabird tracks in sand,
End where mine begin, as tides—
Make both disappear.

The moon undresses you, little bird,
Your eyes are indigo skies without stars,
Your breath is summer grass after shower.
How you hold your arms before the night,
A lance of milky sheen and flailing bliss,
Your arms arrest as they softly surrender
And your ******* overflow in moist shores
Of white sand and shells, little ears to kiss,
I am drowning in your curves on the waves
From the sea, delirious with eye of moon,
Drunk with wild ocean as it consumes me,
Your hair is new grassland to run through,
Windy as a child breaking for the beach,
I latch my fingers to yours like driftwood
Tangled in kelp, the salt we share, steeps,
Is **** and deep and our lips are shucked
Oysters, blind, iridescent, sliding with eyes
Into the famished throat of ***** heavens.

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 Eliot

Dark sound raven makes,
Chortles top fir tree, haunting—
Druids incantation.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

Above, this morning, on another plain
Over bogland and tundra rising snows drift
Darting birds white, unlike you, they strain
Fleeing on wing to save some earthen kin.
Blood runs as they race, your shadows cast,
Their hearts beating to some distant dawn.
Under the pale sun, white burns on their backs,
Daylight sings, their ears are horned, little faun
White as snow, the prince of the sky is blessed
On high by drops of rain, and dusted freeze,
Then blood and breast sacrament and eucharist,
Their tale ends in glory, risen as a breeze.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

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.

Do you remember me?
I am fed up, strung on night
And closed in by time.
When I dine with dearest
Friends there is always a place
Set for you, there is always
A story, untold to them,
But not for strangers
Who know even without saying
What you never said to me.
My eyes are cracked dams
Above the flood plains,
My heart is dented brass,
Bent, out of gear and turns,
Mournful, dried, pocked
As rust, tarnished red,
Petrified.
If I look at the diamond moon
I am hooked.
When the flower brushes my calves
The lifting scent caresses, teases,
Rising with my memory of fire and stone.
If I travel to the balm Paris
Of the southern hemisphere
La Belle Époque is wearing your
Dress, the pampas fires and undulates
Like your hair, the Polaris star
Points at me, dreaming
Of you, dreaming,
My jewel, my,
Little moon.

Hopeful maiden,
Mistress of cotillions,
Depthless, devoid of culture,
Unquestioning, incurious,
Seeks her warrior-beast-of-burden,                                         ­                   
A man's man, a sportsman of sorts,
Yet sensitive and without ego,
A staunch provider,
Seeking beauty for its own sake,
A coy, coltish fawn, un-artful,
Un-fawning, who cannot keep a house,  
Hold her tongue nor navigate
Social gatherings, one whose passion
Is only on offer, never proffered,
She seeks an old fashioned man
Who appreciates her
Mannish manner and business
Acumen— artists, musicians,
And above all penurious poets
Need not apply, I wish
To learn to cook one fashionable
Day, I am working on
Being famous, it is such
A burden being lovely,
Beautiful.
Are all the good
Men Married?  Gay?
Professional athletes,
A-list actors, incarcerated
Felons wanted, perfect
Listeners needed,
Kryptonians preferred.

I have come to the temple
Of your body.  I kneel and prey
Like a sinner.  The holy water
Beads low on your forbidden
Tabernacle, sears my touch
In cleansing flame, what I do
And what will be done is all
For unrepentant confessions
And penances.  Let me truly
Learn the sacraments of flesh
Before I bathe in your wicked
Innocence and commit my sin
At being mortal in your nimbus
Chambers, let the mercies rain
After the fall of my fellowing
Creature, for this night is blood
Sabbath, and sacrilege under
A Pagan moon and let the dawn
In the rising sun of mute morning
Be my absolution, our benediction,
Let the moving waters enfold us,
Pure as lambs, as washed babes,
Baptismal.

My hands are raw and cracked like wind and wood,
My arms, they sway and dance all day in my boat,
My neck is sore from watching you, above me play,
You, great mountains of tree and stone, give me hope.

Woodpecker returns—
Gold bark falls at base of tree,
  .  .  .  Bright seasonal gifts.

Who said cemeteries are for the dead?
For those who celebrate such silence
A commotion’s something too.
Crow about the stones, smeared by sun  
All gawking formal and sharply dressed, rung  
A black congregation that drilled and sermoned  
My ears down to coffin nails beneath  
My feet, a voice that hung the wanting
Waves.  

And over head I saw the braised yearling  
Eagle bobbing past the undivided sun,  
Who tottled about the sky in circles out  
Of center, a wearing down of gear
Churning with the grave
Bruising birds, that spoke  
And wheeled over dusty  
Stones.  

Sea spray, leaning trees, slant  
Of cloud, spilt green grass of one  
Sided mosses all pointing which was to be —
The way,  

And leaving there, I saw the sign and it read:  
    ‘Ocean View Cemetery,’
Opens at sunrise —
Closes at sunset.

Beach walking alone.
Never, short as Donegal strands,
Endless— without her.

Born of fire, your body burned under mine.
The slip shod friction kindled in the bliss.
Blue flames flashing and water dowsing time,
Smoke, my wave, moon seas, lighted sands kiss.
Blue and cold my eyes set, seizing treasure,
Your flaming hair a bed, my boat was wrecked.
A sea of glass and all the stars were measured;
Red on white, your skin was cinder flecked.
Flames were raining, **** the waters break;
Two bodies burned that night, fire on the lake.

Grackles on dark lawn—
Black starlings whirl yellow eyes,
  .  .  .  Mirrors the night sky.

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 that taught  
The Greeks in Helens age, 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.

Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!

Flowers so rare and fine,
Missing from this dry world,
Lost, unwatered, unseen, yet
No ones and none despaired,
They then planted their garish
Seed in blot sun, most sodden,
Soppy soils sprayed which fell
On the plainest, most commoner
Grounds, such fertile dirt, wrought,
Then, all who came to view where
But gaggles of proud mediocrity
Who arrived to revel and preen,
Unjust, they remade this earth,
Once lively, to be lame, what
Celebrations they now need
What praises they do crave,
Sadly, they could not know,
A flower for the weeds.

Without speech,
Former lovers meet,
At a party and are reintroduced
To themselves. In that mute
Moment, eyes carry words down
To hands that are unwishing,
Unmoved to join, yet touch
Haphazardly in the cacophony
Of dark party.  The former lovers
Lips are locked in air, unmoist,
Their hearts beat to the tuneless
Drone of old music and stale bread,
Their bodies fuddle in a tortuous groove,
At the reception they could not get out
Of attending.  In a split second, they pray,
It will be unquick, yet soon, just over.

.
In the dreamlands of sun,
He streams the invisible rivers
Of lit glories to come,

Careens, lording the beams,
Airs, above the ordinary
Grasses that dry in the gleams,

With eyes that wash over kills,
The forking fowl and mealy vole,
Hare in the runaway hills,

High above the fourth wall, stead-
Fast, stately in his dress,
To commencements of death,

Where eagle strikes with talon,
Crescent as day moon,
Sudden, silent to the cast fallen.

When senses run together, dull in the rack  
Of night, it’s Chaos who culls true meaning.
He mocks the light of day in paradox  
Sings: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
The ****** end, embodies the souls watery  
Beginning, and so the beating star is all
Intermingled; until flesh and fibers are done,
Thus: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
Though mighty Jove, who beat the antique world
Down, cast poor Agamemnon his fate, it’s
Helen of Troy whose aisling breaks like doom,  
All from the strain of Leda and the Swan.  
For, ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on,
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.’

The moon, beams over the planted fields,
Growing blades shimmer, slicing the night
As fiery comets first seeded the earth,
Beads light, to life-giving grains of rice.

.
The small grassland hills are dancing.
The sky is blue and the breeze is long,
I reach out, I touch and I look—
Into your eyes, my fingers in your hair.

Narcissist craves friends,
Ignores those without mirrors,
  .  .  .  Only sees himself.

Third had grace, loveliest, angels face,
Second had music and long, lithest form,
The first was a lark, one amorous affair,
All three are now but phantasm, dream,
The forests dark, memory— lost to me.

Eyes of tigress look—
Her gentle ways gone at night,                                                          
  .  .  .  Sacred and profane.

Rising guano smokes the white birds.
The North winds homing, ave, a long
Besieging sea and ferries the prince
Of waves pass pacific and the fair isles.
With javelin eyes, aloft, blue streaks

The seething air, headlands draft
Grave embattlements, red rivulets
Paint on the raining wing, black art
Ticks the tern, marked minions and more
Dread.  Once you were a foundling

Dropped from sovereign doons, scree
Of sky, air of wizard, your image late
Spikes from the lake, taut talons train,
Your breast a speckled main, rapier
Of dreams, arisen, sheathed in stone.

In the frosts of autumn, leaves do tell
In storied colours, yellow and red,
Round the shores your kingdoms table,
Battle cries break, a silence of wails,
Though they fall they shall burn again.

My closet I shun  .  .  .
Little room we both lived in,
  .  .  .  Photos in boxes.

.
Your face,
Tender, round and dimpled,
Framed with gilded, carved, tawny curled
Whirlpools of hair, long, lighted, and sparkling,
Your face is the face—
Of Ireland.

Your lips,
Full, moist and deathly deep,
Are wells, not well for me, not safe, taboo,
Tantric, tall told tales of brave Odysseus
Under Circe's alchemies
Of forgetfulness.

Your *****,
The zenith of blossom in fabled
Elysium, gateway to the forbidden gardens
Of sage and sinners, warrior-poets, Aphrodite's
Envy, Poseidon's drowning
And smoldering Zeus.

Sun God— broken heart,
Daylight feels like Kryptonite,
  .  .  .  Mythic irony.

He wrote in the mornings, she recited to him at night,
He always made breakfast, she made dishes disappear,
His garb was quite frumpy, and hers, made of spun gold,
He struggled with fashion, song birds would dress her,
He thought his poems looked best in moving candlelight,
She made all the fires and lit candles with her eyes.
Once, he was embarrassed and said to her,
'How can you live like this with me in a hovel?'
She said it reminded her of Plato's Cave.
At readings he looked out and saw sinking eyes,
Now he has her read all his poems, it works
Wonders that way, and after-parties are strange,
Everyone keeps staring and asking for her
Name.  She gives cryptic answers and winks
At him.  The poet was running out of words
And thought his days with her were waning.
But she said her heart was kept in a precious
Box of symbols, of words, only he could write.  
She said that it was written in the sky, that poetry
Was dying and that he was the cure.  He told
Her that the stars were lost at night, and fading
While she sparkled unfailing, and many times
They tasted each others tears, many times
The world stopped spinning, he knew
It was her, she felt it was him.  To all
Others, their one bedroom flat was small,
Yet to them, it was the Palace Athene.

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

Do you remember me?
I am fed up, strung on night
And closed in by time.
When I dine with dearest
Friends there is always a place
Set for you, there is always
A story, untold to them,
But not for strangers
Who know even without saying
What you never said to me.
My eyes are cracked dams
Above the flood plains,
My heart is dented brass,
Bent, out of gear and turns,
Mournful, dried, pocked
As rust, tarnished red,
Petrified.
If I look at the diamond moon
I am hooked.
When the flower brushes my calves
The lifting scent caresses, teases,
Rising with my memory of fire and stone.
If I travel to the balm Paris
Of the southern hemisphere
La Belle Époque is wearing your
Dress, the pampas fires and undulates
Like your hair, the Polaris star
Points at me, dreaming
Of you, dreaming,
My jewel, my,
Little moon.