Rua
Dearg,
Rua, roselet,
Gruaige na fíniúna agus scarlet
Fíonchaora, drown me i do deoch
As liopaí, fíona, Ruby, flesh an paisean
Torthaí agus adharc de neart,
Earthen meirge de pebbled cré
Tarraing mé mar uisce seeping
Isteach uiscígh ársa, ualaithe, i bhfolach
Faoi vastness Sahára
Sands. Tá mé scamall de aisling
Drifting, itching, edging chomh maith do chothromú
Hills. Do ******* sruthán mé mar gaile,
Tá do chluasa le haghaidh doves neadaithe
Agus do shúile, tá an spéir ag fanacht, cogaíochta
Le farraige, le haghaidh a dath,
Is é an ghrian wandering strainséir
Mar a thiteann sé, dar críoch gach lá, faded
Mar an fathach gásach de Antares faint,
Eclipsed ag do heavenly
Foirm, do lasair Vulcan
An tsolais.

Frozen in rains, cloistering,
So severe in the dark of day,
Is the walled clutch of garden,
No one escapes, a gilded reaper,
Born of fears, promises beyond,
Of joys on the oak nailed pews.

Above the lost naves, who stand
In worship to a ghost, bones bent,
There are cast arches of old sorrows,
Veiling the lighted eyes of the cosmos,
Shutting out even mercies, heavenly
Lights duly smoked of incense.

And slated roof, so statuary cold,
Of aged rock and moss under spire,
That even the doves, as they coo
Are grounded, up muted hollows,
Chimes that merely echo guilts,
By shadows of faithless pride.

In November early, I planted true,
A yew, golden under Pagan moon,
It's fibers I laid into moist dark soil
And set her proudly in foggy shawl.

Before six moons had turned down,
Her needles fell out of limbs frozen,
By wind and rains *****, unclothed—
Sun-clad boughs now fodder to moon.

In the mercy caul of night,
Where time is frail as memory,
In the technicolor film of ocean salt,
With eyes of yearn and mute wonders,
There, I saw you once more.
We walked through the rushes green
Of warmth, broke into dreams dawning
Meadows of casting light, where winged
Creatures, colourful as we, lilting in midair
Spiraled, drifting through the gleaming
Thoroughfares of endless Mays, of tingle
And flame, where once before, we found
Ourselves at the misty plateaus reflection
Of star shine and flight, nary silhouetted,
Yet, framed in the snow melted tarns
Of golden, glorious, Olympus.

.
I wish to live on the white page,
Cumulus as cloud, be all puffy,
Pure in new world without guile,
My thin body as bounty, cloud eyed
Sky of unsullied page, true kingdom
Of imagination, without euphemism,
Nor malice, but truth, cleanest light,
Where a child's drawings are welcome
Always, waiting to be rainbow crayoned,
Coloured sheen as the dawn appearing
At blackest moons' end, sheet of seraphim
Created, dreamt of wood and earth and sun.

.
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.

The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.  

The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night.  Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.

O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
.

The mind awakens  .  .  .
Light of meditation shines,
  .  .  .  Sun on the water.

Wine, spinning, we dine,
Candles and moon making love,
.  .  .  Sparkle in her eyes.

.
I have seen couples,
So far from each—
Other, on a platform,
Waiting for the next train,
Never touching, yet how
They ****** their mobile
Devices, how softly, sweet,
Without guile nor agenda
They swipe the glass—
As it swoons back in return
With blue lights and alerts,
So dearly needed and answers,
In way words for the machines
Of flesh and the ghost within,
With such personal aplomb
In real notifications of text
And instant message.

By scratch and scrim and keys, a poets write,
Parsing the eyes drop, lancing the buried ear,
Under the hewning gaze of hazel trees night,
Streams forded, moon and yew stepping, stare.

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

.
In overcrowd of family
I was orphan.  No legacy
Of leftover dream, in shut
Into indifference and colds
Unfounded, of cacophonies,
Egg of unreal yolks cracked,
Where even a heart is mute
Without ear, without touch,
When a soul is overlooked,
Like a shadow in high sun,
With parents, who seethe,
Breaking their own bonds,
In a room free of warmth,
Unbeknownst, harmony,
Let loose from civilities,
Open to rot and curses,
Hollow as any prideful
Automatons bent out
Selfless unknowings
True destructions,
Negating orphan.

Painter, poised in passing,
Mad colours, melding with light,
Mind illuminated in the stroke,
Brushes tang, tangle in structures
Of vision, the solitudes of smoke,
Perditions fold on black lines,
Splattered in smithereens
Of grace and white.

Shipwrecked at sea, wholly lost
In the green pools of her eyes,
Little oceans reflecting cool stars
And shear, lighted murky moons,
Her branching kelps of hair lashed
Me to the blinding poles of never.
More and maddened she dredged
Me adrift with oceans birds flying,
Fish and tear jerky waves of darkling
Deep maelstrom swells and cresting
*******, the casting lines of thighs,
And curled toes, towing me under,
Till I was sweetly drowning, again,
Lost asunder in her flowing bodies
Of holy well, mystic seas and ocean.

Mourning dove, set on black wires above
The cool, garden lawn, looks down on cat,
Who is burning blithe birds in greenest eyes,
He tastes them as he chirps in trouncing trance
Fixating upon fixing them, his pious patience
Is job like, steadfast, gracious as lifted wings.
Early next day, all that is left of fallen mourning
Dove, are a bed of feathers strewn on the lawn.

Lips, soft as petals, rarefied as undiscovered
Wild orchids.

Hair, threads of gold gathered, woven, mined
From secret caves.

Eyes, that fell from violet skies landing on new
Isles of azure.

Skin, so salmon flecked, subtle, delicate, solas,
Destination.

Your body is buried cask and gilded keeper
Of jewels and flame, whispers, searing cold,
Blue fires untamed—

Lush, fertile wanderings, colourful birds, sweeping
Moon, pools of sorrows and light, trees branching,
Pleasures keen, crushing delights without name.

Striped wings scythe, sailing across
The late summer sky, wraithing kites
Wrangle with nimbus streams streak,
Banded birds knowing of deaths trace,
One can see such sound which circles
Make, def cries low by an insects wake.

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.

IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG

                1

Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.


                2

Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a ******’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.


                3

Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.


                4

Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the doomed, they are crying . . .
"****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields."

With you,
The color blue is never sad.
The north winds are cold,
But there is no chill.
The sun is a friend I had not noticed,
Beaming.

With you,
My hands are woven
And the grass is weaving
A great blanket,
Safe and long and warm
Like your hands,
When they cover,
When they touch me
Like my lost, new found friends
The sun and the sheltering
Earth
And the autumn winds,
I no longer dread,
No longer fear,
With you.

In the eyes' corner,
Dull and deep, drenched
In dream with hair running
Within the longest song of breeze,
Where bones decay and flesh
Evaporates, there and when,
Cleansed in flash, eternal
Flame, is where we met.

Under ancient oak  .  .  .
What sprung from simple acorn,
  .  .  .  Our love for each.

We made our bed in the spring green grass
Like two deer, innocent, when they sleep,
Many years have passed, love has fled,
And the gentle forest does have left.

Deep in the screws of his lonely keep,
Waiting for word of a land promised,
Sentinel man watches across the sea
Never knowing faith was so dishonest.
Across the sea of doom lies his joy,
What awe, so spindrift were his days
And what lay behind was no corridor
And all his dreaming has left no ways
Forward, but to sink with hapless sorrow
And flowing to the thirsty ocean seas,
He pours another drink, toasts tomorrow
And all the empty horizons of history.
Spiraling down he leaves his diggs,
Praying, death be not a doornail's rig.

When first we met our words with each
Were laced with smile and touch.  Our eyes,
Confessed and broke at the closing café
And fused in joy and salt, opened up
With long, arresting arms at our sides.

You brought me to your toppled room,
I counted a number of worn, weary 
Books, various anthologies, travelogues 
And philosophers, a few fierce Poets,
Looking on, strategies for study, 
All assembled, with great measure,
It was an alternate version of my own
Battle ground library.  Then, I was yours 
But you were never mine.

                                           Your stone, 
Walled spirit encroached upon me 
And I was unset to siege at the base 
Of your winding turret and waged 
With you a fortnight of five full years
When you rushed forth on your crusades
You left me, flung, far from the holy lands.

.
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.

.
She rides the chanting waves
At the seas horizon,
In fires of star sheen and moon shine,
Sweet Niamh of the golden hair, and aqua eyes,

Princess of the green sea turtles,
Of the coral sea grottos,
Anemone naves and kelpie skins,
Trailing the rainbow schools of the whirling fin,

The whole twining ocean globe of blue is swooning
Under the milky waving skies and unfathoming deeps,
Her laughter lighting the unremembered bottom of the seas.

Grizzled-brown sound of tuba walking,
            In the way of circles you wobble step, inverse,
                        As does a broken waltz, bearly graceful.

You sniff your way a crush alpine meadows
            And making sense for you are lowly berries,
                        Rude as any intruder might be in the foothills

Of the Gods.  'More wine for the great Polyphemus,'
            Say the drunk brambles, brighty doomed sailors
                        All a wash by behemothing jaws which hang

Them over.  Yet Ursa, if in minor you must play
            By the cosmos' stilted view, great major, it is they
                        Who glare more distant, as if you really cared.

.
In a swagger of swirl bones begin,
Bold artist looks back on kept time,
Fierce eyes fencing out from a pen,
So much soul reels unto scrim lines.

.
Man has wheels,
Books and machines,
Birds have better means,
Sing as they fly.

Man has culture,
Laws and slight reason,
Beast lives for all season,
A life without lie.

Man has fashion,
Art, music, daze galore,
Flower is supreme colour,
Ferociously alive.

The lone stark bugle cry—
Horn of the great mountain elk,
Ripples down cold through morning
Dusted wood as the mushrooming dews
Drop into dearly waded pools under
Fawning toes of forage and cool
Evergreen.

.
Hiking in a musty wood,
A path is laid in mulch and fern,
Dark and canopied, rung evergreen
And deciduously rooted.  My one goal
Set to plateau, reach of hilltop meadow,
Others had told me, lay a pond in the sky,
Was there to experience a peek, where tall
Grasses and dry luster of flowers wild, sang
In highland clearings of golden lace and tarn,
Set with sun to fly and by sharing the long ocean
Straights, beyond the wildest, white horned mountains
Of the moody pacific and with eyes casted once more of
Youth, after sanded sleep and then to steep in wandering
Cloud, as eagles, robed in light and gleems of night, drift,
Careening wistful and free as running dream or simply roam
A foot as the wise, bearded, mountain goats sure and snowy
As they ruminate and forage.  
                                                 At elevated breaking point,
Of storied, pristine clearing, a smoking, lone marmot knotted                          
His voice in plead and alarm as I was about to breach,
As brigand, the sun clad forbidden, citadel unbidden,
Home of pious souls, of cerulean still waters, intact
Peace, untrampled sanctuary.  As made, that day,
Unwashed interloper, I gazed through threshold
Ends of trees and respectfully circled,
Reverent in spectacle and joy,
Back, down, earthwards.

Swallows round steeples,
Indifferent as enlightened ones,
Purple robes in skies.

—for Síneánn

We drove to a lost, lonely isle,
And where, if only once to find
Ourselves sown again, belonging
Wholly to the keep of faraway strands
That hours tided us in beads and wave,
The nascent sea whispering aloft and birds
Cascading as we flew, to sail under moving
And hoary dunes with stellar eyes of poppies
Wild, such breathtaking strides for we to make
And the sun set dripping and lowly swept ashore
Away to us on breaths of gentle crests breaking,
We spoke sundry nothings, as if to know things
So simple are to be kept wanting nor ever said,
The lonely, dull star of day fell sleepy, dimmed
By sparks, the shimmer to our eyes—

                                                               So clear,
Shall be the hills of the fair isle to us, will always
Remain caste with new lamb and crowned deer,
By thorn and thistle and rimmed with broken shells
Rung on marbled beach, singular, before innocence
And grace, by skip ****** lovers cradled in only sky
To be joined, with the lined hands of long night stars,
Finally reaching in the jeweled glass by the running
Grains polished, a gild castle moat, stained into ocean
Salt, always by the sea of windows glory and joys given
To each, ever to be ****** upon the high tunes eternal,
Beside the stations of grass and drifted heartwoods,
Among wings by the slip of tides, ripped monumental;

Till when we drove away, this time, in a carriage stall
And all the tumbles of sand into eyes crumbled to end,
We drove ourselves back to riven sleep, a stark beyond
The fallen wayfare columns of momentary paths, we cut
Home, trudging through the garden forests and inlet
Bays on serpentine road, always ever to cross—
A bridge of sighs.

Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.

The dark woods circle the clearing.
The marsh birds, safe in their stalks,
Curtains to the yellow,
Cautiously wading.
Wick and wings — wand
Over, under leaves.
Merlin shoots — morning,
Smokes the light
Air.  

The woodland birds,
High and low,
Flick and feed,
Soon will turn,
To fallen
Seeds.

( Song )

Every culture of the world, they speak of,
Tell the tale of a great flood,
I feel the weather is changing, pouring hot
And getting ready to spill.
    I don't know what it was like before,
    'think now is like before the flood.

And so I welcome the rain from the sky,
It is only the tears of the earth,
As a young woman who cries,
Showing beauty along with the hurt,
In future days woes of our lives,
Will be cleansed by the tears of the earth.

I read the story of Noah and his ark,
'say that he was a righteous man,
I look for truth but I can't see clear it's dark,
And all the animals are scarce.
    I feel the end of an age is come,
    Inequity is the day, O Lord!

And so I welcome the rain from the sky,
It is only the tears of the earth,
As a young woman who cries,
Showing beauty along with the hurt,
In future days woes of our lives,
Will be cleansed by the tears of the earth.

Pious predators,
Faith lenders, needle-eyed blind,
Kneeling, nailed to cross.

Someday, soon I will sail a boat,
Away from all the modern seas,
I shall be cast aside, with wind,
The four corners, all calamities.

And gentle waves will carry me
Afar, sailing lost under the stars,
To live in dreamy breaths happily
And never wake, forever slumber,

Free as ocean birds, downy gliding
With currents that are leading true,
To the domes, new heavens hiding,
This is my plan, my soul to renew.

Farewell, fated blue world spinning;
I'm off a rocker, for lofty beginnings.

Garden dragonfly  .  .  .
Eye of morning sun rises,
  .  .  .  Ear and mind startled.

Happy working poor,
In country that is gulag—
What's on television?