Mankind playing God,
Red burning sands, angry skies,
Blue ocean will rise.

Ocean birds scatter—
Sun melting day on horizon,
  .  .  .  Waves in pantomime.

( Sonnet )*

Good deer are gracing the trees,
Take communion in handed leaf,
Touch the soils with loving hoof,
In the tabernacles of the wood.

The owl cries for all souls eternal,
Deep in the shrouds of the vernal
That drape the newly born dying,
Beneath the solemn owls' crying.

And songbird has a psalm unread,
A parable in the twining branches,
Gifts of song foist lanyards of crop
Dear in old forest, this offered sup.

As blood seeping deep in the wood,
Sky washes away those who stood.

Words, utter, deconstruct,
Pure truth is now, tainted.
Always two ways of seeing,
Right is mighty and written,
The blinking stars, warning,
Over heads of manly stone,
Silent testimony unheeded.
Faith, the hearts perdition,
The exquisite supplication,
The tyrants dream so freely
Spun for turning heads tips
As baubles do when moon
Is full or the sun is searing.
Is the world really flat? Are
The angels already among
Us or do birds surely winter
On the moon?

Grafted birds in uproar—
And grey moorlands a fog,
The cacophony of orders,
Even turned earth a slog.

Highest heavens, all one,
Seeing with truthful eyes,
Black and white eagle—
Dispenses the blue skies.

.
He walks in stolid darknesses
At days zenith, hears whispers
In the dew dusted fens, lights
Leaves into sun candle flames,
Drew a lake sword by maidens
Hand, alchemic shaper of water,
Air, old fires and earth, bending
Cold elements of moly and lode
Rushing forth, in extra emotions.

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

.
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
.

Asleep with my love,
I wake, she is in dream— still,
Conversation runs.

With spin and a bob  .  .  .
Shows off her new frock, oh my,
  .  .  .  Eyes on *******.

Little yellow finch  .  .  .
No bird listens to her song,
  .  .  .  Only cat entranced.

( 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.

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.

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.

Rain, thumping down,
Pressing grey prints,
Ocean, tears the sky,
Drowning with drinks
Of blue eye and salt
Taste, rude earthling
Song, takes too long.
Must I go on walking,
In gurgle paths spray,
Soaked, silted, ******,
Drabs colours running
In days raging of rain?

In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine                                          
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.

Snowy egrets, pure,
Stoic, white statues of grace,
Digging in the muck.

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 seventh 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

.
Notes wash over
The no angled ear
Listener, journeyer
See trails leading
To a cloud of sun,
Break in the skies,
Soon to know again
What was creeping
In the eyes of restless
Thought, unrequited
Sense, the whirling
Ride in the globes
Of vertigo and touch.

Dismembered by mood,
The musician conjures
Lost jewels in thought,
Sparks to the mind,
Sorcery in the bland,
Wayout, man, you dig,
Tap the deep rythmns
Drowning under toes,
Shutters we have lined
Go ourselves together
In the blinds.  Turn on,

Off those penny eyes,
The horn careening
In its heights of low
Down blues and sheen,
Be bop and stirring
In a rush, unfinished
The player knows
Your got number,
Is offbeat, syncopated
With the pearly drums
Of the sheet, read heart.

Jazzman is charmer
To sleepy serpent
Kept, shot in only bars
That leech into night,
The looking glasses
Pouring over misery
Ride sweet nowhere
In the tempos of fix,
Youngling daddy-o,
Plenty is the brass horn
Of Jazz in the clears,
Cool fingers singing
What the mind hears.

We made love as strangers—
Do when they eye each other
Separately intimate in a rush,
Our bed was a rack we made
Tortuous and flesh— revealed                                                         ­ 
As it gave into itself, the moon
Conspired in our dominations,
As we suffocated in the breaths,
Way down sips, of earthy heavens.

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!

Under the muted bark of hazelnut trees,
Spurious, sprite juncos scurry in vertigo,
Pecking, replete bouncing downy knees,
Grounded, tuft, constellation of Scorpio.

If I touch your face—
With lips, cool as cave water,
I am wishing well.

Dimples on her face,
Walking long miles without her,
Pebble in my shoe.

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.

Dear Pablo, as I look over
my soaking body, wet, with patches
of dirt, blotched and raw bleeding,
the clouds turn in my yellowed eyes
in order to love you, my Pablo.  
You, who made me feel radiant.  
As I am the sea,  I fish for you,
rolling in mud, and becoming
mountain, I topple for your toes
who'd dig in deep and itch my aching

breast to sleep.  My dreamful-drowsy
birds, rake the skies, rush-out like nets
wanting you on their wings, my poem.
Pablo, I loved you so when you said,
my flowers were little stars to pick,
and that loneliness was a train who waits
in a far-away station, and how, my most
minuscule attributes — a cat, a pear,
the atom, you praised, in odes, heaped
like showers hailed from heaven, as fresh-

water you reigned from the other side
of tears, and temper'd my salt, my green,
murky life.  Dearest Pablo, since you've gone,
my breath has the emptiness that hides under
stone.  And the blue-winds crossing, my life-
less age, they are nothing but long waves,
keening,   —  Nay   —  rood   —   ahhh!
Since you have left me.  And my trees,
they forget how to grow,
my song, my only,
Pablo.

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

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

I walk along the vaulting cliffs,
My mind is open, a clear horizon,
In passing breeze, I smell her hair,
I must get home, dark clouds arriving.

Eyes, orb as exploding stars,
Weighted light of hair rushing,
Held extremities, nimbus limbs,
Eons' spring, singularity crushing.

If I said I want you,
Would you run and tell the stars
To close their eyes and ring dry
The clouds of tears?

If I said let me hold you,
Would the earth crack open,
To shudder the rolling lands,
Not cradle the hatching seeds?

If I said I am yours,
Would your name soon dissolve
And be lost in the revolving
Night that candles you in light?

If I heard your voice,
In twining dream and woke
Beside you talking in your sleep
What would your question be?

If I called your name,
Before the first sunning year
And heard you, Echo in the wind,
Would time guide us to the door?

When late springtime comes,
Fresh scent of cherry blossom,
  .  .  .  Memories of her.

( cailín rua dearg )*

Your lips, soft and full,
Are tearing at my heart.
Your skin, freckled and bumped,
Is at play with my palms.
Your eyes, of water and stone
Rain, storming like fists of hail.
Your *******, are blooms, pouring
Like white chocolate cupped.
Your hair, is a loom even
Penelope could not weave.
Your little feet, are drumming
Like puddles by the sea.
Your thighs, make me mutter
And sigh into the winds.
I will, not go wondering now
For whom is master and who
Is slave, are you the Morgen
Or are you Fand my gentle
Ocean wave?  Your voice
Is song, your breath is air
And your pooling, marbled
Face, torso, hair, how they beckon
And your words, gifting melody,
Such words must be forbidden.

.
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.

Delicious is a word I save for you.
Chocolate comes close but feeds me only
Famine.  Your skin is blest three times,
Once for new redolence.  Bay leaved
To the core, you proffer memories
Which chamber the years in round rooms,
Opening freely into rouge galleries
Of spice.  Secondly, it is soft as summer
Water.  It draws itself toward touch
Like ripples skipping over a sweating pond,
Lapping its way towards the creamy shore.
The third gift of your skin is the colour
Of desired destination, an instrument
Which maps the mirror of a universe,
Because you are deckled with stars so heady,
You are wet smoke from drooling galaxies
And rose white fathoms of sky, they are pooling,
And pulling me with force so fulsome
As to be almost—
Tasteless.

                 The firm green bread of spring,
The blue blood of heaven and the milky
Sun, these are your flavours all intermingled,
And three piquant senses speak to my tongue;
I smell, I touch, I taste— you are,
Delicious.

Pond lilies basking,
Misty buds of sleepy rain,
  .  .  .  Water envelopes.

Rain feathers the ground,
Hooked, worms will tunnel to sun,
Robins on wet lawn.