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.

In my garden, feral and overgrown,
I bear with branchings of the apple,
Hunched and grey, laden with fallow
Fruits, the tired, knottted fingers die
Each year, under which are baubles
Of sourness and stray, poorly drawn
Circles of fodder even hungry deer
Will not graze upon.  The elder tree
Slowly casts itself into Bonsai stone.

Down a valley, in the grades of sun,
Lay a stand of madrones in redden
Fire, with deepest eyes of burnished
Green leaves, some immortal Gorgon
So beauteous, in form and branches
Divine, of Olympian flame, held, atop
Heavenly escarpments by the loving
Skies.  I see it for what it is, my love,
Your body and hair, so tawny, so fair,
Though, ever lost to me but in dream,
Are dearly those red branches, a fable,
Your eyes, green as sea, those leaves.

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

I remember that day on Mount Tamalpais.
We picnicked under the loving sky
On Bolinas ridge, atop Wicklow hill,
The maiden’s breast.  We found those apple trees,
Who’d gone wild and fell into their world.
A blossom on the way.

I took your picture and you developed into
A sea-horse, or was it a mermaid?  The ridge
Was foaming about you and birds were swimming
Like fish underneath.  We found a tree, an umbrella
Left at the beach.  The coral-grass became our bed
And wine turned into water.

A spiral dance in arms of anemone, it was
All embrace!  That reef was spawning heaven.
At the treasure chest under the sea maiden,
Like children on highland pap, we played
At the beach that day in a castle above the clouds,
Beneath the wave.

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

Hollow is the rube  .  .  .
To be bereft of one's soul,
  .  .  .  What a pure mindfuck.

Her lips misty moist  .  .  .
Spring bursting purple lilacs,
  .  .  .  Ripe aureolas.

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.

In the lowland fens at the worlds end,
Like the ferryman, a blue heron waits,
Eyes of dragon fly, hover, over still water,
His legs are the oars rowing to the dead.

.
Lovers entered a forbidden forest bower,
And as they stalked that range, with eyes glazed,
She offered up her hind. Now, with doe eyes,
Deep as his, deep in arousal's sleep, heels fell,
As he knocked and pulled her dark honey hair
And whispered, surrender, into wanting ears,
Softly he drove his hunting command, homing
To his huntress.

Her body braced, yet bade, with heat and vibrance.
Ruthlessly, he ****** his arrow deeper and then
Once more and then again.  She bucked fiercely
And defiant, goading his prodding lance ever more
Ever longer, and parting the pink lines of her white
Rose, he was, and once again, Prince to the dark
Dominion of her quarters.

In the middle of this carnal match they paused.
And looking into the forest beyond they saw
A yearling fawn, a feral Goddess, grazing still,
Bathing in a vale, virginal, wholly unmoved
By their act of venery, lustfully playing, in the innocent
Leaves.  It was as if they were among her kin, a gentle
Doe and a noble stag. From that moment on
The human hunters did not speak.

Falling, again, rolling eyes were deep in arousal's sleep.
Her back was a crescent moon pocked and wet with dew.
He could feel her heart beating in time with his piercing
Prong, her arching back glistened in the suns spittle
As it broke through the dark and vernal ceiling wood.

In the final shot her quivering buck lowered and broke
And a sound not heard, made a scene, a sweet murmuring
Shuddered and sank onto the floor of the forest leaves
With her tale, taken and told, her breathless breath,
Her nostrils cold and her heated and lanced openings
Dripping, draining; here was a New World’s beginning.

Sated, solemn and softly quaking, his woman sweetly laid,
And now, doomed with her doe eyes, two lovers, fated, made;
She glowed, divine, like the rolling brook that mellowed
Slow, in the vine-dark and golden forest stable,
In Artemis’s wood.

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.

Lone piper in pub—
Guinness waiting to be poured,
Blarney and glad dirge.

Cloud, moving waters,
Ripples, soft white leaf on lake—
Shape of neck spells name.

Lost in dream forest,
One cloud drifting in blue sky,
Still searching for her.

Testing:
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Sibilance,
Sibilance,
Hello,
Hell­o
Yo!

.
What blur is vision,
When woman, kind,
Naked as the moon,
Shines in such cool
Light as the stars lit,
In ink of night, scribe
Such spell as ancient
Vocabularies mystify,
Without translations,
The heart is drowned
Feeble as fey emotions,
Rosetta of thorny cut,
Blood spilt in desires
Hard as sarsen alone,
About circle rounding,
A universe unbounded,
For love is kind poison
In nightshade of moon.
.

I remember that day on Mount Tamalpais.
We picnicked under the loving sky
On Bolinas ridge, atop Wicklow hill,
The maiden’s breast.  We found those apple trees,
Who’d gone wild and fell into their world.
A blossom on the way.

I took your picture and you developed into
A sea-horse, or was it a mermaid?  The ridge
Was foaming about you and birds were swimming
Like fish underneath.  We found a tree, an umbrella
Left at the beach.  The coral-grass became our bed
And wine turned into water.

A spiral dance in arms of anemone, it was
All embrace!  That reef was spawning heaven.
At the treasure chest under the sea maiden,
Like children on highland pap, we played
At the beach that day in a castle above the clouds,
Beneath the wave.

My heart is quaking  .  .  .
So deep my feelings for her,
  .  .  .  Even the earth moves.

Dreams lost when waking,
Sea spray, tangled kelp wafting,
  .  .  .  Briny taste of her.

Silent pond ripples—
She dips her toes in water,
Soft *******, stiffen.

Feathers twitching twigs,
Leaves drop, black cat rustling,
Gnomes in the garden.

Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

Libertarian—
Anarchist on a trust fund,
Somalia dreams.

Silent pond ripples—
She dips her toes in water,
Soft *******, stiffen.

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

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.”

Libertarians—
Anarchists on a trust fund,
Fools with conviction.


Only right country,
Libertarian heaven—
  .  .  .  Sweet Somalia.


Regulations ****—
Breathing is free and easy,
With Chinese gas mask.


John Wayne was a God,
We act with guns for Jesus—
Vengeful, cold dead hands.

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.

.
Tangles of vine, wisps of thorn,
Roping a rocky face of granite,
High, on a hill are drops of sky,
Green hands cradle purple beads
Of the sun, whose skin is frosted
In water vail, morning days' dew
Has come, birds and bees singing
Songs to hum anew, this offering
All to ancient invitations of spring,
There will be wine and flower laid,
Before rise of moon or day is done.

Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.

I stack the round stones
From the river, my sculpture grows—
Crow will knock it down.

River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,

                              you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.

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.

Here I tread on a woodland promontory—
With wings and wind conjuring the rains,
All is vastness and shroud, open, empty,
Even the light is carried away in silence,
My flesh all but smearings on the tableau,
Foothold of dream within disrupted dream,
Our hands once reached out into forever,
Now my soul is seeping from veined cairns,
Cut chains, mist, rains hollowing the wind.

Under the primrose stars, the lovers
Lie abed, on green, threadbare croft
Of sleeping daisy, clover and moss,
Trails with hushed air, an embroidery
So fine as to stitch blushing heart fall
And wrap the waters full of stillness
In graces, winding, soft, granulating
Time, wings flutter and hum, winsome
Sparks, fire white, flying as little suns
Burst confetti, in sweet encampment,
Of grass and sapling wood, innocents,
Charmed are wholly twining, in moon
Rise a lantern to the winking heavens,
Out of their skins they are climbing.

.
I came to a courtyard of my own making,
To a cottage by the sea at the worlds edge.
I furnished it with my left over life, complete,
Barren and colourless and I wrote the newest
Book of psalms out of tinder and flame, a tome
Of grey and useless poems, unheard of songs
And reams of flesh.  There in the lightest dark,
By the Druid stone that was placed just for me,
I planted a creeping yew tree.  And the moon
Sang in celebration and silence like a fallen
Priest.  
                    Under the covering hazel trees,
That sprung to life after the longest winter,
Which taught me to forget my name, I now
Struggle with light and my body, warring, torn
Is fading slow, like the always arriving, down
Turning solstice, the climates of the mind,
Where it is digging the never ending shallow
Hole only the spreading eternal yew, that I
Planted, will ever know and only the Lazarus
Moon shall ever rise above.

I came to a courtyard of my own making,
Was it dream that led me there or my eyes?
.

The coastal shoals are your dominion.
No salmon, or smelt, nor bottom flounder
Had ever left the sea until you struck,
You are wraith to the kelp beds dream.

Neocon greed—
Old con of fears, intolerance,
Money in the bank.

.
Light sparkles in the clover,
Yellow and blurr of bees
Are honeyed in the sun
And robins have come,
Yanking in the gasses,
So green is the moisten
Of the painting of the dew
And all is lolling in petrichor,
The soils running with slow
Time so shortly experienced,
Oils of wood permeate the air,
Lapping brooks bream into light,
The loft kestrel swirls in meadow
And chipmunks scuttle at base of tree,
Even the wind does freshly quiet, crisply,
There as a hug waiting for body and spirit,
Patches of white are disappearing, they know—
That one day we must all return, after winter snows.

Tide pool wishing wells  .  .  .
Seagulls circle above strands,
  .  .  .  Empty shell dowries.

Poets dig up thoughts  .  .  .
From much higher than themselves,        
  .  .  .  Yanking subconscious.

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

Snow covers valley—
Solitary raven staining world,
Love has turned black.

Old gnarled branches  .  .  .
Fingers clutch, knuckles to cold,
  .  .  .  Apple tree in snows.

Snow covers valley—
Solitary raven staining world,
Love has turned black.