They buried an elephant
here, in 1922:

White and brown
wet and scattered
branches.

The statues are eyeless in Iveagh,
ruins under leafed eaves,

effaced, pitted, blotted,
benighted green and wet:

they have heard far more love
than mine and hers, witnessed

others filled with beer, wine,
& whiskey. Forbidden fruit

rots on the branch. Magpies gather
by blue knees, curious and hopeful.

Crimes of the heart were committed
on that night. The sound of the river

sinewed through the cracked window.
The past was father of the present,

the sheets were stained sails.
Coffee was brewing in the evening,

corks rolled into corners,
whiskey emptied the memory.

Now it's years, years later:
I just walked on water,

the river would not collapse beneath me.
A friend sent me neon letters,

rain is due tomorrow,
and the kittens are restless.

I open a bottle. My lovely neighbor
is building a mirror before dinner,

she borrows a screwdriver.
I am guilty of everything you said.

I am guilty: but there is no jury
who would ever convict.

O, Van Gogh... I am the swipe of wrist
that doubles your ear outside the Christmas brothel.
I am the heart that falls out of your mouth
into the green jelly of the absinthe glass.

The pearl toenail of sky curls and curls
into the split skin of the world.
I stop at the bar on the way to your roses,
drinking aching rye with the bearded bartender.

I aim the gun at my chest - it's so heavy,
all this black metal. My heart is so sick.
The nacreous clouds roil and roil,
& trees turn bus-yellow, taxi-red.

O, Iveagh Gardens... what I would give
to be back inside you, among the secret fruit,
the elephant bones, the faceless statues,
the richest green I have ever seen.

But I am not there. I am in this white hell,
I come from a cancer family. Cells disobey,
clump and grow. Soon I will be the age
of my mother when the breast cancer came

& lived in our house with its chemical face.
When I am ash, spread me in Paris:
even if you must bring your own *****,
dig in Père Lachaise, in a corner,

& funnel me into the brown pit.
Let me rest among Abelard and Heloise,
with Oscar and Edith. Where I strolled
with my heart in my hand, my dead hand.

Flurries fall to green varnish,
grass-toothed jaw. By the time
coffee is ready, their lives
have waned down to water.

You say the same thing will happen
in Dublin tomorrow: Iveagh flake
mounting the park bench,
then deleted by the ineffable air.

We slip-stepped
past snow sprigs
in Iveagh Gardens
to a castle of bread,
cheese, and red wine
topped to pink shell lip.
We talked a whole world over.

Yet two months after,  
you-don't-love-me:
though I know I felt it
glowing in that rose cage,
saw it on a wine-painted mouth
that smiled at me,
a smile of retrieval.

Remember the day
I met you at the airport
in July, at the start
of the four best months
of my life? Your eyes
carried the same regard
for me then, I swear it.

It is six fifteen in the morning
when you call me,
worried that I'm not well.

I hold you in a little tired slice
of choke-glass blooming
in an smear-eyed hand -

I face you with all my blotches,
try to splint the break,
to be where you are.  

Maybe you're right -  
your love undoes me.
The hours are pauses, aches,

each more or less intolerable.
If my heart slumps away
one of these smoked spring nights,

an unbeating gore-stump,
carry me back to Dublin
& spread my ash-seed

in Iveagh Gardens,
where I carelessly left a dream
among the cane apple husks.

Drink whisky
& recite one of the hundreds
of poems I sent you

to the water-ruined statue
near the rose cage;
maybe someday you'll be curious,

and find the ones I never sent,
filled with sorrow's rennet,
sour-salted, reeking of rain,

retch-cairns
to the halved honeycomb-husk
it seemed like we were becoming.

So of course I both live and die
when your ****** chime
breaks my false, papery day:

I love you above all things,
even now, when you turn half away -  
I don't think you will turn back -

but are you really done here?
Are the white lilies really dead
in the bleachy vase?

This is not what I wanted -
the black wing, a door closing -  
I am living the wrong life.

papa will the  glory corrupt   05.08.18

the man was running
this was no south korean variety test
positive *** was gunning
have to do homework in iveagh bequest.
lips are tight
its the poetry that's loose
wonga to some could delight
could it drop from this  goose.
possibly twist and change
corrupt and alter
one flew of the cuckoo's nest will derange
the chief and sink might drip water.
thanks for jogging
change of scene was clever
not one for a quick bunk or snogging
but never say ?.