After the wolves and before the elms
the bardic order ended in Ireland.

Only a few remained to continue
a dead art in a dying land:

This is a man
on the road from Youghal to Cahirmoyle.
He has no comfort, no food and no future.
He has no fire to recite his friendless measures by.
His riddles and flatteries will have no reward.
His patrons sheath their swords in Flanders and Madrid.

Reader of poems, lover of poetry—
in case you thought this was a gentle art
follow this man on a moonless night
to the wretched bed he will have to make:

The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree
and burns in the rain. This is its home,
its last frail shelter. All of it—
Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before—
falters into cadence before he sleeps:
He shuts his eyes. Darkness falls on it.

Are his sins so great to justify the harm?

Are your hands so clean and white to
Ridicule; alarm?

Was your time so wisely spent
To spew your words of hate?

Will your judgment passify
the hurt that you create?

Is your throne so golden
To stand above the rest?

Do you feel a victory
To shame, to crush, to jest?

Do your means enthrall the lack
of something you hold dear?

Does your “court of justice” claim
support of comrades who live here?

Did you think before you tied
The knot upon the noose?

Do the stains upon your soul
Justify your truth?

If you can answer “yes” to these,
I shall kiss your feet alone
For you started the trial
Fanned the flames
The conclusions, you shall own.

If you cannot answer “yes” to these,
You’d best leave well enough, alone
Abandon reckless disregard,
And abdicate your drones.

Meteoric Buick
Slick *****
Frantic frenetic
Majestic kick
Chick shtick
Shashlik

Nicotinic stick
Lick flick
Hermeneutic heretic
Magnetic rhetoric
Hick logic
Strategic

Plastic music
Tick click
Bucolic Bardic
Peptic druidic
Rustic emetic
Sceptic

Polymeric quirk
Sick trick
Turmeric trimeric
Septic *****
Wick crick
Derrick

This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when travellers pass,
No mount of glass;
No bardic tongues unfold
Satires or charms.
Only, the lawns are soft,
The tree-stems, grave and old;
Slow branches sway aloft,
The evening air comes cold,
The sunset scatters gold.
Small grasses toss and bend,
Small pathways idly tend
Towards no fearful end.

Poetry, the reason we are all here.
Writing words that we hope someone reads and hears
Hears in the sounds of the words, them coming alive
Vocally there is a potency to written words
Say them out loud, hear them, feel them form in your mouth
Soulfully continue this aged tradition of story telling
Poetry, is known globally, it transcends diplomacy,
it reaches souls, hearts and minds.
Like a minority,poetry is seen as weak and bleak,
but then life is not a bed of roses, there are thorns.
Reproachfully it is scorned, 'poet? Try writing a novel'
Wrongfully seen as the poor man to a novelist, poetry
at its best conveys, more in a few verses than a thousand
pages of a novel. Lonesome is the poet, that sees truth.
There is merit in poetry, the continuation of odes told by
the fireside, Viking, Persian, Celt, all historic bardic civilisations.
Purity in poetry leads down a path least travelled these days
but tales of yore still prevail, and Beowulf still roars.
Canterbury tales still elicit smiles, cries and woe.
Shakespeare, Dante, Poe, Neruda, Thomas, Petrarch all Poets with soul.
So, you tell me, and all of us poets are we the novelists poor relation?
Or, just reclaiming our station in life as the purest storytellers?

She fluttered like the heart ascending o’er that ‘a way,
her swirling flower petals trailing scents throughout the day.

Heaven’s hounds are following, the wolves who chase the moon,
who chased after the birds and eagles, -who clamored to the sun.

The meeting followed once the bull, and the man,
tree and mountain, rivers and ship; found they met as one.

And finally the snake appeared to join in Tlaloc’s face,
All the actions, movements and motions that occur in outer-space.
Each apportioned in a name and symbol, time and order, or function each unto its place...

When the heart did see them afterwards and it fluttered like the early birds, inhaling in the wondrous, feeling something marvelous, and trailing through the skies upon and over time…
…and song or poem, bardic tale, kenning and the rhyme,

And set in stone or scribed on scroll, clay-carved or remembered in the mind. Lost of rhyme or reason and forgotten of their meaning until thought of as sublime. A tragedy or travesty, our lost past and history and that Dragon from the mine; and who he was or who he is and what we’ve lost or what we did.

A sleeper nay, a beast they say, who directs the evil Id...

And the birds shall fly and flowers grow, the ship arrived and animals stowed. The rivers, tree, mountain, bee, the bull and last, the man.
An ordering too and of all things said to be a plan,
…and that Dragon in his awful cave,
when Homer died became the grave,
...for over time did man forget them and thus became a slave.

chorus

…qe te awis petō, beehelōtis krēskō, plowós ghēmi qe kaiwotos karpō,

Te danus, deru, uros, bheiqlā, te ukson qe póstmos te haner,
…qe tagjōvi do-qe-pe olja weqtise seke do esmi e-men,
…qe jod Dherghen en-hen ghouros-te-speqos,
jom e-Homer walóm weiṛtō en-dō bhodsās;
…uperi tempos, ye man ne-mē, qe-en-dō e-dōsos.

bleak darkness and its measure:
squandering the light
no definitions
no spectral haze
no inhibitions
its onerous labor is one
    with me.

live life at the edge of the fall.
holding a hand
fallibly.
live alone, love alone —
  these things pulse with strength
      in singleness, even the glances
of prying neighbors are sequestered
   reduced to sealed shut, hermetic,
      no sight or hindsight.

i'll run to where the sunlight is
   and wish for the moon, slumber
like a dead log adrift in the current.
buying myself love and selling its pleasures to defunct markets.
   trying to repair what is beyond salvation,
   trying to amalgamate what is perpetually
        scarred, sundered.

clangorous *** of metal, herding jeep
    and riotous chariots; mad men fill
the lines waiting for encumbrance,
     bardic in the streets of Marilao
hungry for something:
   give me a blank piece of paper
and i will try to reinvent the world
     with impunity and lostness.
the world gives back such awry stare
    and all imperative darkness reigns
supreme, mine are all emergencies
   as shadows are succored not,
retained in their caliginous thrones.

living alone
    yet not so much alone.
the dog outside does not bark anymore.
  the well-placed gnome of stone outside
      stares stonily across the thick space.
the nosy neighbor does not meddle
  through the rusted ocher grills.
the old moon wanes outside
   as the lift of light sways to where
there are no disappearances.
somewhere in the metropolitan there
   is a derby of fools and all mirth;
i wish myself there and curse my presence
      right then.
work does not fill me anymore,
    money does me no good. my soul
bangs the walls and slams the doors
     it threatens to leave without auguries,
and demands a new sense of necessity.

tonight, i will go out, drink at a local pub
   and crawl towards the ajar door of
  my father's car. smoke will caterwaul
the pressing scenes of the vicinities
    crumbling at the tremor of clocks;
i will open my dresser and discover
   all books dissipated, some naked
  in relished pages, others abeyant.

the curtain can fall later,
and the night too, falter evenly
widely spread across the sky.
    — all is broken.

Atop the tor with ancient horn
Blows bardic spirit newly born
With magic emblazoned on their tongue
A descant begging to be sung
Through the saccharine morn

This is the song. The babes rejoice
To hear the magical ludic voice
They sway, and clap, and swing their heads
As bard goes round them with gentle treads

The music paints their passion red
Alight! For cosmic sense is said
The flame of love be theirs to behold
A treasure that can't be bartered, sold
That brings life back to the dead

Amongst the multitudes of beats
That coy, hip underbelly
Allen Ginsberg found his feet
Bestowing an amazing treat

Articulating Poetry
Majestic music of the mind
Like semtex inflammatory
Allen’s Howl gains notoriety

Lamenting forces of destruction:
Materialism and conformity
The consumer world is in construction
Like soma the ultimate distraction

Yearning for a world where souls
Are unencumbered by cynical agendas
Allen assumed the bardic role
Trying to convey creation whole

Alluding to the magick realms
Where chaos and wilderness reside
Allen is at the Muse’s helm
Turning the world upside down