A lament don Ghaeilge

A language
in my Blood
but not - on my tongue.

The prose and poetry of my ancestors
fallen - on deaf ears.

When did we accept this anglicized assonance,
to marr the seanchaithe tale of soil and air?

The Land of Saints and Scholars -
speaking words from others tongues.

Country Attitude

Here I come
Check me out
You can see it in my walk
Listen, to my  velvet voice
It's even in my talk

I  have a certain swagger
That's so ****, and not lewd
This girl knows where she's going
I've got that country attitude

I've  got the look
Of country cool
I've got country attitude
This girl's in charge
I  break the rules
I've got that country attitude

Like a good smooth bourbon
From Kentuck
To be with me
Takes more than luck
I  want a man
not just a dude
To share my country attitude

I'll chew you up
and spit you out
So, treat me good
With out a doubt
The way I  look
Is misconstrued
I'm full of
Country Attitude

I've got the look
Of country cool
I've got country attitude
This girl's in charge
I  breaks the rules
I've  got that country attitude

Born in a place that I don't call home
Raised in a country foreign to Mom
Stained with the colors of different flags
My soul and my heart: in different lands

"Where are you from?" So simple a question
Yet always I answer with such hesitation
For how do I choose from different parts
Of the whole that is me and my colorful heart?

The answer is simple, not complex at all
It's simply a matter of wearing them all
So I'll show them all proudly: my beautiful hues
For I've finally realized I don't have to choose

two concepts
dance around
in my mind
from time to time

the first one is
secure
small towns and
familiar faces
streets with grass
growing in the cracks
and parking lots with
the footprint of my
disintegrating shoe
pressed into fresh asphalt

streetlights that
come on to let
me know it’s time
to go home
a soft place
to call my own

the second one is
romantic
intriguing and scary
traffic and lights
and people and buildings
that fight to reach
into the clouds
an unfamiliar city
with corners and caveats
to explore for the first time

lights that never
burn out
restless crowds
to fade into
as soon as someone
learns your name

two very different thoughts
both equally
concerning in
two very different ways

complacency or
out of place?

i refuse to give
myself an answer
or maybe i’m afraid
to let myself wander

but a third question
knocks on my
skull and
lets itself in

and i can’t help
but wonder

what does
five in the morning
feel like when you
can’t see the sunrise
casting shadows
on empty fields?

does the world still
find a moment to
release its breath
before the day begins
when the city didn’t
even sleep the night before?

what if i don’t
belong here?

which outcome would
leave me least misplaced?

never and never my boy,
riding away and away
from the land of the hearthstone tales
to never look back,
fear or believe
that a look cast into the past
might trip you up ahead.

never and never my boy,
fear or believe
that your Troubles,
dressed in cloaks of Joy -
snarling and snaking,
roughly and blithely
shall leap -
my boy, my boy -
into a home under new trees
in a sunlit year
to eat your heart
in this house
in your whole new world.

country girl
toddled back home.
sepia leaves traced behind her
tumbling on the flaccid, dusty loam.

country girl
in her licorice colored boots
daydreamed at the piebald trees
rotting from their roots.

country girl
dancing in auburn checkered dress
sprinted home mirthfully
looking like a mess.

These nowhere towns,
Mountain tops snow-capped long through march,
All else,
Enshrouded in brown.

Though people live here,
And seems they aren't broken down.

The paint peels from the motel,
The mother tends to her daze,
The attendant ponders the insects of the sill,
Tumbleweed the only things, un-willing of being still.

Life is good here,
In these hazy,
Background,
Nowhere towns.