There was an Old Man of Japan
Whose lim-er-icks never would scan.
     When they said, "What the fu?"
     He replied, "They're haiku!"
That Irish Old Man of Japan.

My gal's got a way of talkin' so sweetly
Of talkin' so sweetly to me
It brings me the mornin' to hear her
Voice sweetly
To hear her
Kind words just for me

She talks of forever and ever just with me
She talks like she's writin' a poem
She talks like a liar
Eyes glint like a tiger
I see it,
And know that I'm *****

My gal's got me wrapped all up on her finger
Caught up in her hair
Curls like irons.
But me I don't worry
That she'd ever harm me
I'm just as disarming
As she

I know by the taste of her tongue
It is silver
I know cause it matches my own
And though we both talk of such aery ideas
When we are together I'm home

One day I sat alone drinking a pint,
My a mhuirnin arriving this mornin'
I said I'd greet her and then spend the day
Stroll'an' watch all the ships come to harbor

Her ship was due in from Dublin today,
She'd gone home for to bury her father,
And though she loved him she weren't feelin' grey,
He'd left her mom alone at the alter,

So there I sat, her ship taking its time,
A little red lark sung above me,
And then it landed, much to my surprise,
On my shoulder just ever so gently

I didn't move I just marveled in place,
The small clever lark sung on my shoulder,
And then from tweets to words slowly I heard
My dear love's voice come out of the small bird

My dear I don't have time
To ask how you are
God gave me but only a moment
To say I love you and don't waste your time
My ship won't ever make it to harbor.

I didnt know just quite what I should say
I was feeling a mix of emotions
I had no reason to doubt this small bird
But if so then my heart surely'd be broke,

My dear I can see you
Can't quite understand
I've died and I've gone on to heaven
In time you'll see
I've done all that I can
And have found yourself a new a mhuirnin

Then back to songs that bird's beak did return,
I couldn't help but shaking and bawling,
But as it flew off It left me a plume,
And I still keep that feather right on me.

In time I found love again,
Calling my name,
And boy did he say it so sweetly,
But every morning I still hear her song
My little red lark singing above me.

His touch was
like sunlight on my skin
the sweeping skim of kelp across marbled coat
his webbed fingers tracking their rough edges
through the sand.
In the storm's howl he was calm
the chaos of waves in my belly slowed
an unearthly peace
of tide-pool eyes that stilled the seventh stream.  
The waves roll out and the waves roll in
and out my love rolls with them.
Seven tears shed at Spring tide
for love of a man
whose heart
is sea bound,
sealed.

Back in my bone crushing
poverty ridden days,
I collected cans for nickels;
enough cans meant ***** and
smokes for the day.
one morning I came across
an empty can of beer, it said,
Dead Irish Poet Beer.
i thought, how odd is this?
Just then, a car blew by blaring
a Van Morrison song.
I thought, ah yes, but he's alive.
I didn't take the can for the nickel.
I left it to its green garbage
can grave.

In their beauty, an unparalleled race
From a higher, supernatural place,
Driven to hidden, underground refuge
When mans’ cynical wars the earth deluged-
Leaving only the slightest, unclear trace.

They knew no pain, nor any suffering
And the world is darker from their leaving
And we are left to pick up the pieces,
While our own ambivalence increases,
Seeking to find a singular meaning.

You may call it naive wish fulfillment,
But I will search for reconcilement.
I will upturn the soil and the roots,
Until I may procure some lasting truce
Make amends for Ill-judged revilement

And then mankind again will have a guide
Some holy beings to gift us back our pride
What a dream, to again have dignity
To direct our kind to benignity
So we may be pulled back from the wayside

It’s all very romantic, isn’t it?
That some saviors will see us fit.
It takes the blame off us,
Makes our apathy superfluous,
Proves we are not hypocrites.

But maybe we should fix our own mistakes,
Go outside and clean our own ******* lakes,
Stop hiding behind flowery language and care
Waiting for a savior when they are rare,
Before our zeal irreversibly breaks.

Guarding the door,
like a bulbus Heimdall,
a blank pumpkin sits,
internally unhallowed,
without gashed gaping maw,
nor knife-notched nose,
nor eyeslits: triangular and odious.

Its inertia, serendipitous,
not for a moment did it greet
children asking
"Treat-or-Treat?!";
Never a one did it glow for.

Encased within, like
those stringy pumpkin guts,
is the puckish Pagan spirit,
craving bones ablaze in a fire;
Lost Loves manifested as moonlit
flaxen apparitions,
finding them Angelic
(yet unchanged),
easily as a ring
found in barmbrack.

A return to the turnip.

Ambling along ferns
rusted that same shade of pumpkin,
pondering the dead, and where
I long for them to reside now;
Rose, with her heaven,
Ryan, his Valhalla.

To each their Kingdom
of eternal inviolate peace.