Tears
They’re said not to be for men
But then again
When touched and in pain
Its considered sane
To let them rain
Down your cheeks
Forming little creeks
Hurrying to the crying mouth
With curled lips
The voice slips
Out little sobs and sighs
Connecting to inner ground
Not happy but sound,
Alive

Richard of York, grew bananas in Virginia
Newtonian prism
That scientific schism
That drives a nail into the coffin
Of innocence
That refracts awe into
Data, facts and information
That splits brilliance into
unseeing insensate familiarity
The vulgarity of knowledge

The longs and rites
Of smoking

The breath of a man
Began at 16
An institutional drag into adulthood
Not for me, see, as we had begun
To inhale the essence of the divinity  of masculinity
As a wage earning paper boy with money to burn
As a *** waving fisherman,
As an adoring footballer,
Strolling onto  the stage
To rapturous applause
Following smoke signals
Of my arrival

They said
“You get back what you put out”
I said
“I love you”

I
Cannot die
Hard as I try
Seemingly
I must
Go
On
And on
Beyond this bright stage
To another age
And
Another.
Hilarious
But
No
Ones
Laughing
Perhaps
Its
time

Grahame Rourke

The daffodil hangs its weary head
The trumpet sounded
The winter dead
The tears of snow now shed
The rise of sap
Begins to lap
On the shores of hope
And beyond
So far beyond
Into silence
And stillness
God bless
The sweet caress
Of tenderness
In a wilderness
If not a desert
Of loneliness
Dunes  piled high
By the winds of chance
And the carrot of romance
A seasonal dance
Promises,
And in short, longs
For contact
Ever present
In the back of the mind
Be kind
Please be kind
Its kinder nice
And much better to have
Than cold shoulders
Like boulders
Standing resisting movement
And in their stubbornness
They thwart life
Oh what a die to die for.

Grahame Rourke