My shelves stack full of books half read
Half poems I could not ring
Limp as a starfish upon this bed
As the bird's sweet chirpings sing

Through the echoing skull I've said
"Beware" for there be no mortal thing
Could tame the waters and lands of dread
Where my madness reigns as King

My heart does sink, a lump of lead
My chains to river cling
On spring's soft pillow I rest my head
To dream of other things

I am sat
In a tight picnic circle
Laid on the grey sand

I am a crusted seashell,
I am the limpets which cling to my skin
Like a sunken chest

The waves and sea gulls call
For each other and the cold
In the distance. The swimmers. The Irish

Sea and the Irish cold
Whistling,
The sea and the clouds

You are the froth
Flowing through my lungs like a white
Feather fallen from the sky

Silent
And dry
The rock's green hair swaying

The wind strikes the eye
Like a splash
And decays with

The grace of a coffin
For me the reeds have born their fruit
They stab the naked

Skin, you are still
Sleeping on your side
In the tent

You are still beautiful
Within, soon the ***** will unfold
And we shall embrace
The sea and her sons

The shining black  
Florescent streetlamps  
In the rain

My hair is heavy
And long and it grows over
My eyes

Look, the stream is smooth
And a mirror like the tears
That hang from the brown

Green leaves floating
And the grey perched on the wall
I'm at the edge where the river flows

Under like a fish
There's
A salmon

Hopping
On the river
Amongst a million ripples

The unanswered pleas
A fog condensed
Into crystals

They drip
To rest on her lips
And between her shining scales

Someone pushed me
Someone
I'm falling

I'm freezing
In here someone is under
The surface

It pulls
And I need
To help

Someone
A mirror
My reflection

My body at the bed
My mouth agape
I'm not awake
Anymore

Give my heart a flaming rest, set down from up on this pedestal
And away from this oaken throne

Let it drift away on the undulating waves of insanity
And fade into the fogs of memory

Mark it with your own decided determination
And withhold your silken vocal strands from uttering a word towards mine

For who can forget what was never there
And who can regret what was always fair?

[Before the storm]

I'm walking away from hope
Childish in my care for the cracked stone
I must be for my mother
            My forehead once felt her kiss
                              Then felt her wrist
I pity the men who can step anywhere  

Anywhere in the grey
Above Dublin's familiar streets
Bubbling, their tea in hell
           It has the taste of fear as well
                             I have made them
Their new reality did not account for me

I bought you a bicycle for your birthday
I helped you to unwrap it
And we rode through the morning
           Brushing nettles
                           And when fox brush fluttered
We were unsettled

Why were you so cold?
When the Sun submerged into galaxies
To become your face and your cheeks
         And the leaves lay on cellophane
                          Your eyes seemed so old to me
But your smile was philosophy

Long hair was blooming in the wind
A deal made with the God Time
No need for penitence
        No need for any of it
                         Tell me there is a way
And I will wage war with the waves

Speeding ahead with my eyes on the stars
And the moon which stays fixed
No matter how fast I pedal
Even when small stones
Get stuck in the metal
And I fly through the air like a feather

I lay with the pattering in a puddle
I lay with the rain and the mud forever

Maybe if you throw broken glass at me
I'll finally understand what it feels like
to be shattered. Right?

I want to feel the tiny stabbing pains inlay
themselves in my face like diamonds until
I can't feel my lashes.

And why, you ask, do I want to learn this
pain more than I want to live myself, and yet
you forget I am more.

I am more that you'll ever be because I wish
unlike one I've ever known to feel the pain
that comes with life.

Because I know
we are lost
without it.