I

The Trumpet-Vine Arbour

The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise.

I sit in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight.
It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets,
I only know that they are red and open,
And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat.
My quill is newly mended,
And makes fine-drawn lines with its point.
Down the long, white paper it makes little lines,
Just lines -- up -- down -- criss-cross.
My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill;
It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen.
My hand marches to a squeaky tune,
It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes.
My pen and the trumpet-flowers,
And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree to the Southwest.
'Yankee Doodle,' my Darling! It is you against the British,
Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George.
What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager.
Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for.
Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target!
Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the house-top
Through Father's spy-glass.
The red city, and the blue, bright water,
And puffs of smoke which you made.
Twenty miles away,
Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck,
But the smoke was white -- white!
To-day the trumpet-flowers are red -- red --
And I cannot see you fighting,
But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada,
And Myra sings 'Yankee Doodle' at her milking.
The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine,
And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air.


II


The City of Falling Leaves

Leaves fall,
Brown leaves,
Yellow leaves streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall again.
The brown leaves,
And the streaked yellow leaves,
Loosen on their branches
And drift slowly downwards.
One,
One, two, three,
One, two, five.
All Venice is a falling of Autumn leaves --
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.

'That sonnet, Abate,
Beautiful,
I am quite exhausted by it.
Your phrases turn about my heart
And stifle me to swooning.
Open the window, I beg.
Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins!
'Tis really a shame to stop indoors.
Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself.
Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air!
See how straight the leaves are falling.
Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe,
It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle.
Am I well painted to-day, 'caro Abate mio'?
You will be proud of me at the 'Ridotto', hey?
Proud of being 'Cavalier Servente' to such a lady?'
'Can you doubt it, 'Bellissima Contessa'?
A pinch more rouge on the right cheek,
And Venus herself shines less . . .'
'You bore me, Abate,
I vow I must change you!
A letter, Achmet?
Run and look out of the window, Abate.
I will read my letter in peace.'
The little black slave with the yellow satin turban
Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes.
His yellow turban and black skin
Are gorgeous -- barbaric.
The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings
Lies on a chair
Beside a black mantle and a black mask.
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
The lady reads her letter,
And the leaves drift slowly
Past the long windows.
'How silly you look, my dear Abate,
With that great brown leaf in your wig.
Pluck it off, I beg you,
Or I shall die of laughing.'

A yellow wall
Aflare in the sunlight,
Chequered with shadows,
Shadows of vine leaves,
Shadows of masks.
Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant,
Then passing on,
More masks always replacing them.
Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind
Pursuing masks with plumes and high heels,
The sunlight shining under their insteps.
One,
One, two,
One, two, three,
There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall,
Filigreed at the top with moving leaves.
Yellow sunlight and black shadows,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
Two masks stand together,
And the shadow of a leaf falls through them,
Marking the wall where they are not.
From hat-tip to shoulder-tip,
From elbow to sword-hilt,
The leaf falls.
The shadows mingle,
Blur together,
Slide along the wall and disappear.
Gold of mosaics and candles,
And night blackness lurking in the ceiling beams.
Saint Mark's glitters with flames and reflections.
A cloak brushes aside,
And the yellow of satin
Licks out over the coloured inlays of the pavement.
Under the gold crucifixes
There is a meeting of hands
Reaching from black mantles.
Sighing embraces, bold investigations,
Hide in confessionals,
Sheltered by the shuffling of feet.
Gorgeous -- barbaric
In its mail of jewels and gold,
Saint Mark's looks down at the swarm of black masks;
And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall,
Flutter,
Fall.
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.

Blue-black, the sky over Venice,
With a pricking of yellow stars.
There is no moon,
And the waves push darkly against the prow
Of the gondola,
Coming from Malamocco
And streaming toward Venice.
It is black under the gondola hood,
But the yellow of a satin dress
Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger.
Yellow compassed about with darkness,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
The boatman sings,
It is Tasso that he sings;
The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles,
And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn.
But at Malamocco in front,
In Venice behind,
Fall the leaves,
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall.

It was not, by any means, a loss of faith;
Indeed, her devotion was a boundless, unfettered thing
Beyond proscription, beyond rote chant and catechism,
And what she found as a novitiate
Were shuttered gates and gossipy confessionals,
Standoffish priests, pig-eyed and pinch-lipped
Sisters who thought life’s commerce
No more than mechanical prayer and spotless linens,
The whole enterprise
Smacking of the exclusion of Heaven’s bounty.
So she demurred when the time came to take her orders,
And she returned to the world of pavements and lesser pieties,
Free to seek God on park swings and barstools,
In pleasures of the pastoral and the profane,
Though her faith is no Dionysian walkabout,
As she is passionate to the cusp of maniacal
When it comes to the Book of James’ admonition upon works;
She is often found among the sisters she once tiptoed alongside
At food pantries and clothing drives
(She is scrupulous about ministering to only secular needs,
As the Bishop is not happily disposed towards those
Who choose not to take the veil,
And the specter of excommunication is a prospect
Too awful to contemplate)
Afterwards clambering onto some vaguely roadworthy MTA bus
Back to her studio apartment in Green Island,
Where she often walks down to the Erie Canal lock nearby,
Praying for those who have travelled  near and upon the water,
Convenience store clerks and ragged Irishmen fleeing famine,
Feral kittens and insufficiently mourned mules.

Father, I have a confession, I admit I smoke one joint weekly,
Father I have a confession, I admit I think about having of ***,
Father I have a confession, I admit I question authority,
Father I have a confession, I admit I sometimes write improper text,
Father I have a confession, I admit to being wild at my bachelor party,
Father I have a confession, I admit to being by myself when I'm alone,
Father I have a confession, I admit I have partied hard at the fraternity,

Father I have a confession...that I confess to you things I wouldn't
Need to confess to any stranger, and I don't even know you like this
At all, and how do I know FOR SURE that this is all confidential?

Right...I get it...YOU JUST DO...sorry, whatever, my bad!
Still this is the creepiest confessional that I have ever had.

(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)

I.

There are the balladeers,
Working in service of their inner Service,
(Though, despite the seeming impossibility,
Their hackneyed verse is even worse)
Creating tortuous rhyme
Which slows down labyrinthine narratives
Ending up in some deus ex machine
So implausible that it would make Euripides blush
(Most often courtesy of some unforeseen projectile
Or sudden viral contagion;
Would that their creators meet such a fate!)

II.

I come not to praise the so-called sonneteers,
But to bury them.
They are an earnest lot,
(Lord knows that they are earnest)
And they will make their fourteen lines rhyme
(Though sometimes the rhyme scheme screams for mercy)
And hang the cost.
Though their narratives are head-scratching things,
And their iambs proceed with the steadiness
Of a nonagenarian church pianist
Doing her damndest to fight the wedding march to a draw,
They are content, nay, proud of their work
Because babble rhymes with Scrabble
(Though they are not particularly proficient with the latter,
They have the former down to an art.)

III.

Let us not forget the Buk-zombies,
Those apostles of aphorism,
Most of whom speak of their departed deity
As if he were an old drinking buddy
(Never mind that most of them were two or three
Or perhaps not even a bad idea
In the back seat of some mom’s Buick
When he exited this mortal plane, stage left, even.)
One’s mind is boggled whilst considering
The expanse of the bar required to accommodate
Everyone who would like to
(Or worse, have claimed to)
Buy old Charlie a beer, not that he’d stand for a round.
They are a sullen horde, this lot,
Best dealt with by aiming for the base of the skull.

IV.
Ah, the confessionals, Lord have mercy upon their souls
(For they shall have none upon ours.)
They feel so many things so deeply
As such things have never been felt before
(They have not read their Sexton, their Snodgrass,
Their Lowell, their Pl--well, no,
They have all read their Plath.)
It is, from the moment they arise in the morning
Until such time they set aside their fears and let sleep take them,
All too much for them,
And they bravely face the days
Until such time they care bear to take action
And fling themselves from some convenient precipice.
We should, as a service to them and ourselves,
Ensure the soles of their shoes
Are sufficiently worn and slippery.

(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The trafic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

Cigarette ash on the dashboard on the way to confession-- I fell in love with a stranger down the street.

I never go to church, never been one to admit to god I was wrong or he was right.  I wouldn't say I'm much of a believer in the unknown.

I never say my prayers. Figured if the moment was right maybe something would finally work in my favor.

He walked by in tight red pants and a black button up shirt. Sunglasses on and slicked back hair.

And I swear in that moment... I headed to church to say my prayers and confess that I think the stranger was the love of my life.

Cigarette ash on the dashboard on the way to confession-- I fell in love with the stranger down the street.

What makes a poet ?
That was my thought
I mulled it over and
Came up with these oughts :

Late nights with
coffee , tea or beer
Perhaps harder stuff
Whiskey , smoke or gin clear

And the struggles and pain
as the birth is exclaimed
Blood , sweat and tears
Falling as hard as ice on rain

Confessionals made
As black on white page
Love , death , fears
Even extreme rage

One who struggles
with the a's and the's
Should one even use
The apostrophe

One who's words
Gel by the witching hour
Words full of promise  
Warnings so dour

But perhaps greatest of all
Before even the start
One must have
a true poet's heart

Facades rise in memory.
Paint peels, marble columns lean,
Rain drowns piazzas.
The bridge of sighs moans in sorrow.
Windows stare sightless into the past.
Cats remember the rustling of silk,
jeweled hands tending morsels,
magenta robes, the cloaked,
the caped, flash of daggers in starlight,
the glory on sun drenched Sundays
when church bells summoned the faithful.

Morning sun bounces off golden domes,
water shimmers a crisp mother of pearl.
Gondolieri untie boats from painted poles,
swiftly ferry their fares in narrow vessels,
pass through the shadows of bridges.
Navigate the water webbing the city,
pass slow laboring barges with overflowing loads.
White seagulls crisscross an expanse of blue.
Shouted greetings echo.

In the white palace, laced with marble columns,
painted ceilings in wood paneled rooms tell stories.
Rich and poor bow to the Republic’s justice.
Doges in pointed hats, crimson robes,
cast fate from bejeweled hands.
Ornate basilicas, simple stone chapels, ensnare sinners.
Priests give absolution behind velvet curtains
in musty confessionals reeking of secrets.
Jews marked in red hats hurry to the ghetto.

On the dock fishermen spill their iridescent catch
from hulls of brightly painted boats.
Merchants shout of silk and salamanders in markets.
Women fill woven baskets with foreign colored bounty,
peaches beckon with pink cheeks,
grapes make sweet promises, purple plums tantalize.
Sun inhales musty smells, exhales sweet scents of basil
jasmine, mint, a woman’s sweet odor of lavender lingers.
Dogs lick cobblestones, savor every rancid morsel.
Window sills host lazy eyed cats.

Goats bloated with milk make their way,
pass baying sheep herded to slaughter
by burly men in soiled leather aprons.
Top sail schooners from far away shores,
carved bare breasted mermaids at their bow,
unload treasures. Silk and spices, chained trunks,
casks of sweet wine, gold will fill coffers.

Vines dig roots deep into walls, cling in crevasses,
perfume courtyards with intoxicating smells.
A flock of small yellow birds alight from rose bushes,
drink from a tiered fountain.
Cascades of faceted crystal spills
from the mouths of carved fishes,
stone maidens’ urns. They display their charms,
smile wistfully, wish away pigeons perched on their heads.
Lovers pass, exchange furtive glances, dream of night.

Dark sweaty men push a barge with a coffin
draped in gold threaded brocade, blood red roses.
A priest at the bow, a cross encased with jewels
catches the light in a blinding reflection.
Altar boys swing shiny vessels, incense permeates the air.
High voices intone monotonous chants.
Mourners follow in gondolas, sway in a rhythm of grief.
Black silk shines. Under veils tears streak
white chalked faces, red lips know of secrets.

Celebrants toast a newly wedded couple
with sweet scented deep ruby red wine.
Boar roasts, seasoned with sage, rosemary and thyme.
Round loaves of bread crust in a brick oven.
Pairs spill into the street, dance a joyful pavane,
pounding the cobblestones to the sound of tambourines.
They freeze in a moment in silence,
watch the funeral procession,
make the sign of the cross, return to their feast.

Now canals choke in mud.
fight ruin in oil slick stagnant waters.
Palazzos put on a false-face,
prostitutes heavily painted.
Greedy currents lick at foundations,
slowly swallow remains,
**** them into hostile marshes.

The Campanile rings the hour.


Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth     July 2010

I

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
  A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
  Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
  Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;
  Far off the noises of the world retreat;
  The loud vociferations of the street
  Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
  And leave my burden at this minster gate,
  Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
  To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
  While the eternal ages watch and wait.

II

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
  This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
  Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
  Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
  But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
  Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
  And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This mediæval miracle of song!

III

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
  Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
  And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
  The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
  For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
  Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine
  The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
  Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
  And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
  With the pathetic words, “Although your sins
  As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”

IV

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,
  She stands before thee, who so long ago
  Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe
  From which thy song and all its splendors came;
And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,
  The ice about thy heart melts as the snow
  On mountain heights, and in swift overflow
  Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.
Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,
  As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
  Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
Lethe and Eunoë—the remembered dream
  And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last
  That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

V

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
  With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
  Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
  And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
  With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
  And Beatrice again at Dante’s side
  No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
And then the ***** sounds, and unseen choirs
  Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
  And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
And the melodious bells among the spires
  O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above
  Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

VI

O star of morning and of liberty!
  O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines
  Above the darkness of the Apennines,
  Forerunner of the day that is to be!
The voices of the city and the sea,
  The voices of the mountains and the pines,
  Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines
  Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!
Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,
  Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
  As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
  In their own language hear thy wondrous word,
  And many are amazed and many doubt.

My dear, every touch from you
Is holy absolution
Every press of the lips
Is a new wave of salvation
Time and time again
You have rescued me from damnation
In you lies the sacred and the divine
Darling, the prophets would have built shrines
With roofs touching the skies
Altars all bathed in golden light
Crusaders would have stabbed every man
With their own spines
Kings and queens and popes
Would have swallowed
The gems from their crowns and thrones
To have this love

This love is too big
To be shoved into confessionals
This love is too holy
For tightly gripped prayer beads
And acts of contrition
This love is too great
For anything less than
The highest seat in heaven

No old bearded bible entity
Can tell me how to live in my faith
No-one- not even Leviticus or Moses or whoever the ****
Can tell me that this is a sin

How can it be a sin
When I have stopped searching for God
The moment I saw you

bloodied hands rub walls of confessionals like a cheap imitation of the most beautiful stained glass

theres beauty in the way you whisper my name followed by the words not good enough

your body is colored in someone else's fingerprints and i've been burning my hands to shape mine in just that way

kiss my lips until they crack like the sidewalks of the city that we used to dance in

bare feet on dashboards, cigarettes in your mouth, and hands around my neck: a list of things that make the most sense

a sunset reflecting off a mirrored building, eyes watered down until dark blue is nothing but the color of blue jeans

thunderstorm veins and lighting in my skin as my jaw becomes a platform for your kiss

your eyes are pools of holy water, but my lungs are full and I've been drowning for quite a long time now

In an attempt to be rational it seems I've forgotten how to ration - stand back! 1,095 days and 1,096 nights worth of unbearable and mistakenly shared sadness pours out and stains your only white t-shirt that I picture readily in the cocoon you built inside my head, wrapped it in swaddling cloth and laid it out to be walked upon - tumble dry low

I'm mscuzzying around your bone structure.
I want to break things, I want to wail, I want to remind you that you're supposed to want to die
(Doesn't it sound so sweet, baby? Right next to each other  - I promise your tattoos will still look cool in the moonlight of our masked and morbid menagerie, a mausoleum that I mailed you a hand-written invitation to)

Have I ever told you that you make me feel like macaroni art and that I know an earlier birth would have given me first place in the Contest That Is You?
Put me back in the box underneath your bed so I can feel like I have a home alongside your frame.

- In the midst of my cartoon confessionals and crumbling sense of worth I'd forgotten all about tonight's previously scheduled light show - like a solar eclipse of sorts, marred by the fact that my sun rests somewhere inside of you and a 'complete obscuring' doesn't entail half of how you've blinded me

A message flashes across every computer monitor in the great Midwest -

- I honestly love you.

Borrowed lives sulk, sprawling over lines
in coffee stains lies their demise
They live in lonely candle-light
are born in the agonies of night
After the streets have lost their sounds
they are the voices of lost crowds.
After a day’s lies, well-meant
they free truth’s pent-up discontent
Confessionals, they welcome
fearlessly each miscreant
And in a Lover’s hand they shine
with chivalry and love sublime
love which lives purely to exist.
Lives even in those who, unrequited
can but dream of it beyond the binned,
torn scraps which litter their sunrises

A fire is unfurling within me the older I get.
The need to be taken, body and soul, is overwhelming

Time ran its lecherous fingers
across our youngest son
with his oldest soul
Cruelly pried open weak spots
and stained our walls
with water damage tears
like misunderstood plague
that gloats just the same with
death knell freedom bell declarations
as we are herded
like cattle
and they ran their sacred waters
over my head but I found
I don't much subscribe to
forceful lead pipe
confessionals
and it's not that we want you off the land
we just want you to stop murdering it
with this run on death sentence
see I try to understand but
I struggle to be loyal when I saw what
you did to my brothers
and at this point all I ask
is
please
let my children
live.

As a priest one serves

in the churches in the hell --


of confessionals.

I’m not of this time
Future traveler on vacation in the Land of Lost, a ship out of fuel, a world confusing, 30th century fool
I came to observe blind beings who bend to the will of a surrounding chaos

After 1000 years adrift... Tired of the creeping tedium, I’ve become one
Tired of Logging anime patches and social media confessionals for the folks back home, I became one

You see, 21st century tragedy **** is big in the future, along with Akira and the selected letters of Eugene O’Neil

I’m lost, tell my subordinates
Confused, no need of a map, I know the coordinates, but I’ve become one

You’re not supposed to fall in love on these missions
Just take manga pics, perhaps monitor your fission

But the eyes I’m lost in
A fading autumnal green
I had to see her, I had to be seen
A violation but I’m trained,
still I’m weak, a mind so ingrained
(I am one of you now)

While drunk counting slightly smeared, sparkles on glass glittered lips, I found myself: in love
I told her: “The wine taste on your tongue is sacramental”
A feigned profundity, it’s incidental
(a convenient disguise for my insanity)

She doesn’t love me back. But I found myself

cdh

We sit up late and talk **** and glass box confessionals
Of fallen men and angels and the space between our hands
And though we spit different brands of fire,
we still connect in between the flames,
In between our overgrown youth and the cracks in the fault lines of our teeth
Between our separate worlds we meet open and honest in your attic and seek to touch the places we previously could not  reach alone
And I am breathless in return
And you, fire eyed girl, speak in sonnets to the dark
You take the circles around your eyes and string them into free verse
Spilling free from the patterns in your blood
You fight within to take hold of the love that is all around you
Because it lives all around you
Love follows you like a dog nipping at your heels
Chasing you into the depths of your being where it fights you up in arms at the immensity and grandeur of it all
Love fights for you
And you'll let it win
And so we sit and talk up the last four years of hell like it was nothing
Though we both know it meant everything just the same
And on the drive home I'm overwhelmed by the lights
Overcome at the light within you
Tangled beautiful girl
I was called fire eyed too but yours is a different sort of flame
A different brand of light
And it burns bright in my memory on the way home.

We strolled through converging pathways spilling with synchronized chaos, finding our own space amidst the rumpus of the crowds on a small hill overlooking an endearing muddle of humanity. The grass was wet with evening dew and we were colored with the aureate light of dusk, watching everything swim by with novel delight. The city erupted before us, vibrant, apathetic, and amoral and we swelled with its magnitude. Round and enchanted, we rolled down the hill and fell into the peculiar happenings encapsulated in the windows.
We stood before a man with no eyes and worms coming out of his fingertips in a room with no floor. He smiled at us, carious teeth bending into slight parabolas under the pressure of its sweetness. We excused ourselves quickly, escaping into a opaline kaleidoscope that had opened up before us. I could taste all the lives we tumbled past as a mix of bitter almonds and grapefruit with the occasional shock of decomposing fish heads.
We squeezed our bodies into the melody of a madrigal sung by a girl with four heads and sonorous hands to find ourselves in the rafters of an old cathedral. Below us contorted souls filed into wooden confessionals screaming sins of their fathers into the ear of a deaf priest who gave copacetic blessings in the form of an orange pill bottle. Distended and bruised, we fell from the ceiling into the baptismal font. Bioluminescent algal blooms effloresce above our heads and resplendent stingrays whisked by, casting soft, amorphous shadows across our cheeks. Lulled by the etherial tenderness of the liminal world, we fell asleep with your hand on my neck and my fingers tangled in your seaweed hair.
We awoke to the sound of falling peaches and splitting skin. I pulled a small fish out from behind your ear and inhaled the brine of your tongue before stepping into the open window beneath your pinkie finger. A man in a suit who was really a box jellyfish greeted me in the center of a opulent office building that had no purpose. I politely declined to shake his hand and instead lost myself in the map of the city unfurled beneath the wall of glass in front of me. I pulled a small seashell out of my pocket and threw it. Everything shattered.
I felt you next to me, falling through space and low-lying clouds to find ourselves in the present.
We are saturated colors of mustard, earthen green, and midnight blue sprawled on sloping grass without hesitation. Buoyant and expectant, we meander through song and chatter to find ourselves bright and shining on a warm green bench talking in improvised harmony. Our skin is a new composition of window light, yellow and breathing. A synthesis of memories pool and flush our cheeks with affection and we inhale the world. Flags pirouette and fall, a refracted constellation glimmers on glass, and you taste like honey and rich smoke. The moon is ebullient, so full and round that in a gasp I pluck it from the sky and place it in your shirt pocket. We’re effervescent, with giggling fingertips on a euphoric investigation into novelty of human sensation. Somnolent and gentle, we fall asleep with the memory of our water soaked bodies burgeoning under softened hands.

It is better not to go to Eden
Empty handed, solemnized,
Among the mutilated people.

Even among first fruits, now withered,
The words of poets with their
Pompous thoughts and politics,
They must have thought themselves
Great for survival of the flood,
Groaning at lesser poets in their eyes.

The ominous black thoughts,
They have worded destruction on
To the new poets whom might steal
Their light in a ghostly place,
So that they do not return and we
Are stuck with the same moderation
While falling under an evil spell
Of repetitive words mixed with
Bitter allusions.

When the site turns to "goodbye"
Instead of hello, inside an old enclosure
Creaking with the same ole and their
Followers hoping to be hearted by
Mediocrity and sleepy eyes,
We all lose a little of what this place
Was.

And I will enter the poem hated,
Earning respect the way it should be,
With my words that cannot judge,
With my hearts that have eyes and
Have read your poem,
I will humm along the spider's webs
And see if I can see the hope and reason
Of why any of you write these
Wonderful confessionals.

In the relentless nature of renewal,
The crying of new born poets,
For what is given and taken
In the words of you ,
I will be here,
Renovated alters for your sacrifice,
I will ring the bells
With fluctuating tones,
The affectionate words of your sorrow,
By the light of your dramatic hearts,
There is a poet who does not take sides,
I am here to read and enjoy,
Either in the light or the dark,
The intimate poetry that is you.

a thousand eyes searching
and i still feel pretty ******* invisible
it’s a blessing, it’s a curse
i couldn’t tell you which is worse
and i’m swallowing magnets just to attract you
talking big and fast like
maybe i can capture your attention
maybe i can handcuff it to me
and now i'm emptying out my heart in the bathroom
just to save space
and it's always a bathroom, it's always a bathroom
because girls throw up their secrets there
making confessionals out of toilet bowls
because lonely kids hide there
eating their lunches perched in bathroom stalls
i think we’re all still more like that
than we want to ever admit to ourselves  
sometimes i think we mistake brutal for beautiful a little too easily
you're a disaster, you're a ******* train wreck
yet, baby, some how you got it together better
than anybody i know
and yeah, you’re ****** record sometimes
but i never could bare to turn you off,
because i know every word too well
and we all skip sometimes
and we all have our botched notes sometimes
and we all have misses instead of hits sometimes
but even scratched up records can still make music,
and even cynical people can still write love songs
you’ve got a smile closer to
a painted-on sunset than a true blue sky,
but don’t look now; your paint’s peeling off
like cheap nail polish
and we don’t like to talk about it
because then we might have to think about it
and it was like getting exactly what you wanted
then having to return it
you are the best and worst things i’ve ever written,
poetry personified
no one ever got me like you did
because i know you best which means i also know you worst
so now i'm like new orleans after the levees broke
every hurricane has a name and i’m trying to forget yours,
there are universes inside of you
people will never know because no one will ever
think to ask about them
and there are storms brewing in you
that no one will ever see coming until they hit
and not everyone can see the brightest of galaxies
with a naked eye
but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there
and i’m searching with a magnifying glass,
a careless kind of precision
i’m just near-sighted with a vision
i looked so hard for you in the stars
that i think i created new constellations there just to fit you in
i accidentally immortalized you
and what's a girl to do when she loves somebody
too big for a twin bed, larger than life
and you know me, i always want to be the last thing i saw on tv
and i know you, you’ll only be famous in your downfall
because if this is a big fish in a small pond type of situation
then you’re a whale in somebody’s kitchen sink,
too big for this **** town
and i couldn’t ever bare to hold you back or tie you down
life’s like a fistfight, right, and you can’t stop
somebody from throwing
their own punches even if you’re just thinking
about saving their unscarred knuckles with you best intentions
and i’ll never stop you from leaving
even if i don’t want you to go
i understand losing everything that you’ve ever had
just to gain what you’re looking for
better than you’ll ever know, better than i’ll ever let show
because i want so bad i’m burning up in the atmosphere
i want so bad i’ll let it destroy me without a second thought;
i just overdosed on my dreams in my bedroom  
and we are not on our deathbed
we’re trying to claw our way out of our open casket
we’re already in our coffin, we’re already buried ten feet under
we were dead a long time before we ever even arrived
and my knuckles might be unscarred
and there's a thousand better ways to word this
but i don’t believe in anything the way
i believe in you
and i guess it makes sense:
somebody once told me that  
either you die for what you believe in
or you live for what you don’t

There is shadow in the corner.
The barest hint of a shape.
Another boy.
So much pain, so much
cruelty. So much...
His eyes flicker with danger.
A silver glint reflects from his hand.
His left hand.
Odd, I think.

There is a shadow, a boy, and
a bullet meant for me.
When he issues his charge the
sound roars through the small
alley.
He drops the weapon,
I shout to bleed out the noise.
Next to me there is no noise.
The projectile moved so quickly,
I didn’t even understand what had
happened until after the shadow boy
had run off, until after I held you.

There were no last minute confessionals.
There was no kissing your forehead
no shouting vengeance to the heavens.
I wish there was.
I wish it had all been different.

I don't know if it was the sound,
how unbearably loud it was,
or if it was the inexperience of the
shadow boy, or some magical combination
of all of these things.
I never will.

There was only a boy
and what was left of the other one.

Would my rhythm to the stars awake the galaxy?
Nestled so sweetly in the craters of the moon
Watching time bend to see the connected
Such a crooked little maybe

Whispers far too quiet for the storm
Soft beats drown in the thunder of day to day
What if you were to listen?
The light is there to guide you home

Fire that burns throughout the night
Love's never-ending promise of next time
Would the truth burn upon your lips?
You are a wildflower

Brilliant light behind your eyes
The fall into a moment
To allow another soul to say hello
Forever searching to be seen

Quiet confessionals for the sake of lovers  
Hidden behind rose colored glasses
The path seems long to the lone traveller
Petals find a way to kiss the sun

Looking back I wonder if
I was a silent player
looking on while you were
held down and tortured in those
abduct taped conman confessionals
he was so fond of
Because the way I remember it
you and I were always standing
on the same corner slinging hope
while the smog encroached
but maybe you were disgusted with me then
like I am when I think back to watching
the scar strangled manner you were
loyally subjected to
I stand captured
Resigned to billowing abstractions
brought forth in my less callous moments
Looking out at these slurred flickers  
shackled and swinging in a nine to five iron cage
wondering if you would even let me out
if you held that key
in those perfect imperfect hands
I always longed to hold.

The seventeenth of March
Is like our own little Christmas,
Thanksgiving, Independence Day,
And Fourth of July
All drunkenly rolled into one

When us Irish and wannabe Irish,
Sing our same old songs
Will repeat our tired mantra,
And do just what
The Irish are expected to do.

To watch nice green parades,
While sipping on nice green milkshakes.
To be drunkards and happy-go-lucky,
Doing our best Riverdance impression to fiddles,
Because everyone wants to be Irish.

Today we'll act like we only drink Guinness.
Where in a place full of craic and merriment,
There's still so much blood and tears.
Where the only snakes are pets or in zoos,
There's still so much venom.

Of course, there was never any snakes
Only metaphors for Pagans and Druidic priests,
And St. Pat wasn't even an Irishman,
Just a boy made into a slave by Irish pirates.
But everything always gets covered up nicely.

Stories get changed and sensitized,
Until the truth becomes a theory,
And fabrication becomes fact.
The truth begins to wear a veil,
Because it's considered so ugly.

The truth is also a beacon.
A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as the confessionals
Where a child's innocence was
Crippled by
The lukewarmness of the priest's
Hand over their mouth.

A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as a septic tank in Galway,
Filled with eight hundred dead babies,
Throw away,
Like ****, because they were
Equally unwanted.

A flashlight against the dark.

Dark as a night flight
To an English abortion clinic,
Because here it's not your body,
The righteous all knowing say
"That's not how it works here".

So drink your Guinness,
Sing The Dubliners,
Watch the parade go by,
Have the craic and
Turn off your flashlight.

at most, i'm sleeping my demons away
or so i say at three AM
another night spent awake

well i guess i'll never be lonely
shoulders perfect perches
for perilous shadows

oh hold thy holy rosary
beads between bitten fingers;
abandoned God forever ago

but sometimes religion
clings like a second skin
and it's nice to talk to the silence

on my knees
for sin or saints, to please or plead
i'm a fifty:fifty on morality

church pews and statues,
but if i don't believe, they can't hurt me
the devil can't do me harm

i abandoned confessionals
when it became clear to me
that apologies mean nothing when you

repeat and repeat,
unrepentant, really
'least i can do is be honest

and say to you
whoever's listening
i'm not sorry for existing