Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;
The immortal desire of Immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edge barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.

Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,
A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,
Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,
Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.

And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;
And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old
Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,
And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;
The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,
And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,
The breathing came from those bodies, long warless, grown whiter than curds.

The wood was so Spacious above them, that He who has stars for His flocks
Could ****** the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;
So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,
Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,
Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide;
And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,
Lay loose in a place of shadow:  we drew the reins by his side.

Golden the nails of his bird-clawS, flung loosely along the dim ground;
In one was a branch soft-shining with bells more many than sighs
In midst of an old man's *****; owls ruffling and pacing around
Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,
In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,
Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,
Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.
I saw how those slumbererS, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,
Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,
Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.

Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a long lingering note.
Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.
He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,
Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.

I cried, 'Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!
And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,
That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;
Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the ****** lands.'

Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;
And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;
And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;
Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
How the fetlocks drip blocd in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;
How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,
And the name of the demon whose hammer made Conchubar's sword-blade of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide;
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;
How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,
Moved round me, of ****** or landsmen, all who are winter tales;
Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,
Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,
Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk
Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death making eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,
And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.
So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,
In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.

At times our slumber was lightened.  When the sun was on silver or gold;
When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;
When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;
Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.

So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,
Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,
A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon waking white as a shell
When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sceolan, Lomair.

I awoke:  the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,
Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his ***** deep
That once more moved in my ***** the ancient sadness of man,
And that I would leave the Immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.

O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white,
Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:
But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight
Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.

I died, 'O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,
I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young
In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,
Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!

'Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,
Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to threadbare rags;
No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,
But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.'

Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought,
Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;
As she murmured, 'O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,
For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.

'Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,
And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide;
But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe
Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will come no more to my side.

'O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'
I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan:
'I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast
We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone

'In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come.
Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest,
Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea's vague drum?
O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'

The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,
Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark:
In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling' ground.

And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away',
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

And the winds made the sands on the sea's edge turning and turning go,
As my mind made the names of the Fenians.  Far from the hazel and oak,
I rode away on the surges, where, high aS the saddle-bow,
Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.

Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,
Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,
When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,
For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.

Till, fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay
Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;
Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,
From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.

If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,
Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,
Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,
I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.

Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path
Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the mth,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and *****,

Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,
Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:
Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.

And before I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,
Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:
And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, 'The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,
So sleep thee by daytime.' A voice cried, 'The Fenians a long time are dead.'

A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,
And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk-
And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,
And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.

And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, 'In old age they ceased';
And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, 'Where white clouds lie spread
On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast
On the floors of the gods.' He cried, 'No, the gods a long time are dead.'

And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about,
The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;
I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shout
Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.

And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,
They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.
Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,
With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians' old strength.

The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; how, when divided the girth,
I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;
And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,
A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry'.

How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;
Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;
What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair?
Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.

S.  Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;
Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide Hell,
Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God's face,
Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.

Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt
The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their Breath,
Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,
And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.

And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,
Afraid, their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;
Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,
Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.

We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass
And enter, and none sayeth 'No' when there enters the strongly armed guest;
Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;
Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.

S.  Patrick. On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are tost;
None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;
But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost
Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.

Oisin. Ah me! to be Shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,
Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear;
All emptied of purple hours as a beggar's cloak in the rain,
As a hay-**** out on the flood, or a wolf ****** under a weir.

It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there;
I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,
I will go to Caoilte, and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.

I remember a story, it starts at fourteen.
I had a crooked back and low self esteem.
I was afraid I was gonna end up in a ditch somewhere.

I had to devise myself a plan
of which direction to go if **** hit the fan
and I knew my mother wanted a prodigy child

So I figured I could sing or get really smart,
but my voice would crack and my mind was dark,
so I decided, in this crazy world,
that I could rob graves.

So I left home when I was sixteen
my boredom peaked and my senses keened
I grew with a morbid fascination with the dead

It started out
me figuring that
they wouldn’t miss their dimes, their shoes or their hats
I tramped on the dusty trail with an evil eye

As I ended up along the borderline
I met another young man who had gone insane.
He just got back from the war.
Like he said: “I’ve seen some things.”

So we rode together for quite a while
in the dust on the trail for a thousand miles
until one night, we came upon an unmarked grave.

My partner fumbled around in his pockets
evading worms and maggots from his sockets.
He turned around and looked at me with his crazy smile

It turned out what he found was a letter
and with this smile he said: “The dead have it better.”
So i reached out to grab it while the stench arose.

He handed it to me and on front and back
I read about this lonely, old, sad sack
who, being sick of life, ended up hanging himself.

This really put things into perspective for me
for the attention me and my partner was giving, you see,
was often more than these people received in life.

But one windy day the law caught on our path
and with a holstered gun me and my partner had
we stopped by a local tavern to wet our throats.

The law had converged in the front door
my partner flinched before I could do more.
And before I knew it he had bolted down for the gun.

Before I could say another word
he dropped to the floor and his fingers curled.
He rattled and faded away while I was restrained.

As I was lying on my stomach on the ground
I looked over and I heard a sound
It was my partner whispering his final words.

“The dead have it better.”

It came at night,
a howling wind,
when gentle Spring
had been expected.
Gumtree pond
Homes destroyed,
bodies everywhere,
devastated.

In the silent
aftermath
there , the sound
of a baby
crying.

Baby Elvis
had survived
when all around
folks keened
for those
who died.

I.
I want to walk out
into the ocean’s gentle swells,
and feel God’s palm
cupped around me.

II.
I want to step,
over the smooth, fluted stones,
and the whorled shells
of bright abalone,
to sink down
onto sundrenched
sea-ground
and close my eyes
to see my blood-red sun-lit lids
flicker and flash, as
shuddering net-designs
dance, threaded and lacy;
as they curl,
tangling across me.

I want to slide my fingers
through the slithering white sand--
the grains carved into
ivory ripples by the
currents’ deft hands.

III.
oh, I want to lie
and close my eyes
and feel the soft lurch of each wave
jerking overhead, its
strong tug like a kite,
watch the shining fish
scything past above,
and let each dancing point of light
reflected
from their scales
scar my pale face.

IV.
Oh, there is a howling, starving dog
that circles on the shore,
alone.
he’s keened his frantic misery to the
deadpan moon
for so so long
that no one listens anymore--
they gave it up long ago
and just sprawl, licking the dunes;
they lie and swear the grit quenches their
aching thirst
until they choke on their sand-covered tongues
and die.

V.
You see,
I want to see the moon rise,
quivering through
deep-water blackness;
listen to the dolphins’
ghostly shrieks and clacks,
and the whales’ deep, grieved noises.
I want to forget
the sound of human voices.

I long to close my eyes,
sink,
and never rise.

VI.
bright, irregular globes
flutter from my mouth
quick,
coruscating orbs
of prayer,
they shudder and
dart upwards

VII.
saltwater, salt tears,
ask Him if He hears
you gasping.

Sitting on the window; looking out onto the terrace,
I was gazing into the twilight, feeling the wind seep into my heart,
Right then he had started to play.

A lonely figure in the moonlight, he was a solitary monk,
Strumming away on his guitar,
Luring out heaven’s saddest notes on the way.

And I began to lose myself too,
In the depths of his deep baritone voice of immeasurable sorrow,
As I vainly fought to blink the tears away.


His music had taken me home in another time,
Into her loving arms softer than soft,
Those that nursed me once and set me right.

I took the violin in my trembling hand,
Accompanying the lonely singer, I lapsed into the past,
The past that I didn’t want to have fight.

The fire that had taken her body, raged within me now,
Every note stabbed our souls as we keened; the world awoke to us,
Mine and his, our grief and music intertwined.

He finally looked up, right onto my face searching a balm for his fractured soul,
And all he saw was his own pain reflected in mine,
We kept on playing; Into that dark, cold night.


**For our first love,
The first face we ever saw with open eyes,
For a mother, A gasp of fresh air,
For the love, the love of our life.

The gravel crunched beneath each footstep she took.
Small beads of sweat rolled down her face,
Her hand sweeping across her brow repeatedly.
Her heart was racing, her breath becoming labored.
The voices were following her,
Their whispers and hushed laughter haunting her.
Faster and faster, she ran --
But the voices grew louder with her effort.
She gasped, "Please" -- crunch, crunch -- "not me!"
The voices became shadows,
And the once brazen and bright sky
Turned to lightless obscurity.
Shadow after shadow,
They crept after the girl.
Her world morphed into an endless plain --
It didn't cease, as if she were running in place.
They swarmed her body, their hazy bodies overwhelming.
"Remember..." they spoke to her.
"I can't," she rejected.
"Remember..." they taunted once again.
She keened,
For she knew it was time to face her demons.

The violin wept it’s tears in the rain
Wept like a heart that is rent with pain
Wept of sorrows too deep to express
Whispered of longing too secret to guess.
Only the wailing wind and I knew
Of the longing too wide to escape.
I could not hold the music in my hand
To whisper, yes, I understand..
I know what it is to have my soul die
I know of pain that cannot cry
I know what it is to call out in pain
For a hand I cannot hold again –
The Violin keened it’s last sobbing note
The violinist packed it with it’s bow.
And left. He would never know
How his music spoke to me, and how it cried with me.
But I know, I know  – and I am missing thee.

He had witnessed
the innocent kids
piled up
in a country
far away
where death
was commonplace
and no one
baked cupcakes
bearing the names
of the slain,
only keened
like maternal sirens
against the inevitable
moment.

He took comfort that
Back in the World
the children
roamed in safety
and grew plump
on promises
far from land mines,
shrieking Phantoms,
dangerous strangers
with barking weapons.

He did not,
could not,
foresee a time
when those
same weapons
would turn
their deadly mouths
on babies,
back in the world.

But the sins
of the fathers
circle back
to the world
and the bodies
of children
wear doomed grins
like death heads
at the karmic irony.

Now that illusion
of a last, safe place
is rent and torn
and there is
no longer a world
to go back to.

   mce

I’v started speaking like you. I’m using terms that only could have originated from you. I talk and I hear your voice. You never left me. You speak through my lips. You come at the world with a cutting sarcasm that people only find cute because they hear it from an innocent, naive young lady. A child.

No one took me seriously except for you. Everyone thought I was golden, but you saw me for how I really was. Gray, sprinkled in the ashes of my mistakes and dusted with the pieces of regret and cowardice that I foolishly hoped would just blow away in the wind. Instead they clung to me as easily as I clung onto your affections.

You changed me in ways that I didn’t want to admit. I thought of myself as my own person, and you agreed with me, but you knew you were changing me. You were selfish that way, no matter how much you tried to convince yourself that you weren’t. You’d lie to yourself in saying that you cared about me, and my future, and my well being. You wanted me; you wanted all of me, no matter how you got it.

I’ve known this since the beginning, however. I knew you’d ruin me, but I went along with it anyway.

Because despite the hurt and the loss I’ve experienced in our relationship, it was a relationship.

I felt. I felt so much when I was with you. I hurt, I cried, yes, but I also laughed, and I smiled, and I gasped and I sighed and I keened.

I wish I could forget everything that happened between us, but I also really don’t.

And isn’t that just so unfair.

I remember the flowers you wore in your hair
when you were my bride at nineteen.
Their bright colors kept all the dark clouds at bay
Or at least so it seemed then to me.

And their fragrance so rare drove some boys to despair
on the day that you married with me.
Your sweet song of youth left no need for a proof
Of how happy together we’d be.

I remember the flowers you held in your hands
On our tenth anniversary day;
Their bright colors kept all the dark clouds at bay
Or at least so it seemed then to me.

And their fragrance so rare drove some men to despair
to think that your hand wasn’t free.
The red blush of your lips as you turned for a kiss
Said no man was more happy than me.

I remember the rosary they placed in your hands
On the day that Death took you, I keened.
It seemed but a moment since you were my bride
And I was a groom of nineteen

All the flowers so rare that they piled on you bier
Both my sisters said they were lovely
I scarcely saw colors with eyes filled with tears
And the blooms held no fragrance for me.

I tend now the flowers that grow by your stone
Their fragrance reminds me of you.
I long for the day the Lord calls me away
And I’ll be reunited with you

Bleak and windswept, my errant ramblings
led me to some time-forgotten vale
wherein a desolate mansion stood; its mullioned windows pale
against the ebbing day, yet from within illumin’d,
as by dancing fiends at play.
Fram’d by gloomy trees, stone pinnacles leaned awry,
and, through o’ergrown gardens,  
that flanked a ****-strewn pathway to its rotting door,
a sleet-cold wind keened for lost souls in torment
‘cross the desolate and cloud-wracked moor.
With dying Phoebus now a blood-red smear upon the western hills
I so resolved to shelter here out of the coming chill.
Foreboding dragged my every step and
cawing rooks mocked overhead as if to say:
"Go, stranger, for you'll find no welcome here!"
Along the gravelled path I trod and beat the door with blackthorn rod;
it opened slowly; in I walked with beating heart and ne'er a thought
for all the world I'd left behind, as rain and sleet and howling wind
blew shut the door with crack of doom,
and left me peering through the gloom!
Around a table there they sat 'midst putrid food and cobwebbed vats
of mouldering wine; their bony mouths gaped vacant
as they grinned and laughed through time.  
I swayed and swooned as in a trance, my own existence thrown by chance
into that hellish company, who revelled, foul decay’d gentry!
And then a fearful thunderclap's reverberations
brought me back to sanity, I screamed and fled
to where the hillsides cried and bled;  
with staring eye and hair turn’d white,
I ran into the raving night.

There were reports of a shooting
Someone called Nine -one -one.
Another young man dead-
all because of a gun.
I heard a woman weeping
as I ran to the scene.
She held her dead son in her arms
She held the death of his dreams.
Dusk was yielding to darkness
on this unholy night.
As she keened for her child
in the yellow streetlight.
As the warmth left his body
She refused my pleas to yield
As if holding him to her
made his dying not real.
The thought crossed my mind,
as I heard his mother moan,
That I had seen this once before,
as a sculpture in stone.

He started to kiss more his cigarettes than him
The red end shining like a beating heart
That reminded him of his bruised skin
And of the white lines painful like art

The tanned arms wrapped around him
Were now deprived of warm consistence
Sometimes he regrets what they have been
But he would do anything to **** his conscience

They day dream of killing each other
And their nightmares are filled with mourn
Skeleton bones filled with flowers
Their black blood will start to blur

And he's turning, turning
Searching for his light
He's screaming but he doesn't hear a thing
They took each other lives

He hates him so he kiss him hard
But the raging blue of their lips
Is rotting like their poisoned hearts
Like his skin his love will split

He still adores his darkened love
So much he wants to choke him to death
To see his bleeding soul cry like a dove
Raindrops would drown him as he rests

His wet and red lips mourn for his God
Permanent cries, eternal fights, try to fly
His life is filled with ruby blood
They scream for their lives and beg to die

Bottle of bubbles filled with poisons and tears
Sword of pain keened with razorblades
Exchange of cries, weapons and fears
One sip, one stab, the one loved ones died

Their souls met before their bodies.
Nodded in recognition,
“I know you!”
Agreed to help, teach, open each others’ hearts
   to giving without hesitation
   to receiving without reservation.

Their minds met before they kissed.
Translated their souls’ wisdom into words
   their imperfect selves could try to understand.
Yearnings, learnings, leanings, meanings,
Embodied in their two earnest selves.

They kissed before they knew.
Passion awakened, promise glimpsed.
“Wait,” he said,
“Wait until it’s sure.”
The perfection of real love awaited certainty.

He offered a gift,
Its full measure not quite grasped
   by her protected heart.
She ripped open a corner -- a haiku popped out
She opened some more --
   poetry flowed
   a mirror revealed.
She saw herself, a reflected beauty,
A miracle of joy.

But the gift remained only partly seen,
Not spurned -- no never spurned.
Just... just... out of reach.
Her heart in the deepest darkest corner of the box.
His heart in the shadow of her fear.

Her shock of recognition came too late.
“O ma ye maya,” she crooned.
“EEEIIIEEE!” she keened.
“rrroarrr!” as she tore open the container.
“Oh!”
Broken box, broken heart,
Flew like a phoenix to the light.

She turns to see what will be.

there are some parts of your personality
you must never be charmed to look at
or Aristotle's logic will pay you a visit
for a 15th century anatomy lesson
an eye for an eye a throat for a throat
gargoyle armies hovering overhead
tongue for tongue trumpeting victory
the oracle had him tossed out
for vigorously offensive behavior
his cult believed that *** withers the bones
madman Rasputins rerouted his mail
how could work ever be its own reward
a case of geriatric illumination
following the high voltage enema
and you learn that by reading the context
you can actually see around corners
it was a code 9 ambulance ride
straight to Happy Valley’s neuro dock
and thousand dollar an hour shrinks
for libido boot heel therapy
with the Empress of all the Russias
please to open mouth dahlink she said
and drove her turgid tongue
down my gagging throat so far it broke off
just make it significant she keened
so he wrote like he lived diminishingly bold
aggressively non-committal engagingly witless
a composite man with a cryptographic message
for the pivoting dervish temple ballerinas
and big breasted truck stop girls
vacationing in Puerto Aorta
you take a cliche you massage it right
you got them eating out of your laundry bag
my Tourette's script writers again
all you can say to truth is
I hope you ain't the whole truth
Aristotle addressed the basilica
as a shaft of light shone down
the gathered sweaty once devoted throng
expecting a thrash metal anthem
murmured and stamped their discontent
and walked out in stony silence
Aristotle was immediately defenestrated
by the Bishop of all the Americas
having **** uncontrollably
and aggressively upon the altar
while uttering the plague curse
from the Plague House of Nineveh
a wanton unrepentant savagery
such as seen in certain Pekingese lap dogs
a masterful mix of indifference and cunning


From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon