1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
     balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
     his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
     and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
     folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
     contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
     the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
     silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
     horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
     dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
     cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
     horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, *****,
     good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
     after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
     muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
     suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d
     neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s
     breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
     the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
     beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
     and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
     massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
     love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
     clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
     had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
     fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
     you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
     the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
     by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
     his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
     swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
     and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
     all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
     was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
     likewise ungovernable,
Hair, *****, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
     diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
     and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
     love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
     prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born
     of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
     outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
     exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
     daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
     sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
     utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
     the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
     soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
     laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
     much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
     no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
     the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
     arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
     aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in
     parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
     in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
     through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
     back through the centuries?)

8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
     times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
     than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
     that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
     nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
     soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
     that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
     father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
     sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
     jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
    ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
     finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-*****, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
     or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, *******, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
     love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
     tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
     meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
     toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
     marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
     the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Since our political system has been laid bare, after RumputiN was installed
in the Blackhouse, it's beautiful complex of lack of complexity, in a word,
conspiracy of conspiracies, has moved me and "...we(e),..." to have as a few
of my favorite things be far more reaching questions, out of necessity. Like,
without acknowledging, and demanding others do the same, that it's been
purposely engineered to be a criminal injustice system instead, how can one
even have a real conversation that would lead to potential for real change
of it taking place in reality, if you don't know who you were, where you've
been, how on God's green Earth can you expect to know who..., where you are
and what's going on, necessary to start thinking about changing anything,
even yourself, as well as directing who you will be and where you will
be going, etc.?  Swine slaughtering lower-middle-class to poor men en masse,
mostly of color, instead of just doing the usual liquidation of their ases
and assets, are just serial murderers masquerading as cops, and what goes
around comes around, no?  If you're not taking bullets you're making them.  
Also, people are fed up with felonious RumputiN and his rootin' tootin'
organized crime family spree from the Blackhouse, which should be prosecuted
using the RICO Statute instead of just being elaborately covered up by Mueller
for he's not using it and he's handing out immunities like soldiers candy to
Iraqi kids, duh.  I would add some salient pointless points, beyond the 'empty
boat' of Zen, and 'useless tree' of the Tao, we can understand the burden
placed on our shoulders by our ancestry not exercising their responsibilities
as they should have, and thereby it's Siamese twin sisters, their freedoms,
Withered like unused muscles as well, as a panultimate challenge, saving
humanity, literally. Also, understanding Jung's "80 % of all actions, thoughts,
feelings we have, that we acknowledge, or don't, perceive or don't, are
compensatory towards our pasts", necessitates an integral understanding of
Satre's existentialism' meaning of angst, as experience integral to life, not
opposed to it, but, rather, central to it, and a nexus of it.  This is more
than an embracing of gestalt's, Perls', moment, now. Moving away from sophist
perspective, we also experience the meaning of life is struggle, which comes
through all our meaningful work, succinctly. Further, what is life beyond that
foci is also, the where, when, who, how, and sometimes why too (but never Y2K)
of life; beyond our masks and ego fulfilling stories, schtick, lines, etc..
Do we struggle, not just as lifelong students, with the impossible, not just
the improbable.  Yet, it's actually more layered than that in a much larger
dimensional paradigm than 4 dimensions.  Yes, the effects of our causes in any
action usually have effects that undo our causes as we act them out, intend,
present them, etc..  Yet, those more superficial, linear, first conclusion
layers are not less effective, per se, as the complexity of Karma, Dharma are
beyond our normal comprehension. What is the root of thought, feeling, the root
of feeling, being, the root of being, the extent to which we struggle with what
it is, no?  For, as the following twig of poetree gleans: Soul//
As my breath
is the one, prana,/
And the life's pulse, pala,/
Reaching angelic source, sura,/

So is this mind, manas, a
/  Flowering unfoldment,
/ Unendingly touching
/ The eye
that would it see,/  
Unbeckoning unto thee./
As well, this Bodhi, a temple,/

Of the four and fifth, nur,/  
So entered by atma, a ray of thy sun,/  
Thus being
winged, and
/  As such with wind,/
Flying only in dharma's dance,/
Is returning
to, Brahma, you./  For, there yet, by thy grace, go I./  
We are not who we think
we are, we are, rather, the extent to which we struggle to evolve to be some-
things, spirit, soul, Bodhi, etc., on the path of study that could and should
be one, you, me, forever asked and never answered.  Yet, even if we lived as
prayer, our light only adding to the well of light, our every step in grace,
leaving no footprints that followed none, echoing in all ways, always,
sometimes, like pulling teeth, "...we(e),...", must stalk our words from our
insides 'til we wrangle them, like cats, to the tip of our tongues, no?  For,
"Words weren't meant for cowards..." and we must "be brave...", Happy Rhodes.
We can't allow ourselves the luxury of taking our supposedly 'golden silence'
all the way to the bank, as your average bear does.  These are the end times,
we successfully struggle, to abolish global defacto-slavery by the non-renew-
able energies' corporate structure's machine and it's convolution, against
the global oligarchy's premeditated mass-****** of 7.5 billion people, or
humanity's extinct.  Gandhi, "(supposed) science is the root of all opression"
and, "...we(e),..." must be the change we want in the world".  Is not life
relation, are we not responsible for one another, are not all threads in
the fabric of life needed, as is the evoliutionary ones' mendings, for we
can't allow it to be torn asunder?  If not here, then where, if not now, when,
not you, who? Viva la evolucion.  Indivisible, illimitable you, GOTV.

The Sounding Foam of Primal Things

*(The title and the poem, taken from and inspired by
Carl Sandburg's "Who Am I?")


wind and rain pound the surf.
snow falls on the beach, on the shore.
man-observer cannot tell:
has the earth gone mad, all wet?
do the seas rise, whipped up, filling the heavens,
or does the white rain replenishes the very body,
from whence it came, and now returns?

this matters greatly, yet nothing answers this, his question.

the furious soundings, the green foam churn,
the silence of no response inebriates,
drunk on the tempest's hard wet liquor,
weighed down, sodden with the despair,
solitude, silence, absent answers,
his natural walking companions!

No Stopping signs on almost every corner,
Do Not Pass, Do Not Enter,
One Way, Two Way, No Thru Passage,
but the one sign he seeks,
"Stay On The Path" absent.

Eluded,
dispassionate endings,
the essential quietude among
furious surround-sounds of creative destruction
he ceases to ask, for unanswered, undirected.

Concluded,
either
their is no one listening, or,
there is no one caring, or,

Deluded,
illusion is truth,
he is an illusion.

------------------

[Being an humble address to Her Majesty's Naval advisers, who sold Nelson's old flagship to the Germans for a thousand pounds.]

            WHO says the Nation's purse is lean,
            Who fears for claim or bond or debt,
            When all the glories that have been
            Are scheduled as a cash asset?
            If times are bleak and trade is slack,
            If coal and cotton fail at last,
            We've something left to barter yet--
            Our glorious past.
            
            There's many a crypt in which lies hid
            The dust of statesman or of king;
            There's Shakespeare's home to raise a bid,
            And Milton's house its price would bring.
            What for the sword that Cromwell drew?
            What for Prince Edward's coat of mail?
            What for our Saxon Alfred's tomb?
            They're all for sale!
            
            And stone and marble may be sold
            Which serve no present daily need;
            There's Edward's Windsor, labelled old,
            And Wolsey's palace, guaranteed.
            St. Clement Danes and fifty fanes,
            The Tower and the Temple grounds;
            How much for these? Just price them, please,
            In British pounds.
            
            You hucksters, have you still to learn,
            The things which money will not buy?
            Can you not read that, cold and stern
            As we may be, there still does lie
            Deep in our hearts a hungry love
            For what concerns our island story?
            We sell our work -- perchance our lives,
            But not our glory.
            
            Go barter to the knacker's yard
            The steed that has outlived its time!
            Send hungry to the pauper ward
            The man who served you in his prime!
            But when you touch the Nation's store,
            Be broad your mind and tight your grip.
            Take heed! And bring us back once more
            Our Nelson's ship.
            
            And if no mooring can be found
            In all our harbours near or far,
            Then tow the old three-decker round
            To where the deep-sea soundings are;
            There, with her pennon flying clear,
            And with her ensign lashed peak high,
            Sink her a thousand fathoms sheer.
            There let her lie!

<!>

Four Irises tall & gallant, looking though
slighted worn out, a tad bedraggled
they are springtime survivor stragglers
of the Great Spring Weather Battle.

living in an open trench, battle conditions,
wind-whipped by constant strong breezes,
raked by intermittent machine gun rain,
familiar weapons of the “handover” season

loyal guardians of their pinpoint position,
remaining on duty, standing at attention,
dignified amidst the serene, nearly summer, now,
accepting quietude & gratitude of surround soundings

arrow-straight, in dress uniforms of royally purple,
four lead a cohort of unbloomed green fellows,
protecting their charge, an ancient marker of time,
rusted-green bronze sundial, symbol of continuity

these four, boon companions to human and animal,
shall persist long after I cease to dabble in this art,
they greet their admirers in full regalia, every year,
long, long may they live, die and be yet reborn!

here, in place, when we arrived four decades ago, a tiny forever,
changelings heading a processional of the summer season,
greeting all with a simple story of constance of change, of beauty,
leading our Summertime Commencement Exercises

May 26 ~ 27, 2023

Sam Clemens snagged his nom de plume
     from a boatsman's measuring cry,
"Mark twain," two fathoms depth - quite enough
      to keep a stern wheel free from mayhem.

What are the markings of our voyages?
     What leadsman within will navigate us
through the rocks and shallows
     of feckless greed and foolish delusions?

The captain waits uneasy at his station
    then above the engine's quiet purr,
and the music of gently lapping waves,
    a voice from the deck cries out, "mark twain"
and he nudges the throttle forward.

*© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard

With a shift inkling, concepts dropped
and I was all of my true name.

I etched in moving water.

I streamed me--water frozen,
water falling, water drifting
as fog, as cloud.

I was mini-singular
H2O.

My two hydrogen rabbit ears
danced five different ways,
and oxygen laughed and sang
(what a team!)

Sundried, now as the clock strikes noon,
I find my feet and I stand.
I build myself of basaltic rock.

Tower of Babel--polyglot soundings
in cyclic revision speak intelligence,
spirals I am.

Inverted, I apt dive down.
In transition, I grow rounded
hollowing.

I Earth. I Center.
I Sun Earth Center

where timeless pinpoint passages
****** me home again.

O, what strangeness and wonder
it is -- this practicing freedom.

And you, too ~ have experience?

Awareness
good beginning.

When I started to write, I sat.
seated, leaned, balanced, distributed, coordinated
To the chair.
the stool, the bed, floor, bar stool, couch, beached log
Under my *** cheeks with one freckle on the skin of the left side
petite and friendly
I am wherever I am.
Usually in my head, sometimes nowhere at all.
Thinking of word soundings fitting into the nonsensical particles of language.
Letters cue the stage curtains of Jedi mind tricks..and mostly only in my head does it sound the way Beethoven wanted his symphony no.9 to echo in his.
Out loud is so rambunctious and persuasive.
I don't want to persuade.
I mean to convince.
You cannot read my thoughts, but I know they are beautiful.

What hath I done to earn such disdain?
   Thust'ly I'd treated thee with an utmost courtesy,
   And yet,

I'd call this breath of redundant utterances,
   A practice of utter futility.

The breadth of my wonderment at the crushing silence graced upon my disbelieving ears,
   I stand fast as the imperceptible stones are cast upon my fragile soundings,
   Your callousness resounds and rebounds within my vacant battleground.
   Occupied by none other,
   Confined within my ceaseless, if imperfect, selflessness,

I am merely a soul.
   Cast upon, or down'pon the mercifully unforgiving earth.
   Borne brazenly to those who are willing to listen,
   At the risk of those who won't.

******'d herein I lye,
   Gazing 'pon the relentless, endless skies.

I am merely a man,
   Searching for a home.
   I am merely the mind within which I reside,
   I am,
   Merely,
   Who I am.

Languid soundings of evening recede;
when commercials calm, dulling faint,
lay yourself simple in his hold. Feed
exhaustion with a touch. Wooing heads wane
and lull, softly full by the fire's beads
burning low in the hearth. Shames
of the day cannot enter there. Nothing short of
a tangible fullness describes such love.

The slow dropping of retiring snow
slumps over the roof. The business of
being disappears into the dark. Know
that they are alive and that that is enough.
Know they are alive, though sharp winds blow.
Wholly essential affections drive
the warming depth. They are alive.

We sit in the still
and through tiny buffeted windows
watch the stubborn shore arrest the fierce sea.

An old clock tocks as slow as winters
as we recall the beach of crowded summers

The cold wind whispers along the scurrying dunes
to throw the sand in abstract arcs
against the ice blue sky

In large coats, billowed scarves
and stout boots
we trudge against the bickering wind
blustering in its niggling argument
far into the sea.

I never thought our steps
could be this close
as we huddle and cower
against the wind

and in a tiny distance
the gale rips up our prints
as if no foot had ever trod.

Yet behind our watering eyes
We know that once two footsteps touched
Our shoes kissed
in the wild wet and wintry night

There will be warmth
in the accordion blessed bar
with pipe smoke leering to the rafters
and yellow light from candled glasses
casting tall shadows
of the shawled women
waiting for the long lost sailors’ return.

Shall I be a sailor then
to board the narrow boat of your body
in all the crash and yaw
the swell and deep
the thunder and breech
the pounding and clamour
until in the safe soundings
in the harbours of morning
we drift like flotsam
on the shoreline of sheets.

And driving home on a damp Sunday
will we marvel at the twisting rain
and how the tiny ship of our footsteps
survives the howling gales
and the all wild wide oceans of our watery ways

I wrote a poem two days ago! I meant to put it on here yesterday,
It was called 'easily read easily said'!
It was O'Reily a special moment for me and of the rhyme it took to be complete.. When you end in terms of a poem with rhythm, balance and in written cliché de par example; don't look back in anger,
To O'Reily when he wrote Easily Read Easily Said..

My name is Kevin Egan I'm a poet of do I know it?
But you can call me....       'O'Reily'!,                                                      ­A Pseudonym name, you said,  you read or maybe you pointed north, the other way like an order of the day to forget and carry on with your daily push.

I copy and paste... Hails Mary Grace,
I then, once finished proceeded to paper it on @here when suddenly, instantaneous not famous not loud but proud my poem disappeared,  My hesitant scream along with a crack on my screen it appeared with Order Order!!
A poem running round me like flying words and getting away in my house,
Soundings like the swear words that had ludic in finding order like a cat chasing the mouse..  

Up it appeared Order Order under my need,  
My post title of Easily Read Easily Said the last of my poetic disorders lost in my trivial complicated head showimg its nemesis!
Like a head master out rages his dandy lip orders, ripping them up in to tiny little pieces and discarding the energy of thy work..

But no, with no saving grace it was Easily Read Easily Said!
6 long verses gone forever!
All that was left, all that maintenance to reflect,
It Was its title and you readers now taking the michael.

After a work all day, with a bed,
sleep  mammoth on my head,
I slept away.
Hours later I woke up refresh and up  getting ready to write and work on something and somehow often mesmeric,
but not touched by the dead poet in my attic.  

If anyone you know who forgets what he wrote and its burnt out in the fire smoke,
Erased from its first gibberish sketches of ambience,
If they're remembrance of each detail word, each written birth mark and of going back over with a certain cert,
Then he or she would then be an O'Really remarkable poet,

and that's not me.

In honour of the pen writer
The technology forget me fighter,
The dip in the ink calligrapher!

and dit, well is that it? Finished!

If ever I had a collection of poems for a title then O'Reily! I would call it Easily Read Easily Said!

Just need 50 more collection of poems or lyrics or is it 100?
I have burnt, learnt my lessons now
I wont pinch myself over that or lose sleep over it either thank you very much.
That is i before e except after O'Reily

O'Reily@21062014

Those Orcas that just got out of frame
fame and fortune in that shot-glass 'Sound'
and focused; coke-bottle vision into depths
far deeper than their soundings, though
secondary in nature and posed as opposed
to that pod's posse of curving mammals
arched into each wave or trough
in that fluid home we call Puget
with the sound of ferry engines
breaking the silent sail boat's cut
and jib as it too arcs its slack in black/white
canvas waving to windward destinations,
as each click-shutter-whirl encapsulates
drops of sun, sea gull and horizon
ghosting as though mist were sky
semi-filled number painting panoramas
and water-color soaked landings
bringing us closer to docked domains
and they disappeared into a dimpled surface
evading this circular myopic lens

-cec

In a thin misty slow the sky ghosts towards grey
And constellations of streetlamps flatter
the suburban quiet with kind shadows.

my fingers feel fertile and full of intent,
as they scratch st my butterfly activity;
while you still sleep beneath the weight of dreams.

Do not fret I will not wake you with brass
Or the soundings of tymbals thundering
But with fingers whispering at your hair.

my lisping tongues voices in soft low echoes
Against the thin filaments of your flesh,
I speak sweet sibilant kisses of sound.

I bathe you in murmurs like vague perfume.
My breath trembles penitent at your neck
summoning the grace of your awakening

I utter my quiet hallelujahs
Into the pores of your arching body
And feel tremors burn through your sheer light being.

And I will taste the Eucharist of you
In the undoing, the final writhing
That cures the heart with blessings of release.

Friday,
open one eye first
check out my surroundings
take a few soundings
make fresh coffee and
quench my thirst.

A dull pair of socks matches my mood.
I wish
I could teletype my likes and strike out
these feelings, erase self imposed limits
and smash through glass ceilings.

Friday,
one day after and one just before,
I get loaded somewhere and
become a part of the floor.
What is life for?
I wish
someone had told me, there'll be no
one to hold me in the darkness
of my falling.

She
casts a spell on me
ties me in ecstasy
sets the dull mood free
and shades me from
misery.

In the morning light,

When the air is still,

Before the noises of the day

Intrude upon the mind,

A certain clarity 

Becomes a possibility,

When in moments of repose,

One can turn inside

To find deeper moods, 

Both beautiful and darker spaces, 

Places of uncertainty,

Tinged thus with anxiety,

As if, when walking in wild hills,

One comes across a vantage point,

A jutting outcrop of rock,

Overhanging a plunging valley,

And standing there alone,

One's consciousness sinks into the abyss,

Its tumbled sea of wooded slopes, 

Above which rise rugged pinnacles

Wreathed round with mountain mist.



Across a vault so vast, 

A tiny bird,

Caught in a ray of sunshine,

Seems to hang and float,

As might a dust-mote,

In a beam of tinted light,

Streaming down 

Into the transept of a great cathedral,

Illuminating the space

With divine renown, 

A sacred sense of depth,

With perspective so beyond 

All human understanding,

As to still one's breath

And overwhelm the viewer

With a sense sublime,

So near the dread of death.



Pondering thus, 

In awe,

I follow with my eyes 

The rugged forest,

Sweeping steeply down
Towards the valley-floor,

Those silent soundings

Somewhere out of sight, 

Which seem to promise 

More than I can see,

Invoking a sense of mystery

Of something hidden 

In the unseen depths below, 

And a sense again,

Of something closer still,

An abiding presence 

Of a far more intimate kind,

Calling me downward,

And, in my mind,

I begin to descend, 

Over great granite boulders,

Hand-holds found on branches, 

Offered here and there

In the tumble of mighty rocks

By trees clinging to crevices between,

Bending as they take my weight,

Shaking rustling leaves,

As I climb downward carefully,

Hand over hand,

With lack of sureness,

And fear of a poor foothold,

A slide of rock, a slip, 

A fatal fall,

Into the abyss.



At last when I have scrambled down

The wild and rough escarpment,

I stop to catch my breath,

Beneath the mass of rock,

The titanic building blocks

Of this timeless landscape,

I find the ancient ground gives way 

To a less demanding gradient, 

And my breathing comes more easily

Descending now less dangerously, 

My shoulders brushed 

By lighter leafy foliage, 

As I step down through dense bush,

Pushing back branches from my face,

Sliding over fallen trees,

And make my way down,

Through thigh-high bracken,

Between the trunks of mighty 

Mountain eucalypts,

Those giants marching silently

Down to the valley floor.



Down here the air is cooler,

And I hear a distant murmur, 

Not of mountain breezes 

Sighing in the tops of trees,

But rather the enticing sound 

Of running water, 

Coming from an unseen place,

Nearby, waiting to be found

In this shadowed peaceful realm,

Where sunlight touches softly,

Catching the frond of a fern,

Shining on smooth white boughs,

And I go further down and in,

Until the watery bell-clear sound

Seems all around, 

And reflected light catches my eye,

Between the trees and foliage,

Until eventually 
I step out into a clearing

An open space

Where there is a great flat rock,

Around which a shallow creek flows

Over a bed of white stones, 

And two great straight trees

Stand like sentinels, 

Guardians of this lovely glade, 

Water gurgling around and below 

Their gnarled roots built like buttresses.



Here I stand in breathless silence, 

Marvelling at the light

Filtering down

Through the towering trees

And floating fronds of tree-ferns

High above me,

Its soft and golden luminosity

Bringing a sense of mystery, 

And the grandeur of stillness 

To this peaceful place,

Where water trickles soothingly.


And as the beauty of this vale

Fills my mind with thoughts

Of Nature's splendour,

I sense the presence

Of that one,
I far too easily forget,
Who abides here in this valley,

Who appears

Unbidden in my dreams,

And whose steady gaze

Has always brought me back

To deep reflection,

For she is my mirror,

Soul, and centre of my being,

And I sense her standing 

Close beside me

By the running stream,

Arms outstretched to welcome me

To our place of blissful unity,

Where I will never be alone,

For she is ever-present here,

Always awaiting my descent,

My return to what is home, 

So felt with awe and gratitude,

Our lovely Vale of Solitude.

After the beer-can disappointments
Had foamed into
An effluence
No longer traceable
She drifts,
Ballasted by
Thin fragments of DNA
Lodged in the brain,
Like pebbles.

Who? What? When? Why?
The dissecting guilt of
Foreign judgements;
Intravenous drip, drip, drip
Of others’ expectations:
Expunged.

She looks like a Peter Doig painting:
Caked in paint as thick as tar
Peering into a lake that echoes its own
Emptiness.

Where is she headed?

The Kingfisher sun
Bobs and re-bobs its head
Into the rusty waters;
Yet, she
Drifts,
Taking soundings from
The bric à brac of
Homeless and factory workers,
Whose zero-hour cigarettes
Smoke up the factory stacks
As voluminous as pipe organs.

Don’t turn back, now, Drifter,
Don’t fall for the life
That clogs your veins and numbs your breath.


©Simon Piesse

I believed love is immortal, irrational,
and sometimes, tired.

I liked the idea of an impossible god.
In all of love has there ever been such a lover as you?
Out of desire for you,

Sometimes heaven is when I’m away from you, god.
Sometimes heaven is only the two of us. I know you
understand.

Transferring the investment unkind, from mountain to cry.
The plan believes itself to be special,
having been assured of its specialness since birth.
The feeling that takes soundings
and scrapes, aims,
and knock-down blows us.
Reduced to an equality.

The loose tangles of habit and taste.
Thinking of ourselves as more than distance corrects the attachment.

In the time it took me to retrieve my cards,
the connection imperative became a stylised refusal.

I tear my way through getting to know you
The unnatural ease of disentanglement.
Unhappily having, to spend time.