Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

The thing is, you can’t ignore that graceful lament-
The teal heaving of your chest-
The wash of questions in your head
That exquisitely hold pinpricks of the future.

There’s a brand of groan you know well
That belongs to feeling unresolved.
That noise you make when you’re a painting without a face,
When you’re two lines of a song that’s lost to the breeze,
When you’re a cup of water dribbling through careless hands,
That noise is the growl of restless dreaming.

There is a struggle to unpin yourself
From the avalanche of time
That has pooled thickly around your legs.
You try to kick, but it moves like molasses.
Slower than a hard thwack to a non-newtonian fluid.
Pointless as collecting antique doorknobs.

There is an urge to catch a destiny by the tail
Like you’re somehow prepared right now,
Like there’s nothing left to learn.
How fortunate you are that perceived linear realities
Can curve the hubris of your linear fantasies.

And yet there’s that gnawing need,
A craving that demands surrender,
That all too graceful lament,
Of being forced to take the smallest of steps
on the greatest of adventures.

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
          Until I labour, I in labour lie.
     The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
  Is tired with standing though they never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
        But a far fairer world encompassing.
  Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
     Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
  Tells me from you, that now 'tis your bed time.
      Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
  That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.
        Off with that wiry coronet and show
      The hairy diadem which on you doth grow;
  Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
   In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
   In such white robes heaven's angels used to be
   Received by men; thou angel bring'st with thee
    A heaven like Mahomet's paradise; and though
     Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
     By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
      License my roving hands, and let them go
       Before, behind, between, above, below.
          O my America, my new found land,
  My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
       My mine of precious stones, my empery,
     How blessed am I in this discovering thee!
      To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
    Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
      Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee
    As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
   To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
   Are like Atlanta's *****, cast in men's views,
     That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
    His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
  Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
      For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
     Themselves are mystic books, which only we
       Whom their imputed grace will dignify
     Must see revealed. Then since I may know,
        As liberally, as to a midwife, show
  Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
      Here is no penance, much less innocence.
     To teach thee, I am naked first, why then
  What needst thou have more covering than a man.

The small dinner party had gone
Off well, Hazel thinks, sitting at
The dressing table, gazing at herself
In the mirror, seeing her hair done

Up just so, the way her maid, Dunne
Painstakingly did it for her. She begins
To unpin her hair, placing the pins in
The small glass dish, her fingers unused

To the task. Dunne is down in the kitchen
With the temporary cook, helping to clear
Up, tidy things away as is her want, her
Tidiness part of her character. She sits her

Hair unpinned, staring at her features,
At her eyes, the mouth slightly open, the
Teeth even and white. In the mirror she
Can see the made up bed, the covers

Turned down, the china hot water bottle
She knows just under the covers, put there
By Dunne. She’ll be there soon, Dunne,
Her maid, her lover, ******* her and

Herself. She has her own room and bed
Up in the attic, but she seldom uses it unless
Guests are there over night or are staying
For a few days. Tonight she will be here,

Hazel muses, rubbing a tongue licked finger
Over her brow, and they will snuggle down
And talk of their day and then make love,
Then sleep. Since her father’s death and the

Truth of his deeds and what he made Dunne
Do and the forced ***, she feels a mixture
Of anger and grief mixed into a compound
That makes her tired and confused. She waits.

She wants Dunne there, wants her fingers
To undo her zips and buttons, brush her hair,
Feeling the fingers on her skin, in her hair.
She wants to feel Dunne’s lips on hers, needs

Dunne’s fingers moving over her body, wants
To know each aspect of her maid’s body. In
Her mind she can sense the feel, remember
The point of high sensation, as if her whole

Body was taken to the limits of exhilaration
Of passion, as if she might explode and all her
Being be scattered into ***** of sensuality.
She can’t find the exact words to express it.

She sits and waits, waits sitting, breathes
In, breathe out. Dinner had gone very well.
The evening guests talked of this and that,
Had their laughs and jokes. Mr Phibuster

Had lectured to her on the economy, how
Some upstart in Germany was stirring up
Trouble. She couldn’t have cared less. Her
Eyes kept going to Dunne, watching her

Coming and going with dishes and glasses.
She sits up straight, Dunne is coming, she
Hears her footstep in the passage, her voice,
Some Mozart aria is tunefully humming.

I remember it was the middle of winter when the family I met became my only summer. The cracks and pops of the exhaust made me so deaf to the common banter, that when I heard this group from across the dive, I knew they weren’t just another group of leather-vested dropouts. Initially it was the liquor store cologne stuck in their beards that attracted me, but I stopped and stayed when they told my back how beautiful blue eyes were. In the few minutes it took to inhale a whiskey coke, they had seen the thirst I had for freedom flowing out of my pores. They said that I reminded them of those dead flies in the corner, turned over and lifeless from the exhaustion one puts themself through when trying to live life so hard and so fast. And they were right; I had made an art out of living fast and crashing hard. When the skin on my palms tore and bled all over the pavement, it was like fine art to any peanut gallery.
    That was the night they taught me to ride. To unpin my curls and let them flow and crash in the wind like a desert ocean. They had found their horizon oasis in me. But Big Jimmy still hated me the most. I knew his secret and he saw that I had figured him out. He was a master at turning his cheap improperly functioning parts into his best character traits. But above everything, he let me learn that the open road will heal any scar.
    I’d been at war with myself. Before I knew that a desert sunrise on chrome was the best alarm clock, I only ever thought that the way I’d wake up was with rushed embarrassment to grab the ***** tip. Big Jimmy weaseled my ****** heart out of my sunken chest, and was gettin’ twitchy now that I had my hand on his. He always said at every pit stop, life was too short for traffic. And when I stepped out of the 7/11 that chilly November morning, I could hear the sounds of distant engines, howling laughter and a single tear hitting the asphalt. I was alone again. But this time, I wasn’t at war.

Breathe deep, your airways expand
There is no shortage of clear air
Your thoughts are down...
Unpin your collar.
The heat is increasing
But there is a cool cloth over your whole body.
I know I must stay...
You know you mustn't leave.
Those thoughts revealed...
Everything feels right.
Discovered by you,
Even cloaked, in the night.
You are melting into my peace,...
Your aura of reluctant need glows bright.
I can carry you out of the dark,
Merge with you in the light .
I will heal you where you lie, in despair,
we shall weather, together,
we will find a way.

real is the form.

here now is a colony of words,
or an empire of assault from the
many truths that smite us.

our hearts gallop altogether
past the prairie of imaginations:
this movement, this locutionary,
this waltz adagios its way
to a pace that knows no sojourn.
let us raise our clenched fists
always angelward.
we are young in this agronomy.
our hands remind us of their increasing responsibilities.
our inner light realizes the throng of our shadows - away from the dark
we go pursuant to all effulgence.
let us unpin our juvenile wings
  from the clasp of what startles
us back to our flawed origins.
a flumine of flawlessness awaits
the steep end of our possibilities.

let us not neglect this.
let us, hand in hand, straightforwardly, break from our nascent states and unfurl in a craze of the so many things that capture our potentials.
outside my home, the streets are vacuous, famished from the twirling laughter of children.
once, the grass is giddy from the lightsome meanderings of our superfluous feet! where did all the days crawl to? these limbless serpents that pillage the fruits of our sageness.

i look outside and the mellow moon
enters with its lithe figure
through the hollow spaces of doors
to lairs where the youth are sleeping, unmindful of what dreams log onto the papers of their souls.
heed the call and do not let
it go, running off into another hapless length of waiting.

real is the form.
there is no lie in our rawness.
the voice inside us is tender
with message, purging our poisons
into detox and preparing with
new energies, our
flesh for our consigned ventures.

the voluminous pages are still
white and new, words besmirched still yearn to be written - there is no getting realer than the realization of our clarion call:

real is the form
and in the blank veranda of green
we sift through wordlessness,
gaping our mouths now,
contributing a verse,
     or a song!

My body is uncharted territory
(You wish)
A map that teases - taunts
(He said)
The road to Armageddon is paved
(With love, my dear)
The touch of an unpainted nail
(Scratched into my back)
You are mine, now
(Unpin your dress, my dear)
The Holy man slides into me
(I sing a psalm to calm him)
Thrusts and moves
(Blood, deep red, flows)
Kisses me with whiskey lips
(The wrinkles around his eyes)
Exit, stage left, you breathe again
(Ssssh, be quiet my dear)
Unconvinced ears, hostile eyes
(I am real)
Birthing women turn their backs
(See me)
Virgins untrap their wings
(Believe me)

The day imploded
came rushing in to remind me that the night
was but an amalgamation of those minutes
that pin the eyes awake.

I take two moments to acclimatise
unpin the pins pinned on my eyes
and the fading of the fading light finally fades and dies.
I look with infra dead between the lines
and intro sped along the times when all was well
and now it disappears into the room of absented fears
French leave for the grieving and believing I am one of them
the lonely buttered crusts of men I go on
and into further there where the sharp words cut my feet
and bleeding sorely thus I greet
the men to whom that I would speak
of better days
who in their ways have sold a million memories
to hang up on the blowing melodies that seem to crow at me
and if I listened carefully
would say but few words dolefully and this before the breakfast laid upon my lap
the dripping sap
another buttered crust
any yet another dream that turns to dust
but in the cream jug where the poison lies and remnants of the dying light prefer to hide and sit upon the milky way
the lay of it appeals
in laying down something unreal can steal this mind of mine
and use it in some future time to come
cryogenic
hallucifrenic
and I am going down the tubes
before the slide that carries me into the beginning of my darkest day
I say,
'if I would walk a second,fecund and mount the insurmountable'
would I be accountable to myself or to those crusty men?
and to the lady,she who knows where this road goes and leads me to its ending
in the twist and bend will you defend me
fight for and lend me strength?

What is the length of illness measure
what treasure does it hold and
and what on being told the answer
would I answer in return?
The fever of the brow and how the body burns
and burn in turns like you
and we together
would we be forever
severing all ties
even as the fading of the fading finally fades and dies
and can you tell me
can you tell
can you
can.
A crusty buttered dusty battered and man to whom that nothing mattered would like to know
before I go.

To His Mistress Going to Bed**

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and shew  
The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
    Licence my roving hands, and let them go,  
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
    Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s *****, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we  
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
    To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.

THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )

The blackbird
leaves me a note

pinned
to the sky

that blue
beyond blue

the tide
of the moment

turning turning.

Time like apple blossom
falling through my mind

the little boy
unable to believe

that this day
is not

made of forever
and only now

I walk back
through my self

to unpin the note
the blackbird wrote

with his voice
still pinned

to that
self same sky.

The blue so still
beyond even its self.

I, at last, able
to read the birds words

its language a secret
no longer to me

"I sing..." it says "...I sing!"

"Because all this
must die!"

"I sing the moment's tide
its turning always turning!"

It's throat
full of song

glorying in being

alive
for this

one eternal
moment.

THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )

the blackbird
leaves me a note
pinned to the sky

that blue
beyond
blue

the tide
of the moment
turning turning

Time
like apple blossom
falling through my mind

the little boy
unable to believe
that this day is not

made of forever
and only
now

I walk back
through my self
to unpin the note

the blackbird wrote
with his voice
still pinned

to that
self same
sky

the blue so still
beyond
even its self

I, at last, able to read
the birds words
its language a secret

no longer to me
"I  sing..."  it says  "...I sing
because all this must die!"

"I sing the moment's tide
its turning
always turning!"

It's throat
full of song
glorying in being

alive for this
one eternal
moment


*

I was reading Frank O'Connor's series of lectures on early Irish poetry ( THE BACKWARD LOOK )and listening to both Bowie's newest and an old favourite of mine LODGER. I was at the start of FANTASTIC VOYAGE when the seemingly impossible news of his death trickled through and I went to BBC to confirm that...it was not so. It was so.

A moment ago he had been singing( as he had been singing for me all these years ):

"In the event
that this fantastic voyage
Should turn to erosion
and we never get old
Remember it's true, dignity is valuable
But our lives are valuable too"

I was also reading this 4 line fragment from the 9th century :

"There is one
   I would wish to see again,
And give the golden world to win -
    All, all, though all were vain."

"Fil duine
     Frismbad buide lemm díuterc
Ara tabrainn in mbith mbuide
     Uile, uile, cid díupert."

And  so I wrote him this little poem....THE BACKWARD LOOK.

Wreathe of lies
Adorn my body with your flowers,
Your flowers of lies—warm and afresh.

Pin them hard,
Till my skin becomes rosy,
And cheeks a little lake,
For the flowers must not dry.

Pin them with needles,
Close to my chest,
Where my treasure lives—
Alone and alive.

What have I become,
But a wreath of your lies.
The flowers withered
And the sweetness lost forever.

Unpin the needles,
Tear the flowers,
I’d still be bleeding,
For I held onto your thorns,
Knowing you’re a rose.

THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )

The blackbird
leaves me a note

pinned
to the sky

that blue
beyond blue

the tide
of the moment

turning turning.

Time like apple blossom
falling through my mind

the little boy
unable to believe

that this day
is not

made of forever
but only this " now."

I walk back
through my self

to unpin the note
the blackbird wrote

with his voice
still pinned

to that
self same sky.

The blue so still
beyond even its self.

I, at last, able
to read the bird's words

its language a secret
no longer to me

"I sing..." it says "...I sing!"

"Because all this
must die!"

"I sing the moment's tide
its turning always turning!"

It's throat
full of song

glorying in being

alive
for this

one eternal
moment.

THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )

The blackbird
leaves me a note

pinned
to the sky

that blue
beyond blue

the tide
of the moment

turning turning.

Time like apple blossom
falling through my mind

the little boy
unable to believe

that this day
is not

made of forever
but only this " now."

I walk back
through my self

to unpin the note
the blackbird wrote

with his voice
still pinned

to that
self same sky.

The blue so still
beyond even its self.

I, at last, able
to read the bird's words

its language a secret
no longer to me

"I sing..." it says "...I sing!"

"Because all this
must die!"

"I sing the moment's tide
its turning always turning!"

It's throat
full of song

glorying in being

alive
for this

one eternal
moment.

*

I was reading Frank O'Connor's series of lectures on early Irish poetry
( THE BACKWARD LOOK )and listening to both Bowie's newest and an old favourite of mine LODGER. I was at the start of FANTASTIC VOYAGE when the seemingly impossible news of his death trickled through and I went to BBC to confirm that...it was not so. It was so.

A moment ago he had been singing( as he had been singing for me all these years ):

"In the event
that this fantastic voyage
Should turn to erosion
and we never get old
Remember it's true, dignity is valuable
But our lives are valuable too"

I was also reading this 4 line fragment from the 9th century :

"There is one
   I would wish to see again,
And give the golden world to win -
    All, all, though all were vain."

"Fil duine
     Frismbad buide lemm díuterc
Ara tabrainn in mbith mbuide
     Uile, uile, cid díupert."

And  so I wrote him this little poem....THE BACKWARD LOOK.

I must remember to remember to wake up from my slumber,
at times it seems it's all a dream.

I pinch myself, ( not something Fagin would have said ) to see if I'm awake.

Saturday and what a way to begin, the coffee's done or would be if I'd switched the percolator on, my eyes unpin, the light floods in, I see your face.