The roads in town get longer every night.
The drivel from a bad novel
Invites itself in and out
After he entered Heaven.
Now that sex has been introduced there,
Meditation still predominates.
Medication has yet to make its arrival
But is expected soon.
Who owns the day?
Not even time.
Your name in a prayerbook
Isn’t Jesus, of course.
It’s a new name
No one has ever seen before
Printed there, no one knows how.
Stop dancing but don’t gape at us.
A dark sister’s journey
Requires well-placed silences
In between her words.
A dark hat and a walking stick
Once belonged to an undertaker.
They should be welcomed here now
Before death comes again.
If you can’t get the way,
Try another. Your mother would approve
If she could still speak.
Burning turf may not seem fair
To the grass. It needn’t happen
But it does, anyway
Both at the races and far away.
Lucy’s fires no longer burn in our heads.
All is quieter now.


11/2/11

Written while watching Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

A fortunate rain clasped his neck
Trudging through mashed confetti
The vanishing fox
And the blurred screaming heat
Silhouettes slip through
Laborers lift and carry
Obsidian particles remaining
After stockpiles of license
Released

until, at least a cloth century unravels
banking upon the shoulders of rivers,
and the roots,
the roots like tapered worms,
settle down into a moldering.

Follow me barefoot
into the rain that embitters
the marsh in cut glass tears
where, the moon trees,
carriers of a sweeter fruit,
grow wild upon the slope
above the grasslands
seeded from the milk teeth of nurseries.

And watch for the blue fern that snags
and the whirring spores
that catch in your hair,
a net cast wide over the world,
and the birds,
again,
making toward heaven,
always the birds.
 
 
previously published in Connotation Press

Subsisting on pills & freeze-dried
astronaut food, the problem is com-
posed almost exclusively of music
The six-tone dialect of a
population under 14 years of age,
basking in the Shadow of Fame
which drove Hamlet crazy
& has been the reason
countless kid celebrities crash
from crèche to rehab. Also
I’m underwhelmed, subsisting
almost entirely on sleeping pills
& freeze-dried astronaut food.
To happiness the same applies:
the trust lies in the indigenous people,
conceived as the largest group of
ethnic flutes to ride on the backs
of buffalo, & women. I can’t tell
a lie without believing it myself
My doggy is foggy, as is someone
who’s entirely underwhelmed.

I sit here and listen to the rain melting the snow

off the grasses and it washes away the star’s smile.

I’ve just peeled an orange just seen the bird’s pass

above my window in a migratory pattern of letters.

With music I’ll wash the orange rind off my fingers.

With the help of my legs one day I’ll go swimming again.

I am very mathematical I am neatly doubled.

Almost everything I have is in pairs on my body.

In this way I distinguish myself from the outdoor lamp post.

I would like to be a shining beacon in the night.

I would hate to be a rabbit running around on one foot.

I submit the annual potato sack race could be difficult.

To tell you apart from a tree I am counting your arms.

When you talk to me I am adding and subtracting figures.

Now the trees talk to me like you do they say I am ruthless.

They say I am mentally ill but in a way that’s productive.

The wind blows you sideways just like a tree your skin

resembles bark and when you look at me like that

Sometimes my calculations don’t add up.

My relationship with nature is becoming erotic.

I have one heart inside me just like the lamp post.

One organ of light when I’m turned on.

So flip a switch in the darkening day and stay.

Watch the way the actual sun cools my eyes in the morning.

The spirit flies free.
Her iron head-cage smashed.
Spring. Canaries sing.

Still the myth persits.
She thinks she was royalty.
Snow covers the graves.

In one crazy moment
One effort, one play–

Everything rides on this

Gum yourself up
for the works

and there it goes . . .

If there is a highest Paradise in music,
This is it. Flute and harp.
Harp and flute, echoing each other
And some view of perfection
Peculiar to them
And to Mr. Mozart, the composer
Who wrote this long ago
On a commission mission
Utilizing his highest range,
A Himalaya away from pain
And/or loss.
If this were not only of the mind
And imagination, only
Our bodies could live it
Our ears already in this regard
For they get it first
And keep it longest
With the brain
An intermediary in this delight,
The light of a world
We might otherwise never know,
The flow of our lives
Being a more realistic flow
Of joys and sorrows
Intoxicating reciprocation
Calls both to and away from
The field of desires
To something else we aspire to
But may or may not reach
Until or even after we die.
So enjoy it while you can
In this bit of pleasant musical hubris,
A bit of bliss in the socket of time.