rumours of another summer
109
1 Rumours of Another Summer poetry by PD Lyons
description
poetry of a very fine sort drawing on inspiration from all over the worlds and sometimes inbetween
Transcript of rumours of another summer
1
Rumours of Another Summer
poetry
by
PD Lyons
2
copyright
© 2011 PD Lyons
All rights reserved
The author has asserted her/his right under section 77
the copyright Design and Patents Act 1988
to be identified as the author of this work
http://pdlyons.wordpress.com/
http://pdlyonspoetry.blogspot.com/
For
Shelly,
bravest of the brave
love of my life
more than ever
more than always
3
acknowledgements
Thank you to the editors of the following publications in which
some of these poems first appeared:
Vox Poetica
Hot Metal Press
Angelic Dynamo
Shit Creek Review
Fresh Ink
Virtual Writer
Gone Lawn
Osprey Journal
Eleutheria, The Scottish Poetry Review
Thunderclap
Calliope Nerve
Poetry warrior
Kerouac’s Dog
West47
Calamity Jane
Irish American Post
The Legendary
Corner Club Press
Lapwing Publishing
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CONTENTS
8. Stainless Un-marked Sky
9. Come Down from your Hills
10. Could She But Think Of Cape Cod
11. Garbo’s Garage
12. Senti Mental
13. Immortal Beloved
14. Jenny
15. Espresso @ the Borgia
15. Ritual
16. F’n Bukowski
17. Morning Piece
17. Once While I Was Away
18. Summer
19 For Jack Who No One Reads
20. Poetry from The Edge
21. Ghosts Of My Summers
22. Still Snow The Cemetery Is April
23 Once We Knew The Dark
24. Pre Ghostings By April
25. Kisses Which Bear The Open Mouths Of Love
26. The Ghost Of My Mothers Lover
27. Bigger Than The Sky If A Star Was Your Eye
30. Divorce
30.Children
31. The Girl Next Door
32. Wait
32. Second Cuppa House Blend
33. Cop
34. As If The Rain
35. Dublin
35. When I’m Gone
36. Summers
37. Rumours Of Another Summer
38. Autumnal
39. Complete Enemy Of Words
40. Rumours Of King Fishers
41. Coffee Mornings
41. Snow
42. Questioning Morning
42. 1955
43. No Place Like Home
44. Beginning
44. Woman Shapes
45. Knowing Now The Healing
46. Billy The Kid In Hamburg
47. Moragna
48. In The Absence Of Air Conditioning
49. Writing With Vengeance
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50. Women Buying Guns In America
51.Looking For Work In Dublin
53. Capri In The Borders
54. The Disappeared
56. American Outlaw
57. Old Shirt
58. This Morning
59. Little Shoes
60. Tattoo On Leaving Gettysburg
61. With Jesus In Jacksonville
62. Riding With An Angel In The Pale Moonlight
63. As Time Goes By
63. Canada
64. For Brian
65. The Lover Of Wisdom
66. For W.B.
66. Memorial
67.The Man Who Came for Turquoise
68. Should The Question Beg For Answer
69. La la la la la
70. Kent
71. In Favour Of Ice Climbing
71. Red Bird On The Road
72.Soft Bends The River
72. Home
73. Hey
74. Pensioners Remiss
75. Smoky Pelican
76. Eileen Di’Bartalamao, Jan Iorio
76. Herding Goats In Ithaca
77. My Heart
78. Red Bird
78. On The Bridge
79. The Girl
80. Hitchcock Lake
81. Annie In Connecticut
82.Brendon
83. Morgan Knows
84. Only August
85. Loretta’s Piece
86. Pop*
87. Battery Park
88. Whose Name began With Stars
89. Continuum
90. The Red Bird
90. Titanic
91. Mo Matter Where
91. Late Night Transistor Radio
92. Too Early For Blueberries
93. Waltzing Miss Jeanie
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94. Porcelain
95. Outlaw Days
96.Wanting To Be In The Old Tongue
98. Dreams Before The Growing Season Of Grass
99. Trust
99. Maybe Michelle
100.. Belize
101. Wordsilk
102. Xunantunich
103. Just A Cat
104. Me And The Small Talk Angel
105. The Poet In Her Narcissism
106. Sitting
107. Dharma
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8
Stainless un-marked sky
Against a powder green wall single bed
Magazine photos yellow cellophane taped
No underwear favourite red t-shirt
30/06 lever action
Blue barrel fingerprints
Weevil ticking toes
Fly hums against the glass
Until heat makes everything
Even outside
Still.
Beneath that shirt
Bump each little island
Up to where if a boy
An Adams apple‘d be.
Knees steady butt end
On a white board floor.
Spidering fingers.
Raw cotton breath.
Knowing it’s loaded.
Stainless un-marked
Alone in your room
Sky.
9
Come Down From Your Hills
Come down from your hills and see me
Remind me when I was a girl
Tip my kisses with honey
Bathe my feet in your curls
Soft green grass in showers of gold
Apple blossoms swirl like snow
Echoless laughter my hands on your face
Come down from your hills and see me
Remind me when I was a girl
I’m tired of long wool skirts
Tired of wobbly shoes
Tired of being a stranger afraid to remember you
10
Could she but think of Cape Cod
Sand spray ridges
Heartbeat trombone ocean
still out of sight
flavours the air
her hair
and
Shifting down to the open beach
opalized lumps of stone
darker lighter sand
crazy north east gales
bit by
bit
Trail of unnecessaries
Shoes Coat
Shirt Skirt
Polka dot bra unmatched by pink panties
A string of moonish pearls returned
11
Garbo’s Garage
Velvet finish
Concrete floor
Silver dollar oil spot
Otherwise dry as a bone
Pontiac
No other reason
Than liked
The bonnet ornament
Lush blob
Chrome
Streaming back
Noble savage
Sometimes
Put her mouth
Around it
Alone
Parked
Garage
Door
Closed
No shelves
No Tools
No Debris
12
Senti mental
Nineteen seventy-three followed me
Out into high drifts
Sparkling like sugar
Crisp pancake sun
Sky blue as a bell bottom
No homes to go to
Old leaves summered out
Criss cross
Like stars our hearts
Fifteen years old
So much a live time a go
There were birds beneath her islands
There were bold Fenian fingers of my own
But love was a thing that made me listen when she said no
And even then I believed summer was forever and so I loved her so
13
Immortal Beloved
There’s no such thing as Beethoven in Waterbury.
No one sees him buying race forms or cigarettes at Bauby's corner.
He doesn’t play pin ball at Dazz's,
Chalk a cue at Genlocks, pan handle a concert crowd at the Palace
theatre,
Order Blue Ribbon shorts at Backstreet’s
Sit in Dresher’s after three sipping cool tall dark drafts.
He’s not protesting the war at Library Park,
Selling acid from the Kingsbury hotel,
Falling asleep on Christmas Eve with a girl named Mary in the chapel of
St. Johns church.
Strung out girls don’t get to build snowmen on the green with him
Mattatuck music can’t hire him to move their records
And old men at Palace Liquors can’t argue with him.
Hare Krishna’s can’t get him to do their chanting.
Doorways where he stood out of the rain for hours are empty or are gone.
Strangers at the all night bus station, killers on their way to Canada …
Women from Louisiana … never meet him anymore.
He doesn’t share a table with downtown Shirley and her father,
Reminisce the death of walkin' stick Louie betrayed by Tiger Teddy,
Sell more orange sunshine than Bobby Comfort,
Blow a joint with the New Riders of the Purple Sage,
Love a reincarnated baton twirling beauty queen from North Carolina,
Let catholic school girls follow him home – Cry because he had to let
them go.
He doesn’t clamour along the roof tops with a friend named Bird, who
never got to California, find free warmth in the library or in the stairwells
of the Brown building or for a quarter a slice get to sit behind the pizza
ovens at Dom N Nick’s.
And no one sees him sitting on the fire escape drinking Roma California
Port with Whitey and Charlie Brown – anymore.
On the corner of Lewis and Main Beethoven’s lover eyes several school
girls waiting on a bench across the street. There’s nothing happening for
her in this town anymore. Yet still she dyes her hair red, refuses to ever
ride a bus and her pale lips still struggle with those Lucky Strikes just like
always in his dreams.
14
Jenny
My fingers have touched
Your face
Your razor cut hair
Rose bud lips
Every square inch of how you define your
Slender secret self
Vulnerable to love
Shielded by the city
Defensive diaphragms
Nicotine & coffee
Shadow sister
Manhattan monochromed cool
Believing anything was possible we were the same
Beneath warm tones of old bones
Pictures of girls and oceans
First born anxiety
Visitation eased by distance
Horizons met and thus reset
Soft steady ache like something summer upon green lawns
Time to talk in silence
15
Espresso @ the Borgia
She used perfume
Smelled like cinnamon gum
That should be enough
If not:
Dressed in black tights
Emerald green Kamali sweater
Hair long white ~ recently unbraided
Red marks left by her lips on porcelain cups
Ritual
Silent on the back steps
Smoke spirals
Past heat stuck insects
Webs of spider’s 60 watt bulb
Cracking whiskery grey paint
Four glass panes never meant to be opened
Stars peek in
& you come along
Not necessarily to join me
But sit beside me none the less
Nimbly roll one for yourself
& then another one for me.
(For Ulrike)
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F’n Bukowski
Idiot me picks now
6000 miles away at 52
To discover him
Still glad I didn’t stay in Waterbury
Find him sooner
Probably still be pukeing
Out in the after last call
Parking lot of now what am I gonna do
Or else back in jail
Or else still with one of the x-es
Or else not even alive
~
Tonight just had a chicken and ham sandwich on rye
And its sometime after midnight
And I’ll probably still be up @ 6 maybe half 6
Do some yoga make some coffee
Bring it to her in bed
Get some pancakes going for the kid
And be happy to do so
~
No not envious
Not regretful
Rather peaceful
Glad to be out of it
That’s the kind of poet I’m happy to live with
Now
17
Morning Piece
This morning
Wrap myself
In a one of a kind memory
Close my eyes
Slip into my hands,
Cock my head back
Lean into a Manhattan Sunday
Just before summer
On the luxury side
Of uptown
Slightly smiling.
Once While I Was Away
You might have come
Expecting awkward greeting won by
Philosophic well planned answers to
What you thought my unasked questions were -
Accidental touch
Silent linger hands
Knowing prelude to a kiss
All it would take to unclench my heart
Inviting you in
So you'd have something to do for the afternoon
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Summer
In June the dead come
October too cold
Perhaps reminiscent of that part of being dead
They’d most like to forget
We talk about the past
After all what else do we have in common?
Mostly women come.
Perhaps because I always went to them
Or maybe death, a vulnerability, makes men shy?
Either way we sit where it is I am these days,
Outside the kitchen
By an old apple tree
Across the sea
Leaving behind the lands they knew me in
No longer needing now to wander
19
For Jack Who No One Reads
Needing someone new to love
Loving/ needing newness
They loved
Not understanding
No appreciating
Not knowing
Or caring
He was it
New
Filling the need they had regardless of who he was
Something new
A thing
Parents never heard of
Would never approve of
Would at least be threatened by
As if every one would really go
Leave pack it in
Give it up hit the road
And even if they did
Would our highways then become our cities?
Places like Manhattan our open roads?
But he brought you flowers
Somehow knowing about purple irises
Sat down beside you
Knowing about the gallery
You being there
You thinking about your boyfriend
You thinking about him in the dark room
Afraid to wait any longer over Turkish coffee at Mamoon’s
That one time he was late
That day you were moving
From the city
From the summer
From all possibilities of being swayed
For Gabrielle
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Poetry from the Edge
Maybe if I stayed
Paid my dues
Drunken disorder
Home town lovers
Possession with intent
Liberal arts and all that shit
Reading at the button wood tree
Slams at the museum
Out for macrobiotic afterwards with students and faculty
But I didn’t
Instead
Carrying with me every step of the way
Bones broke by horses
Planes to airports languages I couldn’t say
Waited all day for you in the Grand Canary
Rode alone desert near Giza
Stranded in Aswan after ships curfew
Walking frozen January rivers in Hamburg
Drove 14 hours straight as far as I could go to end up in Ohio
Waited hours at Mamoons for someone named for angels never showed
Stood alone on street corners 3am waiting on a bag of coke
hope you’re doing well
having a wonderful time glad I’m still here.
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Ghosts of my summers
Ghosts of my summers walk by
Long pink skirts trail
Roads of my youth
Still there yet some what changed
As if each and every memory plays out again
This time
A different girl
Meets a different girl
Once you
Once me
Still June.
22
Still Snow the Cemetery is April
Here hunger
Has been learned
Insatiable
Into a kinder
Peace
Vampiric
Living come
To feed off the dead
Hunger
Temporarily
Satiated
Only fleeting
Only the dead can be starved into peace
No matter how many
Flags
Medallions
Mementoes
Stones
Flowers
The dead no longer can be known
Memories are not the same as knowledge
Unlike the living
The dead have moved on
Songs of birds
Sun on brown grass
Reluctant winter
In ways the living call regret
The dead with kinder knowledge
Know
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Once We Knew the Dark
No matter where days may differ but darkness is the same.
What if I lead you by the mouth?
Places underwater you could breathe in
Fingers taught on instruments stranger than bones
Drawn by strings reminiscent of words long ago
Familiar colours since extinct.
When winter was all there was could you find reasons to celebrate?
No matter how elaborate windows intricate trees harmonic songs
What does it take to lure a silver sun?
Bleaktitude chased
Hot whiskey voices
Oak wood smoke
Red berry holly
Slender secret ghosts vulnerable to love.
If it were long ago and my name was Jesus
Would you change your name for me?
Would you be my Mary?
I have become food for other creatures
Things I never knew existed indulge themselves in me
Grey not white birds mark my passing secret self
No evidence during that time of my existence
Yet even so something still remains:
A dying ember tenderness unquestioned.
Drawn to the wound in you moon strong as my own
A thing to be fingered or fucked a place to meet or loose ourselves.
What makes me want to reach in wonder what shape your creatures take
as I do?
Unlike them others, reverse rodents unable to stay,
I'm not afraid. I know nothing survives the future.
Why wait for secrets? When we forget enough we die. For: Loretta '73
24
Pre Ghosting By April
April slate daggered
crows litter garden walls
grey as soft rain sky
wanting to believe again
all that’s green
able to shine
any minute now
kettle whistle
coffee pour
almost burning toast
can you ever begin anything
at all? Never mind again?
white walls
white linens
white floor boards
high gloss mirroring white
radiator, doors, curtains
pale as milk
skin as silk
black as Japanese
all night eyes.
when the moon was blue
cleaned the roaches
rolled two joints
by the reservoir
sat in shadow
Lambrusco laughter
places so like home between us
without your mouth I couldn’t even whisper
25
Kisses Which Bear the Open Mouths of Love
She would not know me now
All spidered and soft eyed
There are no horses here
I do not smoke with them
Before the rising sun
We do not track our way through trackless lands
Drink from any random running waters.
No summers here
My own muscles do not perfume
The working day
Attract the stars nocturnal butterflies
& kisses which bear the open mouths of love
26
The Ghost of My Mother's Lover
Sometimes I would find the things he left, loose change under the
cushions, a little red box of wood matches (that my mother took away),
black liquorice candies wrapped in stripped silver foil
and once a big silver skeleton key - that he really left for me.
One night I woke up, hearing his voice, his voice form my mother's
room, his voice talking and talking. I went up to the door which was not
quite closed - they were in bed together. He was sitting up and mother lay
with her arms around him, head on his bare chest. He wasn't just talking
he was reading, so I sat down there in the hallway and listened about
Morgana the sister of a king.
I guess he didn't notice, my mother was asleep because he kept on
reading and whenever he turned the page I thought he would look right at
me and smile.
I listened as Morgana looked into the water for pictures of the future and
how some of the knights did not like her but there was one, one with
dragons on his arms who loved her very much, how it was Morgana who
taught the little girls of Avalon to serve the Goddess...And I thought I
have to ask him, who is this Goddess?
I must have fallen asleep there on the floor by the door of my mother's
room because the next thing I remember I am being carried and in his
arms! My face against pictures of blue stars and a black winged horse on
his shoulder. His smell a little like the ocean mixed with something from
my mother's kitchen. His muscles so great that with one arm he held me
while with the other pulled back the blankets, swung me down into my
bed so fast I almost laughed out loud then tucked me in.
Through my half closed eyes I could see his face coming closer and
closer, then his lips touched my forehead - but soft like mother's kiss even
though his breath of smoke and prickly chin were not at all like mother.
As he pulled away he said so that I could hardly hear, "Sleep well. Sleep
well little Morgana."
Then I remembered, I wanted to ask him... I sat up and said "Tell me - "
But he was gone
and already the light in my mother's room put out.
27
Bigger Than the Sky If A Star Was Your Eye
Without sadness there can be no kindness.
Depression while it may be unkind
Is not a kind of sadness.
Someday children will know:
Daddies don’t know everything
Daddies aren’t always there
Daddies cannot protect omnipotent in any way
On top of that neither can mommy.
Not even if we are turned into gods.
Allowing our children to turn us into gods
Should be every parents concern.
I have lived in houses of the dead.
Those who died before my age,
Those who lived to be a hundred a hundred years ago.
Someday these stairs I sweep will still be here
And I will not be anywhere.
Someday all those I ever knew and who knew me,
No matter how intimately; will be no more.
Not even forgotten because there will be none
Who ever even knew them or us or me.
My daughter age 7 asks “What happens when you die daddy?”
“What really happens after you die dad?”
Am I afraid of death?
Afraid of not being me anymore?
Am I afraid of life?
Afraid of not knowing answers?
Growing old?
Forgetting?
My mommy my daddy. Grandma Grandpa Aunts & uncles.
How they looked where they died – hospitals wakes funerals
What they taught me?
Names of dogs, my first cat,
Cards, poker, slap-jack, war, set-back, cribbage, 31, solitaire, rummy.
28
Smoking: corn silk, pall malls, Kents, old gold, lucky strike, viceroy
Marlboro, Mores.
TV: channel 8, ABC, Superman, Twilight Zone, Avengers, Popeye, Lone
Ranger, Roy Rogers, Rifleman, Sugarfoot , Captain Kangaroo ( how to
tie my shoes), Bunny- rabbit, Mr. Moose, Tom Terrific, Sonny Fox,
Sandy Becker, Ranger Andy, Outer Limits, Bugs what’s up doc Bunny
( all I know about classical music) and oh that mighty mighty mouse and
the farmer and the mice (made before sound all action to a can-can score),
Zorro, Robin Hood, Paladin, Seaview, Sea Hunt, Flipper, Twenty Mule
Team Death Valley Days.
Stateline potato chips, Mr salty pretzels, Oreos, drake’s cakes, Cracker
Jack, sandwiches, deli grinders, first sip sting- my- nose Knickerbocker
Beer, hires real root beer, diamond ginger ale, real mayonnaise, sour
pickles, Pepsi-cola, cream off the top of the milk bottle.
Big giant glittering maniacal magical Christmas, and the baby, baby
Jesus in his little wooden manger. Easter bunnies, Easter baskets,
vinegary coloured eggs. Halloween, store bought costumes, pillow cases
full of trick or treating treats.
Songs my mother whistled in the garden, all the flowers she taught me
names of, the birds she always fed, the pets she always had Nietzsche,
Fritz, Simon, Suki, , Dulcinea, Heidi, Beau, Nietzsche II, Terry, Frisky,
Penny, Mamma Kitty, Tuffy, Tasha.
My father’s chess set, going fishing, making models together: black bear
& cub, USS Missouri “big mo”, making us sawn and sanded swords at
his work bench, heavy iron wrenches, hammers I could hardly lift, picks
that weighed more than I did.
Cub Scouts, baseball, sledding on the golf course, going up the bank,
down the rock fort, up the rez, taste of snow, scent of autumn bright sun
on brown leaves orange & yellow & up to your knees holding hands with
mom walking down peach orchard hill to glimpse a sight of JFK waving
as he went by on his way to Hartford.
Roger Maris as a rookie my first time at the major league his first
Yankee game, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and oh yeah Yogi Berea!
Summer vacations, going to the ocean - 5 kids all are we there yet packed
into the Chevy station wagon when Connecticut to Maine really took
forever…
My daughter loves the sea
We don’t live near it
Sometimes get to visit
Dancing in and out the surf
Up and down the Dogs Bay regardless of the weather.
29
My son now in his thirties
hardly ever leaves his house
the one he bought from my father’s estate
The house me and the siblings grew up in
Same ones I argued with so he could live there
Like his grandpa said.
And maybe it’s no so bad to forget?
be free of history
be new
make space for right now
stop so much looking back.
And maybe it can be that way with death?
not so bad,
letting go of all this me?
making space for something new?
But I've a strong ego
Tuff as nails
A Buddha’s nightmare
Veteran of all kinda wars.
Maybe that’s the equation:
stronger the ego – stronger the fear?
I am not the god of my children
I’m too old to fool them with immortality
Anyway they’re too smart to not perceive
My purely human heart.
Love is not an answer.
Love is a response to all those unanswerable questions.
Not knowing anything
I love.
The more answers I don’t have?
The more I feel my own true love.
~ I don’t know what really happens when we die
But I do know how much I love you ~
20 Jan 09 for Morgan Macha
30
Divorce
Two boys
Sons before school
Dad’s darlings
Learning to swing
“...all by yourself!!!”
Under a friendly sun
Free vitamin D
Lace of green tree buds
Song of wandering sparrows
Who knows the sorrows of another?
Children
A natural kindness
Quietly they meet
Slowly ease
Help one another with shoes, swings
and reach the water fountain ~
Fearless to be gentle.
Too soon
The intrusion of adult fear
Corrupts the fragile little dears.
31
The Girl Next Door
When I remember
third floor windows
tall white lace sails
summer all running in our veins
her mother in the kitchen
making cool aid and plate full of something
cookie sweet to eat
she wanted me to stay
I was afraid wanted to go home
but didn’t want her to know
Not wanting to be in this house of too many windows
overlooking this mill town valley
but she wanted me to stay
and her mother agreed
besides the rains begun
going to be a real storm
already rumblings from darkening horizon
I’ll call you mother
She won’t be worried
You can stay for supper
you like hot dogs don’t you?
and that was how I learned not to be afraid of storms
not to hide from thunder or lightning
Frances and her mother guiding me with their exuberance
ohhs and ahhs and joy over every
menacing vibration or sudden crash
every flash or veining skeletal zig zag
32
Wait
Slow
Moon
Miles ran
Rain bent
Poplar pine
Remembered snow
Flickering yellowing
Butterly lite
Echoes of breath
Along washing windows
As if washed
Might sense
A meaning other than
Tomorrow April comes
And here I am
Un-gone
Un-knowing
Second Cup'a House Blend
Almond biscotti
Girl of peaches
Girl of shadow
Smattering old men @ chess
Soft grey lady novels
Dilettante cell phone planners
Lap top troopers enterticing
Man
I am friend of the coffee
Man
I am friend of the coffee
.
33
“Cop”
Sometimes he woke me up so early getting ready for work
I learned how morning could be dark as night
Sometimes he woke me up so late
Just to kiss me back asleep
When my father was a policeman
No one thought armour piercing rounds
Were a constitutional right
No one but the bad guys
Thought he was a bad guy
We knew he was the guy you called for help
And always he showed up.
34
As If The Rain
Emily Dickinson used to sneak out.
Sometimes in day light, mostly at night.
Tip toeing carefully down the back stairs
Even though nobody else was there.
Always a hat a shawl or a veil
To keep the neighbours off her trail.
Walking along the streets of the town
Glimpses her reflection among dry goods and gowns
And in the shop she has been seeking makes her purchase from a little
man who has always honoured their agreement
And never Miss Emily’s secrets revealed.
Bag of tobacco, skins and matches snapped up in her bag.
While wrapped in brown paper knotted with string – a bottle of port
She tucks under her wing.
Emily Dickinson used to sneak out.
Later that night she did it again.
Carefully tip toeing down the back stair
Even though nobody else was there.
Making her way out to the train station,
Counting the stars as she sat on the bench,
Naming new constellations while she was waiting.
Defined by an overcoat of wrinkles and stains
Rodent hands desperate
deep dead end pockets
Rusty knife retrieved by one opened by the other
String and paper, slit and peeled ~
Turbulent mouth not spilling a drop
A shudder of sighs he sits down beside her.
Easing back against green slats,
Things he knows he sometimes tells her ~
Crossing the country by freight. Tin can meals around a fire.
Men who only knew for certain that they’d not meet again.
Bones broken by horses. Bayonets emerging from a fog.
What it’s like on the other side of the ocean.
Names of young girls, young men.
Who might be living? Who might be dead?
And sometimes, only warm smoke shapes lingering
As if the rain would never come again on a Tuesday night in Amherst…
35
Dublin
Dublin
The sea
The gulls
The Liffey
Joyce
And the ship in the window on Berkly road -
Still
Claim
Her
.
When I’m Gone
Who will know the feel?
Wood held by bare hands
Sweat hard work horses
Rain soak
Walking home
In the dark
Night rainbows
36
Summers
All the leaves I ever loved
In autumn fell
Acres of New England
Wrapped in colours
Damp with promise
Maybe rain
Maybe snow
All I ever knew of walking.
37
Rumours of Another Summer
95º
4th
of July
Connecticut
Bare Trees, Winter Night; oldie not so familiar says the radio.
this is age
& what it’s like
& how is there anything else now?
But poplar silver
still sounds like rain
quick sand springs still stream
maples shade deep gorge brooks
high stones circle the pool
of where going down to the horse bones
we were kids.
38
Autumnal
foraging geese
too busy for flight
occasionally eye little white dogs being walked on lines
not being busy myself
I watch my beautiful daughter’s joy at this
To offer is to become.
39
Complete Enemy Of Words
It was
me with nothing left to inspire about
a complete enemy of words
at this point
Hot winter sun
hard through glass
walled heart unbending
damp handed pen
not a thing left to say
at this point
remembering perfect sentence
the artist as a young man
touched not one myalgiac fibre of my un known self
So into the hallowed hands of Ulysses
trust all this open wounded
calcified flesh
hope
one last time
miracle
heal my father
heal my self
heal bruised leg muse
every curse of every failed publisher - purge
quick silvered
anew my lazy soul
go on
do on
no do more
da do run run run
da do run run
40
Rumours of King fishers.
can you ever begin anything at all?
never mind again
white walls
white linen
duvet pillows sheets
white lamp
white floor boards
radiator door
&
pale as milk
kiss
black as Japan lacquer
all night eyes
smooth long whisper
curves of ahh’s
to not call it ocean
that which we call ocean would be?
to not call it mind
that which we call mind would be?
to not call it I
that which we call I would be?
sometime ago angels
leapt up in summer time
yellow gold
all one
w/ human kind
of course looked like love at first
then became lust
by try as they must could never get off
though happily multiple
the women went nuts
41
Coffee Morning
kisses tear
love bleeds
my mouth
more
coffee morning
piano sunlight
flicker crows
garden frost
coloured eggs
cut flowers
chocolate
bare feet
toast crumbs on the floor
Snow
silent
soft
unable to do anything but fall
stops a millennium in its tracks
42
Questioning Morning
How does the sun shine through the window?
How does the barking dog enter?
How do the tips of our fingers touch?
When there are kings of demons and not demons
When there are mortals and not mortals
When there are thoughts and not thoughts
How can I make pancakes without coffee?
1955
when last seas
iodining sharply
long remembered
scented by my late November birth
salt tinctured hands
slippy sticky sweat
sound sighing
tear sighing
breathless
mother ~
held by other hands
I was
43
No Place Like Home
come
for a little while
make this place a home
feed the birds
adopt stray cats
secret places no one else walks
well met unvisible and other things
beauty not always kind
just like always
we must leave nothing left of April
once the birthday of my mother
once the meaning of something new
only now
a month of waiting
un influential hours
un heeded days
long night unbroken weasel bites
and now
the new month -
may
not be any different.
44
Beginning
an amateur chess
crossing fine tattoo ass
indigo satin
fine breathless
golden brown
unlikely to lullaby
rosebud pout
Woman Shapes
dapple grey
helixed tree
any shadow of the moon.
45
Knowing Now the Healing
Once I walked these unfound streets, doorways to oblivion.
Ecstasy, a venture into realms unable to be described in any other fashion.
My own youth deserved derision by the elders. Ah! But it was mine to
Taste - drunkenness never wasted on the young.
A time before cynicism was anything other than humour,
Bitterness something tingling an acid tang, a tiny speck amphetamine,
Alter reality, ultra reality, no difference at all reality.
I could see myself stepping into the night, disappear into an open
Universe such was a lifetime then. And you, would you come? Would
You dare? And could I make some fatal mistake, not going by myself
Because I wanted to be with you?
But how could anything be wrong? How could mistakes be made when
Marked on the map was only the welcome empty great unknown? And
Would I do it again? Does it matter yeah or nay? As long as I was me
How couldn’t I repeat, repeat resoundingly that open, open ode to joy?
I could touch you then. I knew you just around the corner you. Half way
Up the stairs, you. Noticing a single rose growing between back yard
Rubble, you. Travelled by Grey Hound, cross the country by freight, park
Bench dreamed, double dancer Zelda you -
A tide of whirlpools. An antebellum majorette beauty queen. You were
The most beautiful woman in the world. You were me as a woman.
Wanting to be the first one to make love in a whole summer of dry attics
Never believing for one minute we could end up on the street by
Christmas in Connecticut.
I was gonna. I was destined. I was the one. I was the chosen. I could have
Been Jesus, preferred to be Krishna, hoped only to be Watermelon Sugar.
A thing delectable to your lips, a thing you might someday remember
Without lying or regret.
You were anything possible,
Meeting again someday.
Around the corner, half way up the stairs,
Eyes still same as my own,
Knowing now the healing ways,
Strong enough for love.
46
Billy the kid in Hamburg
Billy the kid in Hamburg
On the run from what he didn’t know
Brought his six guns, slid down his hat,
Night robbing trains by lantern light.
Secreted senorita homesick for palm trees & tequila
Small stories of her badlands youth
Explains to him the length of her long legs
And how she knew she’d never have his kids.
Down in the Reepherbahn, softly smoking
Cigarettes he didn’t know how to roll, so she did -
As if hot grog and sailing men
Could persuade him from
Whatever treasures he’d go back for.
And she’d hear how he’d gone for some golden princess steeple swayed,
Belief in orthodoxy still strong especially when so far away from home
Until eventually surrounded by things even he couldn’t deny,
Wrapped his pistols in dirty laundry packed in a trunk,
Trusted to the stations of trains and kindness of strange ports,
Made it back to the land where he was born.
Severely betrayed, nearly captured on the river
Escaped by some woman so strong she scared him
But from whom he learned to ride -
Life of horses,
Long constantly moving horizons,
Real living breathing freedom between his legs.
And whoever couldn’t understand his guns
Abide the smell of horse shit
Take those chances heartily offered,
Wouldn’t they still love him, lead him into parlours, boudoirs,
Soft green grassy banks secluded by whatever river –
Until once more his own true nature’d break their law?
47
Morgana
I was awake, stars like angels
I spoke to about you and me.
A golden moon so fine only by a whisper
Was it kept from disappearing.
Tiny drops of water leaned from every green thing
Flightless fairies yearning nourishment
Your name deep measureless breath,
A hum of whales sky blue enough
So every inch of everything could
Hear deep in their minds, repeated.
Across high, seldom slack, storming
Sightless of any land
Oceans, I have written.
Have you lost more teeth?
What makes your tap dancing men stay still?
Can immortality ever be mellow?
How other than stupor could it be done?
Answerless. As if the right combination
Could instigate response I keep trying new ones:
A girl with stones
Started with daddy but now she’s alone;
Names, dates, standard rates - charges extra for more.
Or, warm coffee streets,
Silence pressed around places we used to go,
Faces we used to know, now no longer clearly
Rather believed in, things thought and sometimes still
Do think are true, even of ourselves -
Dancing on the lake once covered Kathmandu valley
Sipping flowers fell from a sky beyond stars.
Smiling children marked by turquoise cobras
Great roots of great trees where
Grey matchless undisturbed as dust,
We’d rest.
48
In The absence Of Air Conditioning
They talk of gambling
Hit, Stay, Bust.
Sizzling meat and eggs
A bronze beadwork of sweat.
With milk and sugar tones
Discuss how are-yous and the weather.
Crackling newspapers,
Clicking cigarette lighters pressed.
They talk about who they’ve met
And shouldn’t god bless all waitresses? And red-heads too!
Salty stringy ham, wet marmalade toast.
The urgent illusion of having someplace else to go.
Unbelievably they talk about what’s new:
New York, New Hampshire, New Guinea and Zealand.
In a collage of oily aprons
The boy on a milk crate
Head back against the white slat wall
Black eyes liquid lures.
Knowing outside this shelter
A stainless steel sun is all that’s waiting
Draws my attention back to coffee,
To sheets of yellow paper
Avoiding grease spots as I wear this pencil down.
But against the wall damp in his apron
Black eyes spiced with swimming fishes
Blessed by the god of electricity
The boy arches his back towards the fan
Phil’s Diner, 14. 06.97
49
Writing w Vengeance
She bought Kafka by the arm load
Encouraged by her white and kaki
Black ink sunnys
Boyfriend
Held The Trial to her periwinkle breasts
Flip flop over to the shade
Long auburn braid slightly undone
Shuffled half dozen h/c books into one arm
Removed her own black ink sunnys
And with the back of that brownish wrist
Brushed the straying hair away
oh to be on sugar mountain
All muscle and tone and almost twenty one
sure I’d have robbed her with Miller, Bukowski
Maybe a few well chosen irises
Either way I’d not curry favour by supporting Kafka
What your boyfriend encourages you from
Is what I’m living
Every day
50
Women Buying Guns In America
Smash the TV walk barefoot in the snow
Pierce ourselves with steel
Chew tequila worms ‘til the hand of god wipes our mouths
Piss wherever, say whatever, love whoever
Fearless with the night of any street of any place
And no Thelma and Louise
We don’t die
Don’t even get caught
We hide
Disguised as geriatrics
Happy enough to sleep now
Two ends of the same rope
Richly deserved coils of never never land
Surrendered,
Only to each other
Our Peter Pan tongues.
51
Looking For Work In Dublin
The same girl sitting on different buses going by over and over I knew
if I saw her one more time the rest of the world would completely liquefy
and go with her. Wishing to avoid that whirlpool of a thing I knocked
back the coffee, paid and left keeping my eyes firmly focused on the
sidewalk made my way to Eccles street. Sidewalk, crosswalk not daring
to look up risking my life in the traffic like a blind man saving the world.
In the crumbling doorways tilted columns boarded windows planning
permission posters all along the way safe to be looked at on the right side
of the street I had no fear of buses as the decaying signs of Eccles street
lead me down to the Georgian centre for saving the ruined life of city
boys saving ruins among the ruins 90 days repairs a lifetime then out with
you maybe meet again in some emergency of violence queued up amidst
the hospital flu wishing you weren't here. There must be some as yet
undiscovered carpet to sweep you under.
On my helter skelter straight way down to the bus station maybe
O’Connell street. instead some nameless to me slope of a road not to far
is that the tower of Ulysses where once Telemachus watched black mass
Mulligan sacred shaving interrupted by old Ireland who may have
forgotten her own tongue but remembering to bring the milk had her tits
compared to moocows and other things I cannot now remember.
everything old once was new like some profundity this rolls around in my
brain tickling something in me I'm not sure of any more than why.
Cutting across I decide on O’Connell, I am afraid of the city only now
when I am so indecisive about destinations as if there is some gang of
violence waiting for that sign I send of not knowing where I'm going.
Jackals of the lost man wandering seeking safety in the numbers of
O’Connell, safe among the herds, oblivious to the old, ignorant of the
new. penniless. No merchants sanctuary, a foreigner among the African
languages and Friesian competitors, children named Rosalitta frown then
smile, German hippies Burberry plaid guitars,
Somehow I don't belong except to old bullet holes on the GPO, rusted tin
enamelled placards above the discount shop on Talbot, soldier statues,
new inns ward, eroded Grecian friezes on greasy brick work, stained
glass window cracked holes. Noticing no one seems to notice like me
wanting to some how take the time to repair myself, remind myself,
inquire of the passer byes, to whom they attribute freedom to?
52
We are in a hurry to forget, do our best to not remember.
There has never been another day like today
There has never been another way
It has always been so
World without life
Amen.
A long cat stretch beach of green benches
Cobble stone tides break debris from yesterday’s storm
Soggy cardboard
Bleached pigeon bones
Desperate for sunglasses
Into the leather sleeves of dreams
I fold my head.
53
Capri The Borders
nocturnes written a long the ever passing caravan of days
deserted debris in hope of hastening a pitch black oasis
sparkling the only un-still things such as stars or the jewelled throat of
ghosts haunted by something beyond all knowledge like your eyes
the only dark that shines as if a different kind of sun.
my mouth for your love
dreams of smoke on wandering horizons
red glow desert darkness
a voice whispered wet silk
drawn as if my skin found out in the wind
scented by foreign creatures
ground perfumes attracting strong fingers
nourished by such exploring
fed by sky blue horses
my heart like other fruit contains a fertile seed
A treasure trove for beetles an insect paradise.
and I saw you with tears in American gowns
you were just like Picasso but knelt on the ground
as if genuflecting before the print page you’d inhale
the spirit right out of his grave and I just couldn’t
take it so I wandered around as if I could shake you
Like salt from my skull
I end up returning an orbit of doubt.
no matter how determined
the scent of your soapy skin draws me in
so many ways I could not identify and even if I could
would never ever say,
like ivory in the morning someplace else away
beyond a snow tipped mountain
before the savannahs open prayer
dark meandering luxurious survival
Our daring self’s mortal among the Edens.
54
The Disappeared
Along the lane
Straight down as rain
Without wind
Without sound
Wrapped in briar vines
Emerging posts of bone
As if some ancient mariner
Draws me in a secret un-gloved caress.
I wanted to keep you for myself.
I wanted you to stay, because you went.
But the police,
After further questioning
Came up with ideas all their own
And in so doing, made contact with
The families of the disappeared.
Occasionally,
To men in long wrinkled coats, they speak,
A fog of voices drifting apart,
Before reaching any type of destination.
Taking turns, cast looks around,
As if this really were sea
And answers like shoals of silver fishes lurk
Just beneath the surface.
Careful. Pretending not to notice
How each movement flickers in the lights
As if this really were all some cinematic image
Screened with no one but the actors in the audience.
Their silence magnifies only certain sounds:
Elastic latex snap,
Slicing shovel slaps,
Unsteady cigarette sighs,
Plastic, almost echo, abruptly ending zip.
Believing their expectations to be accurate predictions
They came for something clear and full of meaning,
Something settling and complete,
To find, as if some great surprise,
Only the obvious inescapably revealed.
Unlike them I know you not by what you’ve lost,
55
But rather by what you’ve brought back.
It was that which drew me
In secret un-gloved caress
And now plays out
Along the landscapes of my every night
And haunts my every morning with regret.
I wanted to touch that forbidden you again.
To trace upon that more secret map
Etched, invisible to my naked eyes,
Every line of your journey,
Circling with the tip of my tongue,
So that I would know
Everything.
.
56
American Outlaw
Always somebody just like you
Somewhere else
In photos
They even look the same
In their past your lovers
Have met and loved them
In the dark they dreamt
Of things you used to pray for
57
Old Shirt
days
walking laying
sleeping eating
over-steamed radiators
warm spells February spring
But
the colour is good
fit is right and when I catch myself
passing mirrors in hallways
bathrooms
shop windows
turned off televisions
Stop
and/or
glance
who am I
breath caught a moment
Old shirt smell
still me
still who I was
and am now
in need of a shower
58
This morning
This morning of streets
Emptier than anything from my
Deepest darkest youth.
Not even a beggar to drop a coin to
Not even a reason to unlock the doors
Useless to lock anyway.
Ambrose comes
So I open the side door
He tells me about darkness and men so scared
That only by killing and striving
To not be killed by one another
Could they bear it.
I pour hot black coffee into the cup
Cupped by his hands
A browner porcelain of prayer
As are my own.
On little creaking chairs
Face to face raise to our audible lips
Ahh in unison
Hot bitter caffeine
Rewards us another day.
I get up and go behind the counter
return with a small tin box
Knee to knee we look in
Share the same ingrained thought:
But it is forbidden.
Then broadly smiling,
We two grown men
Each take out a cigarette.
We have silence
We have soft grey shuddered light
We have no need of heat yet.
59
Little Shoes
All the same wonderings
Ages of ifs
Lifetimes of whys
Each life
History of wonderings
History of ifs
Where it leads
Where it goes
How it begins
Voices of an independence
Give way silenter than plastic tombs
Small electric dancer springs
A whirl only god could hear
If the ear of god had no hair no wax no smell
But god
Had pious milk bone men
Absolution in the dark
Disciplined and cleansed
In the dark
&
The ear of god
Blind an onan eye
Silent voices absent language
All those wondrous hearts
On crosses born
Their darkness
A long testament of utter failure.
60
Tattoo on Leaving Gettysburg
The dead of Gettysburg reach out
Soak us with desire,
Teaching us its tears that shape their ghosts.
Even down at the Blue Parrot,
Drinking Pennsylvania Porter and Jameson’s
We find ourselves with them,
And at the motel?
Phone ringing with 2am complaints,
Does not stop us the living from honouring the dead.
In the morning Stacy’s Chrome Garden
Soft hum needles lullaby beneath my skin,
Winged horses form a few more drops of blood for Gettysburg
While you, holding my hand as if in hospital
Think of ways to further delay our leaving
Because like me you crave the company of ghosts
And too you know the need the dead have for healing.
For Stacy
61
With Jesus in Jacksonville
Went out rolling n hitting the bars
Bumped into each other got sacramental
After last call
Wished hard for a car with out a locked door.
In a blue & white Bel Air
Fixed on a higher power
Rolled up a Jerusalem
& Floored it
Ran out on some twisted ridge
Wandered So far away
When the cops finally showed
We didn’t even have to run.
And we wished for something we could do.
Something to keep things at bay.
Some way to swear all that we done
Would still be so in light of the day
62
Riding With An Angel In The Pale Moonlight
so light little queenie
I know you know the way
soon now little darling
dawn will light our way
soon now little darling
home will be in sight
I know it’s been a long time
I know you worked your heart
soon now little queenie
we’ll ride out form this dark
soon now little queenie
we’ll see the morning light
I can’t ever tell you
I don’t know any words you’d now
but you’re my own true heat girl
you’re my own true one
in darkness I trust you
in darkness no fear
I know you know the way dear
I know you always find the light
All those nights
sat silent
Smoky wine coloured
full tide
my veins
my heart
my own
For Jeanie
63
As Time Goes By
Days are always going on
Streams of hours like cars trucks motorcycles
Steadily scrambling through
As if on some desperate mission
Important business somewhere else
Not very often quite
Hardly any attention to my imagined rules of the road
I am not important enough
For a slow down
Lucky the buggers haven’t come full stop yet I suppose.
Canada
Where I could step out into the night
Smoke with the stars
Hear an ocean just beyond the pines
Something’d draw the dog off barking
Into a pitch black forest where really anything could be
When all I wanted was the sparkling solitude of Orion.
But you know when the son of a bitch came back
All proud of himself and waging his tail,
All I could say was,
Good boy. Good boy. Good boy.
64
For Brian
All he wanted was to be friends
But there was no friendship there
Three assholes
Got m to steal stuff from his mother
Talked him into going through other peoples windows first
Got him high on percocet or ‘ludes
And when he wouldn’t wake up?
Pushed him out of a slow moving car
There on the street beneath the underpass
Downtown sometime in the early hours
Less than a quarter mile from the hospital.
Few years later
They tried to rob/bury
Me and the wife over a half ounce of coke
Thinking we had something we didn’t even have
One of em had knocked her on the ground n straddled her
So I stuck him well, in the kidney.
Held the others at bay.
Scrambled into her daddy’s car
They bashed all the windows out with shovels
As we drove away.
Later at the police station in the cell
Spent the night wishing hoping afraid
The bastard would die and
I thought they were the demons.
But
Maybe if he did Ronnie would still be around
They met up with him next
Nothing proved, nothing found.
Even the police were on our side in that one.
65
The Lover Of Wisdom
He helped in the kitchen
While she was away.
One night he was worried about the wine
Her father noticed, told him
Not to worry
They said it was the best place they’d been to
That they were glad to be here,
Besides it was the second bottle they’d ordered.
It was then he grabbed her father’s hand, said
Are you my friend? Are you!
The towering man with black moustache
In a well-worn greasy apron said,
Always. I am your friend always!
It was evening when she came back.
He was sorting pots from the green house
Packing them into the jeep
Parked at the top of the driveway
When they pulled in
BMW convertible dark blue w/ tan leather.
He did not want to meet her friends.
Afraid they’d hear the beating of his heart
He stayed on the other side of the jeep
Pretending to be too busy
Waiting for her to come to him.
But after their long good-byes,
She didn’t.
He walked around saw her walking
Down the hill with her bags
He thought – she has not come back at all then.
Shortly later she came back.
Sat with him on the grass
Her black hair veiling them
As hunched together head to head
He opened what she gave him
Wrapped in white tissues
A ball of crystal inside a ball of alabaster.
I missed you so much he said.
Are you brave enough to let me shave you? She said.
Come on. Let me. I want to.
He had not shaved since she left
And her creamy skin could not abide a whiskered face
66
For W.B.
Would I were on raglan road
When days and nights still soft like rain drops fell.
Unnoticed smokes occasioned by good porter
And I wanderer of no particular destination
Knew by heart each foot fall path I’d take
To find my self back home again
Memorial
After a day of rain
White flowers
A young girl
Small songs upon the mist
67
The Man Who Came For Turquoise
He came for turquoise from the mountains
Envy instead green wove garlands of the valley.
Laughed with singing running brooks
And singing running children.
Shook hands, danced
With the man who had the right by love
To kiss her.
Left dreaming she had come to him instead
Long before anyone he cared about
Could be hurt.
68
Should The Question Beg For Answer
will the water be beautiful?
will I thank every drop of the sea?
the sky, will it be so blue,
I’ll find ships sailing in the clouds?
and emerald and hawthorn
would I lie down there again?
arise to secret women drifting sleek wolfhound shapes,
lead by old and limping men
between hedgerows and dirt lanes?
speak with mallard fox and swan?
their stories told of long ago
when black cats and tabby cats,
small black terriers,
through stone walls and brier
sure and steady tracked
all possibility of horses
For Lilly, the Tabs & William
69
La la la la la
I am rolling on the waves
on the waves
on the waves
I am rolling on the waves
far away from shore
The sun is shining not too strong
not too strong
not too strong
The sun is shining not too strong
far away from shore
Happy dolphins guiding me
guiding me
guiding me
Happy dolphins guiding me
far away from shore
70
Kent
there are still
places
walking
far enough
finding gatherings
human kind
small meetings
coffee chocolate
banter
laughter
unthreatened
sanctuary
71
In Favour Of Ice Climbing
used to climb these ledges
hot summer days
high enough
thread like river
above the trees
escape the mosquitoes...
almost grabbed a freakin’ snake once
For Martin - St. Johns Ledges, Kent
Red Bird On The Road
all proud looking for love
& then
not.
how small
easily fit into my
hand
now.
all the beauty you brought this world
may it be equalled by your blessings in the next.
72
Soft Bends The River
if you come here often enough
you’d know
softness is strong enough
to move things the size of cows against their will
Home
Slow motion flags
the east mountain
receding snow
sounds I thought forgotten
73
Hey
keeps her feet
salting sleet
wants to speak
recognising
me
walking by
hi
thanks
how’s the roads
better than this sidewalk
oh
yeah
glad I’m done for the day
good luck getting back tonight
walking by
bye
thanks
see ya
bye
knowing our worlds missed
long time ago when even youth didn’t have enough courage
to do more than buy gifts from her shop
lost in deepest crystalest
bluest eyes
breathless
stunning
and walking by
bye
to this very day
see ya later
thanks
74
Pensioners Remiss
When I wanted to see you
Young and available
Dresses out amidst a blue jean wasteland
Stoned as laughing smoky charms
Dancing at any moment unannounced
On the steps of Spanish little Harlem
Turquoise as your eyes church doors
Sacramental wine just opened
A spiral of possibilities each as believable as the past.
When I wanted to see you
Roads wide open looking to ride
Strong as summer sweat muscles
Love like horses into a sunset
Diamonds across that midnight sky lived only in your love me eyes
Breathless barefoot pirouette
Limitless kitchens by dull Frigidaire light
Icy pale ale fast as you can drink ‘em
Third floor back porch dawn
Aegean blue among a city of fearlessness.
When I wanted to see you
Saint Johns Christmas balsam scented crushed blood velvet
Crystal singer choir of angles
Mysterious as snow the mouth you used
An accent of hypnosis
Lead like sorrow obsessed with green
As if summer returned between live pines
And the first breasts I ever saw were you stripped for the reservoir
My hands held by your own showing me to cup each one instead.
When I wanted to see you
So much more so than where ever you were
So much sooner than now
Despited unrelenting
Sharper than anything ever dreamed.
75
Smoky Pelican
I have known there
those eyes like Canada
mostly dark vacant cold
wake with sudden flashes
no slumber impenetrable
a last boat before the ice
chugs like some crazy kids skipping rope
missing a beat beat beat
before returning reassuringly to proper rhythm
time to go
minutes as if fast food
wrapped in paper Styrofoam
tucked in a rolled up bag
held one handed while the other pushes the door
out into the world quick
as if what was lost could ever be something to be found
76
Eileen Di’Bartalamao, Jan Iorio
rushed in watch from the window
school girls on their way home
walk by my house
my mother when she asked
yes, I said, I like
her
the best
Herding Goats In Ithaca
she went a way up into the high lands.
she had wounds to nourish.
ghosts to speak to.
Her own kind to avoid.
77
My heart
Haven’t I sold you dear?
Haven’t I let you go?
Trading you in for something asleep
Unridden horses
Fields of summer lawns
Sitting cross legged in the parlour?
Something safe and sleepy
Weird yet respectable
Places withdrawn and risk-less
How are you now?
Preserved by ancient anger
Nourished by nebulous acts
Unperturbed by age
Despite my best efforts to skip into senility
Undaunted by the death I’ve fear of
Oh
What wouldn’t you do if I said yes?
Ride until my own legs useless
Could touch the ground no more?
You my heart’d still carry me.
78
Red Bird
Does he get darker with the summer?
Having already found a mate?
Or maybe
No snow reflections
Sunlight instead absorbed
By all that’s green?
On The Bridge
Snakes and swallows
Stone walls
Sleeping sweet
Cut grass
Moves
Pregnant girl
White dress puffing flags
All soft sweet and
White and chocolate and cream
Sunlight mixes
Red breasted finches
Nest of old ivy
Under the trestles
79
The Girl
Call her flower by moonlight
Cypress by spring
Watch from the evening
Change to grey misty morning
Leaving the Stars Behind
Across the spider down day
The girl
Walks on her toes
Sneakers let the ballet
Peer out with wonder
Amid this morning garden
Slipping into shade
Who gives you pentagrams
And whispers river lily secrets
When your musings get too heavy?
For New Haven
80
Hitchcock Lake
I am tired of travelling.
Charlotte
Looks for duck eggs
In the lake
And finds them.
I am tired and drinking black bitter coffee at the kitchen table.
Charlotte
Water cold
Ankles blue
Picks up
Sticks & stones
& chips of glass
Collage.
Basket patterns my eyes haze.
House plants strain for sunlight.
Days been another all day grey.
Just put out another cigarette.
Charlotte
Rolls up her pants
Crazy woman
Before trees bud.
81
Annie In Connecticut
The leaves turn brown
For winter,
The sky’s gone grey.
I’m turning my thoughts
Around you,
Wondering how it would be,
But knowing better
Than to ask you to stay.
I’m thinking of how pretty
You are in dresses
And how you smile
When I hold you.
But this winter promises
To be harsh
And I can’t be the one
To keep you from your
Louisiana sun.
The leaves turn brown
For winter,
The sky’s gone grey
And you
No matter what your accent,
Will always be October.
82
Brendon
You used to do skate board tricks.
So I sent padded gloves,
Black leather to wrap up your wrists and around your fore arms.
You used to play guitar.
So I got you something electric
V shaped to play loud and hard.
You used to run through the reservoir woods.
So I went bringing you bottles of delicious new wine.
You used to like earl grey tea.
So I sent a porcelain teapot,
Green with creature faces from Ireland.
You used to worship the goddess.
So I gave you a dagger,
Rose wood handle, cow hide sheath -
Aged by hunting blood -
Stained by my own youth.
83
Morgan Knows
The night has its own creatures
Familiars like foxes, bats,
Owls, green eye cats
And others more unique -
Those without a day time shape
Shifting shadow colour forms
Billow through dissolving walls
Entwine upon her outstretched arms
Feed on darkness through the night
Until there’s nothing left but light
84
only august
crows
almost quiet
only feather sounds
rising
almost still
only slow
steady beating
as if horses
finally
taught themselves
to march in order
across the fields
almost green
only smoky
spiral dust
almost damp descending
mirage
as if insects
finally taught themselves
to sing
like falling rain
across midday
almost yawning
only august
.
85
Loretta’s Piece
Rose was first thought
Remembering was coming
But put back almost worn out.
Now – when roses bloom
Not trying for anything.
Now when I am and am not
Then or pretty soon.
Now when words burn meaningless
Giving warmth
To bodies
Already left behind
The thoughts are all,
Growing weeds
Coiling snakes
Blooming
Gaping
The flesh we cared for
The planet we cared for
The stars we strived for.
12.09.73.
86
Pop_*
Down the streets of ecstasy
I take my chances endlessly
But there's no need for me to run
With my fingers wrapped around a gun
Look around what do you see
There ain’t nothing here for me
Reality what can it be
But a misery you set for me
And there's no sense in wanting more
This is what I been put here for
You preachers of morality
How would you do to live like me?
Heavens just a novelty
Another thing denied to me.
So down the streets of ecstasy
I'll make my way most carelessly
And you can judge it tragedy
But I won't surrender easily.
* recorded by Background on All The Answers
87
Battery Park
The devil walks shadowed streets
Boys in hoods shoulder him as they pass
Bruises keep them from their plan of violence
Instead they just keep going
Black n blues spread w/ each step
Arms swelling twice the size before the end of the block.
The devil walks on
Slight smile disappearing by the time those boys start running home.
Years ago it would have mattered,
Great struggle, desperate fight for something invisible
He’d have made them heave with their own throats into his hungry hands
– But not now.
Like that lovely girl once said,
‘... just want to be left alone’.
Here by the waterfront, soft still nights
Hardly a sound but for tender lap lap lapping water
Occasioned by his own crackling footsteps.
Just to pay attention to each and every thing,
No regard for priority -
Hard human shoulders,
Cold rising off the grass,
Huge Bulava beams across the water
Black hands point hour after hour.
Memorized names,
Dead of war & catastrophe,
Wireless operators lost at sea,
SOS – save our souls -
Faint sparkles across black water.
Up into a black sky, warm ghosts
Shape into rings by his slightly smiling mouth.
Night so much more beautiful than day.
If ever there was freedom, this is how it would come,
A long breath into nothing bright or strong
While sitting on a bench near gangway 4.
88
Whose Name Began With Stars
the man whose name began with stars
combed like golden curl searched silence
went through forests withheld blame
through deserts called out names unlike his own
took shots with chances so long no one ever knew where they landed
cried into nights so long it terrified god
expected nothing got more than he bargained for
And when the time came for secrets
Whispered to his long dead mother
Remembered midnight hair, red red lips, eyes the colour of someplace
else
Cool skin, pale airless, hello goodbye kisses,
Deep as if oceanic
Swells
Her voice
89
Continuum
Man walks out the cold water tap
Hands drip forgetting everything he held dear
In the lap of a strangling angel fallen into waste
Half mast eyes hypnotic charm
All their doing a fortuitous disaster
They meet full force frontal
As if the harder they fell the deeper they’d go
But the amount of space between them?
Still same as any other, a whole universe’d fit into it.
90
The Red Bird
Now I know his song
Follows me everywhere
Titanic
Silent swimming cold.
Tumblers of fresh water in a lost room.
If I had found you instead?
We’d still be together,
Unlike the brevity of death
Forever.
91
No Matter Where
It was a house full of Irish women
Which should be all you need
To figure out how I the only man among them fared.
Herself, the one who loved me
Loved me in a way I never knew before,
Language of some ancient homeland
Alluring, pulling, unavoidable.
Late Night Transistor Radio
Beneath the bed sheets
The world came in on
Cracks and hisses,
Languages I didn’t know,
Music I never heard before.
Pressed hard to my ear
Not wanting to be interrupted
By waking brothers
92
Too Early For Blueberries
Maybe she dyed her hair
Wears black sweats and grey skirts
Walks a black Boston dog
Down the paths of your childhood
Maybe you just missed her
Lacy ferns
Mosquitoes and still turtles
Sunning on trees fallen
Across dwindling open water
93
Waltzing Miss Jeanie
The sky barely visible
Gunmetal cold keeps each bit of snow completely separate.
Sounds, most into silence or muffled by a swish and swirl
As my horse moves through.
Imagine sand against a giant hourglass,
Wicked witch of the west,
There’s no place like home…
Nothing else moves,
Rock walls mostly covered
Drainage ditches camouflaged
Snow drifts level the landscape almost beyond illusion.
By memory only we keep to the road.
Imagine being the first to cross this land in winter
And if it were a time before horses…?
Off the open ridge we cut down to where the pine woods
Shelter enough so we can pick up the pace.
Occasionally over burdened snow spills,
Sometimes peeling bits of green, chunks of old ice, thuds magnified by
the quiet.
Perhaps an excuse to break monotony
Or some primal memory aroused –
She spooks.
Imagine double barrel blast, a restless dragon, a living legend…
So I talk her through; my voice being a calm place for her to focus.
So I sing, putting the name she knows into the song,
My fathers’ curious choice for a lullaby he used to sing to me.
Imagine not yet five years old, frightened from things that you don’t even
have words for.
Things that move only in those darker places in your room,
And then his heavy footsteps, the weight of his body as he sits on the
edge the bed, his strong steady hands sometimes rubbing sometimes
patting while always singing over and over until finally asleep you
couldn’t ask him to again…
We make our way like that now,
Dealing with imagined as well as real risks –
Patches of ice beneath this rising snow upon this rising, winding road
94
Porcelain
Cold spills of rain
Magpies fly
Always searching with the light
Always dreaming until dawn
When I wake and think you’re here
Coffee on the stove
Pale light over the stove
I would often think of you
Dark mornings just before dawn
Standing in this spot – you’d make mine with hot milk
The pain of coffee much to hot to drink
The ache of winter haunts my hands
When I close my eyes I cannot see you any more
Cold and spills of rain
The music porcelain plays again
Inspired by the music of Helen Jane Long/ www.helenjanelong.com
95
Outlaw Days
Rode through forests so dark
Could only let the horse pick the way.
Called down the moon,
Lain in silver arms,
Goddess whispering across every inch of skin my name:
“Remember what you know.
Remember you are power.
Know that I have missed you.”
96
Wanting To Be In The Old Tongue
Words
Someday
Someone
Might say to you.
Unimportant memories
Aroused to beauty non-the-less
Like cobwebs beaded up with dew,
Brass fittings on a cedar door,
Day’s debris randomly swept into a banked up fire
Before to your own black iron bed you’d slowly go.
W/all our coming and our going
Will we ever meet again?
Fragile as the moth is the flame
One slight breath
And darkness has us all.
W/that in mind, I mind no dancer
Let us join whatever way we can
Before the waiting darkness
Makes us all fall down.
Clumsy fingers
Holds her own heavy breast skyward
As if the moon, areole hungry
Wouldn’t have found communion
Without guidance.
Gentle at the end of the world
Even rocks all soft
And buds of lilac silver slanting sun.
And when gems of green roll down
Meet the slate blue sea
Gently rippled by disappearing pearls?
Somewhere we still know women who paint the things we see in dreams
Wanting to be in the old tongue
January crows gather.
From the eviction house
Another row of slate slips.
97
Sun orange fingers
Poke dark shy pillows,
Disturbing bread crumb dreams,
Little red breast birds.
Shouldn't you be left alone?
Cradled in the earth for another thousand years or so?
Discovered as some tantalising source
Of artefactual speculation:
Those marks -
True cause of death,
Or left by some post mortem carnivore?
Perhaps sacrificial ritual,
Signs still legible,
Though fading as if
Some water colour in reverse
Until only bare bleached paper
Slightly stained.
Ghost steps.
My warm eastern mouth nourishes,
My amniotic fingers curl,
Personal history noted,
As if by some distant observer
Swirled into tight sips
Almost impossible to savour.
Between the posts at midnight
A long wire of electricity
Calls little bits of rusting iron
To lantern the siesta heart away.
98
Dreams Before The Growing Season Of Grass
Not early enough
The day already begun
Anyone with any place to be
Already there or else so late it’s not worth fretting about
Brand new bus half empty
At least two hours to go
No ghosts dance over the river
No diamond tips the foliage
No dark shapes emerge
A girl you used to know
Leads a horse you used to own
Liver chestnut
White star snip
Bucks rears dares
Once your brown hands could do anything
Melt the mouths of untried horses
Finalise another divorce
Set paddock posts well bellow the frost line
Pull sunglasses from a girl
Hold her surprised to kiss
And kiss and kiss as if
There would never ever
Be anything else
To ever do again
99
Trust
I walk out
The horse does not resist.
Leads as if there’s not a diseased bone in his body.
Does not notice children crying,
Rain stopping sun brightening
But rather a yellow butterfly -
Moves his head to keep it in sight
Until for some reason he will never know,
He can no longer do so.
Maybe Michelle
Ripening rock wall berries
Morning coffee sitting
Voiceless smoke winding
Open windows
Damp summer sheets
Candle light pillows
Come home
Come home
100
Belize
The cinnamon woman pulls me down
In an ancient heat
Her golden fingerprints
Whisper of an unborn midnight
Long long ago in the dream time
Before moonlight ever was
And every shadow moved with care
Beneath a hunter diamond sky
Before the horse spirit was hid
Beneath slimy limestone floors
Covered with pottery chips and rusted cans
All twisted up in fibre root and rot.
The cinnamon woman pulls me down
In an ancient heat
Her golden fingerprints
Show me another way to that secret place
And how to draw up the horse spirit
So that it may once more
Run on into the high bush country
Where our flesh lays in blossoms of hibiscus
And the caves of heaven are radiant with swimmers.
101
Wordsilk
Reminding me of words like
Border line
Crescent coyote
Ancient timbers
Polished smooth as kisses
Paradise
Abandoned eyes of shipwrecked sailors
Myriad pin prick suns
Flightless birds
Something Spanish that you said along a twilight turquoise
Ishmael to Ishmael
All the nights we've ever known
Not bothering the quiet.
102
Xunantunich
The silent policeman
Lay himself down
Across the great western highway
Tired from watching everyone
He wants a return to dreaming
A return to those days of the high bush
Those days of the interior
Swimming into limestone caves
A lighted lantern
A box of toucan matches
Floating on a little piece of wood
While on a smoke of kerosene
Coming back to him the words of his fathers:
“So now you know. Everything is alive.”
The silent policeman
Lay himself down
Across the great western highway
Tired of growing heavy with the world
He wants a way to avoid
ESSO drums
Coca-Cola CESSNAS
The End of Paradise Hotels
And return to those days of the interior.
Behind his eyes bare foot women light the lamps
Up into a palm thatch
Honey shadows seep
While owls make questions of constellations
And rolling in from across the valley
A hush answers: “From the pale eye of the hunter
A single tear drop fell arching over an unseen face
It touched Earth and disappeared.”
Ring tail ghosts come by bringing soft grey kisses
Through white jungle nets of night
Beyond an ancient plaza immersed in some whisper of wings
Jealous eyes of jaguar two great gold pearls on the edge of rain
103
Just a Cat
No longer will morning
Find you by the window
Pondering the flight of birds
You won’t
Trip me in the kitchen
Circling like a bandit reminding me I forgot the milk
Play games with our feet
Pounce up on the bed
Attack every thing that moved beneath the duvet
Curl up with my daughter and the Barbies
To watch some favourite TV show.
No more my little one
Trust me to carry you like a slip of black velvet
Still sleeping in my hands
No. No more because
Some ignorant bastard drove like a maniac
And thought, oh just a cat.
104
Me And The Small Talk Angel
At the gallery today,
Among the masks I thought
Of Morrison.
I thought of that black woman.
I thought of the past,
Remembering the future.
Pleased that knowledge
Only brings more secrets.
Sitting out on the concrete,
Rolling another cigarette,
Chatting with the small talk angel
Pass over the smoke.
105
The Poet in Her Narcissism
Creates her own obsolescence, instead of practising real writing.
All those years squandered not a penny to show for it,
If that's not bad enough it's not even the kinda stuff they publish for free.
The poet in her Narcissism believes she’s special,
Expects she's the exception to the rule,
Rock star popular, read by millions
Important people ask her questions,
New York Times regularly quotes,
Name an encyclopaedic entry
And to never ever know what it's like to spend years on work
Inconsequential.
It’s true. Someday has come and like everybody else
Dead or distant relatives, marriages that didn't work
Opportunities slipped into a perfect evil of hindsight.
Mind and body know things differently & therefore each keep their
Own memories secret, hidden from the other.
Today because she forget to write it down she didn’t know where to go
But remembers so many yesterdays.
Never did the ride she really wanted, tack that chestnut mare,
Head out before day break just the two of them
Saddle bags packed, enough to get started, no plans for coming back.
Her next horse a cross between memory and fantasy,
A some day kinda thing -
How many years ago has yesterday become?
We’ve all touched the world with little fingers,
Seen the world through tears,
Breathed the air breathed by every body else.
Once our hands were small enough to be held by another,
Once we saw the world as full of wonder.
Alone is a place where anything can happen,
No mater where it’s always there,
Dark like streets you’re not afraid of,
Deeper than sky reflections on an unknown lake,
A sunset trail,
Stars you can walk off into
106
Sitting
A mans hands on a girls thighs
One on each rolls them out
A better view of what he’s dreamt for so long.
Muscular even in yielding
She allows her deep breath body freely.
Outside women talk how the year slips
School days into holidays beginning school again.
A woman in love writes her name
Moon soft ivory
Pale sky
By the Buddha
By the open window
Major piano chords
A simple charm
Like where in dreams we can’t be hurt.
A man begrudging poetry
Leaves out such things as joy
Hopes a mirage of his own making
Hides in clothes made from mistaken identities
Secrets like superman behind caped crusades
Although blurred some character always lurks
Despite the roles he thinks he should,
He thinks they want, he thinks he must.
A series of figures exchanged through out his life
Even the god he picks a model of dysfunction.
107
Dharma
foggy misty morning
birds sing longer
dawn gone slower
soft diffused glow
tempted to stay in bed
not wanting to miss one moment
push myself to rise instead
golden Buddha
sky blue sky
prayers carried by wind
white & blue green & red
blown beyond belief
108
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