Daily
Mum and I go on walks
for exercise,though we scarcely exert.
I give my hand
to her.COLD HANDS, she says.
Circulation perhaps,
we say.I WANT TO MAKE PAPER,
I say,
BUT I DON’T HAVE…*
Later,
Dad made me a framed sieve
from wood and mesh.Finishing up,
he said:
I’M FREEZING MY BALLS OFF.He left to light the fire,
pour a whiskey,
and smoke.I stayed in the garage
making paper,
heart warm.
March 24th, 2010
mother’s day poem
February 23rd, 2010
those that lived
Those that lived are greening well,
pistachios in their burnished shells.
Those that haven’t are with their lips
and tongues and hands attached
to hips and salty, green, decaying faces,
sharing airless, nailed-up spaces.
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February 23rd, 2010
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January 5th, 2010
inside-out
After a time
something telling happened:
My trousers began to wear me.
You could tell it was late in the day;
Brown corduroys, the loudest, would say:
You are going to be a teacher until my grooves
your thighs corrugate and your buttocks bruise.
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November 26th, 2009
Emergency Power
Photo: J. R. Eyerman, LIFE.
If my joy is depleted –
from wondering if I ought to be wondering,
and getting ready to wait again –
there is still a backup,
like in A&E.Eyes, ears, dusty solar panels to collect:
The music released from a cabbage,
when split with a large kitchen knife;
Sunset light shone low through a cock’s comb,
radiating at x lumens per wattle;
And glassy, blue light,
exploded by the chaff of suspended dust particles in my room,
where the telephone won’t ring.
October 2nd, 2009
the first winter whisper
I spent two of the summer months in the States, mostly in Texas, where they experienced the hottest heat they’ve had in years. My trip coincided with the end of an era for me personally and I’m left contemplating what of myself I am left with.
The first winter whisper,
harsh and real,
finds my wounds,
undresses me; knows me.
No shame here.
Off with that
American attire –
loose t-shirt,
baggy shorts —
take this old cardigan.
It looks right;
it suits you.
Richard Burton won’t mind;
he’s dead now.
No shame there.
June 6th, 2009
Bucketing
Here’s the third of my five poems on leaving Dublin.
I know this Dublin well;
it’s pouring or ‘bucketing’.
I’ll get up with the light,
make a special breakfast
as if for me and my love.
I’ll haste to get ready,
as had I a lover,
whose forehead i’d kiss, and say,
sombrely, breathlessly,
“I miss you already”.
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May 31st, 2009
a pint on tap
Here’s the second of my five poems on leaving Dublin, where I’ve lived for the past 11 years. Sort of.
Two days ago now,
I left the tap on.
After half an hour
I discovered this.Yesterday, bad too:
I burnt a pan black –
I’d forgot that too.Last night, drunk and blue,
“forgot” to say “bye”
or “I’m leaving now”.
Feeling selfish, I,
not digging the tunes,
stole to a taxi –
asocial baboon.Now that time is here:
Groceries have dates,
usually on top,
that are redundant
(I’ll be gone by then).
For example: beer.But a pint on tap
is for drinking now,
or for drinking then.
“Goodbye Dublin town!”,
I might burp and say,
if I’d know that pint
were the last I may.But, instead, I’m dumb;
It’s become my way.
May 27th, 2009
Lidl, Thomas Street
This is one of five poems I’ll write as a farewell to Dublin (doctor’s orders).
I stand
for Lidl Quality,
more and more each month.I am
sitting now on their shelves in boxes,
waiting to exist:
Brown bread,
Bebida Soja, tinned tomatoes.Gladly
I picture myself at my last meal,
before I go off
(abroad).
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February 19th, 2009
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February 15th, 2009
In the absence of a lover
A poem late for Valentine’s day.
In the absence of a lover,
that man creates:
In want of wet lips,
a cocktail;
in emptiness,
a sandwich;
in love,
muddy memories;
and in singular loneliness,
man was created, becauseIn the beginning,
there was love —
the science of attraction
and unity –
and in the nonexistence of a single cell,
that love created.And in the unification of the disparate,
so began a four billion year tradition
of love on Earth.
February 11th, 2009
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February 9th, 2009
Alluvium
A shutter-wide,
light-slick,
peristaltic last
click.Alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial,
alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial,
alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial,
alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial,
alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial,
alluvial, alluvial, alluvial, alluvial.24 colourific cuds.
Sampled time, collected blood,
of people and worlds
delivered in flood.Sloppy rich clay
worked by the waves,
a porridge dependable
for warming cold days.Lips, hands, face, dripping.
Nutritious the first time
but this time there’s missing
the true heart and soul and the face of the flood,
long since assimilated in blood,
or lost in the ground,
but not in the cud
anymore.Pictures of lovers,
friends, family and pricks
held tight under time’s relentless stone mix.
A long time immovable,
eventually a slick
black hole.Eyes very old
but said to be mine
are now closed by the flat underside
of the time when, well, this one is stuck
to the time i’m seen in adorable muck,
my mouth agape like the dustbin flap,
propped open by a time’s too-long unchecked crap.This is not a pipe
of one strict down direction
but a volcanic vent
of spent time’s resurrection.Mind aligned for memories
and the physical, but not death –
his photos he thinks are of all time bereft –
and with that he takes his tragic last breath —Alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium,
alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium,
alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium,
alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium,
alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium,
alluvium, alluvium, alluvium, alluvium.
February 3rd, 2009
20 Questions
Who am I?
Or if life’s a matter of fact,
what?I am vegetable
if I am what I eat,
and perhaps only animal
if that it were meat.Which am I,
if ape is in image
and man is in action?
Is man not defined by his wit worn detraction
from that which makes apes
evolution’s contraption?We hide in the city
perhaps to keep from admitting
that which does not really need a committee,
that which need not be ensconced in a rhyme,
that which is no more a riddle than a comfortable guilt,
laid on like hands in ceremony.
What are we
if ‘inhuman’ is too ugly a word
and twenty questions are too many?