§1
Scrub of grass underfoot
the call of some mythical beast
cliff highway over the waves
the horizon’s golden tongue
licking the lip of the sea
a slobbering wind consumes my prayer
and I meet myself behind the wire
on the head of the fringed cliffs
laughing grass makes a fool of my stare
the green-bowled water inviting
the gulls hovering the air
weed and rock drumming the song
only
the roads all lead out
before I turn
the fields have my back
my bow to the sea
§2
A terror of weeded grace
bowls me over beside myself
with its glory roar-ranging
what once was placed
a careful distance
from the heart
so that with upending start
I grasp my love and hold it dear
melted lightning pours in me then
succumb, succumb
§3
Ash covered quilt lain over
we shake but the dust still licks
our bones, memories home to earth
the map confused, a bed of breaths
beneath
Shellack, shell, or so, soundless sound
blows
mother calls from the past
onto the hard concrete I go
knees a-blast
father waiting with the whip
willows last
the river flowed
beneath my grasp
forbidden
and over the wall to
eat from a can
the food of a dog
or steal from a book
the forbidden
childhood’s task
to keep the quilt
in the wind
the dust from our bones
and the sound in the shells
a-blow
§4
What is the night if not a cartwheel
on the frenzied bust of day?
A shape scraped from concrete longings
To stay the execution, stay
And far stars belie the coming bloom
of sun you say
but I’ll fling my surface ’pon
the moon and bounce
thereon before
a blink of dawn’s amber
play, sing my song
along
the Milky Way
the night is a cartwheel
on the frenzied bust of day
§5
The dive into the sewage
of the past
did you think it would be an easy
stroke across that channel?
many have died rather than try
breathing in the stink
for an entire life
a sea of directions never
fish fly
whizzing here and there
while you watch you shrink
to the brink of the crab’s
home
dots in the sand
there too is the stink
beyond which heads-up
is no escape
only you think you think
and that’s enough
sandflies be stuffed
§6
Breeding maggots from a can
makes do for you in never never
cushioned embrace a pall
ectoplasmic guffaws, wander maws
creep deep sleep underground
sleep deep creep and claw
holes in you you thought you saw
couched in perfect pleasance
§7
Shingles in the system
escape the dying host
clatter heads to screens
words here and there
flee
taught to be forgotten
He spoke of pandas
with a twinkle and a nod
sprinkle magic where you can
he said, into my crypt
the script, the grid, the line
as if the circle’s salt
contained a mystery I could find
§8
The day doesn’t deceive you
it goes its own way
and doesn’t need your permission
you may ask to enter if you dare
you may stare at an hour or two
waiting, drowning in something
you need to say
but can’t because you can’t breathe
and there’s the rub, it understands
When you suffocate it will be there for you
kneading you back to life
But it won’t lie and say it loves you
if you can’t look at it
as through a microscope
atomic cracks in ice
§9
These roots are not reluctant
to crawl
along my path, ossified worms
shunt my steps, the birds know
how to dance them,
though their jitterings
bring no relief
I am something broken
I am something ungrown
They are not reluctant to remind me
either
of my place in the earth
now and hereafter
a mild amusement
in how they use me
there is no axe
sharp to their depth
they have time
that I don’t
and they are not reluctant to fade
into concrete
as the wooden curtain parts
or to watch me shrink
an oddity
from the park
§10
—- EKM PORTAL TO §10 —-
—- PRIMARY CONSTELLATION —-
§11
Boundless red demons
flinging elegies at dusk
I was going to say
but never mind the melodrama
they are not red nor boundless nor demons
nor capable of flinging
psychiatrists have better names
that bore me
but at least don’t make me tremble
only ease these pills down my throat
a preamble to some collapse
when I am older and more broken
§12
The feel of a Sunday creeps
over my limbs, slim flim flam
the man has deep sleeps
brooding cameras can zoom
and do from corners dusted
with the glue of webs’ ice and
what might they see in my
pink eyes, lipsticked globes
red-rushed vessels storming
the verge of two abyssal holes
and beyond the window a
flag fluttered ragged white
victim of the night hugged still
for fear of the day, I say
Sunday was never meant to
be this way
§13
Springs in the bed
of my belly bounce
the tiredness out
that python coiled
its lazy bite, flounce
and parry inner sight
I am the source of
the morning, I am
the source of the day
Springs in the loft
of my head bounce
the webs away
scattered spiders
and there flies
the blue of indolence
I am the source of
the morning, I am
the source of the day
Springs in the air
of my breath announce
a shifting pounce
to tiger’s stance
this new romance
that melts away
I am the source of
the morning, I am
the source of the day
I am the source of
the morning, I am
the source of the day
§14
A slovenly mop-topped simian crawls
to the stage, time slows, and a sick still settles
the flags pasted o’er with hurtled breath beats
and the crowd red and blue bedecked, glazed with lust, a jellied reek rippling all through
the drum of unmoored words, call from the past
for brays and signs, the slick sweat of self unseen
slipped from the hip in anonymous glow
and on the simian face a snarl rough-hewn
Newsman brinks the wire ’til the black shriek
of a rally ghoul tears his step a stumble
torrent of stadium colours alight
our leader swish-flashes the camera a glare
and rage’s sweet sulphur takes the air
in whirlpool eddies the reticent hauled
‘til the swell loosens its bulk and rests anew
the nerves flat lens through the beats blunder
the newsmen shudder, a joke cast under
Down some invisible lane inside slides
clouded sense and freedom jerks the reins
in vain, a supplicant is a pastelled cheek,
a cap’s peak, a mother with child aloft
mouth echoing mirrored caves repeat,
the simian stomps back and forth, loosens
its tie, bears its teeth, and warms on embers
the newsmen fear to reach, lying lurk-low
til stadium’s stomach is empty of the beast
§15
In a doze of melancholy regret
tinged with sawdust-coloured chaff
the words out-tumble full of hidden grief
the spokesman’s mumble reveals the sting
of who-once-could-have-been-him, and now
all’s left’s the airy breath, clouds of
symbols of this and that, to dither hither
in a mic shoved close, and closer still to
steal the noise, not that anyone cares
of course
§16
Always this curl of desire to chase that
which I do not want, this smoke without fire
signals in the desert
that call to my truant self
Or footfalls in dust that speak of dinosaurs
must social beasts scream so loudly,
be so mannerless?
§17
Circles that want to be squared suggest,
to me, a lack of geometry, in the system
I wipe my brain with my gut too much
or maybe my heart is in the wrong place
It’s possible that my skin is on backwards
Or my eyes see from the outside in
That would explain a lot
Symmetry has not managed to unlock my face
I have swallowed the password. It is eaten up
My legs are not interested in my commands
I could go on. But they are not interested
My liver, on the other hand, doesn’t know
when to stop. It extends through my kidneys
And out my back.
All of this suggests to me a lack of geometry
in the system
§18
It’s a jagged smile but not unkind. I’ve a mind
to reach in my pocket but know I won’t find
our intersection there nor in any of the cut
shadows that harlequin us here in this shopfront’s
court. The smile’s an armour that allows me
think there’s nothing that stinks about
where I stand. In other places I’d be chased down
the street. Is that something to be thankful for?
§19
I cannot pierce. No, not only that,
I wish not to enter, into that fog
that will not be pierced. I fear
to enter into the fog of my own fear
and so what surrounds me now may
be a false sense of clarity. And that
will suffice. A lying sun warms as well
does it not? Maybe not.
I’d rather not think about certain things
seems to me the solution is sometimes
dissolution. I am dissolved in the warmth
of my own sun. But that’s not it.
A resolute man walked my skin and I
saw who didn’t want to be seen
The bandages came off. I am trying to
be clear.
§20
A nebula wrote his own obituary
on the back of a wave and jumped in
I thought I was he. The same old dive
to flee. If I don’t breathe,
I am resolved at least
but pierced with the fear of my own sun.
It has made black holes of me.
I am the fog. I am the sea.
§21
The light lingering touch of the grass
that courts the ball’s lazy sphere. It waits here
my childhood playing grace at gravity’s
watch, that perpetual pull,
ruling all things free and bright
spin, but never to my grasp
Hands on the pole that warmer climes mock
steps in circles, that stock of reasons
rhythmless and dead
I count the blades that stalk the sphere
the ball’s court in the grass
and see the child running
with childhood’s lust
§22
A priestly goal it is maybe to light the wick
for others’ sight
but this priest’s collar is as ragged
as the hacked wood
of the confession box where
he once crawled, curled and silent, not even crying
he is a man now, after all.
§23
Soft wave inside
the precious foam on which
to ride, there need be no more
than this filling
moon tide, defeater of dusk
loom web
water-woven in my stride
§24
God may eat me
I lie down
in parts
less a feast than leftovers
§25
Stiffed again. It breathes cardboard into
my bones
only my dreams know the truth
it appears my footwear is in a heap
§26
I
Cobh loops into vision
a longing of heaped strand
a tumbling of layers that peep from
the sprinkled hill and
this child slumber-fallen seeps
to its wind and curls to
the cathedral’s flame
where Gothic eyes circle
ancient clingings
and an orange boat with flowers in
a grave of doubt
bears a high flung Saint’s
look, forgiving
and the eye of a bus driver
bending a wall,
his cigarette, a finger limp with grace
he smiles unforced, the easy air
floats us downhill on the
breath of Cobh
Step-houses to the mansion
and the harbour opens up
Island’s arms take the light
from the stairs that tumble
by the fort’s folds
and a yellow crash of hill
squares us once more
II
through the doors at Bell’s ring
a Madonna blue-haloed guards the
the chapel where
under Jesus’s watch
there is a note
“Pray for Stephen who is in addiction”
a noise sounds and
fumbling with my phone, it
calls my mother. I slip out
to ringings
§27
The heart is the gut
to which is pinned bacteria’s
paintings and the slump of slow
rememberings, there lies
a porridge of regret
§28
If I lie to you, I lie to me
that’s the way it works it seems
I become the play, its shadow
you flung yourself at the wall
hoping you might stick
but now you ground a foreign soil
§29
—- EKM PORTAL TO §29 —-
§30
Charisma’s a slimy thing when pasted o’er
the unworthy. A fool’s laugh, a backhanded gaff
the perverse pleasure of the hearse, silent wheels
rolling. There’s a grave for all of us
while the slow mud spills lazily down
while the blood congeals,
thickens around
the bar folk glittering
their laughing teeth as he hugs a flag
literally
up on a pedestal above the liquor
with what some deem
charisma
§31
Get an idea in the head
and wrap words around it
‘til less naked in its bed
it rises in our stead
§32
The whiff of surrender. Is it that
stealing through the walls?
We sit enthralled with our shadows
moving fingers lightly over books
we’d written when we were someone
The air is embalmed with cold light
A window shouldn’t be open
Loss is not the right word. Something
cannot be grasped.
§33
Maybe it’s that to be in flux
to be unstable though it has
negative connotations is to open
the pores through which the creative
flows. The muse captured in ice must
melt at the expense of solidity
§34
Cheap shots
Unguents
Tell me what time has made
And why this?
§35
The rolling bastard of a call
shatters the glass of my sense
and the fragments wonder in mid-air
why they are there
§36
We are drawn away. That rope
of smoke dust glitters
in some distant light
then sleep makes nothing
of our plight
§37
So much happened in my head,
the weight of all the days that went unsaid,
So when I tried to say today, they crowded in,
These living dead bit my tongue in two,
So I could speak them too, and did,
But they are many, and I am few,
So much happened in my head
§38
I have dipped my oar in the shade of a mountain
of water that only the moon
can make full
and I can only be full when I
push myself away
and travel onto the water
Oars entering and leaving
and leaving shade and entering light that
is the moon I break with my oar that
is the moon that makes the water full that
is the mountain that is me
further out
there must be more
that is
the mountain that is
further out,
further out there must be more
§39
You are on the right track
But in the wrong way
This train leaves without you
And you think then
As you did before
“What a pleasant view from the window”
§40
When we have gone too far out
a spreading light
over dead flowers
we step
a spotlight spread across
the sky, looking for bombers
that surveil, fields we stroked
we call each other enemy
and dead men in the ground
that bear our name
speak to each other
like mirrors do
We didn’t tell you
You have gone too far out
And why didn’t you tell,
We-who-didn’t-tell-you?
§41
Calm like lightning
There’s a spark that hurts more than you know
Calm like spring when it holds your name
On a gust of wind and bids
some Iife grow, so, just so
It can let go
Calm, like lightning
§42
This minuscule must be seen
Or its hidden blooms
Fungus flower
The bacterium becomes home,
a screen the viral, silent ultimatum unseen
Trickle faint light, trickle, trickle
into my being
§43
I had discipline and a plan,
a disciplan, no doubt!
But something sheared in between
and cleaved I am, I am
another marriage broken, I am
where I am not, I had
disciplenty, I thought
But I am not, knot, naught
§44
Knocked bang out of kilter
for a quarter of a year
There I was jilted in
a doom of spring
that laughed and moved on
I thought that’s what I heard
Knocked bang out of kilter
Until summer passed
And the wreck on its step
Begged forgiveness
Once more
§45
Climb the ladder of reason
then throw it away
Poetry is a parachute
for such wise fools