Drunk in a Silk Hat

Link to Website update, July 25th 2009

105

The Soprano forgets her god a
Drunken thumb homage to large eyes
And stranded years traipsing through
Graveyard’s evenings
and what fine looking evenings they were.

Remember the foul fog, the key to the grave?

Wisdom travels alongside custom
A clever idiot puzzling over a misremembered joke
Another vacant indication, hung on wires, raised to some discreet heaven.
A tribute paid in smoke that chains you to the years

The grass will one day marry the sky, but for now,
Like Drunks they tell a story when asked for a name.

No Bad Day For Believers

Link to Website Sketchbook update, July 21, 2009

104

Sadly, we came to Troy and lost the job of
Pumping out Helens like so many gallons of blood
Then on we went , seeking, searching, lying
(Lots of us are damned in the lungs.)
Meanwhile, Lazarus, at six feet, was the last in the boat,
Was the last in the grave,

Then they came: the solid, impressive irish
With their rust and their tooralooms
And touching their treacherous hearts
Walking about with closed eyes
With The traps of life
With the last resurrection.


For Frank McCourt

In Paradisum

Link to website update July 18, 2009

103

Who’ll read this book?

Daedalus of the aging organ,

Of the sameness of sleep

with unexpected holy water

on this day in Paradise.

Who’ll close this book?

Shaking bloom bald with beard

answers heaven’s rest
Water shook dread middle-aged and partched
A batch of little weeping sparrows
Stumbling into Rome.

The book is closed and broken down
All year round and under water
The better best the little barrows carry
Left off to rest among the soft apex of
Himselves, shaking, prayed and followed
Into the side doors of Paradise,

In paradisum.

Leaves Unfinished Business

link to website update July 15, 2009

102

Fitted woe feels important
When balance is fluently mourned
The sideways belly nearly always amuses
Except in the case of butchers with only one hand,
Yet on the other, weepers walk on air
And arrive at rooms where ends fill books
Oh, the infernal looks they’ll get
The bully and the goner shaking holes
Burnt in the altar
Sometimes a sheep in clover
Sometimes a poisoned saint.

Speed If Light

Link to Website update July 10, 2009

101

Would she did she the slender neck
Halted tinder in Cork’s own town
Heaven’s insurance is the only shadow
Weaving solid the unconscious heart
Both lightened and yet furrowed
With same old sixes and sevens.

The substance of violets, the subject of names
Never blinking wanted waiting
For what who knows?
The brother wife owes it-
a brandnew dollar for something
New for understanding
Something new for pointing to
The early morning light.

A Country of Water

Link to Website update July 7, 2009

100

“Double, “ you heard him say as
Saint Jerome steps off the ledge of a window
In the Queen’s hotel in Ennis.
The hindu wife of a lost dead
Husband added wisdom to her bargain
Followed by stiff wreaths of dark thinking
In a world of men in outlived boots
Facing away from signs of this world with heavy whispers.
There is a mountain of stained arms and a sea where, I have heard,
Children gently change to fish

Hyperphora

Link to website update July 4, 2009

99

A murderer is discovered at
The funeral of god where some love is transferred like
Odd weapons passed amongst the thieves.
Unbuttoned and soapless they fire
A single volley skyward becoming plumes of white heaven
Which responds by pressing downward on all
Present. To meet outrage with requiem is to catch
Them all with their pants down
-Whereupon they proceed straight to hell, in a handbasket.
Once there, they make cakes of dog’s legs
And partake of the hair from the one that bit ‘em,
Taking care not to tread nor to toil in any garden
Where mute fragments might lie, unweeded.