the First Aeolus

Link to Website update August 29, 2009

115

A small paper, red but long
bawled insured the ringshead park
now dark with parcel starts out for Sandymount

Just cut it out, will you?
says as swerved the windy upper reach
paid and bought brought forth
some booted memory of a
premature delivery
rolled and mistaken for a loudmouthed
drunken Irish Seaman.

Paste and scissors moves the meaning,
makes the thing.

Final Hades

Link to Website update: August 24, 2009

113-114

In a way, wonder is buried,
like a long ago heart
or a running machine that
appears as a ghost and
takes your whole life
underground.

A lethal fever sets to work
and the crumbling birds eat
at the scraped earth,
this is the place that sighs
this is the place of air and light.

Here and there, little crushed hats
along the beach- and for the
love of ashes, you sail
this evening for Ithaca

Gramophone

Link to website update August 22, 2009

112

Showing hello, these stones wriggle their way
Around and under the years
Solitary wisdom sits and polishes each as
If it were some singular gem then
places it on the catapult of your heart
To let fly at dead animals and
measly, fearful flowers.

Otherwise, who lives here?
The better birds in the quiet smoke of the morning kitchen
They know how many of their brethren are departed
And they speak with reminded voices
And they speak of the wasted years
Much like lost treasure.

A Lighter, Happier Feeling Is Waiting Inside. Open Here.

Link to website update August 18, 2009

111

Let us be more interesting to ourselves
Let us down mostly
Along the blades of hearts
The spades and the turning blank voices
Let us down more like the living
Where a poem is a eulogy that
Slowly moves away
Let us be gardeners that speak of stones
Nearer the doorway to old age
Let us keep our thoughts free from weeds
And silence
Let us say that this is not, and will not
Come again like the
Cleaned hopes spread earthward then
Moved away

Let us down carefully

Everywhere Is the Wrong Place

Link to Website update: August 15, 2009, 40 new drawings

110

No caretaker does harm as
The names of the turning

are figures shot from days
and he knows them all.
You know where the disappeared
Were last seen becoming invisible?
Where my darling asks me to imagine
The plight of the gravedigger
As he struggles with the ground
Struggles with the obligation of it
Struggles with the heart of grace
Begins to be forgotten
Then looks around for another name
Then looks around for what he doesn’t know.

Opposite Jaws

Link to Website update August 9, 2009, 29 drawings

109

The damned warning
Of course it pierces the moment of prayer
Light expires!
With delirium well held
He remembers to embrace
The changing hole in his shivering heart,
His last act is to whisper in his sleep,
“I have no shirt.”

While waiting we are dropping, one by one,
With slackened soles our sinner’s feet
And opposite jaws caretakers
Agreeing, of course,
The law is electric,
The hole is a mistake.

Homecoming

Link to Website update August 5, 2009

108

Thirteen Robinson Crusoes all in tweed
Before a hole to bury Caesar
To know this is to care
In our own pockets the same idea and number
The lonesome half the trundled someone
The earth in a box
The hat protected
The chapel changes and wife messiahs
We look to Thursday and the long holy nose
On the possible mummies
The first thing that strikes anybody
A bit of clay
An unborn child.

Live Forever

Link to Website update August 3, 2009

107

Live forever
The dead know this joke
And trade it amongst themselves
The jesting gravediggers leaning on their shovels
Must wonder sometimes
How things could possibly
Get tougher.

The auditors of the heart lay somewhere
Just above a swirling damp devil
Which is hard to believe
Which is hard to imagine
Which is hard

A profound blood which is that which
Gives thanks before feeding
On itself, goes on, oozing black
Standing under, now lying
In grass and flesh is trying hard to
Go on living,
Forever.

His Best Work Lies Behind Him

Link to Website Update, July 31, 2009

106

Blinking grey the queer signs are proper whores:
Them that accept that they are broke when they
Dangle the possibilities of kiss off the clock.
But, of course, this is all done with a purpose,
That shadows know and only the drunks are tantalized.

Better that I did not write you of the wonder of it
Elsewise would we still be in fear of shade and night
The signs of non-being just a bunch of thrill,
Stretched out into starving tomorrows.

Take cover, now, and keep in touch.