the epifany

i met a woman 
blood on her thighs 
fire in her eyes  
she carried 
a knife and a stone 
by the sacred lake
lough gur. 

was it a dream  
did she come my world 
or i to hers?
i cannot tell,

i am maybe, 
of the cosmos,
when i care 
for my dreams 
the cosmos cares.... 
a knife from the stone
that sharpens the knife 
and womans 
blood flows freely 
with the moon.

fall in victoria

clocks fell back one slot today
sun is now descending and
water at willows is serious
in ripples and gun ship grey.

dogs banned for the summer
off leashed again on the beach
and a little girl in a pink coat
laughing mad plays with a puppy.

her grandparents sporting poppies
on lapels of winter jackets
black and red of hole and blood
remembering a day in june,

twenty thousand
killed for cousin kings.
passing-on the air bites crisp
this unusually cold snap,

victoria, which victories
a hundred  years ago today
deserve commemoration? 

pals from mills and mines
dying on the hardening mud
for gentlemen and liberty.

turning home into the sun
watching the little girl kick and cry
her granddad is embarrassed

he cannot know
i understand,
and she
cannot yet
fit freedom
in a minivan.

what have i helped?

in the attic
of my  mind
a darkening box
labeled belsen
why it interests me
i do not know
but i know

the click and clack of rails and
the heavy sigh of helplessness
of all the stations connected
and the round faced clocks
and ticket makers in peaked caps
of ticks and tocks and visions
of Victoria dying in the arms
of a kaiser, of my mother in mine,
of kaki helpers
constructing camps
and millions murdered
and others loved

persons
in life
and death
singular
solitary
alone and
each
a universe
a gift
to be

or snuffed
by ignorance
or greed
or abuse
of power
so i ponder.

what have i helped?

I am sad

Yesterday I said
I was sad
And today I am
Especially so
I read of a girl

She was nineteen
And I see the
Beauty of my son
Sixteen almost
A man resting
In his bed

What was it she did
That our government
Withdrew
When the clock
Ticked over
On her birthday

Whether it was
Foster care or
Fentanyl or whatever
No one knew but
She was dead

In a tent
On waste ground
In winter
In the city
Thank Christ?

introduced to a tree

i think it a she tree
it has her attitude
not fuck you
but yes i'm here
and i should be
so what!
my waxed green
is showing
in the rain
and yes
you can look
if you like
my red is 

young but strong
needing feeding,
but stripable
discovering cream
and alabaster, 

at winter's 

tightening,
always newly me.

Addiction

Dreaming darkness enlivened
minds seek solace,
dipped relief of sorrow
spawns its shame,
unfulfilled promises
cast shadows back
in ghostly gray half memory.

Attention seeking outlet
mixing passions as
drunken vomit
cannot fail
to splash feet
that wept
to dance with grace.

Awake aware
certain deaths
close down all hope
of resurrection,
in a veiled world
shaded eyes glisten
and laugh at my sad song

museum

standing

welcoming arms
still
outstretched
looking intently
nowhere
bought and paid for
moved and stashed
before our troubles.
You moved
to the island
to your new life
of being,
looking
in a
souls statement.
Do the waves
still whisper
your name
on the salt wind?
Do white-headed
eagles cry 
for you?
Does the bite of salt
miss your ribs
where
dark haired people
netted freely?

Out of the woods

noble trees
stretched broken
born before boots
beat a new drum
in these woods
and bare feet
and deerskin walked
softer paths
fifteen thousand years
in the making
raped in fifty
what remains

Blindness with eyes
backpacks and boots
chains, saws, cables
steel ships to Asia
and the mills
golf courses
where perfect girls
and boys in dark
glasses and black
shirts ride green
Jimdeeres on tarmac
for those taking the
Air

Bosses in regional
development where
everyone chases
a buck, economies
profit or a salary to
meet a mortgage
or a banker or
medication costs
keep it up
as the final firs
Weep their last

i saw them today
because i could
and you took me
after fifty years
since as a boy
looking for silence
i found the home
of letters
where leaves rustled
and giant cedars
peeped in pictures
saying
come to me.

dirt

Fingertips and the point of contact

beneath her nails

where she stored the memory

of gardens she had muddled

and other uninvited visitors.

the sharpened pricks of hardness

and the cold sweat of Prison.

I love the dirt that’s spurned

by the cleanliness of order

adore delicious damage

done in rejection of ease,

give me people peeled in

pursuit of other truth

pilloried for chasing whispers.

I can only love what's broken:

from my own feet and all I've ever touched

to the stomping boots that visit in the night

and then

there are the sweet scents and colours

children's clothes and gardens of herbs

where anyone can rest

Women's Christmas

Twenty five years ago
beyond the wedge of winter
there was an early softening,

when the warmth

of a blackened ocean

kissed the rocks

of an ancient coast.

And on the morning

of Nollaig Na Mna
or just before it,

in the brown earth
at the foot of a wall

I was surprised
by a frail yellow thing

against a gush

of dark and calloused green.

That tender whispish first outbreath

of the soft wet ground carried

on its pale, low-sun, filled face
the whole of the spring

and summer flowering that followed.
Untamable thing, plucked,

won't last a hour.

Now: after all this time

the scent of rosemary

I took from your skin

on my hardened hands,

join the primrose,

signaling an end to winter;

frail promises of spring

I would write you poems

a man should not seem desperate

but I would write you poems

I would make you laugh

I would cook you food

and read you stories

and  play songs by Joni Mitchell

where everything is blue.

Ships can pass but

but I know too much

to let one pass

that catches

I will write new poems

maybe in march

as  buds unfold

and winds on beaches

here begin to soften as

gray waters turn blue.

And you change the face

of summer starting and

I dream an end to longing

I look in your eyes

in hope that you are her;

the her I hope can see

inside men who want to look

and wants to meet one.

A her who holds her heavy lust  

In her gentle hands and

the strength of her thighs.

A her who wakes the sun in winter

and holds it back from hell,

who carries the wolf howl

in her smile at autumn,

she that knows the tears of men

are wetter than any other water

on the tip of a finger

that kisses a shoulder

lately bitten.

A woman

that wants

to know

my river

my river was slow and wide
we swam in it then
largely ignored by
a town of hucksters
that turned its back
chasing shillings
visited by dockers,
working-women and us
boys fishing for salmon
catching eels
bamboo canes from Boyd's
and gut from Nestor's
made us hunters
ever hopeful. seldom lucky
women
the dark subject of gossip
and work-less dockers
longing for ships
of shallow draft
that would clear the silt.
Twice a day she chased
the ocean pushing back
rising, falling
limestone skirts
rusty ladders
old mills watching,
now blasted and gone
over the years
she took our shit.
Dirtied.
'till only the very tired
go in.

doubting soul

I have no difficulty with

the senseless

stupidity of soul

there are many

simple things

not understood.

Take this stone
piece of  

the earth
in darkness

'til Caesar
slashed her 

to pipe shit

beneath a river.

Welling-up I remember

the damp dark night

I climbed in a hole

to save this stone

it has travelled with me
eight hours around the globe
to this land where
blacker stones were hid
i love it's silence and in it see
my grandfathers face,
his blind eyes
eyes he told me Black and Tans
dripped with candle grease
to help him speak of guns

limestone of

the Shannon

simple rock
of my childhood,

grey and hard and sharp

stuff of David's sling

stuff of railway-beds and
schools and churches,
garden-walls and
Georgian homes,
soldiers-barracks, police-stations
nut-houses, cow-sheds prisons
where patriots were shot
and markers for the dead
the grey and cold

to this grey matter
Add life

Mobility

Consciousness

Danger

Daring

and

Willing.

Something wyrd

is happening

before your eyes

Jack

Jack had large fists

curled to a curve

from grasping at things and people

his fingers seldom relaxed

and never now stretched

to make his hands

visible to the world

or those that thought

they knew him.

Jacks tendons shortened

by repeated hurt and

his aversion to the emptiness

that guards relaxation

gave his body a roundness

that those who work 

sweat or slave

for others know.

Whether jack stooped

or crouched it was hard to tell

no man in the forest

in living  memory went

close enough to check,

no one touched Jack nor

witnessed Jack touching another.

things that didn't work

he fixed or kept for parts,

people that didn't work

Jack dismissed  

a man should not seem desperate

a man should not seem desperate

but I would write you poems

I would make you laugh

I would cook you food

and read you stories

and  play songs by Joni Mitchell

where everything is blue.

Ships can pass

but I won’t let one pass

that catches.

I will write new poems

maybe in march

as  buds unfold

and winds on beaches

here begin to soften,

grey waters turn blue.

And as you change the face

of summer starting

I dream an end to longing

I look in your eyes

in hope that you are her;

the her I hope can see

inside men who want to look

and wants to meet one.

A her who holds her heavy lust  

In gentle hands and

the strength of her thighs.

A her who wakes the sun in winter

and holds it back from hell,

who carries the wolf howl

in her smile at autumn,

she that knows the tears of men

are wetter than any other water

on the tip of a finger

that kisses a shoulder

lately bitten.

A woman

that wants

to know

Standards

Mid-April and meaning,

somewhere it means

sand on the wind

and a dry throat.

Elsewhere snow

beyond the reasonable

being tired of ice

and white, cold and

mittens, impatience 

for warmth without wool,

saying bring us light

and sun and green.

In the west of Ireland

in a small city

steeped in war and histories,

for a child in the sixties

it meant gatherings,

groups of boys roaming

collecting logs and old dressers

tires and inner tubes.

Midnight raids to steal

timber for Bealtaine

and the bonfire.

Crazed nights of music and flames

wishes and lost meanings.

But here and now

mid-April means more magic,

greens of chestnut leaves

over Cook Street

back lit yellowed hues.

Trees with skirts of pink 

turning to understated leafiness

after the flowering.

More blossoms opening:

magnolias, lilacs; 

purples and off-whites,

reds in rushes

of silk and velvet 

flashes,bursts 

of yellow furze invasion.

Planters quit pouring coffee and

swinging hammers, 

gather bags boots and shovels, 

move again to the mountains airs.

A butterfly the size of my thumb-nail

flickers blue and cream

over dark rocks on Dallas road

and the hiss of an ocean

delights in me

the ever fresh wonder

of watching

new nakedness emerge

neither tanned nor jaded.

Poisoning

It started after something
looking back it is difficult to see
how it went unseen, but
it wore a dull coloured coat
that helped it to blend into the everyday
and be unacknowledged for so long.

The cracks in the things
that were one began
as I said, after something,
obliterated by what followed;
the coming asunder of things
made sacred by promise.

It appeared simply;
walking down separate
aisles in the grocery store,
and the shopping cart 

arriving between us
at the checkout, as if it knew.

Lunch and supper-times,
once joint meanderings
became a

rushed relay,

the handover growing
always shorter.

Then like breakfast

that stopped altogether.
At the other end bedtimes began
to include silences and chores.
Small ones at first, a few dishes, 

or cushions that needed patting.

All I know is that it stopped
and by the time it did
I was unable to speak about it
we moved into that
bottomless place
between monogamy and leaving.

Now I name it no-nogamy;
commitment to something
that is no more.

only a crushing,

between desire and shame

until something else, happens.

Planter

I see her descending a cut block,

a broken sky upon her back

her face radiant,

throwing her body

into every single stroke

of her work shined shovel

her hair bounces with

each downward step

and for all that effort

she is not convinced.

No high-baller here

neither the evenings

nor the tenting,

neither the fire

nor the consolation

can fill her heart.

It hangs,

calling back from a room

in her future

where an open page

lamp lit

on an old-oak desk

draws black blood

from her fingertips

siphoning her life

into a story.

Women's Christmas

It was twenty five years ago
just beyond the wedge of winter
that comes early where warmth

from off a wild ocean meets

red rocks of our ancient coast.

On the morning of Nollaig Na Mna
or just before it,

in the brown earth
at the foot of a wall

I was surprised
by a frail yellow thing

'gainst a gush

of calloused green.

A tender whispish first outbreath
of the soft wet ground carried

on its pale, low-sun filled face
the whole of the spring

and summer flowering that follows.
Untamable thing

plucked would not last a hour.

now after all this time the scent

of rosemary on your skin and

on my time hardened hands,

join the primrose

signals of the end of winter,

frail promise of spring

it's coming

Your immanence leaves

taller trees still 

beautifully bare

Grey lithe limbed 
stretch touching 
a swipe swirled canopy.

Below the shrubbery; 

bud and early blossom,

presage green leafy fullness

Intricate tight locked 

layered fleshy pockets

poised and pointed
ready to unfold, 

a timely ordinary 

miracle.

Passion prompted endless 

cyclical blooming.

No neocortex yearning 
for a few days off this year.

No: a bodied

root stem limb

twig bud leaf

fruit and flower.

Surrender 

to the push of

The black ground,

To the pull of

light's  longing.
Summer is coming