September 2013
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R&R
Crackling
Cleansed
Old Grief Road
Sedimentary Watson
In that Light of Other Days
Set Me in the Sun
Skin to Skin
Glenfidditch
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There can be no record,
no receipt for intensity
or of the time that freezes a heart;
those catches of life in a memory’s bliss.
I don’t have one, do you?
There are only the trinkets,
the scenes so well drawn behind our eyes.
There are only the photographs,
the echoes of whispering sheets,
the sound of footsteps leaving.
R&R
Nubile waifs in sheer summer dresses,
barely there patches of $90 cloth,
unbleached planks
hot and softly gritty,
nirvana neath my cloistered feet.
Sunsets of crimson,
sulfur and ochre,
slats of umber,
abstracts of topaz
framed by a storm tossed sea.
It’s the furrow in the year,
the days of the R&R.
When the air is savored
and the meals are memorized.
A feast for my lenses,
a salve to the cuts
I’ve endured to my soul.
It’s vacation baby, soak it up!
Crackling
The hearth is dead with last year’s leaves,
crackling,
a festival of sparks,
embers mute
flaring to a Stygian sky.crackling
in my fist - dead dreams
too late for the passion
flakes on the stone,
dead skin from my blister of bone,
sloughing of your calloused heart.Who will call me from the rain
when the sky,
crackling,
weaves its blue rivers of light?Who will wrap their head around my dreams,
crackling,
with the promise of a morning,
smiles muzzy,
grins yawning from starched bright sheets.Who will sizzle on my loins,
crackling,
as desire set us soaring,
their delicious heights
roaring… transcendent,
crackling,
as the fire took us home.
Cleansed
Rain lashed these days together,
rafts of wet pearls
showered with gold
in the late evening light,
two mondays drowned
‘tween weekend monsoons.
skybellies grumbled,
gluttons dragging their pall,
rinsing the sinks,
their dripping veils
bruising the breasts of these hills.
sun peeked,
then stared beneath the covers,
a fierce lamp of interrogation
a steamy voyeur, staring,
glistening on the skin of the land,
a gentle radiant kiss for enduring the day.
Old Grief Road
Something slippery
in Sonny’s guitar.
A crawdad thing,
a naughty bayou breeze
a flash of Raylene’s thigh.
Something frantic
in Sonny’s back-bay riffs of flight,
there be a storm, a-worry
sweatin the sky.
Yassir,! …out on Old Grief Road.
Something manic
from his guitar slide,
strings whining like a pit bull dreaming,
a tempest crawling,
a Lousianne howl at a bayou moon.
Hurrycane chuggin
to dem sweet gulf shoals.
Gonna be a drowning
on Old Grief Road.
there be a storm, a-worry
sweatin the sky.
Sedimentary Watson!
Live we upon vapor,
convalescents crutched,
our steps hobbled
our dramas sterile, layered, trite,
once cradled in the dreams of stones.Live we in a concrete distance,
shut off from the land,
our ears numb to voices
that ring from the dreams of stones.On long walks we are blind,
our toes illiterate stubs,
our feet deaf to the igneous braille
of schist, mica, marble, and quartz,
oblivious to the dreams of stones.
In that Light of Other Days
We cavorted and laughed
your skirts flashed,
our eyes pranced
in that light of other days.
I watched you staring,
ensnared in the magic,
in the evening’s moment
when the music was light.
Sequins running in the blood
of crenelated seas,
a severed summer sun,
our fever soothed
in that light of other days.
Let us waltz as that sea,
the spray of your crinoline
sweeping the gleaming wet floor.
let us savor the heart of joy,
in that light of other days.
Set Me in the Sun
Set me by the sea,
that my soul may quiet,
that these caustic whispers may cease,
in the sonorous knitting of tongue to shore.
Set me on Mars
where my heart can riot,
its breath suffused,
rinsed in rarefied sky
Set me in Nevada sun,
where poetry first burst from me.
Set me ‘neath your moon,
anywhere that stars may scald us.
Skin to Skin
We lay skin to skin
eye to eye
in breathless lilac - still.I knew you as you knew me,
my bones breathing you,
my cells memorizing your scent,
the textures of your heart.We parted skin to skin,
my offering at you altar
my sacrifice in your feral teeth.
Glenfiddich
He spilled his last scotch
from behind his tongue,
thick twisted knots,
great gesture and slur
issued in tidings well intended.
I’ve toasted his honor,
patted his back
as he’s sat in storms here beside me;
in snorts and snores,
this languid, ruddy, unconscious sack of Glenfiddich.
He’s an O’hara, and a Gallagher
on his mother’s brother’s great gran’s side.
“Might as well be a Frenchie”
for all Fionnula might care.
“Fekking deadbeat e’is,
sell es mum for a pint or a pocket-a smokes.”
Cheers all around:
‘To Padraic O’hara,
to Fionnula and the Glenfiddich.
May the last man standing
and please pay the bill.”