Text

A pulsating throb cuts

through the pregnant pause.

‘You have a new message’, it beats.

Flexing fingers fumble for ‘Select’.

Brain brims with wave upon wave of intrepid possibility.

The tide subsides…

It is not her.

[2008]

Loss

Silently I sit on my balcony.

A recent downpour has showered the deck.

I perch here with bare feet,

one foot lightly kissing the shiny wood,

the other balancing across my knee -

toes flirting with the wind.

Rain drops, with condemned fear in their eyes, hang

from the cold metal bars in front of me,

necks fighting gravity.

The dark urbanised sky drifts above me

concealing enquiring stars from my eyes.

Here, I too am hidden.

A part of the world's natural order

and yet an onlooker, inspired and safe.

It's me and my jotter.

You once sat here with your roll-ups and smiles

commenting on this urban miracle.

Its portal of secrets.

We lived out forgotten dreams for a night

knowing that dawn's abrupt reality

was planning his ambush.

Police sirens arouse me from my thoughts.

Beating lights flash upon the droplets, still

somehow clinging for life.

Only now when I am alone like this

and the rain begins to thud down, blotting

the paper with hot tears…

Perhaps I loved you more than you loved me.

And the drops well up and fall from the bars,

betraying memory.

I’m going inside now.

The sky is weeping.

My words are the sponge.

[2008]

Rome

Those dreamy walks in warm night air confessed a hidden glow,

And through the chiselled rocks of Rome our brief affair did twist.

The Pantheon to Peter’s Square let conversation flow,

Red wine did conjure drunken spin and secretly we kissed.

Emerging dawn might then have dried our dreamy hopes away,

But this was Rome and such inaction wouldn’t be allowed.

Amidst colossal fighting rings the real world could not weigh,

Our time was short and so we seized what chance had thus endowed.

I thought my heart was free to give but fatally was wrong:

A voicemail whispered in my ear of sadness and regret.

She said I miss you, please come home – to where we both belong.

My foolish heart conceded and the dream I did forget.

Our hurried kiss to say goodbye consigned us to the past,

But in the light of hindsight it should not have been our last.

[2008]

Embryonic Dreams

My heart has pumped the pain

cold crystal through my veins.

Sharp shingles scraping bitter truths,

etching my soul.

Trapped in a cobweb of memory,

lifeless and limp,

gathering dust.

Left to myself and time

each silky string would have stretched free of the next

like disentangling memories.

Yet your spidery lips

hissed sounds my deadened heart

sought to hear.

Hope rotted within me,

killing any new life

that entered my cursed web.

If you only knew the hurt,

the crystallised pain,

gnawing my insides

as you, the preying widow

pounced on embryonic dreams…

Enough. I have tasted freedom

on another’s lips.

And mirrored in her eyes I saw

at last my insect form.

Pitiful and bruised.

Bloodshot heart,

Shredded wings,

Deathbed eyes.

Knotted in your arachnid saliva

adhesive regret claws at my senses.

My torn wings

batter their fastenings

and my stretching sinews

rip free of your spun lair.

[2008]

The Journey Home

Lips still soft from your kisses;

fresh memories washing by,

breezy and muddled,

scattering fumbled images on rolls of film.

Head slightly sore

but only from those many snatched breaths

taken in severed gasps of passion.

Starved of reliable oxygen

lungs can pump only rhythmical throbs of adrenalin.

My legs are weak,

strangely loose at the knee, oiled and unscrewed.

My skin is smooth where you touched it.

The fragrance of your neck still breathes within my nostrils.

I can feel grains of make-up dusted around my mouth,

a thin layer of paint from your canvas trusted to me.

Your kisses:

so soft  

so taunting

so delicate.

You lost me somewhere in your eyes

and scarcely could I close my own

even to kiss,

such a portrait did you seem.

[2008]

Breakfast In Bed

Scrambled egg and love.

Savour the taste.

But scraping the burnings from the pan takes longer than you think.

Remember that your heart is not a non-stick pan.

[2008]

Hostage

I was an amateur to love,

surviving - I thought - on instinct.

There I was, emblazoned in light           

on Broadway

singing to words I hadn’t learnt

In a plot I knew nothing of.

Carried along with the first night’s

crescendo.

Escaping from my cliff-edged nest

before my wings had strength to fly.

blossoming before the winter’s

final frost.

So when the theatre lay hushed

and swirling winds coughed me up and

rain bled into clotting knives, you

captured me.

[2009]

On The Night Ferry From Dublin To Liverpool

I drifted outside to the salty wood deck

on whose stern I found an angel

and rescued her from suicide.

By the moonlight

we made love to

the rhythm

of the

tide.

But

I blinked

abruptly to

the sound of

five dozen lorry

drivers arriving for

breakfast - like pigs to be fed.

[2009]

Contours

The first, curious tinges of sunrise peer over the horizon,
Surveying the fabric of the land.

It lies in a drape of quilted darkness -

A blanket embroidered with hanging crystals.

And thus, with meticulous eye, the dawn

Feeds its golden thread through the upholstered landscape:

Soft silk stitched into linen,

Hugging the contours of the hills.

This drowsy canvas, swimming in ghostly mist -

Floating dormant and still in shadow -

Now ripples, undulates, swells into colour,

Unravelling her sleeping form.

Narnia awake.

She lies upon her side.

From the small, shallow outline of her draped feet

Her body stretches across the horizon

In a sculpted ridge.

Her knees curl in to her body as she sleeps,

And so the landscape traces:

Material clumping around her coiled form

And falling away in cliff-like folds. Climbing

On, on towards the summit,

Curving in one smooth, snow-capped arch:

A feminine peak of perfection

Which falls gracefully into the valley below:

A valley which rises and falls in deep unknowing breaths.

Perhaps it is the swelling of the tide,

The life-giving ocean

From which all our journeys start.

And from beneath this silvery, silken sheen

Her smooth, sun-kissed skin melts free,

As though swimming out of morning fog –

Cool and clear like glaciers of ice.

The morning dawn breathes its light over her rapt, sleeping face,

Chiselling her features:

A thousand Monets

And their palates of golden light.

[2009]

The Timeless Hour

This is the timeless hour

When ripples dance in the velvet lake

And stars swim in the breezes;

When clouds float to distant horizons

And their bellies shiver in the waves.

This is the timeless hour

When her breathing is slow;

When her back is arched;

When quivering halos of light

Shimmer back at me through the gloom.

This darkness is a chrysalis

Where her angel wings can spread;

Where passions rush and silent engines roar;

Where two bodies surrender to the tide

And ride on crests of waves;

Where currents surge

And the swelling oceans

Cascade over them;

Where they kiss the horizon

And fall… fall into cooling waters.

This is the timeless hour

When the sweepers drive by;

When, wrapped in a sleepy cocoon,

Two bodies learn to breathe together,

And shared whispers make sense of the world.


[2009]

God Of The Silver-Tongues

'The Invention of Love', by Tom Stoppard, received its premiere at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London, on 25 September 1997. The role of 'Charon' was played by Michael Bryant, then aged 69.

"And they stretched out their hands in desire of the further shore."

Not much to look at, maybe. Dog-ears,

Blotches, one of those satisfying

Spinal curvatures (the complexion

Of achieved purpose),

With metal prongs stabbed through

The coverlet of plain-sky-blue.

Plain, that is, but for the blinking glint

Of gold: the label alive (as an actor's eye)

When it catches the light.

Imagining some Grecian scholar

I delve into the ruffled leaves -

Survey the assemblance of wisdom:

'The Invention of Love'.

The first page hangs - an extended dove -

And falls with a snug-winged nestle.

Corrections, arrows, cuts, additions.

Lift, hiatus, drift and fall. Parched

Yellow highlightings (the ripeness garnered),

A tea-stain fleck, electric glow - and lift,

Hiatus, drift and fall. The kiss

Of each leaf on soft-lipped leaf, reciprocal.

(Stop)

An envelope.

Empty. Autumnal. Preserved

Like a petalled-butterfly, pressed -

Embalmed in its chrysalis.

Touch skin on flattened skin.

The air.

Shiver. Wing-ruffle. Escapage

Of dust, and a flutter of fragrance:

The scent of invention, reborn.

This was his 'line-learner' -

Companion in those days

Of gestation:

A drifting eclipse on the rounds

Of his fingers. Their together-scroll

From line to line like the moon

Back-peeling the folds of the sun,

Or the teasing reveal of the turning earth.

His brown-winged Skipper.

I conjure a flash of your eye in the dust,

In the caves of that Stygian gloom. Charon,

Ferryman: God of the silver-tongues, God

Of the Underworld.

You've got to admit it has gravitas.

On page eighty-five you have branded a note:

"Hold out hand"

 Hold out hand?

Soft in my palms is a tremble of wings:

Lift, hiatus, drift and fall.

--

Into the fog

I am reaching, reaching -

Reaching into the fog.

Distant and dim, but approaching,
Encroaching: a beacon

Beams back from the night.

A paddle of waves

And a rippling slosh.

Then a bow, and a belly of wood.

An oar balanced over his shoulder,

His face in a drizzle of light.

A standstill crunch of skiff on sand.

Hold out hand. Hold out hand.

The candle flame quivers.
There is crystal in his eyes.

--

May these lines be my passage,

My obolus into the mist -

And row me over to that bank

Of eglantine.

Sunday Prayers

Peculiar shoals (viewed from blimps)
Weaving migratory patterns.
We converge like seasonal salmon.

There are Heralds to our spiritual homecoming:
Halo-hatted angel-riders at the silver gates.
Beyond, a gently-sloping altar of hero worship:
Bold canvas of Ithacan green.

Baptisms fall in April drizzle.

Fervent Citadel.
Basilica of Zeal.
Catacomb of once-lived Mystery.

Full-resonating our terraced Cathedral
Are the prayers of devotion:
The fading-echoes of St Gregory
Squeezed through an evolutionary sausage-press,
Then pierced like cling-film to taste the clear air
Of our roofless Reformation.

In the heat of meditation
(In the stinging downpour)
We sing the blaze of passion:
Raucous blur of larynx and lung.
Music of the living voice - 'viva voce' -
Filters through the skins of generations.

We sing to our Gods -
Who respond in mysterious ways.

Puck's Grove

I wear the fragrance on my neck.

Branches jut in barky-fingers;
Woodbine suckles nightly screams
and moans; the faithful Violets nod.

A noxious burn of Muskrose scent:
wilting beauty, youth capricious -
the dead breeze blows... blows.

Clog of sound, clog of breath,
cloistered dome of stifled air.

The Elms: they strain, they creak, they crane
their hooded crowns upon the bank,
and muffle and gag the groans.

A snake chokes upon his own skin.

'F'

Fff: my favourite word stopped short,
in the nick of time. Voiceless air
dissolves from teeth and gums
like sand through fingers,
or an hour glass.

'F for Failure': the red-ink smear of Tabloid red.
In the font of blood they baptise Gods:
a dizzying cycle of winch and drop,
winch and drop... ascension,
uplift, sag and fall... fall.

Brains bloat like sponges, swelled;
wires clog with soot, ash
and silicon - the seam of moist grime;
eyes grope a pair of double Fs...
a bit cheap?

The Long Drive to Ithaca

(Tiger Woods)


Eagle-eyed scrutiny
in a talon's clasp -
the taunting grasp
of knowing fingers.

Rapid uplift,
coil
and uncoil explosion -
thrust
with a rocket's trajectory.

Out of kilter -
his affirmative tick
droops under the grind
of spent, slackening cogs.

On the fairway's trim,
in the tree-top dapple,
with the fallen leaves
he stands.

Hiatus...
Pendulum swing...
Silhouette.

She arcs -
the curvature
of a hooked-beak,
primed,
breath tantalised
on the verge of imminence.

In the rushed embrace of gravity
she falls from height -
strikes the apex,
bites, rips,
rolls and writhes
in the ecstasies of wild precision -
a little death...

And a smile
penetrates his lips
in a succession of waves -
like the spread of electric tide.

"Lilies for Lily"

Sat in the pews
we pick up our cues religiously -
respectfully.

Gravity's noose -
so strange and numb.

You were country air,
garden gloves and secateurs,
the salt breezes of Sligo.

Not the type for slow-diffusal:
no shadow drift from life
but swiftness of light.

"Lilies for Lily" -
they crackle an outbreath
of plastic.

Beneath this crust
the sealed caves echo:
loss of warmth,
memory - a cold,
clogged sponge.

Under her weight
his tears drip
dense necklace pearls.