Gnosis

Yours is the beauty of a wild red rose,
wicked and joyous
delicate and sweet.

Yours is the dancing in the blood that knows,
impulsive and generous,
strong and free.

Yours the music that sings like a star,
white and harmonious,
deep as the sea.

And yours is the rainbow that arches the air,
lightly it colors us,
lightly we see.

August 22 - 25, 1990

Skies and Souls

Tonight the sidewalks of Sligo
flowing with the pleasure of our steps
have borne the light freight
of two wandering souls,
the green touching the blue,
blue touching green,
eyes that dance in the darkness
of a cool august night,
eyes that kiss the silence
of the skies within
and the skies beyond.

Two skies and two souls,
each, swan-like,
gliding down and reaching in
to feed deep on the rushes of the bay.
What was that touch
that came through the skin?
Why was it warm?

Even the dim and watchful
eyes of Mrs. Clancy
in a dream drift away
to her days of youthful desire,
as we beneath a streetlight
each receive an intimate gift,
a secret hidden deep
within the rushes of the soul,
a seed that bears a future rose
unfolding, opening out
in the fullness of the one.

Two skies and two souls,
each, swan-like,
gliding down and reaching in
to feed deep on the rushes of the bay.
What was that touch
that came through the skin?
Why was it warm?

The rain has let up,
the mist-gray clouds have risen a bit,
and the voice of the river
echoes from old stone walls,
while my eyes follow the dance-flight
of the swallows of Sligo
at play around an old church tower,
at play in a joyful prayer,
a reckless prayer
to the beyond within them
within the cut of their wings.
And the poem that is your eyes
rises before me.

Two skies, two souls,
each, swan-like,
gliding down and reaching in
to feed deep on the rushes of the bay.
What was that touch
that came through the skin?
Why was it warm?

August 16 - 21, 1990

She Dares the Beyond

Her eyes are the color of the morning sun
Breaking above a silver horizon

And drawing the dawn from the bosom of night
Like dreams, in the deep-rising of flight.

Her lips are the breath of the rose of May
That breaks the soil, reaching to the sky

With her perfume, until it fades
Like a shadow among the shades.

And her arms are the soothing gift of a stream
That rushes pure snow every spring

From the mountains of crystal blue air
To lakes, shimmering with the light of a star--

Ah! sweet music under golden moons
And in the blood, voices of the sun.

Feb. 28 - March 16, 1991

The Kiss

The ice that packs the walks and the ways
Will not thaw on St. Valentine's day
And the fog that is frozen cold and gray
Will not lift on St. Valentine's day
And the snows that blanket the green lawns white
Will not melt on St. Valentine's night
And the wars that drain red blood from the heart
Will not die on St. Valentine's night.

But the ice that burdens the ways of the heart
The snows that weigh down the light of the heart
The fog that blinds the eyes of the heart
Will dissolve in the kiss of St. Valentine's night.

Feb. 14, 1991

Snowflake

Catch a snowflake on your tongue
Chase it down, make it run
Let it tingle on the tip
Let it moisten, let it slip

And be the flake unique
That flutters like the voice you speak
Dance and let it breathe
Dressing in white the evergreens.

Catch one in your golden hair
Let it taste the winter air
Feel the warm delight
When bodies touch on a winter's night.

Feb. 19, 1991

Homeopathic Pique

Political correctness is a bloody curse
That marxists and feminists (puritans!) use like a purse
To buy and to beat us, to make us perverse--
The purge the glory form art and from verse.

January 11, 1991

Jog For Health

Every time I make
My body run the path
I follow changes
Like the moon
I take it round the lake
Beneath the trees
Where lovers in summer
Their fancies please.

November 18, December 13, 1990

An Interview with Steve McQueen, in Heaven

Int: Well, Steve, you've just come back from an exciting trip up the Nile . . .

McQ: Yea, it was really something--swimming through catacombs, and blazing a new trail for scientists to follow round those slippery rocks.

Int: How did you feel about that strip, that margin, where the desert meets the water?

McQ: Well, you're a spirit yourself, so you know how exciting it can be when fire touches water. {pause} But since Angela Davis is MY Ringer in the Tower, I didn't quit till I'd securely drive all those pitons, shaped like chairs, into the stone wall path.

Int: Angela Davis? But you died of lung cancer, Steve, after being a life-long chainsmoker. How could Angela Davis be your "ringer in the tower"?

McQ: {aside} These fools. {to Int.} Well, I reckon you have got a point there. I'm a bit miffed myself. At least it wasn't Maya Angelou. But as you know, we don't choose our ringers in the tower. Come to think of it, maybe it was Angelo Dundee.

Int: Heaven does work in strange ways.

November 18, 1990

Migraine

Break mellon! smash I would this head!
F... eloquence! f... this pain
boring hot nails inside my brain,
wrenching bone from eye, blood red,
No! a stiletto twisting through the eye, I
radiate hate,
curse and cry, murmur and moan,
mulekicked, name after name--
no sign of blessing in my fate?

January, February, October, 1990

Nativity

for the Kurds, bombarded by Saddam Hussein

I bared my tired breast
To give some milk
Among silent stones
And barren hills,
To a weeping, a sick and hungry child,
Among the curses and cries
That swell the air.
But she died in my arms.
Her eyes no longer smiled
Her voice went dry
And a bitter wind blew from the mountain-ice
Down onto the multitudes in flight.
And I heard myself singing,
But in a strange voice,

O eyes that were witness to the wound
That bled to the ground,
O earth, happy to receive our blood,
O joy, born of sorrow and of the word,
When will we emerge out of the darkness?

April 1991

Hostage

for Salman Rushdie
" . . . A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real . . . " Wallace Stevens

Brian Keenan's breaking voice
rings out the strains
of heroic long-suffering.
His sense of "hostage"
cuts deep, cuts through to the nerve,
to the site of blinding pain
where body-dust writhes in flames,
where a mind or a shade at noon
knows only the bitter sun,
where breath or force is crushed
by brotherly brutality,
like a single ember
buried under heaps of human snow.

For nearly five years
did Brian Keenan know the hag, Despair,
beaten into his flesh,
until at midnight
it seemed to fly within his very blood;
chained to his skin,
until at infernal night
it seemed to breathe through his own voice;
cursed in his ear,
until time stopped on the cusp of his pain
and his Irish eye and smile
seemed cauterized to his burning bowels.

Brian Keenan's is a voice from beyond,
because his hand has stroked broken glass,
and bled and throbbed,
because his eye has watched and witnessed
the rape of the void within,
because his ear has listened
to the pulse of his blood
beating to the rhythms
of cries in the dark.

August 30-31, 1990

Winter Visions

Regard the trees of a winter's day:
Leafless and angled, branched and gray
They push, straining to scratch the sky,
To challenge their god and their destiny.

Regard the trees of winter.

But regard the waters of a winter sky:
Their blue is aimless and deep, like the sea,
And their cloud black as tragedy.
They roar in the ear, and spit in the eye.

Regard the waters of winter.

But regard the stars of a winter's night,
Like diamonds burning in a like of ice,
Like emeralds, embers, or light from her eyes,
Like drops of dew in the desert light.

Regard the stars of winter.

But regard the silence in winter's voice,
Silence white as a moon in space,
Silence calm as an infant's face
As it dreams in the deep its mother's eyes.

Regard the silence in winter,
The trees, the waters, the stars of winter.
Regard the silence.

January 21-22, 1991

In Praise of Her Eyes

". . . sapphires flashing from the central sky. . . " Wallace Stevens

Like the poet's sapphires,
the blue of your eyes seems a first blue,
the blue of deepest spring
hiding within the winter's gray,
blue that is bluer than the green of spring,
early, like the morning star
that heralds the light of later day.

The blue of your eyes seems to rise from within you,
uplifting, capacious,
like a glory from beyond the bluest of skies,
when you smile, like a dawning dream
that warms as it breathes its blue translucence,
from inside to out,
from ember to fire,
intense, like cool jazz,
radiant, and self-transforming.

O, say how two blue lamps can glow so pure,
dominating with tenderness
all the other lights of heaven,
say how rich is the touch of a blue
that can move a heart to open and to smile,
and say how sweet is the bliss of a blue
that knows itself and its power
in the dark of the night.

March 5, 1990

Beyond Exquisite Joy

"Exquisite" is a sign too pale to tell
of the fine lines of light that fall from your eyes,
or of the pounding of heart's blood
at their sight.
Nor can "joy" be the name
of that touch that lips would enjoy
were ours to join in a song of one.
The lark that sings the sun as it rises,
though she breathe a melody that is nature's own,
will never image forth the sound
that is the sounding of my "self" within,
the voice of a soul
singing to the touch of your smile.

Feb. 22, 1990