1 New Poem

 A Portion of Recall

In the pinwheel, time tracks
a wind down flat, still lands
that lounge, concrete and wire, right
back in place like ones I remember

from childish breath, cobblestone
pathway, watching how the beach
I traced across would
quiver in heat.

New roads appeared; shut as quickly,
the trod dirt paths and shoe stain
I now manage abacus triumphs and
lose out in station places.

Persist in falling, root cellar
ambition that took me up and became
a wasted tempest in words
I wrap around the axel of gentle
sleep, sparking nights.

In the space between calculation and
embrace, I find a longing for when
I bought Sylvia Plath collections
for co-eds on the Galway quadrangle,
joined Sinn Fein to sing rebel
songs in tavern backrooms,

and tasted all that was good;

I slow in old wound
pain, a place where blades were
inserted to test how much
I wander in memory spaces apart,

How much I miss what felt
unending.

1 New Poem

Frozen Morning

Cut in drift of falling snow,
left shaking shadow in wake,
lying in open window chill,
for plans made of tomorrow
already drifted past.

Curfew and persuasion were
companions at will, summoned to
keep calm when days went slowly
and nights were unloved for all
they lacked in excitement.

Starting a howl up to distant
listeners, reaching past air of
short towers and splintered alley,
cracks in windshield on parking
space for warmth here.

Cursing transparent of old ambition to
new potted plants, sick in bed,
watching wallpaper turn shades
each half-light with age, over
with what was.

1 New Poem

Sensible

Tracing fallen pinecone path:
earth floor to dollar store
display, wrapped in blotch
paint white, bound in plastic
flimsiness, to the place in box
and room corner, was alike

To me from swing set summer days.
A brilliant shock of limbs in
air, crashed to gravel and sand.

I had then the fugitive heart,
washing ashore to tidal pools
in Pacific, Atlantic, Carib
oceans.

Do not fear falling now, flower crowns
and all, to pillow places,
as they keep me whole, upright,

Standing in middle distance from
gold room glow that tempts,
beckons and an impression
of light boxes flashing beyond
wound salves.

There isn’t a clipping thing
I could say now, make it
cohere to something just;
the chosen point is its own
reward, its own despair.

1 New Poem

A Wrecking Disease

There was a bushel thicket,
crossed with sallow concrete,
metallic wires, I met upon
at last in infinite night.

A sort of sunny midday that
placed beyond disguise those
worlds long lost, misshapen,
to take away from

Broken promise, from swallowed
intent.

I make a shipwreck impossible,
blue yonder in rainy stark,
horizon simple, taking away
places for things besides adding

Machines to cut quick a
double-tailed strip that devours
what we were as figures on
dock lanes, in inert cafes.

We don’t talk of it much
anymore, even if we did
lose something every day

From living.

1 New Poem

Linoleum Scars

Touching kitchen floor,
you airs felt of psalm:
to unravel, tracing night
mist, unworthy rulings that made
a lie of all this civil pretense,

all this useless rib cage mending
that makes wine-water bitter,
throws out breaking bathwater,
stills the swirl of reckonings deep.

Memory looms, cicada chirp background,
brush of hair in old breeze,
as I take the first cursing

breaths, longing for ache to end
and be put away, war medals

in the chest for another month’s march.

1 New Poem

Glass Panels

Stare through the water,
looking broken, half-awake,
starving for lightness again,

The wick-dipped scent of old
days, wood chips and mould,
floors tilted with rot.

Cool and boiling at once,
pouring sweat at night when
stars would creek as city breaths;

I was strawberry-headed then too,
unlike a beaten, loose tooth
spectre that haunts about

Rapping chambers for those moments
when actors look again like
old school friends standing by.

Then calculate the rise-run
of beef and petrol, space between
bearing loss and one felt.

Stop to admire the wooden
lampshade, crossing winds
through dry grass.

1 New Poem

Stillness Moving

Moon breath crept across
lawns in early space;
singing places stop-started
their warbling shake,
dove through a
wounded step lifetime.

Under far western skies,
you swept me up in finery,
promised the world not as
printed page tone, but in
full-flowering colour; belief
in nothing so much as together.

Placebo for the arsenic gold:
words shifting more fleeting,
stretched thin to bone, cold
in light of crooked day,
with boxes and book carriages
to fill space.