1 New Poem

 Dancing in Kali Yuga

You say bread and salt greetings
to the morning, dull sun on
the damp flatpack flats of Dublin –

Remembering the trapse through
Javanese back fields, acting
pith helmet past,

Marching with
IMF retirees, teak furniture
executives: observed exotic creatures

From motorbike perches,
from cross-wise wooden windows
set over streams, between rice stalks.

How everything grand seemed greener,
eyes sharper, less bittered
by years after falling,

than now with rain in the teacup,
how things would have moved
so different, had it all been

leading back to this stuck-on
place,  where trees bare bitter
fruit, chemical exports,

that soon drift like black fleet
sails, over all skies.

1 New Poem

Star Transmissions

I remember days when
you flowed like a river around
me, arms dangling through
Thames and Seine,

Out to oceans, seas beyond,
horizons we could tell
from each other in mystic mist,
would be severed one day.

Soon, you’d say, we’ll go on
journeys separate, taking twenty-three
grams with us, as much old film,
phonograph recordings as we can carry.

I looked back to calm when
we traced, paddled all this way to
arrive at the cross station,

Soaked and ragged to bone,
marveling, still mouthing
the winter white hymnal,

Holding you against the pitch sky
as sparks faded.

1 New Poem

 Flora and Fauna Act

It is not so bad to be
starring out the gray window,
as leaves cast shade
on November ground,
and fences stand silent
against creeping frost.

In these days,
missing a clear head
before all the world in gold
intruded, that I sing
“Al-amdulillāh” to sky waters,
river banks, tracing veins
in hungry roots,
in weeping willows.

They answer back, alarming tone:

“What did you take in every step,
things lost in daily bonfires
you set off with unthinking words,
tongue held tight until
crimson leaked on bleached tooth?”

I spin on the black, no noises
left to make in justification.

I know I have cut cloth
too close to bone;

screams still echo about.