These are the lands

Beyond the night, looking
..skeptical of my angst
..disgust .. ;
I cannot ignore
the life that flowers
within these doors . . .
somehow I'm told I must

Give me three or four
..whiskeys
and I will sing you a hymn
..of times long gone
..times yet to begin

like imaginitive plains
where wide-eyed ambition
and youthful indescretion walk
eternally hand-in-hand

When the impulse of the dream
was made living
upon the instant it demands

and the merry-makers
and back-stabbers embraced
coldly
one last time
in dizzy predawn array :

these are the lands
fortold and sublime

these are the lands
become my home

my own neglect

so that fields are empty
and God silent i smiled
my reckless majesty i am
yours, playfully yours!

breaking! upon great cliffs
and dying. A tide, this tide
dying and sleeping between
broken teeth and sunlight.

so that the booze forever
yours dripped in the silent
acopalypse and sneered proving me
inept, i kept on, fell, fell

fallen.
laughten with light.
not even a tooth and Jesus spoken for.

Of Arrogant Stock

He comes from a long line
of poets, ramblers and gamblers
Steadfast to his fortune to decree
the great solemnity of those
coming before him -
...................................But alas,
he too has fallen to the cold
clutches of dead redundancy -
lost vision in a field of poppies;

Elucidated from form and
meaning, a heartless solicitation
to those disinclined to glamour
believe imagination to be
reckless ...self-serving
..and perverse
...........................However,

being born of great rank and file
means not having to care for the cares
of others - that is, their wants for strangers-
not those for themselves -

Being bred of good wheat means
the fertile fields of fancy are always
well-sown, even in times of drought
and great poems reaped,
before the whole world dies,
like Autumn leaves . . .

Oh Ridiculous Torsos!

Who says these new flowers will not find night
more pleasurable in their fancies fecunding-
undoing the certain strains of light nursing
the colors to be in season when these very
same roots find tomb in the heavy crust
of earth embalming the great talons of life?
When all that's left of a promise is a promise
and the echo happens upon a similar moment
so long engraved upon the hearty insides of mountains
and Mercury's long forgotten travel itinerary
that we cast it to the sea and leave it to the sea
to provide the gaps of pulse
the lapse of sullen beauty
the wondrous vision of writhing flesh
.the coarse reminder of the poet exhaling.

A Terrible Moment is Past

Wire-eyed and serious;
Awaking to the dawn :
A terrible moment is past -

It's time for poor Johnny
to leave his wife and home :
A terrible moment is past -

To defend poor Ireland
from Britain and the crown!
A terrible moment is past!

Steel creeping through the night ;
Britainia goes not unseen by dreaming eyes :
A terrible moment is past!

Visions of a Nation!
Our own Emerald Isle :
A terrible moment is past!

Fallen is the father;
Slain in bloody fray :
A terrible moment is past!

For each man left beaten
on the banks of the Quay!
A terrible moment is past!

For every one of Johnny,
a hundred more renowned :
A terrible moment is past!

Childr'n that have picked up
themselves from the floor :
A terrible moment is past!

Declaring there a limit --
that bears no more :
A terrible moment is past!
A terrible moment is past!

Amidst the Wastleand

Joel peered, hawk-eyed
and wasted
from the night, navigating
the ocean
of inebriation and whores,

dead tickets & vouchers
from race tracks
bars and banks - busted
financially, not
Spiritually -- littering
the strand with ominous signs
during his only leave,

The dawn spawns seeds
of hope in even the barest site,
visions from the visionless,
music for the tonedef -

Butt-coffee, the nervous twitch
of caffine and withdrawls
can also make one
Very anxious, but equally hopeful
for fruits that are only slightly
different from those
of Governors, Police Cheifs
and Preachers -

The red-eyed wonderer
in city streets and alleys
was once Socrates, Kerouac
and Christ - and now
existing in the form
of a poet, a philosopher -
a substantial one, not actors
nor politicians of the street -

The dark circles beneath the orbs,
framed steadfast by crows feet,
eventually become the ringed horizion
the proper horizon, as though, afloat
solitary upon the salty brine
in the bark of the creative mind -

The constellations are the words,
the stars the letters,
the perceiving mind the pen
mythic heart is GOD
in a versimilitude of moods,
the methodic muse of TRUTH
AND POESY
Amidst the Wasteland . . .