The Web Poetry Corner is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

• The Mystery
• A Straw in the Wind
• Reflections
• There is No Night...
• Among the Idols
• The Carnival
• Child Asleep
• Flying a Kite
• Homage to a Dead Jellyfish
• The Mask
• A Daddy Bewildered

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In the twentieth century
after christ's death (before that
was amerghin)
I sat upon a rock in connemara
and listened.
There was laughter in the wind
and the waves' excitement
ebbed to innocence upon the sand.
And beyond the waves

beyond the wind

Who is the wind

if not I

if not I

if not I

I watched him straddle our skyline
communicate with our world
in grunts and grumbles

and comb golden straw
for our protection.

He was long ago.
All to remember is:
a man above the rafters called 'thatcher'
a priest's familiarities
the touching of knotted rushes
by the eaves; a house impassive
to the wind's futility -

I remember, too, thatcher's woink for me
as the cock crew.
And thinking that i knew,
like a straw inthe wind,
it passed me by.

She is my soul
sapling on riverbank
nourishing dreams
supped from my hand

She is my song.
Blackbirds join her singing
and her words:
'This is my love.'

There are no stars
- only cold eyes
casting images through fingers
bonded to the landscape.

dark cloud, dark land;
a patch of sky between; a crazy horse; expectant man.

Once I kissed an infidel
and drew sweet sweet blood.

You rode at anchor Kibo's scree
I took a hand to cross its rim

O spirits tidal-sifting jetsam
discard me, release him.

seagulls noising herringboats
will chaw my slop.

Oh - you shall join the idols
my painted mask, my prop.

And you said no.

passed by.

Nothing to talk about.

So many ways of saying...

And I said come.

you were gone.

And you said no.

When I ventured later on
to hug goodnight
You were smilingly asleep.

Once, halfway up the stairs
I hesitated on the fifth step;
a disconcerted realising that there is no centre.
My fiftieth birthday still someways away.

A wedge of torn wallpaper creviced by the next generation
lay poorly camouflaged to my experienced eye.
Proclaiming as the stoned slabs of Inismor
that cliff armoured plateaus sea to sky,
an aged skin ripened to be shed
to joy, relief, discovery; all
unencumbered by the bridles fo the past.
Those soils have loosened to the wind
their flavours and their juices and their seeds;
they have absorbed and polished stone,
and they no longer serve.

Is this the future cast,
the place to come,
the land to be, the fullness
generations cannot see?

And five more steps to go for me:
I taste the vibrance of this air
I have rememberances to share
and all those dreams still shadowed in the lair
of our unventured ways
awaiting centres to unfold and hold me.

And yes, I can see
the very top step of this stairs.

Last night my dream was filled
with the kind of romance
that I had though long channeled
into song and otherworld nostalgia.
An aria for one forgotten love
now surfacing discreetely through your image
to stir my bone.

Last night I rose like christ ascending from deep sleep
to slip untrammelled through the speeding skies above
and in a world of primary clarities
and found below your girl-like figure dancing
singing, slowly skipping on a broad green meadow-field
with undulating undetermined margins. In one upstretched hand
a string on which your beauty hovered high beside me
as a kite on glorious spreading wings, firm-set upon the wind.
I moved beside your gossamer to touch its colours with my palm
and as my soul sped by it paused to rest upon its glowing seals
and butterflies and peacock discs and chinese-dragoned spine.

I thought it was my soul's sin weight upon you that brought us down
in waft and wave and waft until your kite with me upon it
reached you on the ground, and in your arm
I found its strong and gory string
full wound about your palm
and in your eyes the searching silver I must mine.

Nor had I ever thought that there could be a kite so beautiful
that it would joy my soul in sleep and leave my morning
high on dreams.

The opening sky rose behind Ireland's Eye, turning chunkiness into 2d
blackness, flattened halfway out at sea.

High overhead a pair of cloud-9 clouds perched lowly in the yellowing
silence, hovering, uncertain. No wind. Nowhere else to go.
Quite suddenly, a glowing rim of intense ochre peered above the island hub.
Surprise.
I raised my arm to time its levitation.

Two minutes and five seconds saw this halo-hallowed-shimmer clear
the island spine, free of earth and resurrected.
I never thought the universe could move so fast.

Now that was Beautiful.
And the dead Jellyfish hadn't noticed. It was dead of course
I toe'd it over to discover underneath.

A rudimentary tentacle or something in its middle.
And mouth-like orifices by the rim conducting star-form musclature
to a barely opaque gut. For feeding?

I humped it back again and washed the crystal dome with wave.
Then squat and watched and saw what I had missed before - its
mauves and violets blushing four domed-patterns to the rim.

My soul fixed on the creature's heavy immobility, hoping for some sign
that could not come. My finger traced its boundaries in the sand.

A shadow rose beside me to the dunes. I strode to fill my walk
watching its distortions ripple on the beach.

'Poor Jellyfish,' it sighed aloud,
and gave me smiles, and looked up at the clouds.

I see it now, this super gear
the shadow of a lion
eating sugared almonds
effigies of Nero and Napoleon
Christ beside some Cross
a woman wearing eardrop emeralds
with golden skin and eyes
of blue enamel, silver painted pupae
on each cheek, death's head moth her mouth.
I lose her face distracted by demanding breasts
and fingertouch .... and so it is I see.

There are passages within each eye
leading to extraordinary arches of the mind.
I season both, my eyes
absorbing bloodrimmed catacombs within;
enveloped, drawn, I spiral
arms and feet full stretched
to chartered ecstasy.

Here is destiny - just near my touch, so near...
and through its sphinctered arch
a half soul I have chaffed,
- busy busy -
with some casual certitude;
and here beneath this glorious triumph
to some brute man
a gentle energy I well remember -
one foolishly abandoned - aah!
We seldom solemnise our truth.

I see my woman reft in two, rising from those caves
my left eye finding in her right-eyed cavern
the severed right-hand side, and in her left,
a matching severed left.
My eyes could not reformdisjointed body
with disjointed soul, and in my agony
I turned away.

If I could place each semi-vision
to the trim, beyond the margins
of my life, could she and I survive
such pages of design unedited?
Perhaps I should divide and set my severed shapes
upon the verso . . . and recreate a pair of balanced souls.

My passion dissipates and as I ride in envy
with her ecstasy her eyes and mine disintegrate
and I am left alone watching an unlit candle
set in ornamental horn, and a basket of bread.

My great mask is here and it fills my dread
with simple fear. What if it won't come off?
The putting on seems not to be the question.
The now; to do; to be;
How consequences terrify
So close to paradise, so close to hell.