"Fist, stones, batons, and the gun...with courage we shall beat those Blackshirts down!"

"Ghosts of Cable Street."-The Men They Couldn't Hang.

A Poem with Rumors

Probably one of the worst poems I've written in some time.


He carries a gun
I hear he's a Satanist
I hear he's a virgin
I hear I hear I hear
and I realized that responding
would only fuel the flames
so
I went back to fucking my lover
back to thinking about Sufism
admired my knife on its small shelf
and hugged my love close
to bask in her being.
--
This poem is admittedly horrific.
Tough, as they say.

Ex Oblivique.
Oh, there is no joy in it anymore,
the thought of getting drunk and painting
until I'd painted my way into a corner
of something superior by Velazquez.
Painted my way out, out, out
of a piece by Whitman or Frost.
Painted my own exit from here
and that there is no joy in this
in the thought of escape...
couldn't make me happier.
I love being here.

But blood for blood without remorse I've taken at Oulart Hollow

That's all.

Desk, a horrific bit of poetry, because I'm tired and pants.

The desk is clean
except for a tea pot,
brown with blue flowers,
glazed,
and two tea cups,
small, china, also with blue flowers.
And the Buddha,
with a mala around his body,
keeping it safe and serene.
And my talismans
totems
and charms on the shelf above.
So perhaps the desk
isn't clean
after all.

Senachas.
Bury him, deep.
First, he is the prince.
That's all.
Blessed, cursed,
strangled and thrown
into the deepest bog
down among the peat,
the reeds, and the copper shields.
Then, he is the saint.
Buried alive in Iona,
a druid, perhaps,
damned by Columba's dreams
to breathe dark earth for eternity.
Next, he plays the martyr,
different from the saint,
mostly, killed by men in red
serving a foreign, Saxon crown.
This poem took a Fenian turn.
It was not meant to.

Can't stand it,
the sound of your face
crashing hard
against the dead-television sky
against the Ginkgo tree out back
against the dark, frozen ground
against against against
this poem has failed.