Kevin Mc Court

SHADOW DANCE
Bio

Kevin Mc Court, an aspiring creative with a passion for various

creative processes, interior design, ceramics, graphic design and
poetry has written a collection of poems, beginning in 2012 and
developing over the years gone since.

The following are an exert of the completed collection entitled

Shadow Dance which reveals his struggle with love, loss of identity,
emigration and introduces the reader to the broken souls trapped in
addiction he has encountered who become consumed in that exact
and ghostly struggle. It captures his journey seeking a place of
serenity, rectitude and sobriety. The narrative is illuminated and
shadowed in deprivation, the underlying tone a burning desire to be
free from his struggle. It is his aspiration to bring his work to public
awareness.

His new collection In the Blood is growing from conception in to

an ever developing work.

Kevin can be contacted via email at kvnmccourt@gmail.com and

telephone on +35385 77 40014.
Contents

Aspiring [ 8 ]
Gentlemen Express [ 9 ]
Up The Road [ 10 ]
Expats [ 11 ]
Lay Waste [ 12 ]
Spirit [ 13 ]
Clapped Out [ 15 ]
Sojourn [ 17 ]
The Abbey [ 18 ]
Clonycavan Man [ 19 ]
Visions [ 20 ]
Autumnal [ 21 ]
Quiet Hours [ 22 ]
Laundrette [ 23 ]
Mothers Day [ 24 ]
Milld Weather [ 25 ]
Hobo Sounds [ 26 ]
Not You Not I [ 27 ]
Coastal Dream [ 28 ]
Big City [ 29 ]
S.S.S.S. [ 30 ]
Chinese japanese [ 31 ]
Flagged [ 32 ]
Junkie Number 5 [ 33 ]
St. Pauls [ 34 ]
Mr Ford [ 35 ]
Hollywood [ 36 ]
Hush Now [ 38 ]
Spiritually Ill [ 39 ]
Transportation Device [ 40 ]
Zen [ 41 ]
By the Wood Fire [ 42 ]
Aurora [ 43 ]
Roving, Rambling [ 44 ]
New In Town [ 45 ]
Solitude [ 46 ]
Badgers [ 47 ]
Youthful Endeavours [ 48 ]
Petit Amie [ 49 ]
Skylark [ 50 ]
Place Keep [ 51 ]
Silent Night [ 52 ]
State of Rest [ 53 ]
Intercultural Breeding [ 54 ]
Gabriel’s Sinners [ 55 ]
The Chancer [ 57 ]
Aspiring

We are rested, rooted,

Buoyant in gab and secrecy
As the evening light fades.
Garments are obstacle to chaste skin,
To form unfolding in the half-light where
Shadow dances on collar bones, on hips.
As thrust comes before promises,
Be gentle they are not wanton,
In deception or in love.

[8]
Gentlemen Express

Three tickets for debauchery’s finest if you please.

One for a man at home, one each his visitors, if you
Could. This is to be a ceremony of life, living, and
Discovery! Stock well your fridge and escapist
Provisions. We have a dead line to find and meet,
It will take much haste on our part.

The swill and then the swine will appear,

This is necessary. Be warned,
At all costs avoid us in the confines of your
Fine vessel, it is best advised as
We shall be little but ill-behaved beasts of
The night for two moons falls.

Fisticuffs, handshakes, parodies of

Our sycophantic selves. Worry not though,
When we have arrived and all has crashed
We shall part ways.

[9]
Up the Road

It is amazing isn’t it, amazing.

Amazing all together like.
He the boy from Liverpool that
Couldn’t get his pint of Caffrey’s
For any man. There he stood, proud
With her in his hand,
Gulping her in three goes.
Amazing, dammed amazing.
He necked her like one that’d not be
Had till some time up or down
The road until God knows when.
Proud he was and all like,
And bloody rightly so.

[ 10 ]
Expats

This is the broken generation of

Irish men I see before me,
The crutched, crooked, and mostly ill.
Paddy with the swollen nose,
Tommy in his mobility scooter,
Positioned at the top of the
Smokers ramp bantering away like
Millionaires of spirit.
They scare my sensibility with
Rattling coughs from fluid filled
Lungs that squelch and cut them off
Mid-sentence for all too prolonged a time.
It is an agonizing cough when you
Clear your throat, if only gently.
Is it only gently now and to progress
To chunks of ill living waiting to be dislodged
Until there is nothing left to give.
Such contemplations whilst severe,
Somehow provide a means of escape
From more burdening questions.

[ 11 ]
Lay Waste

She lays her empty can from sight in the slight

Ravine of path and road. Almost touching
The open gully designed to direct street waste
From the greater reach of others.

She returns from its placement, two steps backwards,

With more than a slight stagger while her
Companion comforts her. He runs his fingers
Through her greasy unwashed hair and
Steadies what would have been a fall.

They are awaiting their fix and it arrives

In the possession of three skin headed youths.
They greet and depart the most kindred of spirits,
Their sacrament is now complete.

[ 12 ]
Spirit

Come back the bird that pranced

With pomp upon the promenade.
Your spirit was so daring,
As were displays of blatant disregard.

Such agility by the feet of men

While seeking a nip of fallen morsel,
Hop thrice toward, thrice and away,
Whilst always assessing your target.

How your heart must have beaten within

Your supple chest with panic of fear
And virtue. You recalled to my mind
That day memories of childhood nature.

The experience of freedom on the hills

And in the wood where the bull
Was taunted and forest braved.
You gave me so much in that elevated

Space above the market where sun

Threatened for a rare time,
You were amazing to me.
How odd I must have seemed,

[ 13 ]
A solitaire in hippest Camden
Sipping brew and pissing down my leg.
Regardless of this, you brought me home
On your fragile frame of beauty and

I will return one day soon when all is

Some-what brighter; and speak of
How you moved me.

[ 14 ]
Clapped Out

The light on Edgeley road shines somewhat brighter,

Through the right set of eyes. No visitors,
No smoking and the fourth shelf of the
Fridge coupled with a cupboard and the luxury of
One more if one should so choose.
The double lock door, the matted red carpet
And contradictory smell of tobacco a welcome
Change before ascending the stairs to a
New found and much pleasurable isolation
In the evening. The lamp struggling to life for thirty
Seconds each time its black switch is clicked into place
Becomes a prolonged pause of wondering if this is the
Time the light will die. Sometimes it pauses longer.
Flickering at intermittence too far and too long in wait,
Putting panic on, bringing about palpitation. Where will
I be without it, the hinged wardrobe doors, I assume
They were hung by a blind man, will have to be viewed
In full luminance and send me for the tool kit.
As I twist off the cap, it sounds out like knuckles cracked
In satisfaction. My lips are dry and await the great wet
Kiss of a mistress. Such company, her long neck
Chugging out into an empty glass, whispering,
Reassuring this is what I need. I hold her up to the light,
Pause, seeing through her straw glow to
Something held for me.

[ 15 ]
So many journeys made with eyes shut and the breeze of
An open window in the evening chair,
Her scent rising in my nostrils,
Her taste on my lips. She is a fine mistress.
She is a loving demon.

[ 16 ]
Sojourn

I have no will to abide.

I can’t abide.
I won’t abide.
Abide.

[ 17 ]
The Abbey

It stands proud and derelict,

A relic and a reminder amongst
All the graves of Fenagh Beg.
Such a place for the imagination
And physique of a child with its
Wrought iron gate keeping those
Less inquisitive with nothing to
Wonder but its weather beaten exterior.

For a child however of sharp slender

Body and mind, that gate had a window
Of a few inches to gain entry to its
Hollowed out shell of mysticism and wonder.
If you were willing to scuff and scrape
Your back and legs on its course jagged edges,
It would give you all this. No health and safety
As you reach its summit.

Up stairs, steep, uneven and open

To the possibility of a nasty accident.
Such excitement and abandonment to feel
King of this castle, staring out over ancient lands,
Conjuring scenes of ritual and brutality,
Foot soldiers falling into line, primitive torches
Burning in the scores, it was only but a warning
March as the advance towards would cease.
The abbey still stands, the abbey still speaks,
The abbey will remain.

[ 18 ]
Clonycavan Man

You laid in wait unreturned to the earth since

Year three sixty two, or there about with the
Guidance of radiocarbon dating.

Beyond doubt, preserved and contorted by your

Spell there. Almost all six foot six of your spirit
Never set free to the ether.

An infinite toil soaked into your tanned

And mummified remains, you went to the
Earth well. Fed, manicured and styled,

Great treatment for the bludgeoned and

Disembowelled. Through all this, an expression,
A fixed gaze is maintained, three strikes of the axe
And swing out the remains.

Your nipples pinched and cut for your failure,

Nipples that once the sub-missives suckled on one knee,
Nipples by which your Kingship is no longer guaranteed.

[ 19 ]
Visions

Fearlessly lured by the cowardice of my faint heart,

I feel courageous with apparition of your distant slumbers
Swell within me, I am obsessed.

Let not your sinful eyes be mirage for many more dawns
As I have been falling ill to living, compensated for your
Absence with profiteering and poor vision for company.

Compliant and of assistance to the fatally brain detached

Is the daily prognosis to succeed amongst this mirth
Of the misguided.

I must think it daylights suffering and return to your lips.

I must think it not what will kill me and return to vision
The death I desire in your lascivious eyes.

[ 20 ]
Autumnal

We journeyed the autumnal highway with

Burnt umber lying wet along the banks,
Left and right, with many other hues.

It was a shedding of what was held close, we

Released it to fall, returning to the earth
Allowing for rejuvenation.

To conceive such intermittence as dormant

And not of prosper and intellect, would be wrong.
The buds of May beyond the eye are waiting.

[ 21 ]
Quiet Hours

The bamboo blinds are clenched shut

With the slightest sight of the night skies
Full moon getting through,

Resembling a showing of the lightest red glow

Cast on eyelids seeking through cupped fingers
At high noon.

The darkness is not profound,

It is more a warm blanket as a lover gently stirs
Her feet, bringing about her sleep.

Anthony and his Johnston’s blow kisses around

The living loving world and I am content absolute.
Right now, responsibility lies in mornings empty bed.

[ 22 ]
Laundrette

Purple and lilac are entwined in

Operational machine number three of six.
Three silent and three rattling along with
A gentle lulling din. Lilac chasing purple in a
Tangled dance, no malice and no
Potential victor, as such.

With all that warmth and aeration it is

Most likely a sleeping dance in any case.
A sleeping dance soon to be disturbed as courteous
Exchanges are made, that is the problem with
Being four foot ten apparently, you talk and
Disturb a mans peaceful lull.

Purple is chasing lilac now and order

Has been restored, other dream eyed chasers
Emptied out from their lull chests and
Folded with great care for the journey home.
Great care but a testing of another’s patience,
Final service to be four thirty and a multitude
Of chasing yet occurred.

[ 23 ]
Mothers Day

Unaware what she had been through,

I found a sense of guilt and shame upon hearing.
More so the day being Mother’s Day.
News unknown carried a morbid irony in its reveal.
I would not have pursued with words seeking input
To structure my indulgences if I had of known.
Best not to treat people differently, they say.

[ 24 ]
Mild Weather

Falling haphazard continuously dancing

Irreverent to vision, getting in the eyes while
Finding and dancing the way down
Left and right.

Raising on the slightest breeze,

Gathering on garments and moistening faces.
Discovering peaks until energies collapse at
Crests end, joining fellows at the level of

Foddered foot marks that have penetrated

Thy purest earthen blanket. The bubble gum
Constellation found on many walks upon
This high street is hidden, finding its reveal,

And then not. The sky is laying all it can upon

The walk ways, it is doing its best. Bollards,
Benches, bins and roof tops lie wrapped beneath.
Still forming, deeper and deeper to the point

That walkers attempt the use of umbrellas.

Some half collapsed and broken by the winds
That carried, others erect and some-what futile.
One thing is for certain, the mild weather;
Is not over Scandinavia.

[ 25 ]
Hobo Sounds

The coughing saxophonist is blowing hard for coins,

Coins I imagine once a wad thick with promise.
Hard work for a tired man but not as hard
As listening to the toneless reggae maestro that
Usually frequents this spot on the slight slope
To the automatic doors that are home
To conveyor belts of the masses needs.
He is more concerned with a fallen tavern sign
Blown in a wind his lungs were once capable
Of matching. It is dead he proclaims, pointing at it.
It will briefly no longer tell of the cheap artery delights
That take a man to the place of pointing at signs.
He has home brewed gin to do that.

[ 26 ]
Not You Not I

The headless concrete statuette of

Crystal Palace Park stands blind to her vista,
Back turned to the arteries of a city,
The frills of her garment aged beautifully.

Her stone posture cares nothing for packs

Of excited monring walked hounds,
Cares nothing for black birds
Prodding due softened greens.

Was her head in tact to see the great fire,

At what point was she decapitated.
Maybe the answer lies with the sphinx
But he is a stone lipped figure,

Neither verbose nor concise. The lady and the

Sphinx speak little at all, one busy gazing
Over the land, the other sees nothing at all.
Both consumed in stone.

[ 27 ]
Coastal Dream

Candle light you master of genius,

No flame of your three pronged wick tonight.
Instead, I will lie in the cabin upon the most comfortable
Of beds contemplating seventeen volumes of your light.

I will only toss and turn for an hour, a third of my

Usual unrest, which is welcomed. Pottering at six
AM during a heat wave that has been beautifully
Enduring is a fine hour to feel the cool breeze

Run between ones toes before close air comes and

Windows are rolled down on the way to a coastal dream
Of love and perseverance, of dead heat, sun burnt feet
And rugged beauty. At nine thirty true beauty will awaken,

A third more than her usual stint but it is fitting.

Though beauty does not need it. When upright
And unfixed I will embrace her, not speaking of the
Cool breeze, she cares not for activities

Of feet in the morning or any time of day. It would be

Irrelevant in any case as today is the day of our coastal dream
And it will begin and end with the sea air dancing in
Three dimensions, around our wildest dreams.

[ 28 ]
Big City

Big city where are you, in a fighter jet

Over the shores of Roshilli doing practice manoeuvres,
Roaring by, disappearing in creation of a sonic boom.

Big city where are you, on the motor way amongst

Movers, chasers, and those that tail too closely
In some kind of effort to find you.

Big city where are you, in the mud stains upon

My jeans, gathered at the waterfall,
Slipping on your absence but unhurt.

Big city where are you, in the format of Georgics

In a second hand book, read,
Rubbed into the soul by osmosis.

Hayden’s Big Apple has run wet and filling.

Big city, where are you.
Big city, are you waiting.

[ 29 ]
S.S.S.S

Super-secret silent sex under a roof of not quite

Forbidden thoughts is truly the best kind of love making.
Secret-silent and super.

Arms, body’s, eyes and lips entwined in ways unpractised.

A silent intensity is found as is a secret retinal burning for
More than the whispers permitted.

The withheld ferocity of skin engaging skin reduced

To occasional and controlled collisions, all this restraint
Is a secret, silent lustful fuel.

All this restraint is S.S.S.S and our whispered loving duel.

[ 30 ]
Chinese Japanese

Where does the bare foot wino go?

Twenty two or twenty three,
Two shoes short of a pair.
What is the reality of his glazed eyes?
What destination for this man that at
Some point of the evening would accept
Charity of a full cigarette, and then has
Too much pride to stingily accept a butt.

Is he on his way, does he have an acquaintance?

He is sure to make a few and none too kind.
The unfortunate pavement, his grazed
Swollen cheek bone, an ocular fracture beyond
The drug stupor his vision is already producing.

There are two of him, three of her and another for the
Helicopter spin of doom. Most seemed startled,
I just thanked all the divine fortune and
Bosoms I have encountered in my life that
It was not me; I am off to put my feet up.

[ 31 ]
Flagged

Somewhere far enough east,

Youth slews with a bucket blooded floors.
Crudely brandishing a needle and thread,
Ineffectively applying bandages.
Bravery did not reach the bulletins end.
Dinner went cold on a turned stomach.
Bloody Marys won’t be the same.

[ 32 ]
Junkie Number 5

Salvos self-esteem is complex,

He is the sun and the moon together,
An eclipse, night and day.
He projects upon external reality
Angrily questioning, why, why are you not different.
Top hats and intricate kickers with
Golden stitch pass him by on the out of sync TV
That illuminates a grey room where all that
Shines is the glass pipe.
He esteems you lower than an animal,
Animals have more nature is his broken proclamation.
You would fuck your own mother,
Even animals would not do such a thing.
Salvo is angry, why when three years clean
Is he now lost by day and vanishing by night.
Why now has he not found his path,
Seeing through to the end a prospect.
He blames the insurance money, he blames his home,
He blames his status, he blames his father,
He blames Salvo for Salvos demise.
He blames the friendly dealer who
Even now he can’t despise.
Salvos self-esteem is complex,
He is the sun and the moon together,
An eclipse, night and day.
He projects upon external reality...

[ 33 ]
St. Pauls

Dons wisdom is mighty powerful stuff, mighty powerful.

He gests, “I came over here from a backwater of Ireland,
And talk about wet behind the ears. When I heard
You young good looking people talking about
How tough it was working in your field,
I’d wonder what it was you were sowing.
We can all live and learn and thank god for that or we’d
All be stupid, and isn’t that the truth”.

[ 34 ]
Mr Ford

Poor wet brain Peter.

A web of tangled denial or secular reasoning?
A reality so convincing you believed it yourself or
A dogma you could not face for all your mothers courage?
You will die Peter, you will lose what little of your mind
You have left. Memories gone of walking floors where the
Feynman crew dreamt of super charged collisions,
Just as you did, will be stories untold.
Struggling to find the pen you had just then
Will be least of your worries. Are you really incapable
Of engineering a paper about Gods will or is it memories
Of un-aborted Irish children sharing your paternal love
That stops you? So mightily defiant,
Or magnificently lost, the mystery
May never be solved.

[ 35 ]
Hollywood

It is right in close, I can hardly breathe.

Rising up on me, a slow inescapable insanity
Licking at my ankles, seeping like tar
From my mind in a darkened isolation tank.

I cannot bare my weight and sit naked,

Legs folded, posture upright in some hope
For meditative ease to come over me,
Rag draped over my head creating blindness
Where blindness already resides.

What next, what next, what next is the utterance.

Changing posture attempting to cast my mind,
The seep oozing down around me a device of
Transportation to a movie scene
Where a tortured soul sits in an ochre Cadillac
Smoking cigarettes looking deep.

Wipers beat a futile rhythm clearing no vision,

It is ok; the artist sits easy with this.
To feel his pain is art itself.
A bottle of scotch is in the glove box.
A muse is about to run bare foot,
Rung through, to his rescue.

[ 36 ]
She will be his saviour in that moment,
Such a holy and serene solution, finitely gratifying.
When awaking in a dimly lit vomitus room
Full of passionate distance, wanted and unwanted,
Still the suffering will be beautiful.
His vile and nasty tongue that fucks her off virally
In desperation is beautiful,
Her tears are beautiful,
The degenerate mess of it all;
Is beautiful.

[ 37 ]
Hush Now

Gripped tight, the first shovels broke earth of a citadel when

Which a silent halo perfumed amongst the acoustics of Gods
Tongue. His instruction to grip, wrench and sling soils of
Indivduation, to elevate a vision of him in amorous weave with
The ravenous materials of impassioned men, living a destiny
Which may not be realised in a lifetime. Holding a whisper,
Scarcely tangible, on an air of purity and devotion, let his name
Be known and let all man know it through his vision. Take all
That you can and must from the earth and be his vision for him.
Gather men from far and wide as witness to his echoing in
Marble and stone. Make ornament the inexplicable attempts at
Knowing his name for one man of many may come and fall from
Ego, into knowing, knowing nothing but devotion.

[ 38 ]
Spiritually Ill

Jesus, how I hated mowing the lawn,

A teenaged pervert trudging along with
No memory of that symbolic smell of just about
Wet grass on the air that should
Signify the slick skip of minuscule frogs from
Hands too slow and the drone of
Worker bees turned down low in mothers jam jars.
She used them for stewed fruits that
I would grow to find bitter and pointless,
The fuzzy coated gooseberries that used to
Sour the jaw into lock in an act of dare and craic.
I must get back to find nature somehow,
I came close when the clarity and
Multitude of the stars alight stopped short a
Tear in my perverted eyes the other night,
Whilst walking to buy whiskey.

[ 39 ]
Transportation Device

Aghast!
A beat that seesaws shrill through teeth,
Ten times that of the effect tearing cotton has on me.

Your love of hate for rats from concrete jungles

Scurrying to your and only your annoyance
Cannot rise playful.

No thought is possible with a screen raked like a thousand

Chalk boards at once in the damp wintry blub of hell.
If you could see to what extent I am smothered by

The dank odorous coat of another you

Would insist I send mine for radiation treatment
Or burn it and that is why I love you.

If you could see the invasion on personal space,

The droop of trousers and air thick with
Mental health issues you would urge me once

More to take driving lessons. Not a bad idea

On a day like today but let’s not press it too much,
The next bus may hold a better class of people.

[ 40 ]
Zen

You will never wipe your

Arse the same way twice
But try not to think about it.

[ 41 ]
By the Wood Fire

Good man old Mc Guirk, great mollifying anecdotes.

The random shot of making your acquaintance
Not likely, or at least I would say so if I
Did not think, no such thing as coincidence.

A night the cold made its rattling home in the base

Of my spine, before poking my head in the door
Making sure I had found the right place.
Grab yourself a cup of tae, the right place for sure.

You were schooled with my uncle, god rest him.

Knowing the Mc Courts and Master Rooney’s
Offerings on discipline to all the youngsters along the
Tyholland boarder, you could laugh about it now.

Some craic too of Mick and Mr Wallace, the grants

To galvanise, get the thatch off and bring the water in.
“What would I be taking money for to have the water in
When I have spent a sure fire fortune keeping the bloody
stuff out”

Great stuff Mc Guirk, you brought me home to a time

When I had not yet even formed a glint and gave me
Great stories for me auld lad. Could have sat by the log
Fire longer, but we will pick it up next week.

[ 42 ]
Aurora

Bend the spine surely; fold the pages and as

They try returning to where they lay
Press down along the run of them,
With tensed index, with intent.
Leaving them cantilevered in soft
Pulsing candle light, elevated at an angle
With finger widths between introductions
Acknowledgements and contents.
Give resonance fonts small and large,
Sparse and neatly grouped,
Until reaching the opening wonderment
In pin silence of night where not a
Bird sings nor cow lows. Prepare yourself,
Find peace and be ready for journey
With a great mind, ten centimetres deep,
An eternity wide, singing in your ears
In silence, illumination to dawning in night,
Comforting you from the barbed pillows
That had awoken you, keeping you,
Until morning light.

[ 43 ]
Roving, Rambling

No more to the fields old Dusty,

Though no one ever suspected your
Delicate forays through the brittle
Twigs in gaps you had detected.
The lowering of a rotund, un-agile and well
Fed frame encroaching wider freedoms with
Hearing attuned lest an adventure be exposed.
Too close to be found out now, too close.
How many boundaries back the adventure?
One, two, a bewildering three?
Well beyond a callings earshot to beckon you after
Nightfall’s camouflage to your blackest cloak.
What prey and misdemeanours were endeavoured,
Hunted, your scent covered with the acidic
Smell of dung rubbed deep into your
Coat up around the grip of your neck.
It was that which gave you away, a bastardly smell
That left me checking your teeth for blood
Of the flock, for the kill or jovial attack for which
You knew no better. Behind the scowling, and clip
Of snout, I was proud.

[ 44 ]
New In Town

A trio at play in the grave yard,

Scuttling pebbles and circling the tree
With a youthful chirps of their larynx.
Long enough out of the woven nest to stay close,
Long enough to still show jubilation at their sibling tie.

Such fresh voice on a day when

Streets lay idle and the bar quiet.
The changing of the crypt stonework, going darker,
Damp rising in the ancient wall.

It is peaceful as one buts along a piece of litter,

Elongated but resembling nothing of a worm.
A quiet hacienda amongst the scrub as a
Gull squalls above impressing no one
Amongst the drone of other un-inquisitives.

It’s a fine bit of peace and quiet,

Free from a dram though the rain
Brings up the smell of piss from the pavement
As the earth cools slow beneath.

A fine bit of peace alright, I’ll take it,

Youth and ambivalence close by,
People at enough distance not to care.

[ 45 ]
Solitude

The inflexible terms of endearment left both

Hands bound,the nights and days went unwritten about.
They belong to me now. During the long days
I imagine and look forward to the horrible
Winter nights seeking stimulation only from the
Elements battling and rattling against
Georgian window panes. Those nights
Will be mine and Mine alone to fall in love again.

[ 46 ]
Badgers

The rare old urchins of the street.

Two quare fellas, Eugene and Baz.
Purveyors of the finest ciders
At the earliest hours of a morn.
Hobos of a home founded on platonic love,
Having got off the streets and out from
Beneath the snow, rain and sleet.
Who could forget them, their clammy
And dirtied hands not refused of a shake
No matter how much debris observed
Beneath finger nails, no matter how
Ill disagreed to the flaking dermatitis
On their sweet naïve faces.
What is an ill placed tattoo of Homer J
Between friends, an oddity alright but
Such things love transcends.
They are mad as a bag of sanity,
And well beyond reprieve.

[ 47 ]
Youthful Endeavours

Standing beneath a cascading sheeth of desire,

Searing the hot wet want of her body,
Our heights matched almost perfectly.
Calves and buttocks burning as
I chased and chased her totemic virtue.
She wanted her fill of me, pinned to cold
Egg shell yellow tile as I jousted between
Her trembling pins, lust and desire was
Sweet youthful sin. There was too
Much moisture in the air to get oxygen
Deep enough into our lungs to sustain
A stance of kinetic consonance,
The elongated keratin structure
Of her body dug into at least two
Layers of skin, letting blood down
Into the capture tray, leaving wounds
And dental records on display.

[ 48 ]
Petit Amie

Slim and slender,

She does not dance before the sun,
She is sin by lunar tides, by moonlight.
I am one hundred years willing to her touch.

She is an ocean returning the soul,

Eroding the steep cliff face of my highfalutin
Mind into humility and sand,
Sand that gathered and formed dunes when I was
Innocent and had purity in the flight of my heart.

She is a silken blindfold, tied tight,

Protecting vision from scorching sun light.
Her cosmic eyes are diamonds stressed from
Millennial pressure they are not coal.

Like the land to landscape painters brush

She changes with the time of day,
Roving and untamed nature,
Moment and moment of epiphany,
Never ceasing in renewal and surprise,
She is true beauty and beauty never dies.

[ 49 ]
Skylark

Lost in a forest of leaning trees

That hide and follow sunlight
In an undergrowth filled with prick
And aroma of pine needle.
The barefoot will be burdened,
And greatly intoxicated.
Waters churn the hidden
Creek around forgotten boughs
Where no serene song carries
To deafened ears through the
Canopy. No warm rays
For the flesh, nothing to touch
And defog a misted mind.
Break bread at feat for song
As the canopy opens so
Sun and moon may occupy the sky,
Both passing, paying noble glances.
Be lost no more in nature that
Fell trodden and shamed.
Seek the parting within
Befuddled virtue,
Be it no more, as eyes cast
Spirit almighty, the
Spirit almighty is dead,
The skylark; now released.

[ 50 ]
Place Keep

Unexpected I found you in

A place keep among pages
Long since visited, second hand
Then, now new again.
I still treasure the time we
Shared and cherished by the dock,
Lost in oceanic dream, casting
Through your complex observation
On moments of joy that can
Be found when reflecting
Upon loss. Later,
We retreated, de-robed,
You pedicure raising goose
Pimples upon me, blood
Pouring to where your
Words of want had come from,
Lips pursed and delicate,
Thin smiles falling in the
Full thickness of summer
Sunlight as it penetrated
The box window above our head,
Fully reflected, detonating
In the mirror as I watched
You whisper your passion,
Your secret, for me.

[ 51 ]
Silent Night

The gentle touch of her

Innocent index traced a
Secret alphabet on the
Moonlit canvas of my back.

A guessing game in the

Silence of night, imaginings
Whispered softly from
Beneath a half dozen sheets

Squirmed out from underneath.

Our sanctuary, where her
Burden had not surfaced,
Drawn in magic marker.

Her hand me down in the

Dark of night,
We didn’t know it, but
This was when we parted.

[ 52 ]
State of Rest

She sat, her pressed black form

Saddened by a two year stint
Behind the homestead, like
An unprocessed resentment
That lay idle in the elements,
Awaiting and ready for
Reconciliation.

She had ceased altogether

Giving point blank refusal
To budge, spark plugs
Dulled, ignition dead,
Wheel arches rusted and
Crumbling.

Every bit was ready for

The scrap heap, all of this
Seems irrelevant though as
Resolutions are made in
Effort.

The jump leads we found

Were too short.

[ 53 ]
Intercultural Breeding

They flock, they fly, they roost,

For reasons I don’t know,
This murder of the black bird,
This murder of the crow.

Free and untangled by string

Of attachment to the land
In their hundreds, purest glide,
Surest dive, untethered

By human hand that will

Never grasp the western sand,
A slow death in the morning,
A slow death in the night,

No hardship for the winter

As the black birds souls
Ignite. They flock, they fly,
They roost when

The seasons lost her glow,

They nest, they rest and
Make sweet love, the
Blackbird and the crow.

[ 54 ]
Gabriel’s Sinners

We enter, some in condemnation,

Some in hope. He enters,
Haunched yet well able,
Aware and prepared for
His calling.

Each of us have crossed this

Common threshold in to a
House of strength and
Weakness.

His pins now slender and weak

Carry him, carry his upper
Body and mind to
Deliver sermons with
The vocal strength of a
Man much younger, in a
Tone beyond self-pity.

His left hand supports

His opposing wrist, steadying
The tremble of the chalice
He holds to his faith
In God and fellow man,
Words gifted to all of
Good if not Gods spirit.

[ 55 ]
A blemish upon his forehead
Resembles a permanent mark
Of Ash Wednesdays thumb print,
The brightness of his eyes
Making a glare within
His lenses questionable as
To if it was the sunlight
Washing through them,
Or our own divinity.

His mind is unwavered by

Our coming or going because
The work he has done
Is good, and we can always
Return, if not to the
Holy Spirit, then from
Lives of bridges burned.

[ 56 ]
The Chancer

There you were, your exhalation

Turning to an icen powder
On the air, hobnailed
Extremities weighing down
Like numbed anvils on a
Morning so cold palms
Stuck like Velcro to the
Scaffold, having to be
Tentatively peeled away,
But the cheque had arrived
And that you could handle.

“Columbus took a chance and

So will I, in pursuit of
Warmer climbs”

Impulsivity and grandeur

Were in full swing as
Hot breath billowed everywhere
Amidst the smell of rare
Cuts being butchered, it was
Foreign to your nasal cavities,
The multicultural market
Where you bought your ticket
And Caribbean sun shirts,
Sunglasses and suitcases, a
Serenity in seeking,

[ 57 ]
The adventure,
The journey,
To Nichole.

[ 58 ]