Beautiful Women

 
 
 
  

Element of Snow, Dry Rocks and Semen in Decline

Consider: What if we say self destruction has no place in the world. What if we replace it with creation expressed as the tension of pain and pleasure expressed to open our doors without closing them. We can do it. We can begin at some unknown end and find our way outside to where the snow drifts dry on the dark obsidian granite. No ice forms. Water subliminates as does pain and pleasure racing head long into the other.

Mother and Child -- Bonded at Birth

 
  

Pain and Pleasure do not Have to Burn or Cut

 
 
 
  

Beautiful Women

 
 
 
  

You will be more alive than alive.

 
 
 
  

Beauty is Never Shallow

 
 
 
  

Photographs and Stimulants

 
 
 
  

A gallery of Art that could be a Poem

Jan VanMeer 
 
 
  

The Poem Modern Rivers

Come Read Taxi Murders!
Taxi Murders

Four Poems

Poems: "Wonderful History," "Jack's Mountain Road," "My Grandfather's Crocus," and "Snowman".

Jacob van Ruisdael 1628-1682

Dutch landscape painter whose baroque works,
such as "Wheat Fields" (c. 1670), depict
the majesty of and delicate planning of nature.

  

Grandfather Tom
For Tom Farragher

I stumble through the twigs
to reach your grave
I need some talk,
some bits of string,
some knots untied

I remember our home—
the dog I rode when three,
the daffodils, crocus,
forsythia, mock-orange—

blue bachelor's-buttons
strung through your lapel

Each June I see again
the red porch
with the paint and oil smell
I think of lemons

I loved your green swinging couch

As I sit among the graves
the rains begin
then I was eight
standing by the Chesterfields
near your favorite chair

Often I would watch you
walk down our hill
newspaper under arm,
and then,
the snow began
and we sled and sled
until wet to our drawers

we fell home
and you made some tea
smoked a cigarette,
and then
we wrestled

and you read to me of Mars
or Saturn's men
until I yawned asleep—
your white hair
blurred by the motions
of your fingers tucking
me under Grandma's quilt

As I leave your grave
the rain stops,
and we walk up that hill
on your last day.
Then the bus came,
took you away,
and you waved smiles through the glass,
and the roar of the bus stopped,
and we could not touch

I am never able to walk down that hill
and not see you with your newspaper
under your arm—
and the silence each Christmas
is sad even when the family gathers
with new children

no one is there to play card for pennies,
and no one has your vision; and for a time
even I didn't want to remember that there
were no strong hands to help steer my wagon

through the distance
and its chill.

Irish Love Letter

In the mirror
I see our breath
skin to skin.
We melt on the gravel
on the sea cliff--
Beyond Rosses Point
we follow sailing ships
Within this rubble,
fallen masts, falcon,
and shattered glass--
the rain blessed
Lean grass stalks lead
water to our flesh;
the glass leaf reflects
her shawl--her hand bent,
dress over knees
crimson skin on rocks covers
our bodies with human beaks;
blood wets this bed,
mixed to the sea's rain
As I drink her thighs
with blood's cream,
talons as a talisman
moor us to the dock, --
the tarred timbers squawk,
and I see us in the sheets
in that grand hotel
on College Green
I see us in the morning
with tea, cake and a tray.
I see our wet, our breasts, our hands.

We follow children home,
first milk,
we drag our fingers to our spines
(sea salt and sea bird feathers)
As we dance off the sea
and the sun wakes the pier,
wild tulips on the table.
Our back churn,
our eyes blind--
my spit swears oaths
to a winding stair.
I wait with her,
her hair on my arms,
sleep marks on our cheeks
Scum on our breasts
At twilight we walk down Grafton Street,
Dublin ablaze;
next morning we worship at sailing ships
vending fish before dawn,
for her I am air, first light, fire
seed and good knife
I see galleons scull our sea
I see our mirror, our flesh breathes.

Monday, January 31, 2005
Tsunami

Note: Dedicated to the disaster victims of this great catastrophe. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake on December 26, 2004 which generated tsunamis that caused one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history. This rare type of earthquake known as a megathrust earthquake struck at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake off Alaska in 1964, and tied for fourth largest since the establishment of accurate global seismographic record keeping by 1900

December 26, 2004

The ocean rolls civilization into layers of peat
and the air, full of great waves, dry desert
nothing to breathe but the songs of the curls
of tsunami so large a universe is lost in seconds.

There is no musical phrase but echoes as oceans
war with the trees throwing human tantrums

At the edge of the water there’s a dirge
simple beat, like musical dirty coins,
an accordion playing porno loops for puppets.
Nothing heard but the mime of the clarinet
and the churn of the bass and an off pitch guitar;
we assume as the skies are clouds and burnt
sienna rushed from wings and all sex stands
still in the tips of waves that crack spines
and killer whales cannot escape rip-line.


2
On the last day healing began.
We will make water clean again
The buildings empty; dunes rebuild --

The underside of the river blends
zing and zarrow as sand melds fingertips
in the usual ways of sediment, which
sometimes brushed my cheek as sensory
idols turned the leer and make the hot face
that instant calm after love a complete
lake, where water is more than fire
quenched lakes at fundus or sentiment.

Sex began the wave and recovery too.
Pieces of skin were the seeds of the faces
that will haunt the waters of 100,000 dead
and the human rage off the terror we know
visits on the underside of hysteria and loneliness.

Nature has its obituary and we mark down
numbers in red and black, minus light
again, always the loss of light on the edge of leaf
where the stars such small items actually
are the compendium of miracles for tongues
she broke open with a brief morning swim --
for chance has no alphabet and no lies.

After, when time was water and walls
I no longer count the graves of ancestors
but mark their acts with fervor
and when I step to the altar
I count my life as evidence
for mystery plays and docudrama;
I climb down cliff without any guide;
my mask is lost, no longer protects
from ocean or waves without mercy.

Here in the courtyard, the water from the fountain
runs over the statue dedicated to the nightmare.

Even in tide pools, terror pastes after shock
vibrates when wave commits when the beach
has lost all dimensions. There’s nothing
to do but run. Every step buries mollusk,
brachiopods and Silver Star;
faithful ashes blown out again
where nothing remains but return.

Extinct blog of Sean Farragher (November 2004-2005)
(sfarragher.blogspot.com)

Poetry: "Tsunami," "Irish Love Letter," "Grandfather Tom"

Ashley Sonata #2

Self Portrait Vincent Van Gogh

Ashley Sonata #2

I look into the box where you have drawn
genius, yours and mine. Your life is not as
set; well maybe no life should be arranged.

I have changed over the years. I love thought;
the ability to create what is not and to love
what is, of course, a royal map we obey.

I walk into the box where we have gathered
every strand of light and pleasure, and
as night sounds, jazz, sex and delirium
ride with us in a carriage in London
we run out of time. We live in the years before
gas puttering engines when you my Lady
and I walked into the park for a quick squeeze.

Everyone looked. They assumed we were
committed, but pleasure drew us as lovers
beyond the silk walls of one box in paradise.

Today I argue for love 10/26/2006

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh."

San Antonio Sonata

When love has its own pitch
the deceit we practice cannot
be measured anymore. We are
quiet and soft, hard and loud,
and the extremes connect
in that moment when our bodies
decide the path between atoms
and that wedding with no preacher
and without witness will be
a grand victory for anonymous time
setting itself on the horizon
watching the successive waves
drift above and river dust reigns.

You measure my orbit and I
count your rings. You cover
my landscape and I caress
peaches and pubic pear.

Come out of the darkness
we bless our bed and carry
the waters with us to eidolon.

The sun rises and moon
never falls, and when we enter
the ether, light is revised.

Song of Innocence -- William Blake

Song of Ashley
After William Blake's
Song of Innocence

If you push too hard on the sun,
it will backup and flood the sea.

Put pressure on the sphere to
let it roll as hoops with wet
summer performance letting
the arm hold up sky to sweat
the rain across the plains and
in that revue we keep the
actors working on their past.


Something good will shuffle
out of the work we extend
to pit the sun against gravity
and every electro magnetic
swirl of lips kissing gray eyes

in the uniform earth no one
can observe the good man

call with the shark for revival
and affirmation of sexual poles

We do make love not as ritual
but as a storm rising out of mouth
with your skin and nipples heated.

I am taken by you my female God.
You give birth to me from your lips
where you taste the sudden salt

of your struggle to purge the sea
of some poison only you dear myth
can calm in the days after magnetic
poles shift from north to south,
the world will spin soon too late
will stop for another million years.


Dear Blake Garden Man Grower of
Grapes resumes thy Ploy to Never End.
Come dangerous pestilence costumed
to be safe while waiting for reviews,
lift up your floral sheath and show me
how to make love again on a new
flower we grew from broken clocks.

I cannot count the time as you with
scythe pass away and I wait for lights
too shallow to keep the earth aglow
forever watching for relief of dark.
No one can see the first strokes.
You are in my arms forever again.