Irlondais

And all I've done for want of wit
To mem'ry now I can't recall;
So fill to me the parting glass,
Good night and joy be with you all
Traditional Irish Folk Song

As if to prove to myself I can still blog on the site if I want to, if the time presents it self, if I excercise a little willpower, turn on the CD player, a glass of water,
the incessant whistle of the apartment air conditioner (Summer has decided to be summer again)

My roomate is fresh back from Ireland (this time two years ago I was packing my bags to go), he's come back now more worldly and engaged to his girlfriend: Blarney Castle, a garden, a stone walk, mumbling sweet nothings, fumbling through blue jean pockets for the ring. The green fields reach far enough to touch the sky.

And he sat up until half past ten telling stories, and I sat listening, thinking

I have to go back
I have to go back

Strange how the motherlands (even great grandmotherlands) have that draw. Two years since and all I can think sometimes is I have to go back there again, and soon.

Epiphany on the Can

Tuesday, 27 May

When you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?
George Carlin

Revelation,

I need to get off my ass and start writing poetry again

post haste, before the sun starts setting on days, and weeks, before I find myself 40, spread on on a beach blanket, basking in the fire island sun

It comes quickly, you know. A priest once told me that the Devil's greatest deception was convincing humanity that there's time (Father Bob, I believe, now dead and gone) --

but what about? Love and death ad nauseum? The roar of motors on York Road (soon to be a memory, soon enough), the ever present early summer rain? The sun sets over Fire Island, the traffic crawling past Curtis Bay.

How when I'm sitting on the john and look left

into the room length mirror, flickering candles beneath the burned-out bathroom light (one in four), through the red hair and the beard and the wire-rimmed glasses I can sometimes still see Helen gazing back at me? More still, the McHales, the Ronans, the tree stretches left into the past, The Wars, The Famine, the Kings of Ireland, the Dawn of Man.

And she's gone a year and change now. The sun sets suddenly enough.

I need to get off my ass and start writing poetry again.

Welcome to the World

Monday, 26 May

Dearest Reader,

I'm sitting at home, half past eleven on Memorial Day, burning candles in an otherwise darkened room, listening to the end of an old song

exultemus et in ipso iucundemur
timeamus et amemus deum vivum
et ex corde digilamus nos sincero
et ex corde digilamus nos sincero
sincero

and joining the 21st century with the click of a button