razor black mirror porcelain by pd Lyons

razor black

mirror porcelain

for your

rose bud

bird song mouth

I have made bouquets

gathering

shadow light

creatures wonderful

grotesques fortuitous

clear potable water

dark caves beneath a sunless world

secret hand fulls

tremors lolled by after glows

alone like ivory your room in blosom

rich solitudes of orchid

perfumed isolations

joys

with

or

without

love

i only make for you

Now Safe in Snug Harbour, (sometimes in this writing life part 12) by pd lyons

 

Think there is nothing left because

Things are not they way they were?

I have shouted at the city-blocked midnight

Danced fence post crooked side walked racially slurred neighbourhoods

Found my way past numerous boot strap bras soft slung underwear

Love named and nameless

roof tops-vestibules – pinewood -parked cars – basements – garages – around the corner from some bar

All long railroads of dreams no longer gleaming dull rust misuse

 

Waiting supplicant for the dew that would soon cover us

 Cold reservoir air upon one another

 Our mouths an open universe.

 

 

And days or nights never mattered

Hit by shrapnel amphetamine opiate subduction 

Elegantly by psychedelics led,

What is behind whatever it is that things have become?

Oh these  were meat for you

All this was blessed for words by you

And I needed to know was nothing because all newness was all sacred.

 

Tears of lovers in the dark

Knowing soon that we would part

No longer see another day

The way we were

 Now so far away

 

All my instruments pointed

All my solitude true

It was not to other lovers

No mortal could compare

No substance base, mercurial,

will ever compare  with you. 

~

I could not understand factories of men and beer 

Such Have I Heard, (first draft) by pd lyons

 

Such have I heard ~

soft moss mornings a mist unsolvable.

harsh sheets stones on a frozen ground each bouncing echoing.

wounded banshee whiplash dark empty fingers naked  trees.

smooth smothering heat

days wrapped in wet cottons left out between a desert of noon

myriad  deep yielding into deeper nights

 

Such have I heard ~

alone  only my slender secret self

.  how to bring any comfort to what has gone beyond?

 would they surrender such treasure willingly?

could it happen even so?

 

the dead

 who better else to weep

who better else between the worlds?

a sea of tears,

a sailing of  ghosts

such have I heard

such have I known

.

Didn’t We Used to Know Better, circa 1973 by PD Lyons

 

 

bacon I believe

When he would reach both hands open wide sky pull fists into fits as if muscle alone could change the world and make whatever it was roiled inside come out into some sort of peace serenity wisdom of sages and healer of masses. Instead of cigarette bourbon beer, instead cocaine snotty girls lines and rocks wine and physical graffiti still life with twitched nerve endings. Calling it love. Calling it art Calling it life dancing with death as if fear could be appeased by feigning recklessness bravado of a bullying sort.

Gimme a light will yea man. Give men a buck if you got it. I’m tired of standing out here the wind is high and I’m not and brother could I use at least a cuppa coffee. Don’t I know you from school? Didn’t we grow up on the same block? Didn’t your sister go out with me brother? Didn’t your daddy know mine? Days were when I could-a brother, days when I didn’t ask. Days when I dealt bought or stolen. days when I wasn’t so old. Used to call it a party then. Used to call is a rush. Used to call it a living. Now its just doing time. Wouldn’t you spare us a smoke then? Wouldn’t you have some loose change? Didn’t we play ball together? Didn’t we used to get drunk? Didn’t we used to know better? Couldn’t you just help me out?

 

pdlyonsphoto

Cover photo of Mays Book in my Kitchen. words by PD Lyons Poet

(May Sarton)

 

how many years

how many miles

 

today the sun just above the horizon

orange auras long silver fingers

 

first frost this year

my unkempt garden

my unkempt heart

 

wilderness

not afraid

 

I would not set the desk

so, my back be to the window

 

I would squander how many poems?

for the distracting view.

 

as well as to be honest

I’d like to see anyone who’d be coming

or thing for that matter

but as I think on that, I realize

 

here in my kitchen

I do indeed have my back to the wall so to speak

I have no view of the front or side driveways

 

only a slight view over the  sink

uneven fence line, ruff grass field, distant trees

not one inch of a glimpse of the little lake

destined to be sapphire in this daylight

the house was not built by someone with views in mind

 

the laundry machine dominates

the last load dwindles the side windows

sweatshirts, dress shirts, Morgan’s school jumper

hang on the curtain rail

 

still the sun finds a spot of gloss on the black mahogany table

just in time for me to go.

~

two swans

over a lake I cannot see

this morning brought November

unknown photographer

 

 

WANTING TO BE IN THE OLD TONGUE by PD LYONS as read by the poet ~

---

from the book When You Worship Swans no Longer by PD Lyons.

Poetry inspired by the village of Fore, County Westmeath and surrounding areas of Ireland, by an Irish American poet.

“PD Lyons work stands at the threshold so loved in Ireland. That almost magical, almost mythical, almost otherworldly parallel that the Irish dip in and out of. Where we chose to believe in luck and superstition and destiny and embrace these as tangible factors in our daily lives.” – from the forward by Una O’Neill D’Arcy, ~Journalist/Freelance Writer

Thank you in advance for supporting this project!

Special First Edition Limited to 150: each numbered and signed by the poet. Price includes worldwide shipping by regular post in padded envelope. 20.00 dollars US/15 euros Ireland/20 euros rest of Europe/15. sterling Items shipped upon receipt of order (purchase through Paypal) Contact: pdlyonspoet@yahoo.co.uk With your shipping information and any queries. Additional inscription on request. (Numbered books selected randomly)

Generously  by the Westmeath County Council Arts.

 

 

 

WANTING TO BE IN THE OLD TONGUE

 

Words

Someday

Someone

Might say to you.

Unimportant memories

Aroused to beauty non-the-less

Like cobwebs beaded up with dew,

Brass fittings on a cedar door,

Day’s debris randomly swept into a banked-up fire

Before to your own black iron bed you’d slowly go.

 

 

With all our coming and our going

Will we ever meet again?

Fragile as the moth is the flame

One slight breath

And darkness has us all.

W/that in mind, I mind no dancer

Let us join whatever way we can

Before the waiting darkness

Makes us all fall down.

 

Clumsy fingers

Holds her own heavy breast skyward

As if the moon, areole hungry

Wouldn’t have found communion

Without guidance.

 

Gentle at the end of the world

Even rocks all soft

And buds of lilac silver slanting sun.

And when gems of green roll down

Meet the slate blue sea

Gently rippled by disappearing pearls?

 

Somewhere we still know women who paint the things we see in dreams

 

Wanting to be in the old tongue

January crows gather.

From the eviction house

Another row of slate slips.

Sun orange fingers

Poke dark shy pillows,

Disturbing bread crumb dreams,

Little red breast birds.

 

Shouldn’t you be left alone?

Cradled in the earth for another thousand years or so?

Discovered as some tantalising source

Of artefactual speculation:

Those marks –

True cause of death,

Or left by some post mortem carnivore?

Perhaps sacrificial ritual,

Signs still legible,

Though fading as if

Some water colour in reverse

Until only bare bleached paper

Slightly stained.

 

Ghost steps.

My warm eastern mouth nourishes,

My amniotic fingers curl,

Personal history noted,

As if by some distant observer

Swirled into tight sips

Almost impossible to savour.

 

Between the posts at midnight

A long wire of electricity

Calls little bits of rusting iron

To lantern the siesta heart away.

 

The Ways of Sitting, by pd lyons

The Ways of Sitting

A mans hands ~

on a woman’s thighs

One on each rolls them out

A better view of what he’s dreamt for so long.

Muscular even in yielding

She allows her deep breath body freely.

 

Outside women ~

talk how the year slips

School days into holidays beginning school again.

 

A woman in love writes her name ~

Moon soft ivory

Pale sky

By the Buddha

By the open window

Major piano chords

A simple charm

Like where in dreams we can’t be hurt.

 

A man begrudging poetry ~

Leaves out such things as joy

Hopes a mirage of his own making

Hides in clothes made from mistaken identities

Secrets like superman behind caped crusades

Although blurred some character always lurks

Despite the roles he thinks he should,

He thinks they want, he thinks he must.

A series of figures exchanged through out his life

Even the god he picks a model of dysfunction.

Fallen Lilies, by PD Lyons Poetry

 

Fallen Lilies

 

We will surround you with silence

Like the voices of our children never to be heard again

We will surround you with fallen lilies

Like each of one our children cut mid bloom

 

We won’t ever know what to do

With a hypocrite’s thoughts and prayers

 

We won’t ever find anything

In a hypocrite’s concern for  grief

 

But we’ll not match the hardness of such hearts

By hardening our own

 

We will not meet such hearts with violence

We know too well that path of sorrow

 

So, we will meet you in silence

Like the voices of our children never to be heard again

We will meet you in fallen lilies

Like each one of our children cut mid bloom

 

Unlike you

We will do what must be done

Unlike you

We will remember and continue to find days to be thankful for

 

Mothers rocking babies rocking mothers

Fathers rocking babies rocking fathers

In My Country, by Pd Lyons Poetry

 

In My Country

 

Women walk on eggshells

The way they dress  a rapist’s defense strategy

Their silence confers consent

Their bodies always up for grabs

In every way

There is no privacy especially of the womb

They may be legally and religiously sacrificed on the altar of boys-will-be-boys

They may be murdered at will

But have dubious right to self defense

They are not heard

They are not believed

They are not counted

Their labour not valued

That they are

Our mothers

Our sisters

Our daughters

Our beloved

May be conveniently ignored

Easier then to believe,

They are property

of the male

of the party

the state

Blanket (Long Version ~ ruff) by PD Lyons Poetry

 

Blanket

 

For a while some small sense of comfort

Illusion though it be?

at least a thing I could manage.

I do not have wisdom.

I do not have courage.

I do not have liberation.

Is running away, courage?

Is rebellion, liberation?

Is wisdom a thing to be acquired?

 

I am only aware of what I have been taught to value.

I can only function as a means to other’s ends.

An aspect of machinery grinding its own components to lubricate itself.

And like me even you don’t exist in the way we have been taught.

 

If Buddha was real he’d have taken us with him.

 

Instead heretic I am begs for any small sense of comfort.

 

A blanket round my shoulders ~

The only wisdom that I know