No matter how hard I wait the rain doesn’t stop any sooner no matter if I focus on streaming glass or distant green as it meets the still bare tree line no not even if I stare at the little pile of shit the neighbour’s dog left slowly steadily dissolving in the gravel
Couldn’t I just stand here all day? Instead, get dressed yoga later or not at all
There is a softness allowed by the absence of anxiety a nonchalant free from worry over what to do when after all there’s nothing – Things will remind me, no matter what I choose
and tears a lot like rain seem never to stop until they do and then they don’t again
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I go out, with the basket for wood feed the fire started in the dark morning hours ash and blackthorn limbs
and like the rain and like the tears that fire keeps my eyes busy for a while
until some distraction like my bladder like my stomach or the postman with some useless package unable to fit the inadequate mail slot of my front door
Another sample from the 2019 erbacce press international poetry prize winning collection by P D Lyons.
This one does what it says on the tin so to speak. I did live on West Main Street in Waterbury Ct. for a while. There really was a great Dane, a parrot, a park, a toy shop and sugar in the gas tank.
When I lived on West Main
When I lived on west main street
Third floor Victorian
Short walk for the liquor store past a little unnamed park
Not too far from downtown
Landlords’ cousins on the first floor
Stole my unemployment checks
Put sugar in the gas tank
And I don’t know why
We had a Great Dane, brindle dog
Got a cut on the end of his tail
And no matter what we did
He’d wag the bandage off.
Going up and down the stairs, hit the railings
Drops of blood splatter
As if his name was Jackson.
We bought a parrot
Called him Caesar
Filled the living room with plants
And let him fly around.
Got oil lamps to save on electricity.
Tall hurricane lamps,
Scented oil glowed in every room.
Tall well screened widows let the sky in.
Wood floors creaked waltzed all night by ghosts.
I went to work in a toy shop.
I was happy about the baby.
Still painted. Still wrote every day.
Still knew who we were.
It was the place where I’d smoke
As much as I wanted up into the middle of the night,
In that rocking chair your grandmother used to own.
Weight of endless summers in the dark.
Out over the roof tops, streaming lights, distant highways
The annual erbacce-prize for poetry is open from January 1st to May 1st every year. It is entirely FREE to enter thus it attracts top quality poets world-wide… in 2019 we had close to eight thousand entries and all were judged ‘blind’. P D Lyons was the outright winner! Below is the book we produced for him… it is sheer quality poetry, the whole book encompasses a simplicity coupled with deep insight; a truly beautiful collection which reveals more each time it is re-opened… (perfect-bound: 112 pages)
Got to go visit my daughter in cork city for her birthday shes attending uni there. train down from Dublin. So there was this woman…. and this is from the scribble notes….
Originally published bySubterranean Blue Poetry this was part of the winning entriy for the erbacce poetry prize 2019. I once worked in a Jungian residential treatment ctr. in Litchfield Ct. Robin worked there too as did Eva who got lost with me once in a dream of deep winters
Somehow Coming out at Robin’s House Where She Rescued Us with Coffee
The annual erbacce-prize for poetry is open from January 1st to May 1st every year. It is entirely FREE to enter thus it attracts top quality poets world-wide… in 2019 we had close to eight thousand entries and all were judged ‘blind’. P D Lyons was the outright winner! Below is the book we produced for him… it is sheer quality poetry, the whole book encompasses a simplicity coupled with deep insight; a truly beautiful collection which reveals more each time it is re-opened… (perfect-bound: 112 pages)
So a few moths back as a graduation gift to our daughter we got to go back to Connecticut for a while. On the way over had the head set plugged in and listened to the Classic Rock section! Hendrix, Byrds, Dylan etc. filed a half a note book with scribbles, just getting to them now. And as i ‘m wanting to do a blog post today i made it easy on myself and popped this little piece from what i’m doing right now – here. Hope its not to ruff for you.
In the latest issue of Buddhadharma Quarterly I read a beautiful article by Joan Sutherland, Roshi titled Here at the End of the World In it she eloquently and effectively explores our social grief and lack of expression and how it is impacting our response or lack of response regarding the environmental situation. Below is my own attempt to express myself regarding grief and gun violence. While I make no comparison to Roshi Sutherland and my own pale writing I felt I must site her influence. Perhaps from here you’ll seek her out? Here is a direct link to her site and the complete article https://joansutherlanddharmaworks.org/Detailed/186.html
Thank you for reading.
pd Lyons
.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If we could allow grief
Our grief to manifest
A school room of 7 year olds
Shot to death
A spring morning
Their families
The responders
The survivors
The shooter
All grief worthy
If we could allow this grief
Wouldn’t we be able then to progress?
Fear of grief
Shielded with anger
Anger stifles, prevents movement, stagnates into polarity, perpetuation of fear.
blown reluctant to participate in my one and only treasure.
I lived in a time
when women sat beside me whispering on back porch landing’s
interrupted by neighbours running down the stairs
hands wet beneath Danskin purple skirts
she spoke of how in past or future it didn’t matter which
I was her child she the mother
knowing I would go on to crucifixion
suckled me with saltwater glistening breasts mingling milk
into my hungry hot house mouth.
were there ever other places other days,
freedom? confidence?
a mouth full of meat?
a belief anything was possible?
I stood with someone once at midnight
not just a time but the place
a place where midnight born and lives out in each of us.
The place of my mid night?
sometime in October out there by the water
breath rising in smoke, dew soaked shivering pirate breath kisses
I called you cypress by moon light,
buccaneer beauty I chose
there in the place of my own midnight
you but not you rather the you of what you ever were.
I called you Guinevere by moonlight
lay down with you there
in the place of our own midnight
among cold Halloween coarse grass
surrounded by stolen beer bottles
a dwindling hedge barely separated from the street.
The only promise I ever kept?
never a mathematician or carpenters’ wife.
I have not even now more years than miles can tell – broken that promise.
Sometimes I forget I made it,
sometimes I forget to congratulate myself for not breaking it,
sometimes I try to barter it, threaten to turn my back if somebody doesn’t pretty soon pay me for it.
But I am not the famous rebel, not the muse’s figure head –
quietly steadily I am only the keeper of my own promise
born from misguided Madonna’s introduced by white women to the place of my own midnight
I have never stopped; I have never turned back.
That’s all I have ever really done with all that treasure which was my life.
no big deal but still, something real. no surrender, no slipping,
no disparity of one who broke the only promise ever truly made.
Yes, still writing. Yes, still the poet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
there will be a time when I walk alone no possibility of interruption, no sense of anything but wonder. ready to go anywhere – I will alone step upon a beach of star dust, a twilight evening morning without distractions of any sun rise. Body resembling translucent moons encircled with rings like Jupiter silver oh you know what I mean.
to walk alone totally alone; the great adventure that. every step a holy ground, every step unknown places beckoning without distraction. the only one around, me walking without reluctance across the universe. And when like some great invisible hand reaches out cupping me as if my whole body but a sweet lovers cheek, the last eyes I see before I know of eyes no longer? my own reflected back across an endless sky as if in kissing my own self one brief momentary glimpse of the Krishna that is and always has been me.
No longer afraid, narcissism the enduring aspect of the world in the jingle jangle mornings I have followed and loved only you.
.
Mr. Tambourine Man. B. Dylan, Bob Dylan Live 1975. Play it while I die if I die quietly or lingering otherwise at my funeral.
