"Vale of Cashmere" from "Black Irish"

Fueling the fire we walk in the rain,
Obstinate (a pair of Irish Francophiles);
Refraining, we skirt the ravine, restrained,
Bewildered amid the wilderness while
Immersed in fecundity, we traverse,
Double bound, the lavish Vale of Cashmere,
Delectably stuck, wondering what’s worse,
Ecstasy curbed or the Hell of being near?
Near, as you lay an arm round my shoulder,
Looking upward in that desperate way you do,
Open, shut, seething with the quiet smolder
Venus stokes, so much so, my lone hope is you,
Exactly now, beneath this cool green canopy,
Right here, amid the emerald mist, might kiss me

"Kid Madigan" from "Black Irish"

“Ya know how to move your feet. Ya know how to snap
out those punches, Michele!” urged the ex-pug, as I wrapped
my hands in cloth and tape, and he laced me up, and I dug
my fingers into the stinking hide and he tugged
the headgear down which held in it an old boxing scent
I found stunning. Tapping gloves, my partner and I commenced,
with sparring. I slipped a few jabs, ducked a right,
but was somewhat frozen in my pose too slow dispensing might —
until that cross landed on the bridge where my nose
would have been and I thought about all the people I loathe,
all the low-life scumbags I’d really like to pound,
and I stepped to the left, before coming around
with a nice hook to the head. How splendid, the desire to kill
with my hands! And feeling like maybe I could — was a thrill!

excerpt from "Penelope" (from "Greeks Bearing Gifts")

There were women who sang to you, I hear,

and you never refused that chanted rapture

which seized your navigating beast. You neared

and steered clear of them, denied them capture

via potions that lay frothing in deep beds

of ocean which salted you with wriggling brine,

and bore you sewn within her twirling threads,

which married the belly and spine

of your ship to her, while aching to swallow

you whole and spew you out in a bile as dread

and furious green as waves you follow,

who stirred it well, who whipped up your oceans --

a woman to turn your swine to men with potions,

excerpt from "Penelope" ("Greeks Bearing Gifts")

"Darling, have you got all you need?" she asks
watching trunks go by on men's backs, seeing
shoulders and arms swell as when such tasks
are undertaken by men; for fleeing
is where some men place their trust, what he must
do who hears too well the dirge a closing
shell makes, and thinking singers must, who lust
for music only goddesses know, stir those dozing
goddesses first, and thus arrest the silence
of their dreams. Or so a surmising Penelope thinks
imagining he must go, in violence,
travel to those brinks, imbibe those Muses' drinks--
that naturally he must crush what pearls
he wrangle from theirs grape-green whorl.

from "WISEGAL"

For Michael Ryan

1

So here you are, about to be upstaged.

Your mother holds the soon-to-be born

babe beneath her skin and walks engaged

so fully waiting, her increasing form

all belly, all full of him or her or theirs.

Sure, your concerned--why, this baby bit might

well turn out to be a bust. Might he dare

challenge thee, Mikey, for spoil or for spite?

But what if he dares be a she, who fails

to offer adequate honor to you¯

and cops your treats as she neatly high tails

it, the cry-baby girl, boo-hooing to

Mom who draws that sniveling deadbeat near?

Maybe this baby's not such a great idea.

2

And what of Dad, Mr. Bear and Good Night Moon?

There's them to consider. Trouble's coming.

Bad news, big trouble, coming soon to ruin

your too short-lived empire on swift running

baby-bootied feet, or worse yet--crawling--

Get big, Mikey! Seek refuge now! Take

heart! Escape the racket, flee the squalling--

why--almost 3--you're old enough to make

something, little man, of a Museum trip:

of Armored Princes, a Velasquez horse,

Unicorns--unreal--not fake! Pharaoh's crypts,

nose-less Romans, busted dicks--and of course,

fine Infante, at your unspoken behest--

breasts galore, grand compensatory breasts!

Another Irish Priest

Two decades and a half ago, almost to the day, a guy
heard a bell go off in Heaven and on Earth
and he answered. The challenge? To wrestle sky
down and cultivate light on earth. Thus the birth

of an apostle transpired. Another Irish priest,
you might be thinking, just what the world needs.
But note what the complex blend of this variety brings to the feast,
how he opens at the table, how his color and clarity entreat,

how his subtler merits blossom with time, as full-bodied imagination holds
its own, pairing well with spirit, how besotted with creation and vision
he uncorks wonder, how blarney, wit and lyric figure in, how bold
adoration of God animates this son of the sod, how in breaking with tradition,

he upholds it with optimal tenderness. What terrific terroir! He is right
where God wants him -- in the middle of things -- and with a nose for light.

"How to Cook a Man" from "Glamourous Life"

for TT

They bore in mind the ultimate intimate meal

for two would require the more generous

lover to end his days with a bite, but the deal

fell through. There was a glitch. Men are just

too chewy and bleed too slowly. Hence, the knife;

“I could eat you alive, I long to consume your savory flesh.”

One easily imagined the first cut might end the life

of him whose sacrifice would yield the hearty dish.

The other sautéed pepper, salt and shallots in an all-clad

skillet as the other bestowed the precious gift of testicles --

his sacrificial homage to selfless love, to say the least, O mad

crazy love. That he lived to sample the fare was a miracle

both chased with pain killers for one and paired with a glass
of Spätburgunder, a perfect pairing, for an ultimate repast.

Glamourous Life

“Living the Dream”
-- Ramses The Great

I awoke to a gorgeous gamine beside me in the bed, she was straight
out of the Renaissance! A long-necked Maria, nosing her lustrous
osculating face into mine, her mane a gleaming array, a crimped and coppery
spray upon my pillows, her lanky extremities all-embracing, her epidermis impossibly
aglow. She was working me, but I didn’t mind, shaking me down for food.
(Won’t be long, Botticelli girl, ‘til you’re old enough to play with fire.
Then you can feed yourself in the morning and make magic using beans my French
press. That ought to expedite the early antemeridian routine!
I’m a big baby in the morning. I like lots of milk
in my coffee and the first one best,
drunk in bed, and I like news! Weather, too, and the voice of
on air “personalities” whose politics I hate. Problem is, I met one,
once, a handsome oaf, in a bookstore; he had a light
heavyweight countenance. I’m a sucker for pugs.
Sometimes we aren’t the sum of our parts.
Sometimes the loins hold the key to the ancient city and its monuments!
He’s the kind of man you know can kill with a lone
jab, the kind who looks down the front of your blouse
when you’re trying to hold a conversation
and you don’t object -- even if you’re the objecting sort --
even if you’re intelligent and saying something
he ought to know. I’m a sucker for a voice.
When the sister enters the boudoir -- no less beautiful
than Botticelli girl, just darker, with little sense of propriety,
she is accompanied by Chulito the Splendid
who chases her into the bed. What a glamorous life I lead!
Pair of sprites and boy like a god scrapping like Huns
for the prize of my attentions. But broad daylight
stretches out ahead, so we must rise, knowing full
well the excitement won’t let up ‘till the chicken music stops.
And I can do this all again: execute short-order
alimentation (I’ll be the Greek.), preside over assembly-
line ablutions, serving in the capacities of Hygiene Inspector
with a Concentration in Fingernails and Teeth --
“Let me smell your breath. Get back in there!”;
Minister of Shodding and Detective Assigned
to Lost or Strategically Concealed Footwear:
“Well, they didn’t just get up and walk away!”;
as Chief Petit Officer in charge of unheeded carping,
Composer of the Wall of Blah Blah
(“Can’t you see we‘re not even listening?”);
As Mistress of Swaddling: “You need gloves.
Where is your raincoat? Every time you leave
a slicker in the schoolyard, I’m out 25 bucks!
But once dependants have been duly disposed of,
there is an appointment to keep. So be it,
should oatmeal petrify in bowls,
should circumnavigating flies hover
about warm juice; I can always swat,
disinfect and chisel anon. I’m due
at the Brooklyn Museum at ten sharp.
Outside, a roster: Thucydides, Confucius,
Aeschylus, Homer, Pindar, Saint Peter,
Moses, Deuteronomy. Outside,
a layer of thatched, evergreen vinyl,
tethered to a chain link fence, obscures
the hemicycle which accommodates
an oblique axis of approach to the museum,
its new origin having been established
beneath an existing dome. The day is very Paris;
lazy mist the color of limestone lurks
neutral, undecided as to the question of the state
of its matter: liquid? Gas? In either case,
this much is certain; precipitation
will inhibit the mixing of cement during morning hours on the site,
leaving the construction crew little choice but to stand around
doing what such crews seem to do most: stand around --
leaving them to huddle in windbreakers
beneath a Brooklyn pear tree, to loiter in a cluster,
haloed in their cannabis cloud which, diffusing, infuses
local fog with an incendiary fragrance somehow
at once simultaneously pissy and floral;
leaving them to spark a skinny in the drizzle,
on the clock, on the Parkway, outside the museum,
whose mission is to dazzle, sticking
the workers with a mission to dally, for there is nothing
to build outside and inside
there is everything
to see! Must they remain where they stand? Do they not know?
Ought I advise them thus? To head on in, check out
that Degas newly hung
near the ballroom with a floor of glass. The experts
think might be an under drawing;
light pours down upon one of her breasts
as the baigneuse dries her body with a cloth.
I have it on good authority that stoned heterosexual men
in their testosterone-governed prime
are partial to naked women. Therefore let them try
the Slave Girl on 5. At first glance, she appears
ancient but Hiram Powers’ “Greek Slave” is a young
American War Between the States Era slave, a shackled
black girl sculpted of white cream.
Also on five, Larry Rivers’s “July,” softly operatic, calmly
resplendent, a half-drawn summer glimpse or flash:
a black bike, a geometric shirt, a verdant yard, generous splashes
a sun working somewhere behind the scene generates and delivers,
a table set, visitors in chairs enjoying shade and its opposite,
a scene as replete and incomplete as leisure itself on a warm afternoon --
but who has time to stop to enlighten the guys from the local today?
Alongside that queue of long yellow vehicles which waits in the rain,
wriggling pupils depart in an orderly fashion and line up
at the museum entrance. I am expected there among the sarcophagi.
It will be my duty to count heads, distribute ebony
implements and return them to the Medaglia d’Oro can
in the paper-white galleries once the sketches by 8 year-old
children are done; to remind the uninitiated and forgetful
that touching is prohibited. It will be my honor
to behold, alongside the juveniles, the guardian eye of Horus,
the Precincts of Mut, the flexible equilibrium of the Late Egyptian Period
before the Persians and Ptolemies advanced; to delight
at the particulars of mummification: the practice, for instance (during the reign of Ramses II), whereby the brains of the imperial dead
were drawn out through their nostrils by means of a hook,
which amuses my Maria and her companions,
because, while the organs of the head, along with other viscera,
were often buried in canopic jars, embalmed alongside eviscerated
corpses, the hearts were left intact within their thoracic cavities.
The hearts remained in place – for the ancient Egyptians
believed the muscle of the heart
to be the locus not of love, but intelligence,
which sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

(From "Stations of Light") IX Tiberius and God’s Generous Beyond

And God said, Let the waters bring

forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life … (Genesis 1:20)

Byxxx the

shore of the lake

that drinks from

the Jordan, I will show

you how to fill your nets with

damselfish and blennies, combers,

catfish, tilapia and sardines. And later --

where to spy sand smelts and silverslides,

flathead and greyhead mullets, painted combers

and greater weavers; scorpion fish, sea bream, parrot-

fish, sole, razor fish and the common Pandora, large-eyed

dentex, dusky grouper and bonito; yellowtail amberjacks,

swordfish, smoothhounds, two-wing fighting fish, piked dogfish,

triggerfish, torpedo fish, sea urchins, shrimp scad and surgeonfish,

pomapano, Indian threadfish, sphinx and Okinawa flap-headed gobies,

scissortail sergeants, barracudas, African tetras, tunas, wahoos, eels and

morays, perches and puffers; file fishes, striated frogfish, spot nape and

glassy cardinal fishes, frogfish, Bikini wrigglers, high backed head standers,

bar cheeked and bluefin trevally, reef sharks, leopard hinds, King demoiselles,

pipefish and whitetail dascyllus, painted sweet lips, lagoon damsels, half

black triplefins, snake mackerel, wormfish, coralfish, shortfin, mako,

blacktail snappers, blubber lip snappers, pacific Gregory, pick

handle barracudas, ocellated dragonets, spiny seahorses,

large head hairtails, oxeyed scads, pacific emperors,

longface emperors, shadow fish soldiers, unicorn

fish, doublebar goatfish, dusky batfish, sixline

wasse, three-lined monocle

bream,

starry triggerfish,

star spotted grouper,

bicolor xxxxxx midnight

angelfish, goldfish xxxxxx sunfish, starfish …

from Black Irish "Capularis"

To put one’s affairs in order,
to ponder and articulate,
to ejaculate and swim,
to lug, muddling,
the heavy bodies
our minds are
through emulsifying
tedium and industry,
to be all ears,
to have eyes
in the back of our heads,
to wear our hearts on our sleeves,
to be operatic and porous,
submissive to susceptibility,
mounted by curiosity,
to invite wonder,
to wander ‘round
castles of our own
making, modest, yet baroque,
to capitalize upon the acoustic plenty
we find therein, to ambush our muses,
to push them up against the wall,
as, sultry, domineering and
obedient to octave shifts and
crescendo we commit
to memory and come
to know song by heart,
to consent to being governed by vision,
by seeing what sticks
to the wall when we
catapult it, to fling
our souls into the ring
like a line into surf,
like the flesh of a tomato
going up against
ancient granite,
is to sing ourselves to dream.
And when we sling our souls
forth, their ripe mettle combusts.
Chains sound, the drawbridge
is lifted and towering carillons
resound as accompaniment
to our crossing over into the life of
hurtling death we live
which finds its way into
the concerto. It’s our occupational hazard
to guess. But in any case
the scherzo’s on us.
There’s no getting around it.
You’re always Keats or Yeats,
young in middle-age, immature
in dotage, dashing, in your way,
on your own, in your own way,
your own worst enemy,
your own insurance policy.
Sure, you were fluid once,
but in the end, you are fluent.
If you are lucky, you are
venerable but lust
still, not dead
on the beach,
a good looking corpse,
your work in crates,
your joy disseminated,
attaching where you never would
have expected, the incantations
of your divine tribe taking root
underground, in bloom,
a sharp-looking legend,
whose work is perfectly laid
down upon crossthatched
crosshairs
— all fruition, friction,
and operatic luster
(“Da mi colori!” .)
who were once wily and outsmarting,
with a fine command of perspective,
an all-knowing god in tight pants,
peeling off, flexing jacked-up imagination,
guns out. If you are still here,
still listening, maybe you’re venturing
to guess that maybe lumbering
the distance, unencumbered
by all the times you didn’t get it
right, or get it down
is possible. Growing old,
once an anathema,
is looking pretty
good about now.
The rope-a-dope
tuckers one out,
naturally, but you’re still
fighting Irish
when the bell goes off,
you go off into action,
pummeled as you are
into an ample tenderness.
You’re a great white dope
in love with the holy
Word. In the
mix, you are
in the
clear as a bell’s
echo, delicious
in your way,
no longer in your own way,
armed with ornery
fervor and a few
worthy combinations capable
of ripping away whatever
ropes you’re up against.
You make a loop of their twine
to fashion not a noose
but a curved means of reining in
stars to gather as you gallop
toward the celestial vault
that you might
do with them
what you will —
You’re a god,
peeling
away, like a bell,
pealing, off,
you’re a little
off, in your chariot, leaving
not enough blood
to kill you behind
where it mottles
the canvas, its contours indicate
the shape of crescent
moon burnt in orange,
the color of oxidation,
the ruddy color
of your Irish up,
a revisionist moon
up and ripe
for raving at,
a red moon
to remind you
that maybe waning is waxing,
automatic or waxing lyrical —
maybe it is just
as well beauty
is sacrificed
like a firstborn child
on the altar of faith
by willing participants,
the dumb chumps
who go along
with a cruel joke
a stuttering god articulates
as lust yields but is wasted
on the young,
and suckers like us
with all our expertise
in beauty who stand
by, gaping and open,
say precious little
more than “Wow!”
with our Irish up
gaining greatest altitude
just
as the glow begins
to vanish from our flesh,
and the elasticity, which
resiliency can replace,
moves out of our
reach — but maybe
waxing is waning,
maybe beauty is nothing
more than a series of tests and
lavishments a hot and
cold running muse delivers
in a whorl without end —
a world with no end
in sight, a ravishing world
overgrown and lush,
through which,
advancing, we prance,
as, besotted with a certain fidelity
to these savory cuts of music
and the study of pulchritude
on the run, as, besotted
with fixations on surprise,
shadow, wit, mindfulness and song,
as, hounded and trumped
by a fascination with what’s difficult,
we keep travelling, stuck
on trains of thought so glorious
who but a poet could possibly
know how to catch one?
We accelerate and thrum,
figuring, who but a poet
can be trusted
to conduct crucial
interviews with the engineer?
Who can be trusted
to conduct the strange adaggio,
say, of equinocturnal snow
such as this one I behold,
which in turn takes hold
of me this instant
as it transpires outside
my window
as inside the chambers
of this poet’s heart
which is one busy
pump tonight?
The flakes fail
to sail straight
but rather they slalom
curvaceous in a downward
waltz at the behest of
gravity, their lacey
voluptuousness aglow
as they tumble and land
with an unheard thrash
upon early shoots of hellbent
crocuses, which may be
seen and construed
as the frozen upshot of
God’s shooting from the lip,
the aftershock only poets
even if nodding off
in chairs before fires
making love in their dreams
can hear, for their fires are still
going below, their pilot
lights are still blue:
their angel vehicles are still
aloft as ever, eternal dirigibles
amid a marbled firmament, afloat
in a variegated field
of nacreous noctilucence,
amid the ramous circuitry
that reminds me a bit
of those black limbs
encased in ice
my neighborhood pear
tree brandishes; they
overlay an under
drawing which burns
with astonishing ordinary
beauty in my icy fenestral vista:
a modest scene adequately
lovely to incite lachrymal
wetness, depicted, as if in oil,
which right angles and
perimeters my window frame,
delineate, limit and set
apart. Glassed-over
rounding off of new buds
frozen in clear swells
form barely visible molds
of ready green that reached
early from shoots but stopped short,
stunned in the frigid clench
of a casement that is doomed
to cave in under
the weight of light
and the warmth
its live limbs dispatch
in the interest of releasing
dormant verdure from its translucent,
transparent confinement
giving way to an arching rhapsody
of swollen tips, lips, fists
against the death winter
doesn’t always have to be.
A bright backlash follows
having waited so long
for the “go ahead” —
The waxing heat
comes as it may,
comes as it can,
armed with explosive
wetness and romping
pulse with which we,
O, supple bards,
have some sense of
what to do. It is for this
reason we may decide
we might be wise
to stick around a while
if only to see
what develops,
knowing all
too well
the inspiration
that is ours
doesn’t come
cheap,
but it comes.

*Capularis is Latin for “having one foot in the grave.”

Come hear me read in Boston with Jade Sylvan and Nava Renek in Cambridge, MA on Sat. Feb 13, 2010

Jade Sylvan
Nava Renek
Michele Madigan Somerville

Reading

Sat., Feb. 13,7pm

@the Pierre Menard Gallery
10 Arrow Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge

Click here to read my poetry debut down under! "Peals of Light" in Eureka Street

Take a look at my Christmas poem in Eureka Street, a fantastic online publication run by Australian Jesuits. Great articles and essays on theology and politics. Check it out.

check out "Born Again Catholic" in Brooklyn: online NY Times

Click here to go to Fickle Muses

Check out From Gods' Mouth to My Ears on Fickle Muses.