Elephant Ocean

Jump back inside your elephant bones

You know what they always say

Build your home inside your ancient bones

And lie like sleeping whales

On the ocean

How can there be so much of something

You can not hold

Tear it up and start again

Feel the rain.

This time.

For my nephew.

You gave me a bracelet of the solar system

although you don't know you did

of all the planets and their moons

on a string around my wrist

theres little black beads

between each tiny world

each one representing

a million miles

curled around my bones

you've given me responsibility

of the Milky Way

but, believe me,

its a small price to pay

to be able to see you everyday.

I'd carry the weight

of everything that is in space

just to see your face.

You write me love letters in font size 16 because you know I have the worst eyesight known to man

Cut my hair and let me play Solitaire

let me line out my Lanzerote playing cards on your Ikea bedspread

watch me win, watch me lose

clear up my hair clippings and keep them in a box

or throw them out or feed them to the dog.

Let us lie here in my parents’ bed on a Tuesday afternoon

and order Dominoes

Oh! Let’s play dominos

let me line them out on my parents’ bedspread

watch them fall.

Let us fall

onto the icy grass

like green stalagmites

behind my house

Christmas Eve 2002

and let me tell you

that I love you

that I’m excited about all the different things your face can do

that I dreamt about your mother.

Shave my legs in a white tiled bathroom

and look at them in the Cypriot sun

look at my legs shine, look at my skin shine, look at my hair shine

in the Cypriot sun

let me eat biscuits in your bed

and lets not worry about the crumbs.

Let me shave your head

in your kitchen one night

watch the shavings drop onto the clementines

lit by the fluorescent light.

write your number on my left hand

in blue biro and in the morning

you will be there, just digits now

bright and blue and truer than my veins underneath.

Cut my hair and tell me that I’m beautiful

and remind me why every boy I meet will fall

Down at my feet,

Protesting, on his knees,

On country roads or city streets,

That he loves me the most

That he will build towers of affection for me,

Tear his heart out and construct a ladder of love for me,

Climbs rungs of arteries, blood and veins just to shout from the top

That Yes! He does love me the most!

The Canopy

Somewhere in Co.Mayo

about half a mile from Sligo

near those ancient trees

that sing with mystery

the canopy of a petrol station stands alone

its legs, once pearl white
like the teeth of some god, are rusted

but the roof is still midnight blue

it juts, triumphant, out of the harsh, unforgiving land.

now there are no footprints

in the dirt

no human voices

no signs telling the petrol’s worth.

long gone are the pumps

and the hands that worked them.

there is no hint left behind

in the rocky ground

that once a cabin stood there

and money exchanged hands.

underneath

the pipes have long run dry

and above

the only glimpse of sky

is a blue cloud

among the silver.

an inverted sky hanging over

the sharp bushes

and beyond them

earth’s tables,

the brown dirt mountains

and the canopy

eerie-elegant against the Western sky

a sculpture

by an unknown tribe

an alien thing

sheltering the rock pile

and rubbish

left behind.

Never before have you seen such a magnificent bridge burn.
And by your own hand too?
Oh, oh what a fool!

Norwegian Tigers

I want to draw your bones if that’s alright with you

the way they remind me of the woman in the sea

who fell off that boat

somewhere near the North Coast

while her husband, shocked, watched from the deck

as waves like tigers gobbled her up whole 

(they didn’t even spit out her bones)

and I think someone heard the wind whisper,

“tigers will be tigers will be tigers.”

Separate that frame that holds you up

loosen those ribs like tigers’ teeth

oh, I can not help but think of her in the freeze

tigers’ breath on the salty breeze

it took four minutes to find her

but by then she was gone

like smoke from bones 

on a dying fire at dawn.

And it made me think:

one of us is going to have to die first.