Looking Back on Yesterday

You were there,
I recall,
milk shaking to the beat
brown hair held by ribbons
when the rhythms tapped your feet
nine o'clock Friday, schoolhall social evening
talking with your hero from a hundred miles away
you walked a narrow road you surely would be leaving
looking back on yesterday

back in the pinball cafe where you sipped your coca cola
slower than I have ever seen again
life is such a mystery when you refuse to look it over
but life looked over you just like a friend
and there you were with your face painted and smiling
talking with another evening idol of the men
all the ones around you had found that they had found some new messiah
in the fire of a newfound friend


You stopped a while beside the stage,
and looked around in wonder,
I couldn't understand exactly what you meant,
and when you saw me I was screaming words of thunder,
all about a movie and a tent,
the old blue resting place had taken its toll of spaceman,
I had to tell myself there was nothing there for me
old men from the phoney opera house
getting by on buried treasure,
getting high on LSD

I returned again, to the memories friend,
that was in a palace sighing,
I was taken aback when I couldn't hear your name,
a torn worn out uniform hung from a coatstand
where had the nervous traveller from the city in the slacks gone?
where were all the people who took shelter from the rain?
i caught a glimpse of a mortal sin and then I turned my back on
looking back on yesterday

What's it all about anyway?
seems I look from all the awkward angles
was it so contemptible
lying under where the dagger dangled?
and if I could only get to you
I'd take you till tomorrow
and you could see the changes that were coming around yourself
and then before you turned me off
I'd give you something you could borrow
a page, a book, or a library shelf.

The Force of Love (for my mother)

I was so very bound to you, my heart was like a rock, that when gravity was ended was still in the same old spot, and I don't need gravity to speak to me, about the force of the force of love.

Memories of Twinkling Feelings

Brightening spirit within the dancing coloured lights where the words will not reveal their mystery in their memories of twinkling feelings.

A Sports' Jacket on Parnell Street

Sports' jacketed, with the leather patched elbows, looking all set for the academic life, perhaps a little beard and a couple of pens in the upper pocket, it is Parnell Street and the weather is winter, and I catch a glimpse of the past in an unforseen moment. And there is a different person in the garb, and I remember the glasses and the gait and the way I was affected then, and I am looking on the sixties in the numbers of the years. I think of now and I think of then and the space between made greater by the succeeding years, life becoming mistier by the thought and the time and the discomfort of uncertainty.

A Matter of Towns (A Tale of Two Cities)

I walked by the Guinness river
my dream was a ship forever,
taking me slowly to the place
where I was born
and she was right here inside me
using her love to guide me
singing a song about the place
where i belong

I was there in the festival city
drinking in all kinds of beauty
I walked in the gardens
when summer was warm
and I was in love and music
flowed through the streets
and into beauty
and there was my son
and the one o'clock gun

And so I was home in Dublin
so peaceful
with all the loving
living inside me
taking me on
but the summer was turning colder
and I'd grown ten years older
in a couple of moments
in a matter of towns

Truth in the Night and in the Day

Even the night,
has the memory of light,
as the day believes the dark
will return
truth is not given freely
except when truth and I are one.

Summertime Rain

The Summertime has been full of rain,
like a beautiful woman crying,
like a promise broken,
by the one you love.

Eternal Song

I don't know how it happened,
how the picture got in place,
the summertime had faded
while the sun was still engaged
and I saw a new direction
I'd never seen before
and I quickly recognised something
and I wanted it somemore

and I'm closing to the eyes
for the beauty of their soul
it smiles for me familiarly
and it makes me want to know
and I don't know about knowing
but I seek to understand
to sense another feeling
to hold it in my hand

the orphan oriental from the ether of the mind
refuses to be known to me and floats along in time
dancing to the music of the words that know no rhyme

and I'm closing to the eyes
for the beauty of their soul
it smiles for me familiarly
and it makes me want to know
and I don't know about knowing
but I seek to understand
to sense another feeling
to hold it in my hand

there's something in the area
of the riches of the soul
emerging from within silence
when the night has grown old
and it reaches and it touches
and it warms you with a kiss
I think that only lovers
can have recourse to this

and I'm closing to the eyes
for the beauty of their soul
it smiles for me familiarly
and it makes me want to know
and I don't know about knowing
but I seek to understand
to sense another feeling
to hold it in my hand

the universe is changing
in this little world of mine
the stars are rearranging
there is nothing that is defined
I have heard some whispered wisdom
but I've never read the signs

and I'm closing to the eyes
for the beauty of their soul
it smiles for me familiarly
and it makes me want to know
and I don't know about knowing
but I seek to understand
to sense another feeling
to hold it in my hand

Nature, the Devious Beauty

The feeling is: That I've arrived at the place that I might have been at a long time ago, and that things are put in the way, as forms of experience and trials and obstacles, before permission is granted to let us be at ease and at peace with a situation that is pleasing to both ourselves and to the people around us. Nature, you seem to be a devious beauty.

A Particular Universal Truth

Outside of my head a world is in motion, forever suggesting and gazing its gaze, looking for a move to be made, asking its tacit questions, from its conscience to mine, and I can only turn my head inside for so long, away from this particular universal truth.

The House of Mystery

It seemed like a house of mystery, the atmosphere was of death and winter, it made me uncomfortable, I had not to stay, and then I had to think of what might have been going on there, and I am still thinking about it, it seemed to be a place devoid of feeling.........