James Mullaney, 31 december 2011
Horsechestnut trees in my dreams, it seems;
Horsechestnut trees in my dreams.
Lizzie looks sexy in blue denim jeans -
Sexy as pie in those jeans, it seems;
I love her so much in my dreams.
I want to make love to her down by the sea,
I'd love to get down with her right after tea,
I'd like to make love to her, soft as can be -
I'd love life if Lizzie'd love me.
Horsechestnut trees in my dreams, it seems;
Horsechestnut trees in my dreams.
Lizzie's the girl in the onyx and jeans -
Sexy as pie in that onyx, it seems;
I love her so much in my dreams.
James Mullaney, 31 december 2011
Lucinda's eyes like diamonds shone,
And in her slender wrists, the moon;
And in her hammock swayed and sighed
As I drew near, impelled by pride.
Lucinda's eyes like diamonds shone,
All silver in the crescent moon;
As through a buzzing cherub's haze
I pined to snare Lucinda's gaze.
Lucinda's eyes like diamonds shone,
Through whom that sylphid loon the moon
Detained me there in dreams, four days,
Until I'd gleaned their subtle phrase.
Lucinda's eyes like diamonds shone.
But who can fault the aged moon?
For every man who's dreamed and died
Is stirred by Woman's sensual tide.
James Mullaney, 30 december 2011
This antique morning is
The consummation of history.
Shoguns arose, worlds warred,
And numberless processions passed
Like thunder in a bonsai garden
To prepare for this -
My green sencha tea with wedges of lime.
How grave and staggering my debt to the world is!
Centering, I dip my fingers reverently
Into a bamboo bucket
To douse my face with spring water.
I marvel that the sky shivering there
Is a blue witness to the direst ordeals
Of countless, faceless rascals and questers
Disinterestedly being us.
James Mullaney, 30 december 2011
While skeptics level magic arts to myth
And syllogism swears the truth it yields
Cauldrons of the cunning brew mandrake pith
And Beltan fires christen barley fields.
The churches in ciites teach father gods -
Men of the cloth solicit banditti.
White-shirted sharpers set casino odds;
Salvation is by select committee.
Then up a quail flutters, harmless as down,
Whose habitat is Peace, and Light, and Fair,
Pleated summer meadows, broad woods of brown -
Hale woods of viceroys in a vibrant air.
At day dusk, all along the river weirs
The Mother Goddess winks, and disappears.
James Mullaney, 30 december 2011
Autumn in Niagara Falls, spring in Rome,
Hawaii, Amsterdam, Portugal, France -
Yet more romantic still our happy home
Should you consent to dance this spirit-dance.
What argument persuades like tender tears?
What logic can my deep affection prove?
If Heather lends them grace, my earthly years
Will blessed be, by lithesomemost true love.
I see you as a delicate bouquet -
A garden where the lily petals fall.
Eschew the solemn spinster soubriquet
And de rigueur funereal banquet shawl.
But maybe I have overgauged my worth
And must abide in hopes beyond this earth.
James Mullaney, 29 december 2011
For Hansel, Gretel's jazz slayed the dire wood.
Her native valor wowed the Brothers Grimm.
Their jaunt was vexed and fraught, Laura: A lewd
Hag stirred bhang round and round a cauldron's brim.
Hikers we two on a wood hollow path
Have shared a torch that cleft the raven dark.
A shrill hush; weird shadows; a gigue of death;
Flared by the Yggdrasill's numinous bark.
Still, trailways divide and trailmates must part,
So snap off a deadwood djinn and ignite
A blaze that purges this gnarled woodland heart
Where gnomes hunt snails and gremlins spit and bite.
Halved yet whole, our flame does not diminish.
Fancy a fairy tale forest's finish!
James Mullaney, 29 december 2011
Aurora Borealis lights the black hole
Which gnawed me till I watched her in the hallways
Draw circlets round my solitary soul
With twin caducei that tend her always
When suddenly the veil was torn asunder
And sprites and pixies whirled their tambourines
Accompanied by acrimonious thunder
Whose blast caused ten times ten more wondrous scenes.
By what white magic has she conjured bliss
Where beatific starlight never shon?
Dear Jennifer, intently swear I this:
To Thee I pledge my troth till time be done.
So lift a glass to conjugal wassails:
Wee Cupid's portion starts and ends in veils.
James Mullaney, 29 december 2011
You cased not for sickly everlasting
Banks of that noxious industrial creek.
But my blighted bracts, my corymb casting
Seed in abhorrent air, my axis, weak
And sere, you noted. You unsheathed a spade,
Combed my caked roots and laded a bell jar.
A glass vivarium in a cascade -
Sheer mist, sheer light - became my reservoir,
My humic sacrarium. Those vert months
Your care cleansed me like a windswept downpour,
Till my frail corolla bloomed ten millionths
Of an inch from the ley of joy. Therefore,
Seed the stygian banks with pale asphodel
And let pressed poesies be your immortelle.
James Mullaney, 28 december 2011
1.
Virtual Liberty carries the prisoner this festive Fourth
Through littered parks where immigrants barbecue redolent chicken and el maiz;
Across cafe-crowded sidewalks;
Beneath opulent, exploding fireworks by the riverside the balmy evening air,
Where he scans the variegated faces in the throng.
He seeks one character in particular whom he knows he loves.
She's beautiful; the most comely woman he's met
During his incarceration. So he walks,
With the apparent ease of freedom,
Through the circus light of neon in taverns
Where drunken bullies brawl;
Past the fire station, and the Post Office (closed now);
The pool hall; and the endless cavalcade of passersby;
Until, rounding a corner,
He descries the shapely physique,
The flowing auburn mane,
And pink dimpled cheeks of the one he loves,
Stepping out of the light of an old-fashioned ice cream parlour, laughing;
Licking her ice cream cone and holding it
At such an angle to her body
That it cannot drip and stain her white cotton dress.
2.
The desperado follows, swiftly and silently,
His sole aptitude vicarious penance.
He thinks to run up from behind but somehow smothers the impulse.
Only her femininity spurs him on, but how exquisitely!
Suddenly his spirit shrinks and his feet become leaden.
Should he approach, well he knows, the beauty,
Affrighted by his boldness and mistaking it for treachery
Would cry out, and the game would be at an end.
She's done exactly that time and time before
And must again, always.
Because this cityscape, on this Fourth of July, is virtual.
The time is actually midwinter,
And behind the reinforced concrete and steel walls
Of a Federal penitentiary
The only partaker of living bread in this scenario is
The prisoner.
3.
Nations, too, may dote upon ephemera.
When disc jockeys hawk celebrity cookbooks and sex books
And petrochemicals make a lethal hothouse of the sky;
When cabals vote to surveil outspoken dissenters and their friends by satellite;
To subpoena the email of college professors;
To clutter the public discourse with sports statistics and weather forecasts;
And if possible, to trick the trickster-god,
Or bribe him at least,
Or sleep with him -
It -
Witness the curse, witness the curse, coercion.
4.
A rude iron bell shrilly rings, and a rough screw
Pushes a prisoner down through a stony hall
Bootheels clicking endlessly,
To a 6' by 12' cell, and slams the steel gate shut.
Then the prisoner lies down on his pathetic cot,
Grinds his rigid member against the mattress,
And enters upon more vistas of Virtual Liberty.
James Mullaney, 28 december 2011
A sitter of public benches will come to
In nether fog tonight.
He drains heeltap from a beer bottle and lights a nubbin.
Pigeons are roosting but who can say where?
The scabrous skin of this urban autochthon
Bubbles with pustules;
The whiffling fringe swaddles larval eggs.
He rises and declaims: Lines from Agamemnon?
Or the gibberish of dementia praecox?
Earlier while he was foraging for food
In the back of a chop house
A peace officer sauntered up and said,
"Get outta my garbage."
Get outta my garbage.
He reclines.
The hollow heart at the core of the wild nighttime
Beats time in desolate duple measure:
Red light, broken promises;
Green light, a penchant for grandiosity;
And trucks thunder in the mute naught
Like iron stallions,
Or the iambs of Aeschylus. That cordial detritus
Teetering on a sewer lip reads:
It's Our Pleasure To Serve You.
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