On the Eve of Your Leaving
By Liam McEneaney

Hand in hand we walked, as children,
As though these past fifteen years
Had been bridged by a day.

Time has brushed you with its feathered grace,
And the years have slipped like shadows ‘neath the door.
Time has traced its lines upon your hands.
Hands that guide me now, for once for all,
That guide me now and hold my heart steady.

We sat there atop a roof in Brooklyn,
The lights of Manhattan, precious jewels
Set in the dark velvet band of night.
You asked if I wanted to let my feet hang,
Dangling over the edge of the abyss,
Little knowing I had already plunged
Down into the warm space between your lips,
Down into the warmth of that first kiss.

I slipped into you,
Into your conversation,
As easily as a newborn soul
Slips into its first skin.

You lay on a bench ‘neath the city’s only willow,
Clumsy fingers stroking your sleepy black hair
That spreads like night across the soft heart of my lap
Serving for your pillow.

And I looked up, and through the willow branches,
Past the city lights, to the three lonely stars.
A V of white birds, their soft bellies glowing
Tiny moons floating ghostly in the dark.

A shirt with safety pins trailing down its front
Stairs that trembling fingers climb
To your chin, and holding your cheek
And lips that meet in the fire of moonshine.

I hold your hand, and my heart beats faster,
For now you must leave, though I know I’m not ready.
So I hold your hand longer, just one heartbeat longer.
Your hand on my heart, now hold my heart steady.

I hope that California holds
Whatever you were looking for,
And I hope that California knows
The peace that you were seeking
And I hope that when you find these things,
You bring them home to me.

The Unseen Whip
by Liam McEneaney

A black horde descends upon a sharp rocky shore,
Shoes shuffling, torn and jagged upon the terrain
Of dull teeth grinding against their ragged soles.
An empty, hungry sea awaits their return,
This shambling mass, heads down and eyes averted,
And across their dark and dirty backs, deep red stripes,
Across scarred and searing skin, the tattoo of an impatient master
Whose dark hand holds an unseen whip.

A soldier sits, arms folded, wrapped in grey-green fatigues,
Head down, fast asleep, body rocking in the tunnel,
White lights streaking across his face,
As this engine hurtles towards an unknown end point,
Its only destination to stop.

A teetering slope of stone, carved by winds from the sea,
And near fractured by the thunder-crack,
White wounds tearing across a thin black sky.
And upon this impress of stone, an anchor cradled,
Bearing mute witness to this starving, stumbling multitude.
No bleak iron chains resting heavy on their hands,
Nor shackles to bind or cripple their feet,
Yet still they lurch under the cold steel of the fear
That to slow their pace, or turn aside
May bring upon their thin and disfigured backs,
Shivering exposed to the bleak rain,
The sharp snap and drawn blood
Of a dark hand holding this unseen whip.

Clad head-to-toe in black cloth,
Body wrapped in a dark iron
And only a dirty white collar
To distinguish him from thief,
Or assassin, he kneels
At a glowing golden altar
His hands stained with the green
Smears of a god who has visited
And on visiting, in answer to a prayer,
Has left garbage.
And his body hurtles through a tunnel
Dark and endless, quaking and shivering
Sweating feverish, teeth grinding,
He tears at his robe,
His body eating itself with a need
And his eyes roll back in his head
As his head whips from side to side
As his blood boils in his veins
As his nails rip at his flesh
And his jaw grinds and grinds and grinds
Until the pain of want is so great
He can only nod agreement
To the voice commanding with a deep thunder roll,
Eyes unseeing through a thin white film
Of tears.

March they now into the ravenous belly
Of a dragon-prowed slave ship, into the cells and holds
They will sweat with disease, and burn with a desire
To taste the sweet breath of a green summer evening,
On a wet grassy field, ‘neath a sheltering tree,
And the stars are blinking, old and wise,
As they lay, cramped and starved and shivering, they wait
For the soul-eaters, whose stomachs grow fatter yet never full.
And they eyes roll like cattle, and they whine like penned dogs,
Though there is no collar to choke them, nor fences to hold.
Only the cages of thin sharp wire ringing their minds
And tearing across their backs, racing from the clutch
Of a dark hand holding this unseen whip.

Trees of bare-bone brown framing fields of fire, staccato
bursts of light from a dark desert town ringed
in tight circles of barbed wire - death drone
of grey metal raining down
fills the empty spaces 'neath the sky,
ragged wounds in the earth
where they buried their dead.
Death rains like tears from an empty
eye and - torn by the jagged rain
from a cloudless sky - her mouth hanging open
like a dark casket door, her body baby-cradled in her father’s
arms there, laid upon the splintered floor, trembling hands
hold her head as blood fights lungs for empty air
coughing twice as if taken ill
coughing twice then lying still.

Blood trickles in a thin line from her lip
Scars running from this unseen whip

And On this Spot, May only Lilies Grow . . .

I am old now, and I am grown old.
My teeth have fallen,
My hair has greyed and drifted
From this body, this worthless bag of flesh.
And my heart beats slower,
And my breathing grows shallow,
And shadows slip gently over my eyes,
Silk black veils with layers softly shifted.
And soon there shall be nothing for me,
Nothing for me but the quiet cold,
And an endless reflection on this life
This wraithlike, clinging subsistence.

Now they slip, these silken shadows slip,
For there is no brave or shining dawn.
Nor knight on horse as white as Northern winters.
None but the solid splinters
Of sunlight piercing the morning veil and lancing upon
A doomed and ghostly ship,
Tearing the purple velvet curtain of mist.
There will be no dew-speckled petal
Opening to greet the day, to be sun-kissed
To grasp for a warmth just beyond reach.
Only the cries of the gulls above these waves
That shine with the cold of black cannon metal
Thundering fire upon a distant beach,
Firing Thunder with a ghostly roar
Then breaks upon the rocky shore
Serving sailors for their graves.

Two faint outlines of souls standing,
Dancing in my mind’s inward eye
As a silk voice sings stardust.
Her head dips and swoons, landing
On my shoulder in love’s rapture and I,
On hers in loneliness, in pride, in lust.

Last I saw her, fingers slender
Tips of fingers, tips of fingers.
Calloused and rough-hewn tips
Patterns tracing patterns upon flesh tender.

The first prison is the heart
From whose fast rooms
And from whose glass bars
Men may gain no escape
From the touch of her – tips of fingers
The touch of her kiss in fingertips.
Tracing along her arms,
The scent of roses lingers
And the mark of a stranger's lips -
- tips of fingers -
- across my cheek -
Soft and cool.

This year has approached its autumn, as have I,
I grow old, for old I have always been.
As now the countryside loses color,
So now do my memories
And the dead and the dancing of the brown leaves
As they spin slowly to rest under dying trees.

Back I ride on that acrid wind,
To that long-remembered summer,
In the dirty arid desert of our youth.
Back in the heat that drained us,
When the grime clung to our bodies
And coated us as a second skin.

And should we run, if we should run
Our bodies tracing circles
In the distant desert sun.

Within the dark curtain of dust, a shape uncoiling,
The sand-borne phoenix, pure white feathers unroll,
Claws of diamond digging into inches of coal,
Black broken nest and ruby eyes boiling.

And she stands. And she stands,
Rivers of moonlight
Running through her hands,
Her eyes, virgin islands of white
Untouched sands.

There is a city of towering spires that, seen afar,
Burns with an inward, godly fire -
Diamonds shining in shadow walls,
And though it may never be approached
Along the same path once it has been departed,
Still it calls fools such as I am.


My voice grows hoarse, faint, and laced with bitter poisons,
And my eyes fade to a darkness that sees only ahead,
Through the slight hazy shrouds, through the dark fluttering veils,
And a small smile cracks these papery lips.

There came a letter today from a dark and distant land
Edged by a bottomless sorrowful sea
In whose depths lie the timber-rotted remains
Of a once-proud galleon, remnant of an age gone by –
A figurehead, spent and skeletal, and left to lie
Astride a mistress whose name has peeled into paint and stains,
Whose crew has faded, lost, into the oblivion of memory,
Now become a lightless husk, a splintered, rotted carcass,
Abandoned to a callous fate.
A letter written in a familiar hand,
Post-marked Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

A photograph, beaming, her face mirrored
In the small blond cherub held
As once I was
In her warm and loving arms.
Arms that now press thin,
Skin tight over bone.
Pale pale silk draped over bone.
And a trembling piece of paper slips
Through anxious ash-burned fingertips.

Brittle leaves of Autumn
Ride a bitter November breeze
Settling 'neath the branches
Of grey, unbending trees.

And if we should fly, if we should fly
Into the silver sheets of sadness
Of a pale and snowy sky.
A sad and sourceless glow reflected
In a ruby-crusted eye.

As thin as air, he slinks smoke-like, drifting down these yards
Eyes sunken, grave-shaded shadows set in skull of pure white lead,
Body black and draped in silk, mouth shining in sharp daggers
Fashioned from the moonlight's silver shards.
To drift down the sidewalk, to now alight
Upon the ragged beggar who staggers
And falls into the peaceful still of midnight.
As clouds slumber, drifting slowly overhead.

And where is the Death of flaming sword
Atop a milk-white steed of regal dignity,
In his mad blood-lust storming castle keeps?
And who is this damned-by-God coward who would steal
Into this room in the dark of night
And rob a woman as she sleeps?

Love erodes, as do the desert’s fortress cliffs,
Slipping through the clumsy fingers of God's hand,
Black rock crumbling into fine white sand.
White as the walls of those cities
Built upon a foundation of soft memories,
Whose solid outlines through the eons fade,
‘Till all is blurred into blameless past.
A distant desert mirage so cruel
A distant shining precious jewel,
A diamond set in a wall of shade,
That seen close-to is worthless glass,
Now collapsing, as all that’s desiccant must,
Into a silver cascade of stardust.

And my hands tremble upon the knob of the door,
And nerveless fingers grasp and turn,
And then - I find her, lying in state,
And these long-dormant passions,
As dying embers of coal once fanned will burn.
And my face, how it has changed,
The scars now faded and folded into wrinkles
And laugh-lines, and crow’s feet.
And there is a machine that rasps
And breathes in as she smiles upon seeing me.

And if I am met upon this passing with faceless scorn,
For the baubles I have gived,
If my tomb lies cold and grey and unmourned,
I can say at least I still have lived.

Now the moon is a pale and bone-white hearse,
Pulled by eight fine horses afire
With an incandescent flame that may neither burn nor purge.
And the wind that whistles through the reeds to the lonely shore,
Joins the screaming of the gulls and the lilies’ scent
And the ocean's crashing cannon roar
And song of the sparrow, and the crickets' choir
Blend into an ancient dirge;
A somber epic of lament,
A canticle of solemn verse.

In this dark and unfurnished cell
Among the fossils, among the thin layers of dust;
A man who has prayed he might find repentance,
Who has begged absolution
At the feet of the unyielding priest,
In this last, lonely prison
From whose fast rooms
And from whose glass bars
He may know only one escape,
Down a dark path of pain and broken promises,
At whose final landing lies at last,
A lonely end to this solitary sentence.

With these wings to graze
The skins of the Earth.
With these wings to trace
Patterns in the sky.
Who shall weep for me when I'm gone?
Who shall burn my ship in the Northern dawn?
And send it drifting on forever more?
To crash upon a distant, rocky shore?

And I peer through the dust and the remains
Of a near-empty apartment sealed as a tomb,
Through the streaked and starry window
And the reflection of an old man's eye
Bloodshot and afraid to die.

UNTITLED SPRING POEM

Follow a lane, through the brush and trees'
Green and growing branches, with the humid breeze.
Now find this cabin built of wood
In the grave of a former holy grove
Where once a cove of oak trees stood.

Around, in a grass-and-flower-strewn clearing,
Where once there had been no human hearing,
The birds singing as through green leaves they fly,
To hanging branches dangling low
Outside the window of the bedroom where we lie.

Our cabin is three rooms, six windows made of glass,
Walls of timber from the neighboring pass.
And standing guard over my only treasure - She
Who makes a prince of a soul this poor -
There stands a door that was once an old oak tree.

The air is cotton-thick, and soon swells damp.
She crosses the room to light a lamp
As the sun fades into a dark and thwarted moon.
Now comes an angry rumbling just beyond hearing,
To cleave the clearing; a storm coming soon.

Now arrives a soft, persistent rain,
Tip-tip-tapping with its fingernail upon the pane.
And knocking upon the cabin door;
That stalwart knight made of massive wood,
Of oak that once stood guard over the forest floor.

The air turns thicker, starts to swelter,
Birds quit singing, fly to shelter,
The wind through the hissing forest prowls
Like a hungry wolf on its hunting paws,
Throws open its foaming jaws - and howls.

We huddle beneath this blanket hand in hand,
As the rain's angry fists pound the land.
Glass windows with the wind are humming,
And singing with a scared refrain.
The tattoo of the rain on the wood roof drumming.

The window glass screams as it takes a lashing
From angry leaves sharp and slashing.
The loud guns of thunder with a smoking crack,
The loud guns of thunder with a god's light flashing
A pine tree crashing to die upon its back.

And in reply, the wind gives a raging moan,
Trees scratch with bare branches of bone,
Like demons to drag us to the depths of hell.
Demons with clashing, desperate hands,
But still the oak door stands - a lone and lonely sentinel.

Pine sap flows into the ground like blood,
Angry fists punching into the mud.
And grab these wooden walls, begin to shaking,
Now come to collect what they have lost,
Thunder tossed will now be taking.

The drumming and the thunder and the wind a' shrieking,
And in this sanctuary no space for speaking.
These walls wrenched by mighty hands.
But through this bloody banshee call,
And through it all, and through it all, the oak door stands.

And we, under our blanket, sit afraid,
Until the howls and the drumming and the fury fade,
Until a ray of sun peeks through the glass,
And the wind's fierce pounding fades to patter
And the birds chatter as they, flitting, pass.

This is your poem

This is your poem,
I have nothing else to give you.

And maybe some day someone will
Wonder who you were,
That a base and homely poet
Sang your beauty to the sky
And grabbed this burning sphere
To place it on a pedestal.

And I never asked you
To love me
But only accept me
With the grace
That frames every line
Of your face
From which I have fallen
So many times.

And so this will be your poem,
The poem that describes
In the richest, pulpiest terms
The sapphire jewel that burns
Behind your eyes,
And your laugh which, it would seem,
Is a song heard once
In a half-remembered dream.

You are the first warm day of Spring
And the last warm day of Autumn.

You are the cool mountain breeze
That brushes the cheek
As it comes winding

Down through the trees,
Along a meandering creek
Through the green valley bottom.

And your face
Is the warm breath of the morning sun
Carving a perfect moment of fire
In the diamond surface of the day.

And this is the poem that tells you
Arise! O, Sun,
For this is light and you are its champion.
Your arising to be a rare miracle
Like the shifting of the tides,
Or the opening of a petal
Along whose lip runs
One perfect drop
Of dew
- You.

And your eyes are two cathedral windows
Stretching high to grab the greater Glory
And they stand as stained glass,
Coloring and reshaping all that pass through them
Into beautiful new patterns
Playing softly on my skin.

I can only drop hints, and I only drop hints
On your pillow like hotel mints.

So I wrote you a poem -
To tell you that your presence in a room
Leaves me twisted and tongue-tied
My breath caught somewhere between my chest
And my voice
Until all I can do is nod.

And these words are scratches,
Nothing more than lines
From a pen.

Or maybe they will work together to be
A monument to eternal beauty.
And maybe someday in the far future
When all we are
And all we have ever been
Will be as lost and forgotten
As that half-buried dream,
There will be a yellow scrap of paper
Floating on the half-breath of evening,
Over scratched streets paved with gravestones,
And in a long-dead language
There will be these words:

"This is your poem,
I have nothing else to give you,
Certainly nothing as great as the gift
I receive
Every time you turn your smile to me."

So please take this poem
For you have written it
Through my pen,
In that moment when
My heart stopped beating
And you called my name to me.

dry-diving (a long and lonesome goodbye)

river run-down dusty
whipping winds of cloud and slips
into a stream of faded memory
pirates pilot old ghost ships

down the cracked and muddy mouth
dead trees in a skull-head grin
pale misty memories floating south
the ghosts of where we've been

the actor's headshot, it grows older
'til his sister, she comes crying
running naked no one told her
they were goin' out dry-diving

thirty years still in her teens
sitting smoking in the cellar
plastic crowns for self-appointed queens
pray to themselves no one'll tell her

that the coronation's cancelled
and the orchestra's gone home
no payoffs need be handled
no one sits waiting by the phone

clock runs backwards, it's been tainted
scrapes to get by; it's just surviving
and drinks until it's fainted
off the wall and dies dry-diving

the mad minister is preaching
on all the souls that he could save
but the sinners he's been reaching
already live down in their grave

the lookout in the crow's nest
working on his midnight tan
grabs a shooting star and says
'are you looking for me, man?'

but the star just burns his fingers
and leaves the lookout sighing
the glowing memory lingers
of the night they spent dry-diving

dragon comes a' courtin'
dancin' to the bossa nova
like the pulp artist's rendition
of dime novel casanova

the jester's in the corner
with the bearers and sedan
the purple velvet to adorn her
clenched crumpled in his hand

while the jester he lies weeping
for a love who's late arriving
he doesn't know she's still home sleeping
she's dreaming of dry-diving

now the river run-down rusty
flows out into an ocean
of memories rank and musty
stinkin' of embalming lotion

and the passengers and crews
in the rotted stateroom for a ball
say there's nothing left to lose
when you got nothing left at all

the sky burns red as the sun sets
down over the last horizon
watch our fadin' silhouettes
as from the deck we go dry-diving

FOOTNOTES FROM A LOST AND WANDERING TRIBE
Parts I & 2

I - Pilgrimage
That's where they all end up you know,
the dreamers and the drifters
and the penny-ante grifters,
Vegas:
city of sun-baked sin
ghosts glossed over with Disney frosting
and a yellow smiley-face veneer

He rode in his drop-top El Dorado
Cigarette ash floating back into the air
Lighter glow reflecting in his thirty dollar Ray Bans
Like twin suns baking the Nevada sands
Beating his hand to a Bon Jovi song
On the only good radio station for miles around
Wondering how he became that classic rock dinosaur
Singing along to the South Jersey sound.
She was riding shotgun shooting her mouth off
Between healthy portions of nail and gloss
And the wind steamed her seat shaking her ass.

There's a shining city, a diamond zirconium
Set in the rusty gold-tinted brass
Of the Nevada desert sands,
A jewel made of glass
That refracts and reflects like the devil's prism-cut claw,
Emerging from his flame-baked, sand-crusted,
Velvet 'till it cuts your face
So sharp and so quick you only feel the bleeding
On your way home
Paw.
Like a diamond-set fang in a used-car dealer's
Polyester-and-pleather smile,
Purring an ermine "Welcom home!"
The dark priest who absolves himself as he
Cuts your throat reluctantly.

They hit the Strip, of course,
Talking nostalgically of Frankie and Dino
Of mobsters and whores,
Of Diamond Jim Kelly - wish you were here -
And they look at the spandex-stretched tourists
With their children in undertow,
And they can't help but sneer
As they bask in the second-hand glow
Of neon-baked memories.

And now they've set the stage,
She in her alcoholic, irony-grey gauze,
Peering through eyes of veiny red,
Ballerina tip-toeing to a tune just inside her ear
Around his pornographic temper
That stumbles through pot smoke likea
Minotaur through a maze
Until it finds the golden grail of rage -
Five purple fingers against the pale of her arms
Five bruises blossom -
Linked to her childhood through two
Gold leaf foil-flavored brass rings.

II - Worship at the Mecca Room
A lost little boy peers from within bleary brown eyes
Taking in the stemware clink
And Virginia soil stink of the Texans and their
Dropout mistresses with the bleached sprayed-high-stiff hair.
Clinging to the mic
As he launches into his world-weary and wise
Retired drama queen routine, and wonders
If anyone anywhere with forty miles
Cares anymore anyway.
Selling his songs like an indicted preacher
Still tries to sell afterlife insurance,
Songs that once pulsed to the beat of his soul
And made women slow-dance
Their fingers through his hair
In their cream-colored silk fantasies.

And his hollow eyes peer through the nicotine curtains
And yellow-gelled columns of smoke
Spying the irony-eyed couple at table twenty-nine
Smirking as he spoke.
She in her frosted hair and sneering gloss.

Behind her battleship-blue steel marble eyes,
Behind her pale white makeup and space-black bangs
Behind the sarcastic smirk set in ivory fangs,
Swoons a little girl seduced.

What can the eyeless black Ray Bans do
But laugh as she sets off for
A green room autograph.
And he holds her hand like a delicate toy,
The porcelain cool he can never enjoy
And he takes her
He takes her future
(From what horrible fate she doesn't even know
Finding no illumination in the afterglow)
He takes her hand -
From smile to hand to pelvis, she doesn't care to remember
That her laugh shimmered like a mirage in the desert
Forever far off, taunting with possibilities.

And the metal-bite-cool of the motel air conditioning
From the dust and the smoke and the lights
And the feel of freedom as it blows through her hair.
Trailing the ashes from the fire
Of the woman she once was.