The Wind Is Isolde

The warden's bewildered, the watchman's amazed
For the gate's standing open, a hole in the haze.
The steps are uncertain, the nighttime is crazed
And the stars burn above us like pinwheels ablaze.
But lanterns hang vacant in streets standing blind.
Though the path is a riddle, there's no need to guess... I'll not leave you behind

The lepers are leaping from tombstones of steel
Chasing rollaway caskets with luminous wheels;
The shadows are frozen, their echoes confined,
Twisted time melts at midnight - Take hold of my hand... I'll not leave you behind

The ponies of plunder are riding on high
As their castaway riders cast stones from the sky.
They're mocking the magpies, who pay it no mind,
But the broncos are bolting - Just cling to my cape... I'll not leave you behind

The bandits are hiding, the leprechaun's lurk
While imbibing dark brews of a hag's handiwork.
They're gulping from goblets that goblins designed

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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The Mighty Eye in a Brief Eclipse of Time

Umpteen billion years
Big Bang, supernova, gas
Brief eclipse of time

Gases swirling, fall
Sun and planets, water, life
Brief eclipse of time

Another billion
goo, amoeba, fishes swim
Brief eclipse of time

Movement, changes, flux
slither, crawl, climb, walk and talk
Brief eclipse of time

Ra, Sol, Helios,
Mithra and the Mighty Eye
Brief eclipse of time

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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Nun in FRiar Small-Bro's Grave... Yard

The midnight clings to dwarfish kings
While robot drones, adorning thrones,
Kneel, bowing to the Old...Guard.
Arrhythmic clocks and wooden box
Grace FRiar Small-Bro's grave...yard.

The diplohacks, in melting wax,
Are swept along, a thriving throng,
Just dying for a life...guard.
And Nun, alone, has beached their bones
In FRiar Small-Bro's grave...yard.

Beyond the streams, a raven screams
At loser fish that swarm and swish;
Nun gently drips her dreams...jarred.
There are no thanks along the banks
Of FRiar Small-Bro's grave...yard.

While FRiar smiles and prowls the aisles
The hierarch obeys his bark;

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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By Now You Have Forgot' (To Whom It May Concern)

Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they crawled (and others that they brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They asked
"How are you feeling? What it is you want, you've got.
You've scrawled behind your calling cards ‘I AM, but you are not',
Though carved beneath the seven seas ‘Salvation can't be bought.
Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.'

"You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

"With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
You lure your legions in harm's way like giant juggernauts.
Like Tweedle Dum your minions come, the sober and the sots,
The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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The Drummer

1
The drummer beats slowly, the drummer beats loud
As he beats of Humanity wrapped in a shroud.
Well he beats of the bone bags Dame Famine's designed
As she ravished and plagued us since dawn of mankind;
And he beats of Lord Boss letting oranges decay
While a child suffers scurvy and passes away;
And he beats of the beasts we've so needlessly slain
And of critters and creatures cast off in distain;
And he beats of combatants who're dying deceived
As the merchants of murder count profits received;
And he beats of the rape and the killing of war
And the mind blinding sorrow we blithely ignore.
He beats and he pounds till our consciences gnaw
And his fingers are battered and bloody and raw
And his hands are all broken and bleeding and raw.
2
The drummer beats slowly, the drummer beats loud
As he beats of abuse that we try to becloud.
Well he beats of the barons and princes and kings

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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The Morning of the Hurricanes

The Horsemen, holding broken reins
The Morning of the Hurricanes,
Sigh 'it's no use, it's all in vain,
The King will soon surrender'

The Bishops weep, the Rook's long gone,
And Pieces, pacing, pale and wan,
Watch Queen be ravaged Pawn by Pawn,
Her Knight dares not defend her

They wonder why they ever came,
They have No One that they can blame,
They have no face, they have no name,
They're black and white, transgender

The feeble minded Cleric clowns,
Mouths hollow hurdy-gurdy sounds,
While Fantom of the Opera frowns,
And follows dazed dissenters

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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Sleepless In Whereis

I'm stealing through a twilit realm, the ancient pale of Whereis,
Passing chambers of an heiress (with no need to feel embarrassed)
Through a magic mystic mirror hanging curtainless.

A glimpse down naked alleyways (denuded by the moon) ex-
poses ghosts in gauzy tunics carving symbols, round and runic,
In distended dingy dungeons of uncertainness.

In misty streets of cobblestone - ancestral avenues -
Patchwork paths consume my shoes (chasing foggy curlicues
Twisting, twirling by in twos, floating anywhere they choose) ,
Leaving smoky residues in the footprints that confuse
Of the threaded wooden sticks that stalk a puppet wandering.

Distilled in drops of fantasy and fading into view
(Twixt the treasures in review, awful Towers peering through
Distant dimness bent askew) , shifting shadows I pursue
(Wearing faces I once knew) , lost - no stars to guide me true -
Midst the visions of the painted past I can't help pondering.

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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Silent City

Deserted streets lie draped in dusk and yarns of yesterday,
with silent sounds no longer heard (though having much to say)
since teeming life, abundant once, surceased and slipped away.

Against a sudden sullen burst (unleashing lashing waves
that washed the Silent City clean with radiance that laves) ,
neath soothing suds so soft and mild, the stony structure braves.

Within the walls, whist buildings, tall... outside the City, dunes...
they mime a soon forgotten tale, once written, carved in runes
on broken skies, like halos hung, reflections of the moon's.

Though churches, mosques and synagogues abide without a bruise
the City's now a sepulcher for Christians, Muslims, Jews -
Cathedrals, Temples, vacant now, enshrine their residues.

A church's Gothic ceilings guard the empty pews below,
and blowing there above the bones, a maiden's blue jabot.
The Saints, in crypts and catacombs grace halos still aglow.

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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Boa's Ark

1. MORNING HAS BROKEN
The men, in lines, tramp two by two (forgetting all the women who,
Preparing for a night of tricks, were painted with their flaming sticks)
And think about the time ahead when they'll be gone, their bodies dead
(Some rotting slow, some mummified) though once they were their mummy's pride.

Attired bright in uniforms, they've strewn their bombs in desert storms -
Like melting sands, the sky deforms with darkness, death - and doomsday swarms
Through ravished lands where fires warm the corpses, cold and puriform.

Their eyes flash forward towards the backs of lucky ones who'll have the knack
Of never being in the way of bursts of bullets as they stray
(Effacing phantoms faraway) but live to die another day.

They're wishing for a foggy morn or best of all to be unborn,
And peering down to mark the sway of wings in webs while spiders prey,
They wonder when their time will come and they can stop their fleeing from
The sights they've seen, the deeds they've done, the life they've lost, the death they've won,
Then muse a while upon the child they killed one day when they went wild,
And when they're finally reconciled with broken bodies stacked and piled,

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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One Way Ships

Flings and wings and rings rejected
Cupid's arrows fly deflected
'It clearly is too late' she signed, 'to love, adore or pay me mind'

Penciled lines drew cruel conclusions
mocking mirror's cracked illusions
Sometimes, in time, I hang awhile, reflected in her parting smile

Drifting wan, below unheeding
worried, wounded suns a' bleeding
Struck dumb by night, no way to say 'Let's sound the stars another way'

Shaking sands frame distant smokestacks
shanty towns, forsaken oak shacks
Pursuing dusk, collapsed and dyed, the docile dolphin deftly stride
beyond behind the ebbing tide, towards One-Way Ships of sunken pride

Gypsy dreamer in denial
Sleep and slumber standing trial

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poem by Terry O'Leary
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