GALWAY TRAIN WINDOW GIRL (Collaboration with Trouble_Loves_Me)

i.  

In Coole Park, Yeats pen hangs from bough  
Fountains spiral circled words in walled garden  
Seen only by repect’ers of language magnitude.  
 
Lilting breeze teases rose petals into curled leafs  
Page upon page of love letters never to be written.  
Stems arched, bravely keeping beauty afloat.  
 
Through threads of Roisin Dubh hangover  
Frayed remnants of London Girl relationship  
Held together by barest filament, shivers under  
Ireland’s saddest sun, shimmering for burnt out love:    
Finally to ignite bodies into pyre of ash.  
I shall be glad for the night of prostitutes & drunks.  
 
Walking along dusty path, only twigs for company -  
Two hands entwined cause me to wince  
Sympathetic smiles stretch out to me;  
Can they see something in my eyes?  
 
I remember The Train Window Girl of yesterday  
She causes me to stoop and stop:  
Little black cloud in a dress boarded at Athlone  
Dublin to Galway Express became platform of desire  
Sirens of signals, sweat formed across her lipstick  
As liquefying glass astride luscious mouth,  
Thoughts of her kept me awake in burglars’ hours.  
 
On returning to Galway Bay, decide to return  
My hangover to sender in hallows of The Quays,  
Streams of chilled alcohol run into River Corrib  
A man alone with his thoughts of days of ice.  
 
Casting my net o’er bar dwellers, as a  
Whisky-soaked elderly man sings  
‘My Way’ to himself, for himself.  
 
Then a low flying bomber drops a H Bomb:  
In an alcove, adrift in litany of empty glasses  
Sits The Train Window Girl, lost in depths of a novel.  
 
 
ii.  
 
Rote turn of page an attempted distraction  
thwarted by letters refusing to cohere.  
So much had been riding on that interview.  
Gloom floating low over the river echoing the deception.  
 
‘Hopes Dashes: Galway Girl Returns Home Empty-Handed.’  
Today’s headline fast-forwards to unmet expectations.  
Drowning out the might-have-beens  
I again put glass to lip.  
 
Laughter lands as shrapnel from meandering tourists three pints in.  
Then downed by projectile from nearby song,  
‘...I bit off more than I could chew...’  
Insufficient liquor in the whole of Connacht to numb.  
 
Sensing eyes upon me,  
I abandon page to catch and hold,  
Demure back into book,  
slight curve of mouth indicating anything but.  
 
Sad, stubbled man from the train.  
Those deep stormy eyes, a welcome distraction.  
Gazing downward still,  
sandaled foot outs empty chair in invitation.  
 
iii.  
 
Hell’s bells & buckets of blood  
Eyes of blue pearl shunt me to the chair  
Shovelled coals steam bones to mist.  
How can an encounter so brief,  
(Un)crush butterflies on steel wheels?    
‘Leopold Bloom’ silenced tomb tight.  
 
Cigarette smoke lisps thru hair tendrils.  
Voice wounded by alcohol blade, and too  
Many late night conversations with myself  
Opened by Rosaleen’s soft speech, tender  
As ribbons from typewriter of blind poet.  
 
She speaks, biting paroxysms of stalest air  
Dreams felled by shotguns, swung from the hip.  
Lonesome kayaker paddles against rip tide  
Lovers writhe on sun drenched wetness of bank.  
 
In eye blink, my Romany ancestors  
Punch drunk me back into their graves.  
Hand painted caravans carrying generations  
Dusty tracks to destinations marked by stars  
Led by horses who wearily read sky as braille.  
 
Idly, under séance of memories, recite words  
From my notebook lying restless in suburbia:  
 
'Soar as the Redshank, towards as many suns  
As your heart can carefully hold  
Remain as the Romany  
True to yourself.'  
 
Quietude embraces the sudden chill  
Movements of a brittle foetus  
Nest in haunting hawthorn.  
 
Embryonic tears birth on cheek bone  
Well of amniotic swell mascara’ed  
All sufferance, pain cupped in wells of palms  
Painted nails cover(t) canvas of all Rosaleen has ever been.  
 
Breeze burrs to spread blouse buttons open  
Mountain wind 'Clair de Lune' breathless  
Trembles from cleavage to open leg crevice  
Salt of her mouth cleanses, neck nape  
Applique of all feminine scents.  
    
There will be time in the morning  
To reassemble compass point  
Right here, right now  
The night belongs to the North.  
 
iv.  
   
Clutching Joyce in one hand,  
a second James takes my side.  
Personal Bloomsday adventure unfolding.  
 
His steady gaze births rain and sun  
as sentiments flow swiftly into chalice ready to receive.  
Outpour pacing the quickened beat of my heart  
his prose spreads as balm across still fresh crevice.  
 
My hand journeys towards dancing lips  
softly tracing back through generations of storytellers.  
Fingers re-enacting the wanderlust  
of the here and now and of those who had come before.  
 
Tongue’s salve to soul transforms to carnal elixir.  
Skins recall old truths while absorbing the new.  
Ensuing cries sent direct to the gods--  
Poseidon, Eros and Helios in unison— then beyond.  
 
Each placing our respective tatters into that infinite space where  
one body ends and the other arches to begin anew.  
Broken bits cradled in sacred hold  
languorously pulverized as flesh meets flesh  
then sent out on the winds.  
Gift of fluids and salts and dust for the divinities,  
Mooring where neither duty nor suns can be counted.  
 
v.  
 
Genuflect under shadow of sun sunken cathedral  
Rosaleen’s eyes slumber under penile head of the dome  
Anticipation of what lies ahead, looking at Galway  
Gutters through her blue dreamer’s eyes.  
 
Arousal smells of an orange left to flay in mid-day blaze -  
Enough juice to satiate most rapacious mouth.  
 
Hands clasped, she plays my knuckle keys  
Whale bone organ, seductress of fingertip painted puissance  
Sea-skin sprays, spumes o’er her marble mantle below.  
Imagination tilts on Atlantic’s hinges  
Sweeping drudgery of egg, bacon, scrabble…  
Into corners of a London kitchen sink.  
 
Conversation carves runes on her temple wall  
Understood by those who linger in libraries, where  
Yearning becomes the sixth & seventh senses.  
 
Air-conditioning wheezes  
Couple in next room argue  
Language of alcohol from pavements  
An alphabetic gang of words.  
 
From behind Rosaleen unbuckles me from denim  
Clit circles lumbar, vulva turns inside-out  
She squeezes and strokes me to cliff edge and back.  
Slowly unpeeling clothes to reveal constellation of skin  
Freckles align to nipples in quiver of arrows  
Falling at her arched body, slitting her quim deeper.  
 
A long finger drenched by her coiled tongue  
Finds a home in every black hole of Rosaleen’s universe,  
Lips entangle until skin raw & bruised  
Drip over jaw bone, slackened by tinges of our taste.  
 
Bouquet of primordial roses thrashed  
To decay in a fuck-storm, a settling crepuscule  
Of entwined vines creeping around the back of the day.  
    
In dawn drenched fields, Somnus cradles  
Woken by bells, tittle-tattle of tourists:  
Where her head lay, softly forming creases in pillow  
Sits, as butterfly wings, a crumpled note.  
 
vi.  
 
Spent, body recovering slowly from the épuise of the night.  
Soul marvels at ability to take only flesh for truth.  
Head attempts the untangling of legs from soaked sheets from emotions from hair.  
In unison, rolling gently to the floor, I leave Romany god to his slumber.  
 
Recomposing self and wardrobe from every part of this dark room,  
breathing in deeply the mingled musk permeating each corner,  
I fight desire to return and recommence.  
Body memory pulls hard at hidden muscles,  
contractions transporting and pulling me back towards vacated port.  
 
Picking up borrowed quill on even further borrowed time,  
I attempt ink worthy of last nights’ gift.  
Queue assist from delayed collation of text from yesterday’s novel:  
 
‘Dearest James,  
I ran into myself thinking  
I was escaping with you.  
You were a cairn leading home.  
May I also be even the smallest of  
Galway’s stones  
in your own way finding.        
-R., The Train Window Girl’  
 
Replacing lid, I crease paper consummately,  
as the night had enfolded me.  
Stealing silently back into room,  
I gaze down one last time,  
marveling at sleep’s ability to turn even thunder calm.  
I inhale him in along with the truth of the night,  
atomizing both into every cell.  
 
Exhaling door closed behind me,  
the cool familiar mist of my childhood embraces me  
in salty retrouvailles.