Metamorphism the Fifth Cycle
By Sean Farragher

The earth grew its own heart.
Great lizards walk the Amazon.
Photographs of infinite beasts
shift shoulders, fall, freeze with
cold boulders made into shells.

The history of the earth is grand.
There is nothing more to discern
except what cannot be known
when the next storm rides
with Poseidon out of the Irish glade
over the cobble stones into fame.

The Fifth cycle repeats when
the earth melts as it did four
times four, such a discontinuity
can only reveal as human sacrifice
set to the top of Mayan pyramids.

We not only pray to fire, storm,
death, corn and suicide. We laugh when
we dream that peaceful end.

Come with me lads and lasses
to an old fashioned Irish wake.

Trapped by the humor of it all
we steal the imagery to welcome
another fall from grace. Dear
mother humping serpent let's worship
with our tongues and spits
and all those darker moves
that sets you on the game.
Do not refuse the spoils of war.


2.
Ireland ran away. It passed out
the historical tree. It was ground
into the drifting mud of New Zealand
huts bound to the beach. It was
Wooden taverns strung as jewels
in Boston and New York for music
to rip away at backbone
replaced with every curse
as Jesus walked in Tuam
Streets carrying his eyes and
hands in a bag. He was ready
to make beautiful what was old,
but the sad sack invisible
to the guardians of the pub.
They barred the door to sandals
stained brilliant green by his
pilgrimage from Zion to Erin.

These awful beasts revived
canyons driven with blood,
as they genuflect to worship
that first beast with razor teeth.

We have had the past and now
that new cycle will open its books.

The fifth Universe, created from song
drifted down the future highway
as I rubbed hands on a lass, --

I will alter time in this confused
travelogue. Nothing was what it seemed.

The lass speaks:

“Beauty is temporary,” she said.
“I will grow old with mountains
driven through my loins.

The great serpent shifts
thigh from cocks to breast –

She cannot hear her testimony.
There was no sound left alive.

The green door to the pub
opens for them. He squeezes
her ass, and runs to the bar
while she sits calm in the Loo
racing the days left behind
into future tense, as her pubis
trembles when Mass bells ring.
When will she be stroked by belief?
Frozen to the old earth melted
into streams of imaginary lovers
who cannot find her heart at all.

Is that the life we know being
born again when nothing heals?

Am I so crude when I touch
my vulva to clean it, I shift
and cannot escape the pull
of fingers or the effort dug
into the mighty fortress
of our God, so help me Mary?

We do piss away our memories.
How does that past drip down
on our arms and into the crowd?
Let the rabble hear the truth.

Outside, the lads mingle
with old men drunk in corners.

“What truth is that a dark man
says,” his eyes closed by fishing
too long on the Irish China Sea.

Terra, born of God’s boredom
draws its ancient words from broken
sticks, cheery pits and gory tales
drawn in blood from every woman
to keep man alive and our sexy
God, drunk on mother’s milk,
races up the beanstalk with Jack
to find that heaven has been replaced
by row houses in Alphabet city
and Vegas strippers with cups of coins
driven like a great beast born
out of misery and into a peculiar
paradise where pain and pleasure
have the same reward,-- so help me
God I am heartily sorry for having
offended thee and I detest the loss of
privilege and the mercy of Christ the Jew.

Great beasts will be born again.
This becomes the fifth cycle of the earth
Ireland will be more beautiful, and
the women and men more handsome
than the newts and frogs and puppy dog
tails beating their meat on a plastic street.

Ireland's long gone; Liffey and Shannon
held back by a lonely Yeats.
Mother warmed the rashers for breakfast.
My Irish lady dressed in French silk stood high
watching the descent of men--
beasts and serpents dressed in Roman robes.
Nothing we do will change the history of Adam,
Eve and the fall. Apples grow out of grace and back again.
No one remembers Dublin, Cork and Belfast
famous names left behind to hide their Furies from the Black and Tans.



XXXX first draft 1/29/06