Poems that I love

if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. if you’re going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. go all the way. it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine. if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. do it, do it, do it. do it. all the way all the way. you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, its the only good fight there is. – Charles Bukowski

Sometimes I wish Who I was Was not What I did Did never And was also not But that’s not right To make it disappear I shift the story Slightly skewed The end is wrong It doesn’t fit It cannot ever end at all I craft my tale For a dark winter’s night When nothing’s right That‘s also wrong She says she wishes She was 18 I say 60 We only dream She says  Slight is slight I say  Dark is dark And night is night Neither’s right Who we were Is not who we are Right now Ken Ireland

by Bob Dylan for Rebecca del Rio Sing of the mountains and the deep dark sea Sing of the lakes and the nymphs of the forest Sing your hearts out, all your women of the chorus Sing of honor and fate and glory be Mother of Muses, sing for me Mother of Muses, sing for my heart Sing of a love too soon to depart Sing of the heroes who stood alone Whose names are engraved on tablets of stone Who struggled with pain so the world could go free Mother of Muses, sing for me Sing of Sherman, Montgomery, and Scott And of Zhukov, and Patton, and the battles they fought Who cleared the path for Presley to sing Who carved the path for Martin Luther King Who did what they did and they went on their way Man, I could tell their stories all day By Tony Attwood  I'm falling in love with Calliope She don't belong to anyone, why not give her to me? She's speaking to me, speaking with her eyes I've grown so tired of chasing lies Mother of Muses, wherever you are I've already outlived my l

This world is no match for your Love Being away from you Is death aiming to take my soul away My heart, so precious I won’t trade for a hundred thousand souls Your one smile, takes it for free Hafiz, it may be that you’ve just poured a toast that will wash love clean of all its pictures. ~ Hafiz

By Peter Steele, S.J. Beaten, still breathing, as awkward as a dog, He swags across the donkey, unaware Of who’s beside them, footsore in the slog Uphill for shelter and a kind of care.   Under the bloody bandages, some oil Soothes where wine has washed away the dirt To leave him clean and mortal. Alien soil, Continuing fear, is mingling hope with hurt.   Downslope, the priest is hustling on his way, Clean as a whistle, and the levite too, Who thought that pausing meant the devil to pay, And all the hours awarded them too few.   By the plodding beast, wordless and out of time, The stranger braces once more for the climb.

Father Nolan’s baritone would have made a camel blush But he launched into “Tantum Ergo” With the enthusiasm of an Irish barroom brawl. He was tone deaf  Bringing the mystery of all things transcendent Down to earth where mere mortals can fight about them. Brawls with priests in attendance are nothing new And not usually a laughing matter. Choirmaster trains with a whip No mercy for wayward lads. Nolan was deadly serious. I was once on his list. Aquinas tried to complete the work Of Nicaea. Truly god is truly god. True means true. It means When you bite the coin It cracks your teeth. Breath that rattles straw. More straw please.

  A retreat Chapbook Rohatsu, 2022 Ken Ireland Pilgrim's Progress In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline Why Did Bodhidharma Kick Up His Heels? In defense of really bad poetry This One Precious Human Life A Dream Drape All the Mirrors Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's) by Lucille Clifton; translation, Ken Ireland   Outside My Window Pilgrim's Progress Will my heart ever warm to these foreign gods? No matter that we shaved our heads for a while. No matter that we wore socks that felt more like gloves than the fingerless mittens that mother stuffed our hands into when the pond froze over. There is still some mystery the heart cannot speak.   Sometimes I feel as if I've been snowed into that one room school my grandpa talked of, huddled around the stove, a gang of kids jostling for attention like best grades, playing with tongue tangled words in a Sanskrit yeshiva, parsing phrases as cold as Tibetan snow. I aim for the precision of the shovel I used to dig out the fami