RAVEN

BALCONYTV.COM 5/03/2008
POETRY SEASON
I found my orphaned voice one day,living in the ruins of a house collapsed years ago beneath the weight of what was unspoken. I sculpted diction like pulpfiction and gifted it the colloquial violence of a gun. I lifted glib scriptures from a street preacher's passions to fashion mispelled gospels from its own fears, while the illegible heart left the tracts of its tears untranslated -- but the word got out. No manifesto but the breath til even that goes. See, I misread the writing on the walls that said: A death without joy is a night without stars; and when at last I comprehended I penned this on remnants of night, between pinpoints of light. I misunderstood: people are not killed for what they say, but for its echoes. The roar of distant suns is unheard, yet years after their deaths are we aware of their presence, when it is darkest. No manifesto but the breath til even that goes. We have all misspoken -- testimonies consigned to air are yet tethered to earthly prejudice; word balloons are too leaden too fly and make cartoons of speechless reverence. We have all misspoken, and for it our ends will be identical when the bottom drops out: all swinging our days away on the rope of this life, our inexhaustible diatribes, our inexpressible disbelief choked between lip and lungs and lost forever. No manifesto but the breath til even that goes. But tongues will cleave to language as fire to that which fuels it, until meaning is burned out and nothing more can be said, and history cannot be recited nor repeated; until we are left standing in the ash of voices fallen from a feverish nation with its tongue enflamed. The ash of voices, spiralling down in ever slower revolutions to a day when we have waited in their remains long enough to recognise the virtuosity of their silence; to a day when every song martyred by mouth goes unsung at once, the harmonics of sympathetic strings and crossed wires fading at last to leave empty the contemplative air and room enough to breathe.

http://www.myspace.com/nomanifesto
http://www.myspace.com/dublinpoetry

Tune in again tomorrow!!!

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[ccJoeMurphy]

Just heard you in the patriot bar in Dublin tonight...and have to say you have a presence, and many messages too. I wonder how such a man so gifted in verse, is not listened to more. Thank you for your delivering what others haven't, and cant do. You are in a way a prophet of a modern kind. Best of luck in your journey, and may God continue to bless you.

[shollypop]

rockin...no idea what it was about but loved the sound!

[conchubard]

Excellent Stuff!

[sweeney1965]

spot on... Dublin "Poets" take notes...

[selphiealmasy8]

Fantastic!

[windcu]

great delivery

[rickysbaby]

Bravo.