On Deserted Farms

by Austin McCarron

On deserted farms
I find the wood on
which stars leap and
wild animals roam.
In darkness I shave
my head and the wind
sleeps and the leaves sing.
In green bush the fire
of my inner being roars.
I lie down to see and the
wolves shine in blindness
at my burning secrets.
Strangely, I drink the
worms in a scalding cup.
The night sky is like skin
of bruises, black as manes.
The morning sun wakes me
with strong and vivid mouth.
I starve my glutinous heart
with crusts of light and my
tongue sips at the blue faces
in the dancing wine.
First the blood on the branches
flows in silent waves and I smell
the suffering of pine, riddled with
spit of swollen glans.
Then the sea rises and covers me
with drunken fists, eternal kisses,
leaving me exposed to history,
the archaeologist of my own ruins.

In Wild Bush

by Austin McCarron

In wild bush,
on gold stones,
on steps of green
and yellow wood,
the lamb grazes with
flesh of sacred curls.

Imperial laughter
attends the meal of love.
The knife healing the
stricken bone is shining
with blazes and powerless
as kings is the
blood eaten of fiery wounds.
The sun, grown weary of
flames, reveals only mystery
and blindness, visions of time.

The Ground of Our City

by Austin McCarron

The ground of our city
is blinder than shadows
of spring, but
richer than sand with eyes.

On the desert river we see
widows of light, on dangerous
journeys, holding plans of dust,
where the music of machines
is greater than clouds of song.

Trampled underfoot, in parks and
spaces, the bones
of servants, slaves of time, hidden
like water in baths of eternal stone.

On this Sunday, walking around the
city coast, the wound of history is dry,
patched up with leaves of blood, the
sun of trances, art of religious voices.
Flanked by possessions, we describe
our emptiness, but
grasp nothing of solitude, selling in the
market our coats of expensive flames.

The sweltering summer contains carvings
of our flesh.  Bitterly, we recover from
the savagery of loss, our mystical ruins,
torn out of
the city like dreams in the womb of life.

The Blindest Ray

by Austin McCarron

 I walk through air
of shapes,
with amputated feet,
and the light in my soul
is open
and the
hair on my face is free.

I comb its breath with
images of song.

The purity of dawn, grey
like a severed heart,
blue
like a mother of dreams,
trusting what it sees.

Incomprehensible, I sit down,
hunting for plans to live.
I bubble inside
like water on grass of solitude.

I drink out of machines. I find
a path belonging to dead trees.
I walk
in a garden of trembling stone.
I pass rivers of chaos and dances.
The sun is
a crowd, baked with silent voices.

In between widowed branches,
the city is my childhood, radiant
with feasts of life, bread of water,
food of fish and flames, crushed
like sweet fruit with juices of time.

The Act of Light

by Austin McCarron

Believe me, that’s all I know,
the crime of beards,
marching
through visions
and bowing to the scheme of trains.

Guides appear and the rain is blind.

All night I follow the line, past buildings
and huts,
barns of time,
where giant haystacks of ice blue veins
bleed like types of air.
Temporarily
I beseech the act of light,
on the ground, hiding the birth of voices.

Landscape of Reason

by Austin McCarron

Behind chrome plated forests
there is a stump
of light and bright
is the flame of its inner machine.

Hot as a roast the meat
of its gleaming fist.  On tours of air
the destination silence cherishes.
Its heart trembles like wood.
Plagued by doubt, its greatness of
spirit is revered and its life is a song
poured out of
concrete furnaces like a cast of wires.

The land is sweet, full of religious
smells.  Out of roots of chaos, springs
of water, wearing caps of snow.
On legs of blood
a journey through gates and passes,
where trees
with animal fur over time begin to thaw.