Best Rosemarie Poems
THE MAD SECRETARY
Hunched over the computer, I am mystical,
With mental white gloves and a karate belt -
A daylight cursor, but on my bicycle,
A word and energy transformer, a flickering Celt.
Such metaphysics I can make into sensation,
Turned into binary formulae by the boss,
My passion is for punctuation-
But the lingua franca doesn’t give a toss.
I see the point. I accommodate the pause.
I rinse the cups and make the coffee sweet,
I am saving myself for this man of laws,
Of Brehon provenance, who will entreat
Me to be his love, his partner and co-genitor,
Of a life graph, where he can trust the monitor.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
WOMAN WRITER
If interviewed on the subject of the sonnet
What man has brought me endless cups of tea?
They’ll say I’ve got a Queen Bee in my bonnet
The male groupies will not type my poems for me.
What golden mother lives without inspiration?
What sister can be truly herself, and tackle
The canon in the patriarchal cold, the purgation
Of miles of libraries with the truth a hackle?
The worst thing is that there’s no male muse -
I don’t feel the marginalisation or the neglect
Quite as much as the possibility I might lose
The reader in the absence of his call-collect -
And I must be very careful with my man -
I lose a husband if I kiss a fan.
by Rosemarie Rowley
DEMETER AT THE CHINESE OPERA
So, I invited you to the Chinese Opera impulsively
Thinking of masks and dragons and triumphant mystery
I though it was time we threw off our coats
Of mourning, you for your daughter
Stopping one night, on the way home from a party,
So randomly, cruelly, killed by the monster
Who has slain more than all the century’s wars
And my private sorrow for which there is no funeral.
I remember your straying husband also
Loved the Chinese Opera. What will happen
If we all meet between the acts?
Surely forgiveness will come like snow on the mountain
And we will live in a harmony that can never be suppressed
In a slow majestic music that takes account of grief.
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
THE TEMPLE PROSTITUTE
The God came to me in the guise of a stranger
His gold body scent was of great sublimity
His arms were marble pillars, and his embrace
Melted the whole world on my belly.
He tuned me to the refinement of my own nature -
Pitched me so exquisitely I fell from heaven -
Totally vanquished, till I remembered
All there was of paradise, and the number seven.
He has the unfolding of centuries since
To worship me as a goddess divine,
But they couldn’t build churches fast enough
To deny our union in the votive shrine.
The salt of humble pilgrims for my wantonness
I, who had everything but blessedness.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
FOR MARY MAGDALENE
Between necessity and freedom I was crucified
Perceiving Himself endlessly on the cross
Yet aware, as an onlooker, petrified
My vision that never was, would be His loss.
I mimed too, as they hammered in the nails
Once more assuaging myself in His deep tears
Once more my heart rallying where my speech fails
To give His lips the vinegar it fears.
Sun eclipsed, I dallied with the vision of day,
A multi-chromed banner the old enemy was twisting,
Till I could no longer read in stone and clay,
My flower-head lopped, topped to the moment’s listing -
I shone for Him like a speck in the glory of the sunrise
Waiting for twilight, the beauty of the stars’ surprise.
by Rosemarie Rowley
from IN MEMORY OF HER, Dublin 2008
I can't unthink about you.
I can't unfeel your love.
I can't unremember that Precious day.
I can't unknow your love.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't unsee your beauty.
I can't unshare your truth.
I can't unsee your creations.
I can't undo your bearing.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't untell you, I love you.
I can't uncount the memories.
I can't unstore Precious moments.
I can't ungo the extra mile.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't uncomplete your will.
I can't undo your works of Grace.
I can't unfeel your enduring mercies.
I can't unmove your gentle guiding hands.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't unread your Holy Word.
I can't understand everything.
I can't unbe all you deemed me to be.
I can't uncover my sins.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't unlove your people.
I can't unlove your church.
I can't ungive you my whole being.
I can't unsing you praise.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
I can't unsee your witness.
I can't unchange my heart.
I can't unchange my ways.
I can't unlive forever.
I realize just how impossible it is, I can't unlove you!
(c) April 12, 2006 Rosemarie Schrock
THE TOKEN POETRY EDITOR
Sexless, unloved, this poem tycoon
Reads the heart’s treasures as the brain's boon,
And riven with erudition, explores the spaces
Where uninvited couplets kill the places
With talk of probity and probability.
This mortgaged toad of honesty gives glee
To those who find in truth a rash offence
And save their daily lies in deference
To a lone columnist like herself, persuading
All that is needed is this harvest of envious raiding
To feed the bonfire of youth and exploitation –
The seducer’s vocabulary of apt explanation
On why God is absent from the universe,
And can only be heard in exploding verse.
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
JADE
by Rosemarie Rowley
I knew you fainthearted what side you were on
When you talked of social reality: not Jesus at the well
With the Samaritan woman, or the invisible loss of power
Which halts her speech and causes His deference
Holding her in trust for what she is.
You can talk of rural communes in China
Till the cows come home – leading them will be a girl
Bearing a key-ring and a dead black raven.
Your ways are sweet indeed, nectar and honey
And vinegar to end it all: you’d let all the
Wells in the world run dry for a principle
And proudly show us the papier-mache women who survived,
Embalmed with bitter hope and urgent salvation,
To tell the tale on electro-magnetic tape.
Happy Easter Baby
Today is a “Gift”
My heart, it jumped a beat today when I answered the phone
As I listened to that familiar voice, I couldn’t help but feel at home
As we talked it occurs to me, it’s like so many of our days
The clock stops, the sun goes down, and time just flys away
I’m honored to be with you, on this “Special” day
You’re my Happy Easter “Baby”, and it will always be that way
I love you with all my heart, your love is so true
When you take me in your arms, and again it feels so new
I figured out when love is real, you never have to choose
To settle for less than what you have become, for now you know the rules
Always be true to who you are and listen to your heart
Then you and your soul will never be apart

This poem is dedicated to man that changed my life
I am forever grateful for his love and friendship
And for every moment of sad and happiness spent on our behalf
And for showing me what true happiness is all about
With Eternal Love & Respect,
Rosemarie
ALMOST AN APOLOGY
Sometimes he enchants me with his word
The sea of phrases laps around my feet
His vision hones on truth just as a bird
Seeks its mate to fit a fancy, greet
With the sun each rising lovely day
Preens his feathers shining in the wood
As a flowered clearing on the first of May
Seeks redemption for all Adam’s brood -
The twain, the pair, the loser man with Eve
Stumbling on knowledge – a foxglove’s draught
A sweet sip to stage a sin, as if to grieve
Hard labour, the smithy’s spear and shaft
To gauge surrender, ‘twixt good and evil torn -
To gouge the heart, this child of woman born
by Rosemarie Rowley
from IN MEMORY OF HER 2008
I have my good days and my bad days
Eros has trimmed his brows somewhat
Setting off to some far distant land in a haze
Trailing over the side of the boat his worn love-knot.
Prejudice sits quietly on my window sill
Its’ hard to forget and hard to remember
How he lit up my days so much I could fill
A cornucopia with fruits in this mild December
Now he’s definitely gone, his last plea
You’ll regret this, a net over his shoulder
I’ll leave you to your reminiscences and your tea
As you gradually grow older and older
Remember, I left you with a loving child
To gladden your heart on my return from the wild.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley 2014
BROKEN FLOWERS
i.m. Ann, my sister 1947 – 1997)
Heads of fine purple strewn across cement
And yellowness heaped up in an airless room –
Travesties to which your heart’s golden fire-dust
Is an increment on pain. You asked
If the pretence of caring had now vanished,
Was it real now, under the cracked sky-line,
Like your memories dammed up under the rain.
Surely some vital drops will float
To pull your rootless beauties into holiness
Even as they die in a still vase –
There is no picture to quite stir the heart
As these fallen crowns, noble as the chalice
Of Gethsemane, which yet held the terrifying
Dark secrets of the world’s crime.
As you winter in your youth,
Beheaded flowers your beauty, your truth.
By Rosemarie Rowley
LUST IS AS ILL-CONSIDERED A WEED
AS EVER STOLE SCENT
Rejected in the main as superstition -
A gadfly, I’m alone upon the weed:
A hot cinquefoil brooding on position,
Declared intent of being in need of screed -
Now the subject of each idle bee
Gorged already, needing a restful stop
What if his gyrations bring to me
No true syncopation of a honeyed hop?
Beauty – not recognised as such – I wonder
Why man and woman excavate a flower garden
Tear my fertility, so they may squander
Wild possibility, and the earth around me harden.
Can the joy I have before I’m torn asunder
Be worth it when they never ask my pardon?
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
Europe was frozen in a tide of hate
The genius Jew was being persecuted
Bound to the intransigence of fate
His violin played the tunes they executed
Now it was time to think as they electrocuted
The hopes of young people in the dawn of their history
Whose own stories would have so much mystery
Down in the baker’s the story ran around
Hitler was marching to a frenzied tune
He bruised the flowers underneath the ground
And told them works of genius had no boon
While the bridal pair planned their honeymoon
On country roads, a visit to the town
Where they would see wonders and a family found
The day of the wedding dawned so fair
It would seem creation began again
Every single person going there
Wore the best they could, the men
With dark serge suits, and a fountain pen
For Granddad to write to his daughter
Who lived across three thousand miles of water
The wedding Nora had lived for all her life
Now like fate, could be too late to cancel
Nothing would please her more than being a wife
No longer a woman her relatives liked to spancel
They went the evening before to the quiet chancel
Made their vows in private for each other
Far away, war’s declaration on a brother.
His thoughts were far away this harvest morning
The corncrake singing in the flowery ditch
Struck into his heart like a heavy warning
That life was choked with love, so rich
A fantasy dove-tailing in augured pitch
Be faithful to me, the bird sang, my husband
I never want to wear another’s riband
She wore the oyster dress her sister gave her
It was soft and crumpled like a clotted cream
Her veil was raised when he kissed her
And she thought she was fainting from the dream
What could matter now, but what could seem
His handsome face, his hair so fine and black
There wasn’t one feature where he lacked
Her face was lovely as a golden flower
Her dress, a simple thing with fine kick-pleat
It lay like wisps of cloud upon her tower
Where beauty, youth and kindness all could meet
Such tiny pearls slid on her throat so neat
Their hour of tortured chastity was over
Profusion, perfection, they were like gods in clover.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley from "In Memory of Her", 2004 Dublin
DEMI-MONDAINE
You belong in silhouette to the dream’s theft
And weft with paid desire, look all adoring
At the man who’s made your life bereft
Of actual household dreams, he says it’s boring
Fresh linen, dimity and damask blue
Would be my veil, too, for daring
To ask: did it happen to you too?
And: when did your sorrow go past caring?
Don’t try to leave this room without an answer
Or you’ll turn back – the swathe of silk
In my eyes - you see, at heart a dancer
Each night I come home with the doorstep milk -
In the big bad world to be a cinch in style,
In the good small world to be a bright tear trickling.
by Rosemarie Rowley
IN MEMORY OF HER 2008