Best Tansey Poems

With the boy’s room, draped in white sheets
This whole year, like a cocoon, preserved in amber, 

She closes another album: The fossil record of their marriage, 
Steeped, in the earthen layers of clay.

Then turning to face him, two huge land masses: 
He, the old world,...

Continue reading...

Evening sets with self-delusion
stirring the synapses
with a steaming 
cup of coffee.
A dimly lit oil lamp
shrouded in Saffron 
casts the room in an amber hue
where words meld like gold 
onto the page
		in an alchemic blaze.

Morning rises, dispelling dreams
out of every fold of darkness
to a sterile whiteness
that...

Continue reading...

THE MORTAL DILEMMA OF FAIRY TALES AND FIRE FLIES 
 

(Brandon, the world  

depends on the existence of fairy tales and fire flies, 

the simple kindness towards lesser things,	 

the magnanimity, the compassion	 

of not taking life simply because you can.)		 

 

Out playing...

Continue reading...

It is in the subtlety
And not the blunt insult, 
The threat and not the onslaught; 

The implied and not the explicit.

It is in the first gleaning, 
remembered scents of Spring
And not the direct, 

Overhead heat of Summer.

The autumnal dread 
And not the dead of Winter;...

Continue reading...

I Fear the Day 

 
I fear the day 

the sheer length of it. 

It's call to actions 

and not words. 

 

Fearing it while it is 

and loving it when it is gone, 

right or wrong. 

Evening beckons... 

 

It's soft, amber hues of...

Continue reading...

Nobility


Scouring for something to read
Someone else to be,
I am lost in this dark sparse room
With nothing to do.
Stuck in a neuronal loop
Of the neurotic mind.

I want to be noble.
Fight with a crowd of rebels 
For a righteous cause
Or die
Saving some small child.

Then rising from this...

Continue reading...

Primal Language										 

 

Speaking gutturally in the fractured  

Fragments of a foreign language, 

A tongue unknown to her 

 

She is come from another country 

gesturing with her hands 

Between the islands of broken English 

 

Within her hesitations are the silent 

Stutters of...

Continue reading...

Broken



Like a wild stallion,
that will not be saddled, spitting the bit,
I bucked and threw every rider
galloping toward the infinite open...

With nostrils flaring, mane blowing,
it was a brief sprint of being harnessed to no one;
Until, as all dreams, I was stopped at the fence
only to be...

Continue reading...

AUTUMN BIRDS 


 

Heading home, toward the sun; 

its long drawn-in breath of twilight, 

sucking the last gasps of birds 

toward its mouth, 

 

I glimpse a flock of sparrows,	 

gathered up in squalls 

to forage the last bruised fruits of summer, 

 

and know...

Continue reading...

A child 
put to bed,
In a large, dark room;

At first, frightened
But then, the door creaks, 
slightly ajar,

Where a skant slant of light, 
carrying booms of laughter
floods the room
From its narrow wedge

The warm familial sounds
Of aunts and uncles

from a party next door,
Where old friends and family...

Continue reading...

THE DEPTH AND THE DISTANCE
        A story of Divorce

Because you would plumb only so deep					Final
Before returning, too soon, back to the top,
Breathing in air
And your preference to swim,
Skimming along the surface
Like a flat-edged rock.

While I continued, delving deeper...

Continue reading...

Sacrifice


My love has no edges					
	it is like a great ripe fruit,

both, sustaining and life giving 


Your love is a sword
	its' hilt as a cross

both, protective but life taking.	


As you cuts me in half
	sucking the juice I provide

in willing sacrifice
      ...

Continue reading...

White Weddings and Wet Funerals				Final 

 

When I was young,  

And the world crisp, 

Through the crystalline cold  

Of November Morning  

At the parade 

And we were all caught in the sacred gear grit, 

Grinding motion 

Of life in abundance, 

Pushing crowds...

Continue reading...

Depression



My depression 
is steep
It is as a deep back lhole in space

From which neither the 
light of dreams
Nor a loud thunderous 
scream
can escape.




John Thomas Tansey...

Continue reading...

I have had my Fill with the Lifelessness of Winter		 

 

I have had my fill of this winter, 

The lifelessness in its frost; 

Fingers stiff, face pale. 

It’s cold pain in the bone 

To the black and blue bruise 

Of a cracked thumbnail. 

...

Continue reading...