Homage was published in 2004 in a very limited edition. That was a very busy year; Ballad of the Confessor came out in 2003, but was not truly available until 2004 because of distribution issues. Riffs From New Id came out later that summer, and then a month after that so did Homage. There was virtually no marketing of the book.


Here are a few of the sonnets:


It's in the heady days of August wane,
Across my shoulders, against your aging,
Throughout the valley, ours, without complain,
I steal you, stripped, to youthful rut's raging.
You, who stood amidst the milo bounty,
And gushing waters far from providence;
A wood nymph, sea conch, sidekick, and mounty,
Spores fleeing on this bareback circumstance.
Give me all of it--all of it, I say!
What falls outside the circle--give me too!
Free is how I found you, and free you'll stay;
Give me former whoredom, what once I knew.
We've matted down the milo, now let's see
What you're made of, and what you hide from me.


And when I see your glist'ning twilight calm
In eyes of mine closed to yesterday's bliss,
God Himself must have formed you in His palm--
Your white-hot beauty makes me conclude this.
Where have all the days of summertime's heat
Run off with barely tastebud's speed bumps quenched?
Where, in endless hours of lips conjoined sweet,
As time, for bed squeaks, stopped round lithe legs clenched?
Your beauty in me strikes down all discord,
The sense--I say not senses--made with thought;
And makes me wish with heart and hands to ford
That impasse to Oneness all time has sought.
Look not for deity in logic's game,
But in the lines of flesh, woman, her name.


I saw your face as I asleep did fall
While on the bus from Galway's green today;
My eyes a flutter 'gainst that tugging wall,
Your sweetness lulling me along the way.
All bathed in light your cheekbone's breast held high,
A wreath of asters sprang out from your hair;
Upon your nape a spot did want to dry
From where my lips, enraptured, pressed you there.
A fortnight, this, my banishment agreed,
To give you time to resurrect your heart;
But know that I in bondage can't be freed
From what you say has driven us apart.
My love three thousand miles from you remains,
At a sea's loss at what this absence gains.