Pete's Seriouser Poems

The pyracantha

2009-07-30T08:12:00.001-07:00

As we had planned,
the pyracantha grew and, sprawling,
blocked out the breeze block back wall
of our square suburban home.
So high it stretched,
that it threatened to blot out
the early morning sun itself,
and I suggested, one evening, from the sink,
that it needed its wings clipping.
He disagreed,
child of the blackened chimney,
surveying his new leafdom
like a benevolent dictator.
He loved the wild entanglement of thorn and leaf
that would have made a great nesting place,
had the blue tits only thought harder.
And, he decreed, it stopped the early morning cats
using our back wall as a short cut,
as they swaggered jauntily home
after a night of wild carousing.
Left to its own devices, I argued,
it has lost all shape and purpose.
fine in the Amazon rain forest,
or an abandoned city centre parking lot,
but not here, among the sculpted lawns
and dead-headed roses, that we can see
stretching uniformly from our bedroom window.

One day, after he roared off to work
following another breakfast argument,
I took the shears from the rusting nail
in his shed
and clacked and snapped at the tangled maelstrom,
the thorns raising ugly red wealds on my bare arms,
as I drove the fierce metal
between the resisting briars.
In ten minutes it was all over
and I stood back, panting triumphantly,
as the thorny twigs lay around my feet
like the remnants of my marriage.

The Old English Sheepdog

2009-07-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Lolloping over the old English cobbles,
In bright July sunshine that licks at your face,
The old English sheepdog peers out of his fringe-hair
And smiles a mild greeting of ‘God be with you.’
Past the squat church with the rooks standing sentry
And past the young mums with their children in tow.
Past the red post box and past the newsagents,
Past the o’er-grandiose building society,
The old English sheepdog trots by with contentment
As children excitedly squeal in delight.

Other dogs pass in a light-footed patter,
Smaller, more wizened and fearful of tread.
The old English sheepdog looks down on them properly,
Grunting away through his stiff upper lip.
But here comes a mongrel who will not pull over,
Who will not acknowledge the well-defined law.
The street is a maelstrom of teeth and fur flying,
A belly ripped open ‘twixt resolute fangs.
The sheepdog trots on with an air of self-righteousness.
The mongrel limps off as the cobbles run red.

Tarmonbarry May 2009

2009-05-05T14:29:00.001-07:00

With Cubist strokes, the whistling sun had leant
Into the room and daubed the waking walls
With colour. Lost in delicious content,

My eyes switched open. Somewhere a lusty
Robin announced his news with strident calls
That swiftly unravelled sad night’s dusty

Blanket. Outside the stretching Shannon purred,
Tickled by the fronds of reflected trees
That lined the far shore. Beside me you stirred

Softly beneath the careless cotton sheet,
Like a butterfly inching by degrees
From winter’s cocoon towards summer’s heat.

A moment so true I almost cried in pain,
Knowing that the night would fall again.

But, determined, I lay back and succumbed
And drew imaginary pictures on
The blank expanse of ceiling and hummed
A jaunty tune as hidden heaven shone.

Eulogy

2009-05-05T14:19:00.001-07:00

How sharp are now the cleaves upon your face.
The downy hairs upon your softened jaw
Show clear that claims of golden age are base.

Your feeble joints grow weary of the race.
Your back is bent, your slippered feet are sore
And can’t maintain the unrelenting pace.

Ornaments stand proud on crocheted lace
A life displayed in china – nothing more
Is needed to exhume each holy place.

Arms that cradled children in good grace
Now drip with skinny skin and bruise till raw
When lightly held in sorrowful embrace.

Justice flees and leaves no mortal trace.
The runner will not make it to fourth base,
The struggle more important than the score,
The wish to sleep more potent than the chase.

Weed

2009-05-05T14:10:00.001-07:00

Is this a plant or is’t a weed?
My tender fingers feel the stalk,
Caress the leaf. Should I just walk
Away and not commit the deed?
My trembling hands begin to baulk.
Did I once plant this living seed?
Is’t better to pull out a plant
Or give a weed its murd’rous head
To strangle others in their bed?
Once done, ‘tis too late to recant.
No wonder God shrinks back with dread
And shirks the role of commandant.
The greater good? I give a scowl
And weakly reach out for the trowel.

This morning shone the sun again

2009-05-05T14:07:00.001-07:00

This morning shone the sun again.
For three days we had plodded round
The dreary house and peered outside,
Tut-tutting at the teeming rain.
For three days we had fought and frowned
And I had yelled and she had cried.
This morning life began afresh.
I padded to the cherry tree,
Once thick with bulbous pregnant fruit,
But lo! the stalks hung destitute,
As hov’ring wasps buzzed round with glee
And gorged upon the juicy flesh.
Now nothing grows in Babylon.
I called to her but she was gone.

The vicious tempest

2009-05-05T14:03:00.001-07:00

The vicious tempest flared up very late,
Too late for her to get her washing in,
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

The rampant gale unlocks another slate.
She starts and draws the beads up to her chin
And prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

She tries to hide the banging of the gate
That crashes ‘gainst the jamb with fearful din.
The vicious tempest flared up very late.

Longevity does not deserve such fate.
Where is the balm to soothe her careworn skin?
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

Must God destroy whate’er he may create?
Is justice only consequence of sin?
The rampant gale unlocks another slate.

A crackling spark vaults o’er the soot-thick grate
And smoulders on the carpet with a grin.
She prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

Jesus on the wall does not hang straight.
She reaches for another mug of gin.
The vicious tempest flared up very late.
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

The furies scream their bitter songs of hate.
The picture on the wall begins to spin.
The rampant gale unlocks another slate.
She prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

When I am dead

2009-05-05T14:00:00.001-07:00

When I am dead, erect no marble stone
With random clichés writ in gilded font,
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.

My testament is this: I do not want
My lovely life and death to be proclaimed
With random clichés writ in gilded font.

What purpose serves a stone thus cheaply named,
To summarise in bland and hollow words
My lovely life and death? To be proclaimed

A loving husband / father? Do the birds
Attempt, when some poor wretchéd soul keels o’er,
To summarise in bland and hollow words

His time? It means the living evermore
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.
Attempt, when this poor wretchéd soul keels o’er

And heads off to his chill October plot,
To countenance the grieving souls that none
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.

Enrich the soil! That’s how things should be done.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But countenance the grieving souls that none

Should to that dismal place again be drawn
When I am dead. Erect no marble stone.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.

One yellow leaf

2009-05-05T13:58:00.001-07:00

Clinging tightly to the twig
Like a first day child at the school gates,
The one yellow leaf
Shivers in the stiff November breeze.
Inevitability denied
With irrational stubbornness,
It seeks to reverse the flow of rivers,
Travel backwards in time
And snip the umbilical cord of the moon.

Passing by,
Collar upturned and eyes slitted,
I admire its pathetic bravado,
In the same way that the last survivor
Charges the lines of the enemy
With spear upturned.

There is a need for futility
In a world of purpose.

When I pass, the following day,
It is gone,
Shaken loose and scolded on its way,
To join the millions mashed into the earth.
And I feel that I am nearer
My own time of clinging on stubbornly
Against the odds.

Cherish me

2009-05-05T13:56:00.001-07:00

I’m the man at the front who stays standing
When the rest of the church has sat down.

I’m the child singled out in the gym hall
When she can’t touch her toes with straight legs.

I’m the old man who lurches and stumbles
When the driver swerves into the bus stop.

I’m the woman in town unaware of
The red strain on the back of her trousers.

I’m the driver who visits a new town
And finds himself stuck in the wrong lane,
Or stalls at a short-changing traffic light,
Or drives in the dark with no lights on.

I’m the interviewee with a bogey
Stuck to the base of his nostril.

I’m the principled parent who finally
Buys a toy gun for the young lad.

I’m the straight-laced managing director
Who is bursting to go to the toilet.

I’m the self-proclaimed saviour of mankind
Who is nailed to a cross at Golgotha.

The lie

2009-05-05T09:29:00.001-07:00

One night, the stars came floating down
Like paratroopers, bathed in light.
They fell on countryside and town
And fields and roofs were clothed in white,
Cold starflakes silent as the night.

They say the moon came down as well
And landed near Trincomalee
And natives set off through the swell
To where they thought that it should be,
But it had sunk beneath the sea.

Three days the starfall cloaked the earth
And then it slowly turned to slush
Till soon there wasn’t tuppenceworth
Between Portrush and Hindu Kush.
And then there fell a deathly hush

As all the world looked up and saw
The inside of a jet-black dome.
No pinpricks twinkling as before –
Just us, squashed in our dismal home,
Our squalid, lonely hippodrome.

And then, when realisation hit,
We marched upon the college gate
With oil-swabbed torches brightly lit
And flung them on mendacious slates
And blocked the doors with burning crates.

And to the media too, for they
Had propagated all those lies.
No mercy. By the light of day
Those bastards were cut down to size,
No more to gloat and moralise.

And then the churches and the banks
And Government buildings and the shops.
We razed the world in armoured tanks
And burnt out forests, deserts, crops,
Then set ablaze the mountain tops.

And soon the whole world was on fire
And night time was no longer black
And raucous voices formed a choir,
As choking ash rained down like flak.
Alone. There could be no way back.

Duel

2009-05-05T09:27:00.001-07:00

From room to room, our flashing swords
Grapple, the air sliced by each thrust.
To land that fatal blow we must
Show no mercy. We move towards
The stairs. Backwards my love ascends
Furiously fending off my
Unsubtle lunge. My mouth is dry.
I thrust again. Again she fends
Me off and strikes my full-flushed cheek
And turns and runs. Slams the wood door
Like gunshot. I hear the bed creak.
Panting, sweating, I come for more,
But she has thrown away her blade
And taken up her tear-filled shield.
My rash and vengeful fury played
Into her nimble hands. I yield.

The Hayman Doyle

2009-05-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

He prowled the house and bastard scrap of land
As though he were a wolf trapped in a cage,
Black bucket in that great ham-fisted hand.

He spat a lot – great balls of pent-up rage
At life beyond the stakes and crude barbed wire,
As though he were a wolf trapped in a cage.

On sweat-soaked summer days, he lit the fire
And spat into the flames, a phlegm-filled shot
At life beyond the stakes. And crude barbed wire

Bound well and gagged the dismal, muddied plot.
And then, in crusted boots, he dozed till dawn
And spat into the flames, a phlegm-filled shot

That fizzled with a sizzling angry scorn.
He hummed a snatch of some forgotten tune
And then, in crusted boots, he dozed till dawn.

With one eye cocked towards the mocking moon,
He brooded on the road beyond the gate
And hummed a snatch of some forgotten tune.

Sometimes he sat down heavy on the crate
That served as doorstep facing down the drive
And brooded on the road beyond. The gate

Lent height when Joss and I used to contrive
To rattle with dull stones that crate upturned,
That served as doorstep facing down the drive.

And then the door would swing. The game adjourned,
We’d run back up the hill, with no desire
To further rattle that dull crate upturned.

With raucous yells that ripped through thickly briar,
He snapped and slavered hard upon our heels.
We’d run back up the hill. With no desire

To follow or to quell our porcine squeals,
Untethered were the snarling, baying howls
That snapped and slavered hard upon our heels.

Unfettered ran the dark and brooding scowls,
Unleashed the pent-up fury in his eye,
Untethered were the snarling, baying howls.

With head upturned towards the mocking sky,
He prowled the house and bastard scrap of land.
Unleashed the pent-up fury in his eye,
Black bucket in that great ham-fisted hand.

Mick

2009-05-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

With milking done
And the sweet warm liquid
Added to yesterday’s bread and peelings
To make swill for the sow,
The two cows would be slapped down the drive
And out onto the road,
Like two lazy sons being urged to find work.
Up the road or down, as they wished,
They ambled, with a calm, unhurried air,
Discussing the soft weather.
On occasions, as I came up from Two Mile Water
For a spot of lunch, I’d pass them,
Grinning in a ditch or in Delahunty’s yard
Or, worse case scenario, Jackie Hagen’s garden.
“Any sign of de cows?” he’d grunt,
Spitting on the range and stirring his thick tay,
One ear cocked to the shenanigans on Harbour Hotel.
In late afternoon, bow-legged and unsteady,
He’d cycle out to put a halt to their mischief,
With a big, sturdy briar and a gruff “Yar!”
And lead them back up for the second milking.
The iron gate would clang shut
And he’d glance up and down warily,
Like a small country fearing unfriendly overtures.

One day visited an earnest man
With a clipboard and a pen
Who talked animatedly about something called
Health and Safety.
The oul’ lad nodded sagely
And spat on the ground amiably
And agreed completely
And helped him reverse back out the drive.
And life went on as before.

Words of love

2009-05-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

The words do not flick lightly off my tongue
Like balls of spit that in my mouth are rolled
And then, with practised ease, succinctly flung

Across the yard to land upon the cold
Concrete. From throat or gut or rasping lung,
They must be hewn by axe where seams of gold

Fold beneath the earth amid dullard rock.
They must be grappled with in shadowed light
Deep, deep beneath the grey-eyed monadnock

That bears the brunt. By nature, words are slight
And brittle things. Mere glist’ning baubles mock
The sweat-brow of the poet in the night.

The words do not flick lightly off my tongue.
They must be grappled with in shadowed light.

For stones upon a necklace loosely strung
Are valued for the rock-scarred miner’s plight
And in their flaming lustre can be told
The aching earth-mother’s huge aftershock.

So lock these chiselled words deep in your young
And pristine heart. And later, at the height
Of pain, when I am gone and you are old
And darkness won’t retreat, unpick the lock.

Mountains or clouds

2009-05-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

And when the linnet sings no more,
When shadows stretch to grotesque heights,
Sometimes I pause at my front door
And watch the day’s decaying lights.
And over in the blazing west
Where hope bows down in blues and greys
Reclining ‘pon the earth undressed,
The evening sings her hymn of praise.
But lo! Those dark and smould’ring shrouds –
Be they firm hills or wispy clouds?

A mass of limestone looming high
Above the long and fruitful plain?
Or formless vapour in the sky,
The harbinger of big-eyed rain?
As evening folds another day
And stacks it neatly on the chair,
I gaze upon this shapeless grey
And wonder if my dreams lie there.
Or are my mountains merely strands
That slip between excited hands?

What is it thou hast seen, oh Father?

2009-05-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

What is it thou hast seen? I prithee, tell me.
What is it that thy aging ears have heard?
Thy terror-racked expression doth compel me
To wonder at what horror hath occurred.
Alas, feared Father, how thy speech is slurred
And how thy twisted face doth now repel me!
Oh, canst thou not spit out a single word
To tell what thou hast seen? I prithee, tell me.

Dost thou know what spectre did o’erpower thee?
What future vision did this ghoul impart?
Are Satan’s flames now waiting to devour thee,
To lick the blackened chambers of thy heart?
Oh, is the fiendish news come that thou art
Soon destined to have fireballs to shower thee?
Oh, transfixed Father, won’t thou even start
To tell what fearsome spectre did o’erpower thee?

The priest hath fled; he had no words to save thee,
To lift thee up to God’s immortal grace.
The doctor blanched in terror as he gave thee
A potion to relax thy rigid face.
The life thou led was scurrilous and base –
Small wonder then Beelzebub doth crave thee.
There is no power through land or sea or space
Will love thy tortured soul enough to save thee.

What is it thou hast seen? My Father, tell me.
Let loose thy tongue! Relate what thou hast heard!
Recount what chilling happenstance befell thee,
What terrifying Fate was thus conferred.
In life, thou rode thy black horse undeterred
Through pleading hands that served but to propel thee.
Surely thy dead conscience is not stirred!
What is it thou hast seen? Oh Father, tell me.

Unsuccessful entry for The Words on the Water competition 2008

A lament for Scaldwood

2009-05-05T09:14:00.001-07:00

You wouldn’t call it good land.
‘Tis a small and jumbly copse.
A bad hair day of woodland
Where the creeping concrete stops,
Where the bramble and the briar,
Serenaded by the lyre
Dance a rumba of desire
As the dripping rainfall drops.

Great Scaldwood, once your branches
Bade the traveller beware,
For your russet avalanches
Hid the wolverine and bear.
A great forest to be skirted,
Crow-fly journeys much diverted,
Where red, gleaming eyes asserted
There would be no thoroughfare.

Then with the stealth of taxes
And the filibuster’s frown,
Came the blows of sharpened axes
And the trees came crashing down.
Like a roadside puddle shrinking,
Your great fortress fell, unblinking,
To create a roadway linking
County Meath and Dublin town.

And now the once-great Scaldwood
Where the ringed wood-pigeon crooned
Is but a small, be-walled wood,
Obedient and cocooned.
In this wilderness neglected
The soft rain that has collected
On the thorny arms projected
Falls like blood-drops from a wound.

Weathering

2009-04-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

He always thought
That if the mighty yew ever toppled,
It would swat the squat, dumpy tower
Like a hand slapping a beetle,
Crushing it flat,
Obliterating it into the dust
Whence it came.
He turned the unwieldy iron key,
Using two hands to make sure the lock caught,
And stood shivering in the stone porch
As the wind clawed at terrified slates.
A few pitying coppers rattled in his large pocket,
The restoration target a few pence nearer.

The arms of the yew strained in frustration
And the grey church cowered in terror.
He buttoned his coat over his collar
And, head bent to the wind,
Strode off between the gravestones,
Like a row of forward slashes
In a hieroglyphic frieze.

The ballad of Mabel McCartney

2009-02-09T13:42:00.001-08:00

As the richly scented crocus
Craned its neck towards the sky,
It was difficult to focus
On the world beyond the gate.
Through the window darkly shattered,
Mabel trained her watered eye
On the garden, brown and battered,
Set before her on a plate.

They’d not spotted him come running
As they fled across the street.
He’d approached them with great cunning
As the bank’s alarm bells rang.
‘Twas an instant gut reaction
When she heard his pounding feet.
Crashed the gun with satisfaction
As the off-beat copper sprang.

Eighteen years of dumbly staring
At a thinly plastered wall,
Institutional, uncaring,
Left her vision badly flawed.
In her spectacled existence,
She could never quite recall
What lay in the middle distance
Where her memories were stored.

Her long tear was not remorseful.
No emotion spurred it on,
Independent and resourceful,
Automatically displaced.
Through the window she stared neatly
At the yellow head that shone
On the crocus gloating sweetly
O’er the winter’s ravaged waste.

Though her single room was tiny,
That was where she spent her days
As the cars, so new and shiny,
Blurred past on the street outside.
On the day that they found Mabel
All the street was bathed in haze.
There was a crocus on the table
And her eyes were open wide.

Review of 2008

2009-01-03T03:45:00.000-08:00

Well, not a bad year all told on the writing front.
The highlight for me was definitely winning the Strokestown International Political Satire Competition with "The Poverty Trap." Honestly it was like the Oscars and the shock when Margaret Hickey announced my name was only too genuine. I had a smile permanently attached to my face for a week after that!
This was followed closely by gaining second prize in the Boyne Writers' Swiftian Satire competition with "Global Warming? What Global Warming?" Earlier in the year I had the honour of having two entries in the shortlist of six for the Kilkenny Swift Satire Poetry competition - namely "Tattoos" and "In Defence of Texters."
The year was rounded off nicely with another shortlisting when "On Jackson's Bridge Lock" made the final ten in the inaugural Attleborough competition.
"Country Lane" was published in "Revival" and "Time's Joke" was published in "Boyne Berries IV" and two lighter pieces "On Knockmaroon Hill" and "The Cotton Man" came out in "Phoenix Ink 2."
I also wrote a couple of short stories and set them off but not much luck there, I'm afraid!
My Musings column continued in "The Community Voice," for whom I also write the Arts pages and do occasional articles. I also contributed poems and a serialised football love story "A Tolka Romance" to Shelbourne FC's matchday programme throughout the season which ended so cruelly in November.
I gave up on www.footballpoets.org during the year. Too time-consuming and one smart-arsed commentator's boorish remarks meant it was giving me no pleasure.
During the year I discovered villanelles, terzanelles and science-fiction poetry, which have led to some rather enjoyable experiments.
An advert for 5,000 authors wanted to be published for free on YouWriteOn.com led to my Complete Community Voice Musings (2003 - 2008) being published at the end of the year, though they neglected to tell me! Its out there on Amazon if anybody wants to order it, though as I haven't seen it myself yet, I can't recommend it!
I hope to self-publish my first book of verse shortly - tentatively titled "The Flash of Orange" with a foreword by John Creedon - and then begins the job of flogging it to make money to publish the next one!
And so we boldly go forth into 2009....

Five Paths

2008-11-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

The focus always on the eagle’s nest
That lies atop the frost-cracked mountain tree,
The pathways to the peak are thus progressed.

Acquire the things to lead you to your quest.
Plain learning holds that old and rusted key,
The focus always on the eagle’s nest.

Prepare to see your fur-clad mind undressed.
Through nakedness that causes shame to flee,
The pathways to the peak are thus progressed.

Beyond the door, the void is manifest.
Just push it open slightly and you’ll see
The focus, always on the eagle’s nest.

Your mind erupts with notions long suppressed,
Volcano blasts that shudder ‘neath the sea.
The pathways to the peak are thus progressed.

At last, you have become devoutly blessed,
The inner mind allowed to wander free.
The focus always on the eagle’s nest,
The pathways to the peak are thus progressed.

Slipping into Autumn

2008-10-29T11:21:00.001-07:00

Do not lament but hold your chilled cheeks high.
The frozen finger’s crooked but holds no threat.
Embrace the fiery promise in the sky.

Observe the ochre-tinged confetti fly,
Cast down from fingers blacked in silhouette.
Do not lament but hold your chilled cheeks high.

The spirit’s eye is arched. It wonders why
Great Samhain’s robes are stained with dull regret.
Embrace the fiery promise in the sky.

The greatest book is senseless to the eye
When stripped of part of life’s great alphabet.
Do not lament but hold your chilled cheeks high.

Oh blesséd time – your frozen waters lie
To stay the hand that wields both rod and net.
Embrace the fiery promise in the sky.

The busy wren does not curl up and sigh
When frosted earth demands new etiquette.
Do not lament but hold your chilled cheeks high.
Embrace the fiery promise in the sky.

Entombed in snow the shoot still seeks the sun

2008-10-27T18:30:00.001-07:00

Entombed in snow the shoot still seeks the sun,
Although it never felt its soft caress.
And thus the plot of winter is undone.

Though dark may be the shadow of the gun
And broken bodies quickly acquiesce,
Entombed in snow the shoot still seeks the sun.

Imprisoned Alpine streams in springtime run
With playful bounds not shackles of distress
And thus the plot of winter is undone.

And still the ropes of tyranny are spun
By those whose fingers blister to oppress.
Entombed in snow the shoot still seeks the sun.

Seek out the light, for even where there’s none,
A distant star will somewhere phosphoresce
And thus the plot of winter is undone.

Each dawning is a battle bravely won.
Tradition never guaranteed success.
Entombed in snow the shoot still seeks the sun
And thus the plot of winter is undone.

Tory Island ferry

2008-10-23T07:07:00.001-07:00

Báidín Fheilimí, d'imigh go Toraí, báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann,

Báidín Fheilimí, d'imigh go Toraí, báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Báidín Fheilimí, briseadh i dToraí, báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann,

Báidín Fheilimí, briseadh i dToraí Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Pitching through the growling tide,
Spies the tiny craft the light
That drops and rises like a star
On speed.

Like a gannet, half-concussed,
Returning to her rocky ledge
Where squawking chicks are huddled in
Their need.

Desp’rate struggle, yet her pledge
Will drive her on through ice shards thin.
For the young, the journey must
Succeed.

Next season, she might well decide
The cliffs that fall from Foreland’s spar
May prove to be a safer site
To breed.

The heron

2008-10-23T06:15:00.001-07:00

A scattering of hares
And foolish rabbits, dun
Fur pinballed in sudden light.
Which way to run

As the blinding truck glares?
Snap decisions. Fur congeals
In the black imprint
Of too-recent wheels.

But beware the stranger!
Grey waistcoat, he blinks,
Frozen for a second
In the spotlight. He thinks

He’s in no danger
In the shadows. Is his dish
Now hare and foolish
Rabbit and not fish?

Dolphin watching

2008-10-23T06:09:00.001-07:00

The black triangle slices
Through the concrete waves,
Like a prisoner
Sawing his way to freedom.
A flash of black back,
Rubbery and sleek.

Above in an alien world,
We patrol the light,
Pointing and clicking
And laying hands
On young shoulders,
Watching for a dark form
To break the cell roof.

Or are they the wardens of the deep,
On watch, lest those strange upside-down shapes
Crash through their crystalled palace?

On Rathlin Island

2008-09-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

The merest headflick is effusive greeting.
Stoic faces carved by wind and tide.
O’er the heather, windswept lambs are bleating.
O’er the sound, the mainland stretches wide.

Eyeless houses stare down to the pier.
Rope lays coiled beside a peeling wall.
O’er the hill, the old light, bright and clear,
Proudly bathes the island’s purple shawl.

Mist rolls in like one grey canvas awning.
A stout man hauls an old boat up the beach.
The harbour will be quiet until morning,
Save for just an errant seagull’s screech.

No lights gleam from the mainland. No stars glisten.
The crashing sea, the island’s rasping breath.
Old men cock their heads aside to listen.
Women fear the grasping hand of death.

Capel Island, county Cork

2008-09-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

A stump. That’s all there is. No more.
A nippled breast that rises
From the fathomless domains,
While loud gulls in many sizes
Skim like paper aeroplanes.
A stump. That’s all there is. From shore,
She bears her breastbone proudly,
Unabashed and unashamed,
While around her, waves crash loudly
As the sky becomes inflamed.
A stump.
That’s all there is.
No more.

All that exists on Capel Island is the unfinished trunk of a lighthouse abandoned in the 1840s

Polishing

2008-09-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Shafts of sunlight
Stream out from behind grubby clouds
Rubbing the sea.
Tarnished,
The grey rippling plate
Holds steady
As the sun sets to work,
Polishing, polishing,
Till it gleams.

Three birds

2008-08-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

When sea and sky roll in an indistinct haze,
When light and dark melt in an orgy of praise,
Where up and down tumble like leaves in a gale,
When a faraway island dives down like a whale,
Then, she says, from her cliff overlooking the sea
That crashes with fury against the dark wall,
Then will come the three cranes to the disfigured tree
Where stands the great bull.
And the three cranes shall call
And the dead will crawl out of their worm-rotten graves
And shake off the earth that has clothed them so long
And filled with the breath of that magical song,
They’ll be drawn to the island across the dark waves.
And she keeps her eyes trained, for she knows they will come,
For her heart beats in time with the mythical drum.

Home

2008-08-05T19:57:00.001-07:00

My mother said the snow fell thick
That Stephen’s morn so long ago,
Although the ward roared like a stove.
Outside, the little chestnut grove
Wore cheerily its hat of snow,
As pink-cheeked children stooped to pick
Up handfuls with excited yells.
And o’er the town, St. Clements’ bells
Pealed joyously the news that I
Was born that day, she used to laugh,
While the cottage hospital staff
Ate threadbare mince-pies on the sly.

Sometimes, while wanting to unwind
Or waiting for the hand of sleep
To cradle me and brush my hair,
I find myself once more back there.
The snow again lies thick and deep,
The building dark and ill-defined.
No tinkling laughter lights the gloom.
I peer inside the darkened room
But all is dead and all is cold.
I tap the frosted pane and scream,
Knowing well I’m in a dream,
But knowing too that I am old.

I’ve not been back, ‘cept in my mind,
Since leaving on that New Year’s Day,
Encased in layer on layer of wool.
And now? The Cottage Hospital
May be a car park or a grey
Apartment complex ill-designed.
‘Tis nothing – just a piece of earth
That once bore witness to my birth.
No ties, no chains. We chose to roam.
The candle grew not to a torch.
It flickered briefly in the porch,
Then blackness overtook my home.

Conversing with gods

2008-08-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

I have conversed with many gods
And taken tea and chewed the fat
And listened to their rambling thoughts.

Sometimes, when they are out of sorts,
They do not care to sit and chat
And conversation merely plods.
And then I’ll smile and take my leave
And lay my hand upon their sleeve
And mutter words of sympathy.

But mostly their loquacity
Ensures the afternoon is spent
In bonhomie and merriment.

They never see me to the door
Nor shield their eyes from burning sun
Nor glance along the village street.
They do not raise a hand to greet
The neighbour’s wife. It is not done.
They can’t transgress the one true law.

Their windows, grey and thick with grime,
Opaque now since the start of time
Stare blankly at the passers by.

I cannot help. I must not try.
My job, starch-aproned district nurse,
Is just to listen and converse.

Upon the quay

2008-08-02T03:15:00.000-07:00

Upon the quay the ropes are thrown
And grizzled faces squint ‘neath caps
And ponder fish not found on maps
And listen to the wind’s low moan.

Upon the quay, the keen gulls land
And contemplate the marching band
That haunts the pier from dawn to dusk
With instruments o’erloud and brusque.

Among the bustle there are few
Preparing for the daily kill
Who know they populate the view
For those up there, upon the hill.

Upon the hill, they sit and stare
And wonder at the life down there.

The deep end

2008-08-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

In the shallows they splash
With weak-muscled panache,
While their mothers watch well
Lest they do something rash,
Like ride on a swell
To the deep end.

Yes the water is cool
In this uncovered pool
And the markings are clear,
So only a fool
Would venture too near
To the deep end.

Step by step, as they grow,
Straining down with one toe,
Till they’re steady of limb
In the unending flow,
Till they’re ready to swim
To the deep end.

The swimming pool

2008-08-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

Am I resentful that we stayed around the swimming pool
While the others had a ball upon the beach?
You said you much preferred it at the swimming pool –
Chacun á son goût – yes, each to each.

I said that I’d stay with you at the swimming pool
Although my feet were itching for the strand
I’d really no desire for the swimming pool,
Chlorine-laced, unint’resting and bland.

Love revolves ‘round making compromises,
Sacrificing personal desire.
But don’t be quick to hand out any prizes –
The blackberry lies sweet among the briar.

If I’d have turned my nose up at the swimming pool,
Headed for the beach with all the rest,
Would my guilt have strayed toward the swimming pool?
How was love in such a way expressed?

But, ask, am I that resentful of the swimming pool?
Were there compromises on your part?
Chacun á son goût – the beach or swimming pool?
Neither of us selfless in our heart.

James Barrett and the Doll in the Corner

2008-06-12T05:59:00.001-07:00

(An interesting project coordinated by Kathy Murray to delve into an imagined relationship between the man and doll above)

Ah begod, Jamesie Barrett, you were handsome back then
With your hat on three hairs and you’re chest like a hen.
How you’d strut through the town with a bounce in your stride
And a smile on your lips and a song at your side!
In a town of brown tweed you were every girl’s dream.
In chattering huddles the glances were flung,
Ling’ring too long or with too bright a gleam,
Like the song of their mothers, imperfectly sung.

And you knew and you grinned,
Held your face to the wind
And I watched like an overawed child.

With the priest or the tinker you’d stop for a chat,
At the simmering housewives you’d doff your felt cap.
Oh you were the rooster, all swagger and charm
And I was the girl that you placed on your arm.
My tongue knotted tightly the day that you paused
And crooked a long finger beneath my prim chin.
And what a commotion the sight of this caused
In Hilda Magilton and Bessie McGlynn.

And you knew and you smiled,
Brushed my cheek like a child
And I froze like a rabbit at night.

I grew buds,
You cracked jokes,
I would light up your smokes.
You’d raise my parasol
And you’d call me your doll.

Jamesie Barrett, how I laughed on the day that we wed
And I danced until morning to stave off the bed.
I was young and afraid and the joy turned to tears
And the smell of your body rekindled old fears.
But you held me so tenderly, close to your chest,
Your pulse locked with mine in a spiritual beat
And the breeze swung around till it blew from the west
And out in the meadow I heard a lamb bleat.

And you knew and you cried
As if speared in the side
And I took you and kissed your wounds clean.

I grew fat,
You worked hard,
I hung clothes in the yard.
You’d raise my parasol
And you’d call me your doll.

Winter cracked
And the harsh light drew thick shadows
On the gable wall.
It wasn’t your fault.
I’ve told you that many times.
Just an old friend well met.
I screamed for you as the room darkened.
You found us cold and still on the kitchen floor
In a swimming pool of blood,
Present and future scythed down like yesterday’s barley.

And after the funeral, your horrified stare
When you came in to find me propped up in the chair.
A haunting? No, love, but you broke down and wept
And later you screamed as you fitfully slept.
In time you approached me and knelt by my side,
Recounted each breath of the day that I died
And begged me to open my mouth to forgive,
Declared you no longer desired to live.

But no prayers could rescind
The foul blows of the wind
That assailed our small cottage with fury.

Jamesie Barrett, forty years have sped by like a train.
I’ve silently sat here observing your pain.
The chisellers shout at the bumbling old fool
Who mumbles aloud as he passes the school.
Your time isn’t long now – enough of amends!
You never forsook your unfortunate wife.
Cradle me softly when darkness descends,
In death in your arms, as I was once in life.

And we’ll stroll
Hand in hand
Down that vast stretch of sand
And you’ll raise my parasol
And you’ll call me your doll.

Slugs

2008-05-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

The sun disrobes and folds the day
With care upon the bedroom chair.
Against the dark’ning sky, a sparrow
Arrows homeward down the narrow
Laneway, to the beech tree, where
The bony branches gently sway,
Grinning in the twilit sheen.
I wait beside the creeping lawn,
The torch grasped tight in whitened fingers,
As teasing dusk demurely lingers
O’er my garden. Foul deeds spawn
Great wrath in deities serene.
The hoe leans ‘gainst the shed door, which
Is comforting. I snap the switch.

Like black torpedoes frozen in
A brooding sea of sharp-shorn green,
A score of deadly slugs, or more,
Lie targetting the flower-bed shore
With murd’rous minds, caught in between
The flimsy blades, unsure and thin.
I glance across to where my plants
Sport jagged holes like windows smashed
By mindless thugs.The hour is near.
A loving god invokes no fear.
Clothes unrented, teeth ungnashed,
Fools smirk at happy circumstance.
As Newton postulated, so
I righteously take up the hoe.

The voice

2008-05-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

With great passion, you deny me,
When the man with clipboard calls,
While the cord with which you tie me
Cuts a channel in my wrist.
With coarse bandages I’m muzzled
Deep within these cobwebbed halls,
And your voice is low and puzzled
When he asks if I exist.

Confined within this attic
In the echo of the storm,
You can hear my voice, erratic
‘Mong the murmur of the stones.
And you find my smile unnerving
(For there’s no hope of reform)
And I gaze out, undeserving
Of your disapproving tones.

But sometimes when you are dreaming
Or you’ve gone out for the night,
Through the trap-door I come streaming
And inhale the buoyant air.
In the darkness, hear me snigger
With a serpentine delight,
Growing bolder, growing bigger
When I know that you’re not there.

Then I dance the dance of ages,
Unfettered, unrestrained,
Unconfined to rusting cages,
I can stretch my withered limbs.
Whirling round now, unencumbered,
My mobility regained,
For too long, my dear, I’ve slumbered
To your dull and dreary hymns.

Then I hear a car door slamming
Or the light snaps on upstairs
And I know your fierce god-damning
Means your fist is firmly flexed.
So I flee back to your attic
And your glum and nervous prayers,
And I’ll stay there, mute and static,
Till the next time, till the next…

Guantanamo

2008-05-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

The jet black sun squats down upon
The troubled waters in the bay,
As each point of the pentagon
Shrugs nervously and turns away.
Toothpaste words shout loud the pain
On smuggled mugs. The silent screams
Drop hard, like stained, sand-laden rain,
Narration of forgotten dreams.
Soon, all the world is spattered by
These droplets thick that so besmirch
The windows of both state and church,
Refracting light from sea and sky.
One day, says Travis, real rain
Will wash away each fractured stain.

Garden birds

2008-05-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

In early April, nuts and seeds
Are set out for the final time.
The bush on which the sparrow feeds
Is now sufficient for its needs,
And lusty nature’s in her prime.

I’m spared the traipsing to the shed
O’er crispy grass stuck hard by frost
To make sure that the birds are fed
With fat balls and hard crusts of bread
Obtained at very little cost.

And though they now no longer come
In flurries of fast-beating wings.
It comforts me to know that some
Still flutter by to find a crumb
And listen how the blackbird sings.

Strokestown

2008-05-06T08:56:00.001-07:00

Whence one time they fled with dread
And blackened tongues and sunken eyes
In search of just a crust of bread
That beckoned in the western skies,

Now, they return, replete with words
And cheeks that bulge with metaphors
And adjectives that flit like birds
From em’rald grass to budding spores.

Oh Strokestown, verdant and serene,
How silent sits thy bitter past
Beneath the tended sod so green,
Now free from scorn and pain at last.

Time to go

2008-03-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

It’s time to go, Larbowski thought,
As yet another jet of steam
Shot just outside the spaceship’s port.

He tried to catch a fleeting dream
That flickered somewhere in his mind.

The purple ocean fizzed and crashed
Against this island ill-defined,
As soot rained down and lightning flashed.

This continent, this vast domain,
Where exploration first was urged,
Had shrivelled to a tiny grain
Of sand that soon would be submerged.
The screaming wind howled loud with pain
As land and sea and sky converged.

‘Tis not the planet of my birth,
But still my halting breath is caught
To watch the death of Mother Earth.

It’s time to go, Larbowski thought.

The band wore red suits

2008-02-26T11:16:00.000-08:00

The band wore red suits
And the singer’s teeth shone white,
Matching well his tell-tale roots.

Cheesy songs all night.
Sunday evening painted brown
In a small provincial town.

Worked hard through the week.
Now the make-up, well applied
Fosters elegant and sleek.

Dresses swirl with pride,
As they lose themselves perchance
In the movements of the dance.

Beer bellies stretch shirts,
But the lightness on their feet
Echoes fine the twirling skirts.

Pulsating with heat.
More duck than gliding swan.
I look enviously on.

Time’s Joke

2008-01-29T23:38:00.000-08:00

The skin on the back of your hand, dear,
Lies fleshless and loose from the veins.
Like a frog staring hard on the sand, dear,
It rests, contemplating it’s pains
On the cloth of Swiss lace
In a state of pure grace
Adorned by that dull, tarnished band.

Your fingers are trembling lightly,
An aura of ice haloes round.
Your nails have been pared back contritely,
Now grey as the shale in the ground.
The hand I first took
Never shivered nor shook
But grasped with a clench of delight.

You don’t catch my heart-searing gaze, love,
Your eyes are like buttons of steel.
This pointless addition of days, love,
Won’t touch very much that you feel.
But I still catch a trace
In your soft, worn-out face
Of the girl smiling out of the haze.

Do you remember Felicity Connors
And the time that you swam round the bay?
How you both put the fright’ners upon us
Near the end of that bright, cloudless day?
And your hands looked so old
With their ridges of cold
And I rubbed till the wrinkles were gone.

I’ve no towel that can warm up your hand now
Lying speckled and white by your cup.
This chapter’s unheard and unplanned now -
Each day we are making it up.
Just two elderly folk
Who can’t laugh at time’s joke,
Coming close to the edge of the strand.

On Jackson’s Bridge Lock

2008-01-22T05:42:00.000-08:00

I sat on the footboards in midge-ridden heat
And sighed at the pleasure of dangling feet
And gazed at the splash-thumping water below
From the lofty-eyed perch of my gallery seat.
And yes, I was God and the Lord of the Flow,
Welling up at my back in an ocean of woe.
“I’m Canute, turn ye back, for my peace is complete!”
And the lip-lapping waves murmured “Let it be so.”
And thus did my world, so minute and banal
Slip away in the heat of the Royal Canal.

The hours had flowed gentle since leaving Twelfth Lock
Past hawthorn and bramble that hid Castleknock;
Clonsilla, where moorhens did silently glide;
And Leixlip, asleep at the head of the clock.
And always this handrail stretched out by my side
That brooded so long ‘pon my every stride.
Hewn from wet marshlands or blasted from rock,
Uncaring, it seemed, of the toe-tapping tide.
And long past the grey, chiselled walls of Maynooth
I rested awhile, contemplating the truth.

Like the swish of a tail, did my hand flick the spate
Of food-frenzied flies that did whirl and gyrate.
The sun bathed my brow and my heels idly tapped
A pulse beat against the great riveted gate.
Behind me the waters hypnotically lapped,
Beside me the barley shone strong and sedate.
Far away in the distance, a grey heron flapped
Along these calm contours so carefully mapped.
O’er the hill to my right in a hymn deep and glum
Swam the westward-bound traffic’s insatiable hum.

Was it midges or cars that buzzed constant and loud?
The sun shuffled into a solit’ry cloud.
I hauled myself up with a sigh long suppressed
And a beady-eyed raven blinked slowly and bowed.
Rebolstered and buoyed by that much-needed rest
I resumed my intransigent, rhythmical quest
Toward the deep haze that dropped close like a shroud
‘Pon the narrowing water away to the west.
And so I departed that welcoming lock
And followed the towpath that led to Kilcock.

Shortlisted in the Inaugural Attleborough Poetry Competition 2008. One winner, the next nine highly recommended.

In Defence of Texters

2007-12-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

Among the drivel that holds sway
Upon the radio today,
I heard a learnéd poet moan
That this new-fangled mobile phone
Would spell the death of English Lit.
By subtly replacing it.
For this new language he called ‘Text,’
About which he was roundly vexed,
Would render spelling out of date
With acronyms that just create
Phonetic words devoid of vowels,
Which chill all literary bowels.
And thus this word upon the street
Would render grammar obsolete,
With adverbs and subjunctive clauses
Lost to modernistic causes.
I know this poet and his verse,
And sadly know of little worse
Existing now in prose or rhyme
Within the pages of our time.
His references are so obtuse
And syntax so supremely loose
That very few can understand
Each Latin, Greek or Persian strand
That emanates at will from his
Well-rounded nether orifice.
Dismissive of both style and form,
So far from the poetic norm
His verses are, that if one chose,
They could be written down as prose.
For e’en the poet laureate
Should manage to communicate
With prince or pauper, stranger, friend,
In language they can comprehend.
And spirit quickly disappears
When writing solely for one’s peers,
Elitest nonsense, masked as style,
Delivered in a breathless guile,
That fools the meek poetic heart
To thinking he is hearing art.
And it is an uncommon truth
That our maligned, phone-texting youth
Are far more versed in every way
At reaching out through words today.
Though their epistles may be brief,
It brings an old man some relief
To see that they have found a cure
For television’s evil lure,
And though frustrated parents groan,
The ever-present mobile phone,
Ideal for communication,
Can’t be used in isolation.
Instead of being cooped up at home,
Their profiles are allowed to roam
Throughout the ether, interact,
“Poeticise” to be exact.
For poetry, to be precise
Is language chosen and concise,
And though the spelling may not be
That found in any diction’ry,
At least the reader knows what means
The writing on those tiny screens,
As very few pubescent writers
Reference Zeus or Heraclitus.
Androgynous and under-sexed,
They’re learning well the joy of text.
Elitist poet, hold thy tongue
And learn a little from the young!

Made the final shortlist of the Swift Satire Poetry Competition 2007

Tattoos – A Conversation

2007-12-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

I strolled today with Reverend Spate
Upon the beach at Donabate
Which, basking in the summer heat,
Was, as becomes its wont, replete
With bodies lying stretched and still,
Like kippers cooking ‘pon a grill.
And as we strolled with sandy feet
Around this mass of cooking meat,
The Reverend happened to remark
Upon the etchings deep and dark
Adorning arm and derrière
Of every second person there.
The Reverend, living in life’s crêche
Knows little of the painted flesh,
But learns of life through novelettes,
About which he routinely frets.
“Are these all real?” he thus enquired,
Discreetly pointing, as required,
At anchors, angels, ships and braids
‘Pon upper calves and shoulder blades.
I harumphed like a Philistine
(Tattoos being a pet hate of mine)
And with the smallest nod of head,
Confirmed the truth of what he’d said.
It was a while before he spoke,
And then the lengthy silence broke,
With ne’er a trace of whim nor joke
To ask if these were “sailing folk?”
“Sailing folk?” I loudly snorted,
At the image this imported,
And bending down, I swept a glut
Of clammy seaweed from my foot.
Gnarled old sea dogs telling tales
Of close encounters with fierce whales,
And losing masts and mizzen sails
In terrifying southern gales,
And drinking rum in dockside bars,
And navigating by the stars,
And getting into narrow scrapes
With giant squid, and rounding capes
In rolling seas, lashed to the wheel,
Harpooning walrus, shark and seal,
And walking planks and abject fears
Of meeting ghostly buccaneers???
I gazed around upon the rows
Of tender bodies in repose,
And then addressed the image that
The Reverend had been hinting at.
“My learnéd friend,” I ventured forth,
As we perambulated north.
“I’d venture that these painted clowns –
For want of more descriptive nouns –
Have never slept aboard a ship
Or voyaged further than a trip
To Holyhead and back again
Upon the placid Irish main.
It pains me, sir, to break the news
That sporting these absurd tattoos,
(Which I consider great pishogue,)
Is, at the moment, much in vogue.
It seems that all these little elves
Feel urged to beautify themselves
With celtic or far-eastern script
In inky colours dourly dipped.
Or else they choose to etch the names
Of wives or girlfriends, latest flames,
Which doubtless they will come to rue
When that relationship falls through.
And tattoos now, where once confined
To those more nautically inclined,
Are favoured now by every shrimp
And lily-livered knock-kneed wimp
To show the world that they are tough,
Constructed of the harder stuff,
Whereas in fact, ‘tis a deceit.
To paint one’s skin requires no feat
Of courage, bravery or valour,
For even those of deathly pallor,
Lawyers, tax consultants, bankers,
Now sport little skulls and anchors.
A man is judged by deeds and views,
Not whether he has got tattoos.”
The Reverend Spate (my rant complete)
Perused the sand beneath his feet,
And thus we walked along the beach,
Devoid of any need for speech,
Skirting all those tanning hides
Spreadeagled round us from all sides.
At length, the Reverend glanced at me
(I thought, a little warily)
And then, which I could scarce believe,
Pulled back his shirt’s flamboyant sleeve,
Revealing verses from a psalm
Tattooed upon his spindly arm.

Made the final shortlist of the Swift Satire Poetry Competition 2007

Poor Harry

2007-12-10T06:24:00.001-08:00

We’re mourning the death of poor Harry McGrew,
Who died at the age of just fifty and two.
A popular man who we’ll never forget,
His passing is tinged with a lasting regret.
He went for a walk in a breeze strong and stiff,
And ventured too close to the edge of the cliff.
The coroner told everyone that he did owe
A debt of great thanks to his teary-eyed widow,
Who had the whole inquest in fits of loud wailing,
Describing poor Harry’s last ropeless abseiling.
As he plummeted down to a horrible death,
She heard him take one last great lungful of breath.
“God bless you my dear!” he shouted in shock,
While striking a treacherous, sticky-out rock.
“It wasn’t your fault, you must not blame yourself!”
As he rolled off a narrow and down-facing shelf,
And just as he crashed to the boulders below,
She heard his last words echo up loud and slow,
“You’ve been such a loving and wonderful wife,
Please don’t stay unwed for the rest of your life!”
The death of a loved one is sorrow indeed,
But see how the mourning’s now tinctured with greed,
The itchiness caused by the terrible wait
To see if poor Harry left any estate.
Clad in black is the most lacrimonious spouse
Whose father-in-law is not long for her house.
She’s already eyed up a plumber named Roger
Who’s expressed an int’rest at being her lodger.
She’s been getting ideas from wallpaper books,
And bought a small sample to see how it looks,
And poor old Josiah may well scratch his chin –
He’ll have to move out when young Roger moves in.
And see, Jill, his daughter, breaks down in wild tears.
I don’t think she paid him a visit in years.
A house in the country with meadows and stables,
Hats made in Paris and bought for the labels.
And yes, it is true, from the day she did marry,
A card on his birthday was all for poor Harry.
Her husband’s made fortunes in peanuts and soya
And recently phoned up the family lawyer
To see, from an impartial, impersonal view
Just how much of poor Harry’s estate they’d be due.
And then there’s the son, poor old Harry’s great hope,
Who needs an abundance of powder to cope,
An image of Harry in flesh and in blood,
Who moans to the world that he’s misunderstood.
Despite all the handouts and scrapes with the law,
Poor Harry refused to show Junior the door,
But handed him thousands of euro to burn,
And never was offered a cent in return.
The lad now is silently doing his sums
And working out grams for when handout day comes.
And Harry’s big brother is sniffing around,
Attracted no doubt by the smell of a pound,
Arrived in his Merc from his farm down in Clare
(Inherited after a shotgun affair)
But though his great farmhouse lies on a large spread
There’s no space to give poor Josiah a bed.
The cousins and nephews have all come around
To pay their respects and to test out the ground.
The golf clubs, his tankards, his prize-winning trout
Have all been politely enquired about.
But the widow is bullish, she’s well on her guard
To keep all the things for which Harry worked hard.
A rumour’s been started, (they say ‘twas by Jill)
That maybe there has been a subsequent will,
And Junior’s been rifling through letters and drawers,
And offering to help with the financial chores.
And hints have been dropped about what is expected,
And how many thousands may end up rejected.
And Junior’s friend, simply known as ’The Greek’
Has called round to pay his respects twice this week.
Oh yes they will all miss poor Harry McGrew
Who died at the age of just fifty and two.

The Tiger’s Roar

2007-08-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

She came from a town near the border,
Once jungle, now scrub,
Once peaceful, now disputed.
At dusk, as a young girl,
Lying on her raffia bed,
She would hear the lion roar
Its homage to the day, now kissed goodnight.
She would think it was roaring for her,
Afraid that it would poke its strong head
Through the mud walls
And she would feel its warm breath,
Catch the gleam of its sharp teeth
Before it carried her off like a rag doll
Into the cushioned undergrowth.

Now she lives in two rooms
High above the snarling street,
A spear’s throw from the spot
Where Pearse issued his proclamation
Cherishing all citizens.
The vans growl
And the buses shriek
And titanic tussles rise
From the nearby watering-hole,
Cacophanising the coarse air.
Sullen tribesmen stare out from the stairwell,
Decorated, menacing.

She flicks the chipped switch
And straightens the kettle’s frayed cable,
Casting a careless eye
At the dark patch melting down the wall.
A month’s grime curtains the sash window.
Flakes of white paint lie stricken on the sill.

They tell her the tiger is still roaring
And she lies awake at night
Straining to hear it.

Three Trees Leaning

2007-08-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

In the grounds of Strokestown House,
Where, every year,
Newborn free verse poetry
Totters out of the open French windows
And gambols with the lambs
On spindly, uncertain legs,
There stand three trees leaning.
Leaning like broken teeth,
Each points not heavenward,
But slightly to the left of it,
As if heaven were a cliché to be shunned.
What caused this angular deviation from the norm?
One could be a maverick.
Two might be coincidence,
But three suggests a revolutionary movement,
Breaking from tradition with an impudent flourish.
The three trees of the apocalypse?
Where should the poet aim? At heaven?
Or slightly to the left of it?
Words flying staccato-like
Through the stratosphere and ionosphere,
Each chiselled like a personal bullet.

Three pillars to the inexact science
Striving obliquely toward literary perfection.
Silvered bark, straight and sleek,
Roots buried deep in the earth
On which druids recited to deafening applause.
Did their words fly to their target
As from three cannons pointed at the invading army?
Did their words find their range,
Or did the lyrical bombs drop harmlessly short
Unheard and ignored
Amid a cacophany of alarm bells?

The villagers of Kap Dan

2007-08-03T06:20:00.002-07:00

“This tribe” said our guide,
As we crunched through frosted snow
In our patent Italian shoes,
“Was only discovered in 1884,
When they plucked some shipwrecked Danish whalers
From the treacherous East Greenland currents.”
Unaware that they were not alone,
These primitive beings
Still inhabited an ice-age world
Of flint-topped spears
And sealskinned umiaks,
Invoking forgotten gods
As they battled the harshest conditions on earth
On a daily basis.
In return,
The Danes gave them religion,
Education,
Realisation,
Social security,
Whiskey
And deep-chasmed despair.

Wizened and deadened faces bore no animosity
As they shuffled around in a makeshift dance,
Complete with vague chants,
In a demonstration of Inuit culture.
A little girl in a pink anorak with synthetic fur
Thrust a carved walrus tusk into my hand
And held out a grubby hand in silence.

And if perchance we are visited
By higher beings from behind the iceberg clouds,
Will we not all just shrug our shoulders,
Twist the cap from the bottle
And wonder what’s the point?

Young man old man

2007-08-03T06:20:00.001-07:00

As a young man,
He thought he’d killed an Austrian in a fight,
Pounded him to death with bearlike hands.
His father, helpless to his awful plight,
Packed him off to strange far-distant lands.
To Tunis and beyond he made his way.
With Nubian women three years he did dwell
Until his father wrote to him to say
“He lives, come home, the world is looking well.”

As an old man
‘Tis now disease, but then the loon was just
A mad old Swiss man, querulous and frail.
A strong mind crumbled into yellow dust
Behind those eyes expressionless and pale.
And though he knew not daughters nor his wife,
He spoke about those women dark and warm
Who cradled him for three years of his life
And drew their veils across the howling storm.

Silence

2007-08-03T06:19:00.000-07:00

The hum from the distant dual carriageway
Has settled in my ears
Like a thin film of wax.
It paints crude pictures in my dreams
And greases down my hair.
A plane bound for New York or Athens
Buzzes behind a cloud.
A lawnmower somewhere hammers out
Its rheumy rhythm
As birds chatter excitedly.

Where would I find true silence?
In the desert? On the ice-cap?
Maybe only in death.
Would I even hear it if it bellowed down my ear
Through a foghorn?

No miracle needed

2007-08-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

Like a yellow blanket,
The size of a small nation,
The wheat field gleams in the sunlight,
Waiting for the crowning hum of harvest
With purring pleasure.
Thick and strong, the ripe ears
Breathe the soil in the triumph.
The farmer stands on a gatepost
And, shading his eyes against the reflected glare,
Smiles.

From Newfoundland to Norway,
Squat trawlers winch in groaning nets,
Setting down their struggling catch,
A writhing mass that slithers and slides
Before the hold is battened down.
The skipper taps his pipe and re-lights.

Five million loaves and two million fish
And still the people at the back go hungry.

James Shaw, Cooldramun

2007-08-03T06:17:00.002-07:00

James Shaw, Cooldramun,
It must be great fun
To lie in the earth
Many years from your birth
With a poet next door
Underneath the brown floor.
Are you now best mates
With W.B Yeats?

In Haverhill town square

2007-08-03T06:17:00.001-07:00

In muggy warmth, the market square
Is crossed by girls with wondrous hair
And mothers chiding errant tots
And stiffened men in shuffling knots.
Beneath the church’s sandstoned tower
With sentinels to guard the hour
The yew tree and the willow sway
In homage to this rhythmic day
With jackdaws squatting on the roof,
Imperious and quite aloof.

‘Tis Middle England, soft and calm,
Far from war and death and harm,
With cute cafés that sell high teas
And yes, building societies
And betting shops and lifeboat shops
And shops that stock both socks and mops.
But visitor, beware the ire
Exhaled if one should stoke its fire.

Goodbye

2007-08-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

The close embrace, the bosomed hug,
The cases hauled out of the boot,
The tightened lips, the helpless shrug,
The watch face no-one can refute.
But though we part, it’s not the end
Despite our deep and voiceless fears.
Though weeks may pass, or months or years,
The day will come again, dear friend,
When once again I’ll kiss your face
And clasp you in a tight embrace
And we’ll resume, as though the chime
Of clocks were not the mark of time.
But now we’ll sing our sad refrain
Until we come to meet again.

Country Lane

2007-08-03T06:15:00.002-07:00

An old shawled woman shuffles fearfully
Along the roadside verge
To a neighbour’s cottage,
As the tin bullets stream by
Like machine-gun fire.
She creeps and pauses, creeps and pauses,
Only forging ahead when the coast is clear,
Like a marine in the jungle hell-hole.
Beside her, the banks of
Burdock,
Knapweed,
Dandelion and
Cow parsley
Wear their veil of cement dust,
Unnaturally silvered like sprayed wreath-roses.
With rasping breath, they seek the sun,
As a drowning man forces blue lips
To break the rippled surface
Of a world turned topsy-turvy.
The rumbling of the machines in McFadden’s Field
Drone their miserable lament.

Country lane now designated
“Orbital Access Route.”

A bloodstained pelt is mashed into the tarmac.
Fox or rabbit? Who can tell?
It matters no longer.
Certainly not to the opportunistic magpie
That takes its life in its wings
To investigate.
The old woman glances at the blood-splattered fur,
Nods knowingly
And pads on.

Cobweb

2007-08-03T06:15:00.001-07:00

Do not dwell on’t dear.
Blow it away like a stray cobweb
Accidentally blundered into.
Don’t let the gossamer threads
Wrap their wispy bonds
Around your beautiful face,
But pluck them off
With a careless finger
And laugh gaily.
The spider in the crevice thinks naught of it,
But will set to work at once
To weave his dangerous chains again.
You are no struggling fly
Frantic with terror.
Cast off the rope that binds you
And think no more of it.

Bird dance

2007-08-03T06:14:00.002-07:00

On fine evenings we would stand by the canal
And watch the dance begin.

At first a few stray sparrows, like formation spitfires,
Would turn and swirl and swirl and turn
Above the multinational plant.
More would join and more and still more,
As summonsed by vespers bell
Or a conductor’s baton,
Until a full third of the sky
Was blocked out by a massive cloud
That rolled and fluttered, swirled and turned
Like a giant flag waved gaily.
And we would stand and watch in awe
This great primeval homage to the day
Until as if by whistle called,
The birds dispersed like shrapnel.

When I hadn’t seen them for a while,
I questioned a sad-eyed man sitting on the lock,
Who said:
The owner of the multinational plant,
Compelled to be seen to act
By his shit-strewn employees,
Hired a man with a hawk, or a falcon
(He didn’t know which)
And this bird, shooting fish in a barrel,
Dispersed the flock and broke up the dance
Like a Gard unplugging an amp.

Sometimes I imagine myself a lark
Sitting high atop a purple cloud,
Gazing down with beady eye upon
The streams of cars that conga to this plant
From all points of the compass.
And I wonder how long it will be
Before a hook-nosed man
Besplattered by shareholders’ flak
Puts an end to this crazy dance.

At an antiques fair

2007-08-03T06:14:00.001-07:00

Like pleading puppies in the pound,
They stare up at me, big-eyed.
The stallholder turns another page
And crunches an apple.
I stoop down and scoop one
From the brown and battered box.
“The Life of Fridtjof Nansen by J. Arthur Bain”
I read,
Etched in gold print on the rubbed navy spine,
Above a silver print of Fram,
Nudging through Arctic ice floes.
“E.G. Lyttle, 66, Manor Street”
Written proudly in Edwardian handwriting
On the frontispiece.
An age when daring feats of bravery
Still inspired enraptured boys.
Nansen, Bain and Lyttle,
All gone, all but forgotten,
Joined after death by a scrawled fly-leaf.
The bond will break when,
Dumped in a skip.
The broken spine and moulding leaves
“With numerous illustrations and a map”
End their days in landfill.
Would that I owned a bare-shelved carved bookcase
In a Georgian drawing room
Where I could stack authors, subjects and readers
And let them converse forever
In erudite surroundings.
But this is a practical age.
I lay the book down atop the others,
Silently bidding them all a good home.

A war maiden prepares for battle

2007-08-03T06:13:00.000-07:00

The warpaint hides her soft’ning jaw,
The spider lines beside her eyes.
No painter born could ever draw
A mask of such complete disguise.
Preparing for this savage war
Each careful stroke is thus applied
To screen what nature cannot hide.

Her armour laid out in a row
Reflects the callous lamplight’s glare.
With steady hands and face aglow,
She dons each piece with utmost care.
The moon lolls by with gait so slow
‘Tis unsure if he moves at all,
Yet she ignores his mocking call.

A strange bird screeches in the night,
The trees sashay with ancient ghosts.
Beneath the wan, translucent light
Eternal spirits leave their posts.
She straightens up, the ancient rite
Concluded like some sacred dance,
With very little left to chance.

She draws a breath. Her bosom heaves
Beneath a lace of stately blue.
Her earrings, like two semibreves
Resound with a foreboding hue.
She knows the fashion that deceives,
Yet still she asks me with a hiss,
“Do you think my bum looks big in this?”

A family reunion

2007-08-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

There he lay, pink and fragile,
In the parish of Baltiboys,
Shallow breath barely heard
At the foot of the yellowed microfiche.
“Milesius Behan to Martin Behan and Mary nee Cullen
Twentieth March 1830.
Sponsors Luke Hughes and Bridget Behan.”
I bowed formally to Luke,
As he prepared to launch into another song,
And smiled warmly at Bridget,
Remarking on the family likeness,
As she fussed nervously over the sleeping infant.
Bleary-eyed through months of searching,
I gazed fondly on the calm brow
Of my great-great-grandfather, Miley,
Warm in his rough sacking,
His parting from the Black Hill,
His journey to Dublin,
His marriage to Catherine Byrne,
His life as a nondescript labourer
All ahead of him,
Undreamt of in that new-sprung head.
Then I turned to Martin and Mary,
Proud parents, tired
Through scratching a living on a plot
Owned by the man from the Big House,
And childbirth.
I embraced them in turn,
Like a prodigal son.

The Wonderful World of Disney

2007-08-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

Coralled along ropes
In the kingdom of hopes,
We shuffle and sweat
‘Neath the blue blanket sky,
And the businessmen sing
As the registers ring
And they count all the plums
In the Florida pie.

The queues wind around
O’er the pink concrete ground
And we’re ushered and prodded
With throats black and dry.
And the drovers are types
Who wear badges and stripes
And disposable smiles
As they wave us on by.

The colours leap out
With a bold, brassy shout.
Like skeet and flamingoes
To heaven they fly
And the poor wilting kids
Raise dispassionate lids,
As their parents mop brows
With a wearisome sigh.

And wheelchairs are pushed
By men wrinkled and crushed –
Sick sons who are feeble
And waiting to die.
Last moments of joy
For the poor, tragic boy
Whose face shows no trace
That his dreamworld is nigh.

There’s no lasting joy here
In this world of great cheer,
Just suspension of life
In one fabulous high.
But down we must come
‘Neath reality’s thumb
When the cases are packed
And we’re waving goodbye.

Executive Toy

2007-08-02T14:37:00.004-07:00

Like the showman, trying to keep
All plates spinning on their poles,
The Magician starts to whirl
Tiny orbs around the sphere.
Some go fast and some are large,
While some are clear as drops of sand,
But they all flow round the stage
On elusive nylon threads,
Reflected only in the light
That cannot reach the farthest edge.
No applause, the stalls are bare
For this great game of solitaire.

The Goldfinches

2007-08-02T14:37:00.003-07:00

The goldfinches never arrived this year
To feast on our larder of nuts.
Sparrows and starlings
In numbers, the darlings,
Bring plentiful chattering cheer
Swapping tall tales from the fence’s flat struts.
But the goldfinches failed to appear.

The robin checked in on Christmas Eve
And perched on the flaking back wall.
He sat there surveying
The sky cold and greying
Like a wistful and fat semibreve.
Until interrupted by dusk’s gentle call,
He’d no inclination to leave.

The rooks and the jackdaws came swooping in
With confidence in their great size
Aloof, yes, and haughty,
They’re not very sporty
And flee at the drop of a pin.
Like black, soaring shrouds, they near cover the skies
Like the reincarnation of sin.

But the goldfinches never arrived this year,
All painted in yellows and reds.
Do their tiny hearts harden
At the thoughts of our garden,
Or have they forgotten we’re here?
Or did they lie dead in their feathery beds
When the cold hand of winter drew near?

Jonothan

2007-08-02T14:36:00.001-07:00

For thirty years his mere existence
Never crossed my mind.
Out of sight through time and distance,
Memory is blind.
A slim youth then, now paunched and greying,
It can not be said
That thoughts of Jonothan came straying
Once into my head.

But suddenly, a name! Oh dare I
Cast my twirling line
Back to those dark waters where I
Thought no sun could shine?
I, attracted to the city
And its neoned names,
Jonothan evoked my pity
For his simple aims.

I smothered in a tiny village,
Gasping out for breath,
Crying out to strike and pillage
‘Ere I choked to death.
Jonothan lived with his father
In a hillside shack,
Never saying once he’d rather
Leave his mountain track.

I caught the village bus the last time,
Never once turned round,
Never tempted by the pasttime
Of my native ground.
All my links I chose to sever,
Freedom unconfined
My old pal for long years never
Crossed my dazzled mind.

Does he still live in his cottage,
Circled by his sheep,
With his lamp of lowly wattage
Dulling him to sleep.
Do the cattle keep him busy,
Shirtsleeved in the scree.
Jonothan – I wonder is he
Happier than me?

I wish my feet had calloused soles

2007-08-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

I wish my feet had calloused soles,
As tough as strips of air-dried beef,
So I could pace o’er burning coals
And never, never come to grief.
On shingled beach, my sharp-breath moans
Attract the seagull’s mocking eye.
He glances as I hobble by,
Deflated by the smallest stones,
While little children, spades in hand,
Skip lightly o’er the pebbled strand.

And though I search for flat-topped rocks
Whereon to place my tender feet,
I really should wear shoes and socks
To cross this lethal, sandy street.
Too oft I walk o’er shingled shores
And feel each tiny pin-pricked dart
That scoresd its name upon my heart,
While down below the wave-crash roars.
I wish my feet had calloused souls
So I could manage seaside strolls.

A Winter’s Dawn

2007-08-02T14:34:00.002-07:00

The blanket torn from off the bed,
The callous cold clamps pallid lips
Upon the startled motherhead,
Flesh naked in her rolling hips.
Stiff and haughty looms the birch
Behind the tracing paper mist.
No grain of colour doth besmirch
The frozen twigs by winter kissed.
A writhing corpse in camera snapped
With bony fingers gnarled in death,
Convulsed in shock, by violence sapped
Of gut-warmth and the spectrum’s breath.
With grotesque grin, it mocks the dawn
It’s fleshless teeth bared to the sky,
And brittle branches cry with scorn
That all souls should prepare to die.
The gripping hoar-frost clings like mud
To ear and nose and sap-choked eyes,
Tight-smothering the living blood,
Endeavouring to paralyse.
In shock, the statued monster stands,
Black silhouette against the grey,
Throwing supplicating hands
Toward the dawning of the day.
Lo! primal colours squeezed of joy
Like berries nipped ‘twixt fingertips
And thrice distilled to help destroy
The hope encased in tiny pips.
With curling lips, the stillness reigns.
No breath to warm the rock-hard buds.
No early-rising pigeon deigns
To break the cover of the woods.

But hark! Away, behind the east,
The sound of distant hoofbeats drum.
What manner of a man or beast
Dare rouse the equilibrium?
At first a paleness, nothing more
That clambers up the startled gloom,
A whisper heard above a roar,
The merest hint of gay perfume.

Behind the wall of light’ning grey,
A thousand fanfares rent the skies,
As darkness braces for the fray,
A look of terror in its eyes.
A mighty roar, the clash of steel,
The whiff of charcoal ‘pon the air.
Blood red runs the savage weal
That glistens through the tunic’s tear.
And then a yell, a sudden thrust!
The dark reels back as though harpooned.
A shaft of sunlight thick with dust
Comes streaming through the open wound.

The hawthorn hedge explodes to green,
The birch bathes in the lucent hue
And, painted in the luscious scene,
A red-eyed pigeon starts to coo.
The battle’s won, scarred night has fled,
The frost is prised off flexing boughs,
And, rising like a figurehead,
The morning dons her brightest blouse.

Heidi

2007-08-02T14:34:00.001-07:00

With the midwinter gripping,
By the stove’s sultry heat,
With the midwife still slipping
Through freshly glazed snow,
Unfocussed eyes squinting,
Cocooned in a sheet,
She gazed at lights tinting
The darkness below.

The mountains subsumed her
Throughout her dour life.
They lured her, consumed her
And rolled her like phlegm.
As dutiful daughter,
As downtrodden wife,
Each nerve, each aorta
Beholden to them.

From the cold social basement,
She’d crane her head back.
A tragic encasement,
Just one of life’s scalps.
But sometimes she’d ponder
Upon a high track,
And I’d watch her mind wander
Back home to the Alps.

A thousand miles distant,
She saw out her days,
But the mountains, persistent,
Would not let her go.
She’d lean on a gate
And she’d wistfully gaze
From the rolled hillside’s pate
To the valley below.

Her cottage was bare
Like a gannet’s rough ledge,
But she breathed the thin air
And gave thanks to the sky.
And up where light flashes,
By an old hawthorn hedge,
We scattered her ashes,
My brother and I.

Autumn

2007-08-02T14:33:00.002-07:00

Through the bus’s grimy windows,
I watch Summer take her seat,
Her sunkissed face in profile,
Children laughing at her feet.
The driver pulls the handbrake
And the bus moves slowly on,
Till its lost among the traffic,
Till the final glow has gone.
Then I turn with misty eyeballs
To the old man at my side
And I clap him on the shoulder
And I fall in with his stride.

Two Red Lights

2007-08-02T14:33:00.001-07:00

Two red lights,
Rear headlights,
Keep me safely on the road.
Rain sheeting,
Drum-beating,
As the dark cloud sheds its load.
Night falling,
Fear calling,
And the trees and barns flash by.
I swallow
And follow
With a panic in my eye.

We started,
Departed,
In a light and playful mood.
Fine weather,
Together,
And a sense of hope imbued.
You leading,
Preceding,
As we listened to the band.
Songs playing,
We swaying,
Sometimes you’d wave your hand.

I’m steering
And peering
Through the metronomic screen.
Gears crunching
And punching
O’er the dark and slippy sheen.
I wander
Far yonder
To the glow of our abode.
Your red lights,
Rear headlights,
Keep me safely on the road.

And then, as I screech round a dangerous bend,
The lights that did guide me come to a sharp end.
No shining red glow in the thundering rain,
Just darkness, sheer darkness and darkness again.
My foot on the pedals, I slip down the gears,
Peering round wildly, my mind set with fears.
Have you come off the road, ended up in the ditch?
Or accelerated? I cannot tell which.
Maybe you’ve taken a half-hidden lane,
A shortcut you know through the wind and the rain?
Alone, all alone now, I slow to a crawl,
No red lights to guide me, no red lights at all.

The Ant

2007-08-02T14:32:00.003-07:00

Upon a small island within a large ocean,
I went for a walk on a warm Autumn day
‘Cross cliffs that were fissured by saltwater spray
And polished by breezes of circular motion.

I came to the headland that thrust out its chin
With arrogant air to the rippling blue,
And I stretched in the grass to admire the view
And watch the great rollers come lumbering in.

And then by my sandal, I spied a small ant
Ascending a tuber of rich emerald grass.
With each gust he paused to allow it to pass,
And I fancy I heard him puff loudly and pant.

Slowly he followed this gruelling ascent.
From stalk he progressed to the wavering blade,
Which made him clutch tightly each time that it swayed.
A puff of his cheeks and then onward he went.

On reaching the summit, he never gave pause,
But turned and crawled quickly the way he had come,
A pointless adventure, I fancied, to some,
But worthy of thund’ring and lengthy applause.

I smiled at this scurrying insect because,
To him, that one blade at the end of the earth
Was more than the whole of the planet was worth,
And where is the man to deny that it was?

Translation

2007-08-02T14:32:00.001-07:00

With earphones on, translators start
Producing sense from balderdash,
Nuance central to their art
And mindful of a culture clash.

Their efforts may avert a brawl,
May keep relationships correct,
But better still by far if all
Just spoke the language of respect.

Why I Dream in Maps

2007-08-02T14:31:00.003-07:00

Wish-fulfillment is, perhaps,
The reason why I dream in maps.
In ten-league paces, long and crude,
I vault o’er lines of longitude
And, fleeing from the east wind’s moans,
Small islands are but stepping stones
By which I cross the ocean deep
Without the need for fevered leap.
I skirt the continental shelf
With but a pause to bless myself.
Colossus that bestrides the earth,
I’ve minimised the planet’s girth.
A puny wretch by day, it seems,
A giant nightly in my dreams.

The Lights that you see

2007-08-02T14:31:00.001-07:00

The lights that you see with your eyes tightly shut
Are the lamps on a mountainous track,
The welcoming glow from the wanderer’s hut
With its promise of brandy and brack.
Perched like a crow on the treacherous slope,
O’erlooking the boulder-strewn gulf,
A symbol of refuge, a promise of hope,
Escape from the ravenous wolf.

The lights that you see with your eyes tightly clenched
Are the lights on your grandfather’s porch,
Where hunger is sated and burning thirst quenched
‘Neath the glow of an old oil-dipped torch.
The coy smell of childhood wafts down from the haulm,
The grasshoppers chirp in the night,
And your grandmother’s bosom is gentle and warm
As it puts howling monsters to flight.

The Wounded Lion

2007-08-02T14:30:00.005-07:00

The wounded lion slinks away,
No longer master of the pride.
The hunter once, now easy prey,
Stripped of power, undignified.
Beneath the withered grass he slinks,
Padding out a tortured crawl,
While high above, a vulture blinks,
Its face impassive as a wall.
The race, as always, has been run,
The loser draws a final breath.
And beaming down, the blinkered sun
Smiles smugly on a lowly death.

A Simple Truth

2007-08-02T14:30:00.003-07:00

Stride out in a cornfield at night.
High above sing the rhythmical stars
In the heaving and natural dark,
Like pupa awaiting the Spring.
They glisten with dewy-eyed hope
In the comfortable shadows of shade,
Like splatters of snow on a road.

Back in the town they are fewer.
An optical illusion, they say,
Polluted by orange-hazed glow.
There, night is unnaturally bright,
A nervousness clouding the view,
Caught up in a nasty attack.
Perception is blinkered indeed.

Stars thrive in blackened conditions,
And gravitate more to the black.
They huddle like chorus line beauties,
Simpering on the large stage,
Giggling in self-conscious hope,
In front of the great velvet curtain.
One in the eye for the city.

They Played Football at Auschwitz on Sundays

2007-08-02T14:29:00.001-07:00

They played football at Auschwitz on Sundays,
While the guards and Alsatians looked on.
As the cattle trucks came
With humanity’s shame,
And the sun in its majesty shone.

With the shadow of death at their shoulder,
With the angel of hate at their side,
They practised their flicks
And did bicycle kicks,
And despaired when a shot whistled wide.

They argued the toss over throw-ins,
They moaned when a colleague mis-passed.
They frantically hacked
When their goal was attacked,
As the hordes shuffled off to be gassed.

Incongruous though it appears,
‘Twas born of a deep-rooted need.
What mattered the most
Was to be so engrossed
That the darkness began to recede.

They played football at Auschwitz on Sundays,
And joyfully panted each breath.
For a few sacred hours,
‘Neath the menacing towers,
They skipped o’er the stretched leg of death.

Published in Revival Issue 3, the quarterly poetry anthology of Revival Press

The Reverse of the Coin

2007-08-02T14:28:00.002-07:00

On Christmas Day, the tension ceased,
Brown faces into cackles creased,
And trenches deep disgorged their band
Of soldiers into no-man’s land.
And as they through the dank mist peered,
Brown faces with broad smiles appeared,
And clambered out to meet their foe,
With metaphorical mistletoe.
And cigarettes were handed round,
With photographs, dry, crunched and browned,
And when a football was produced,
The enmity again reduced,
And laughter, talent and fair play
Became the order of the day,
As human jetsam, urged to kill,
United in the common thrill
Of boot and leather, crosses, passes,
Loved by all the working classes.

Nigh on ninety years have passed
Since all those men were shot or gassed,
And I sit in my easy chair
Too far removed to really share
In those emotions that prevailed
When men against the system railed.
It seems an instinct born of good.
Humanity crawled out of mud
And shook his killer by the hand –
Thus far can I understand.

But I, so hypocritically racked,
Can’t comprehend the simple fact,
That on the next morn, war resumed
For men once more with death consumed.

Perspective

2007-08-02T14:28:00.001-07:00

Another Kenyan kid lies dead
As flies buzz round his dust-strewn head.
His mother cannot cut the thread,
And cradles him so gently.
A girl out shopping in Iraq
Is maimed in an unnamed attack.
Her stump is charred and sooty black
And bleeding quite intently.

And mothers, kidnapped in Brazil,
By those who choose to steal and kill
And trample on God’s Holy Will,
Recite the paternoster,
While Arab girls are sold as slaves
By Rolex-clad and gold-toothed knaves,
And rot away in shallow graves
That human peddlers foster.

And we, with passioned howls of rage,
Conditioned by the headlined page,
Disciples of the football age,
Are roused to fierce invective.
Oh, how we shake a righteous fist
At penalties the linesman missed
And diving victims harsh-dismissed,
With closeted perspective.

Shortlisted at the Kiltimagh In Search of Raftery Poetry competition 2006

Homeless World Cup Winners 2004

2007-08-02T14:27:00.002-07:00

No cavalcade when they returned,
No crowds in the arrivals hall.
Despite heroic glory earned,
They were not recognised at all.

No marching bands upon the street,
No roofless double-decker bus,
No minister for them to meet,
No press, no waving flags, no fuss.

An unbelievable display
From World Cup winning Boys in Green,
But in the Ireland of today
They slunk back to the streets unseen.

But huddled in their rugs at night,
Their dreams unravelled and unfurled
Fly up above the earth and write
That they are champions of the world.

Entrenched

2007-08-02T14:27:00.001-07:00

It’s an image that should be inspiring,
Restoring our faith in humanity,
When the cannon and guns ceased their firing
And goodwill overpowered the insanity.

When the mud-spattered fodder came crawling
O’er trenches so cold and decaying,
Sweet respite from murderous brawling,
Repose from the maiming and slaying.

When the Christmas Day truce stopped the slaughter
With its thoughts of a faraway manger,
And wine was dispensed as if water,
And no-one considered a stranger.

When a football was kicked about freely
Where the blood of lost comrades lay frozen,
Concentration so earnest and steely
On the brows of the players thus chosen.

And the smiles brought some warmth and some colour
To the endless expanse, brown and dreary,
And the flush, sweating faces seemed fuller,
Though the eyes remained ghostly and weary.

It’s an image that should be inspiring,
Restoring our faith in humanity,
But the next day the guns started firing
And the world sank once more to insanity.

Mirror Image

2007-08-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

Mirror image on a shaded lake,
Broken by a most ambiv’lent drake,
A duck and seven ducklings in his wake.

Morning webs ‘cross glist’ning rushes spun
Ensnare the pirhouetting flies, undone
Through bathing in the warm September sun.

Willow mourning by the water’s side,
Rooted in calamity and pride,
Resolutely pining for his bride.

Mirror image on a shaded lake.
Would it be a terrible mistake
To plunge with effervescent heart and break

The spell created by the living sheen?
To swim down to the treetops through the screen
Of navy bushes topped by verdant green.

A world devoid of gravity and strain,
Untroubled by the vagaries of rain.
No fingerprints upon the rounded pane.

To dream perchance and never more to wake.
The ancient limestone mountains start to flake.
Mirror image on a shaded lake.

The Louder Girl

2007-08-02T14:25:00.002-07:00

They say that she might be a little intense.
Each word that she utters is shouted.
Her energy levels are truly immense
And normal politeness is flouted.

She touches your shoulder to make you pay heed,
Her laughter is quite overbearing.
The lines on her face are expressive indeed,
And she’s somewhat too prone to foul swearing.

She lacks true decorum in all that she does,
Her head full of fanciful notions.
And yet, she’s more normal than any of us
Who habitually mask our emotions.

Symphony

2007-08-02T14:25:00.001-07:00

The cymbals crash loud
At the base of the cliff,
As the whole rhythm section explodes.
The mournful trombones
Emit passionate moans
As the harsh, squawking piccolo goads.

The tubas all blow
From the deep down below,
While the harp sings a mem’ry-filled song.
‘Tis a symphony played
Since the world first revolved,
Never-ending, rejoicing and strong.

Sunset

2007-08-02T14:24:00.001-07:00

The giant child
Wielded the brush like a sword.
The child smiled
And slashed the pale canvas
With flamingo pink.
Carelessly styled,
Flamboyant orange cut a swathe across
Pensive grey,
Not defiled but merging
Like memories.
And then textiled blue
Stabbed staccato across
Unstructured fluffy white.
Too wild
To be hung in a dusty frame
Enclosed by certainty.
Too mild
To resist for long
The dark forces of night.

Greener Grass

2007-08-02T14:23:00.002-07:00

A blue formica table,
Scratched by jet streams.
Linear reminders that tomorrow
Life resumes.
Back to billowing grey clouds
That portend rain,
Or a nondescript muffler
That merges into dank concrete.
I am forced to remind myself
Of the soft greenness of my homeland,
Not stark and rugged with ochre dryness,
But snug like my mother’s cardigan.
A beauty unappreciated.

A Gull at Twilight

2007-08-02T14:23:00.001-07:00

A solit’ry gull ‘gainst the red of the sky,
Floating above the calm sea,
Still searching for fish though the darkness is nigh
And the light is preparing to flee.

His wings never move as he arcs o’er the bay,
With minimal effort he soars,
Then suddenly drops wih a splash in the grey
As the waves aspirate their applause.

And then he flies off to his treacherous ledge,
With the swell sishersashing below.
And sits and looks out to the earth’s distant edge
Now bathed in a tangerine glow.

I marvel at just how unflustered he seems
Though existence is one constant fight.
Oh how I despair when my faraway dreams
Disappear at the touch of the night.

Mitching

2007-08-02T14:22:00.002-07:00

Sometimes in the mornings, while driving to work,
My mind drifts away on its own.
So I wield my lassoo, bring it up with a jerk
And haul it back in with a groan.

It often drives on past the factory gates
To a lake at the foot of a hill,
And there it will lie nibbling pecan and dates
By the waters so clear and so still.

Far away from the clatter of roaring machines,
Far away from the manager’s curse,
It will paint golden pictures of countryside scenes
Annotated by free-flowing verse.

One day, in the future, I’ll follow my mind,
Drive on past those factory gates,
And find that still lake with its contours defined,
And stretch out nibbling pecan and dates.

The Autumn Pool

2007-08-02T14:22:00.001-07:00

Another leaf drifts down
And lands silently on the stagnant pool,
Now cool in the depth of Autumn.
A faint ripple and then stillness.
So many leaves…
Like memories they float on the surface
Hiding the cracked tiles below,
Shaken from the once-proud elm,
Now grown thin, naked, ashamed.
The pool is deep and musty,
With a faint smell of decay.
There are no children splashing happily,
No excited laughter in the boyish sky,
Just leaves.

Photographing Smells

2007-08-02T14:21:00.001-07:00

You can photograph smells
In your mind
And you’ll find
That in decades from now,
As you plough
Fertile soil,
They will rise to the boil
Like a pot,
Boiling hot,
And by closing your eyes
In surprise
You will see
That an image from childhood develops.

Solar Staring

2007-08-02T14:20:00.002-07:00

Don’t stare at the sun, they tell us,
You will go blind.
Medically speaking, the light is so bright
That the retina behind
Will be burnt, so I learnt.
This law is well-defined,
But begs the question, infers the suggestion
That we are taking instructions
From a blind mind.
This law, you see, is unsigned.
Was a man in Kurdistan years ago so inclined
To sun-staring that he went blind?
And was this assigned to his solar observations?
Parents are asked to remind
Their kids to bat their lids,
To glance askance.
This law is enshrined and not confined
To humankind.
Animals too, if you visit the zoo,
You will find have the sun non-aligned
With their vision, a subconscious decision.
However, Narcissus,
As he by the waters reclined, and pined,
Stared not at the sun but at his reflection
Without interjection.
And hour by hour turned into a flower
Much-maligned. So the rule thus outlined
Might apply to the sun or to all things or none
Or to two things combined.
I asked a learnéd don would he comment upon
This thesis, but he declined.

The Yacht

2007-08-02T14:20:00.001-07:00

Like a yacht, tacking before a stiff breeze,
Your seemingly innocuous questions
Soaked in sweet flattery
Carved a passage through my defences.
The waves churned and turned choppy,
But you grasped the wheel firmly.
I blustered and blew,
But your sails were so thin to to the wind
They slipped effortlessly through.

Spent, I watched you chart a course
O’er the dancing sparkles,
Erect now, growing smaller,
As your triangular tail grew larger,
Until you were lost
O’er that faint line
At the edge of the ocean.

Kiltimagh

2007-08-02T14:19:00.002-07:00

We drove into Kiltimagh
On one Saturday in June.
It was half past three o’clock
On a glowing afternoon.
On a burning summer’s day,
Such as only comes too rare,
As the flies buzzed round in play
And the cats sprawled in the glare.

Tired and sticky from the drive
From the suburbs in the east,
Baking sun could not deprive
Us of our literary feast,
Where blind Raftery wrote song
Of the hedgerows of his youth
As he tapped his way along
In pursuit of rhyme and truth.

There we bathed in crystal streams
Of bright metaphor and verse,
Deep-submerged in babbling dreams
That the sun could not disperse.
Image washed away the grime
Of the sticky, prickly heat,
In a shower so sublime,
Drops of poetry so sweet.

Thin Veneer

2007-08-02T14:19:00.001-07:00

Around the pool, the young boy lumbered,
Shouting gaily, unencumbered,
Though his legs were singly-numbered,
Still he laughed with boyish ease.
And as I woke from idle napping,
On my sunbed, sunshine trapping,
I saw his shorts leg idly flapping,
Flapping lamely in the breeze.

On his hands and foot he bounded,
Like the letter M quite rounded,
And I watched him, most astounded,
As he stumbled on all threes.
And as my peace was interrupted,
And my pleasant dreams disrupted,
A fleeting, savage thought erupted,
Filling me with strong unease.

Why, while I am holidaying,
Far from normal everydaying,
Should this one-legg’d boy come straying,
Like a sudden, sharp disease?
I’m trying to escape reality
At this holiday locality,
Fleeing from the world’s brutality
And it’s tragic amputees.

Thus my mind, when pricked a little,
Gushed a waterfall of spittle
Through the shell, refined but brittle,
Shaped by civilised decrees.
Spewing forth, like gonorrhoea,
Through the flimsy, thin veneer,
Viscous, putrid and unclear,
Hidden for eternities.

And then I shivered, quite disgusted
At the way my mind, once trusted,
Could be, in an instant, rusted
By such selfish thoughts as these.
But my question, rashly tabled,
Begs which of us should be labelled
As the more obtuse, disabled –
The cripple or the ill-at-ease?

Hieroglyphics

2007-08-02T14:18:00.000-07:00

A china milk jug, slightly chipped,
Adorned with roses on the briar,
By sea of dust is tightly gripped
Upon the mantle o’er the fire.
I pick it up with idle thought
And leave a circle, clear and stark.
So houseproud once, she now cares naught,
Her mind at peace, befogged and dark.
In hope, I peer inside to find
A window opened on the past,
A stony footpath, clearly signed,
Converging verges, lightly grassed.

A paperclip, contrite and small.
A button, shiny tortoiseshell.
A scrap of paper in a ball.
The broken clapper of a bell.
An English penny, cold and round,
Now tarnished with a steel-blue hue.
A twisted matchstick, frail and browned.

What treasures do old dears accrue!

Oh mother dear, thy death draws near.
Shall I consign these to the bin?
If they should swiftly disappear,
Would you even raise your chin?
But no. I’ll sadly leave them be,
These hieroglyphics so miscast,
Upon the wooden dust-strewn scree
Within the circle of your past.

Old Age

2007-08-02T14:17:00.002-07:00

The panting sun can sap no more
But rests above the pallid sea.
Above the tiny, bustling shore,
I close my eyes in memory.
The cool verandah, tiled and white,
Smiles down upon the frantic ants
That rush about, as in a trance,
Preparing for the fear of night.
And high upon my marbled throne,
I play a jaunty xylophone.

The lilting tune is borne upon
The balmy and massaging breeze.
For now the burning heat has gone,
The fronds dance lightly ‘pon the trees.
Old age, I cry, is not a cell,
A dark, enclosed and gloomy place.
The evening sun laps at my face
And oils it in a liquid gel.
And near the harbour, people tut,
Ascending that steep hill on foot.

Stranger on a Train

2007-08-02T14:17:00.001-07:00

Like meercats herded on the train,
Packed much too close for poetry,
We swayed as bounded by a chain
In steady, rhythmic harmony.
Body odour churned like glue.
Somewhere near, strange tongues poured forth.
And several strained to catch the view
As we careered insanely north.
A brush of skin against my arm
Cracked louder than a power shock,
Withdrawing hard in mute alarm
As we slowed down for Castleknock.
Furtive glances, slyly thrown
At strangers welded in too tight,
Each one cocooned and quite alone
Upon this nervous evening flight.

Besandalled boy – a Pole or Czech?-
With handbag firmly clasped to chest,
A fearsome boil upon his neck
And eyes that never seemed to rest.
The office girl in worsted grey,
With horn-rimmed specs and double-chin,
The schoolgirl, chewing, faraway,
The one sock slipping down her shin.
The tousled youth with sullen stare,
And hair cropped tightly to the roots
Caressed his molten jaw with care
And eyed a pair of pinstripe suits.

Beneath my high and outstretched hand,
A pretty woman blinks twice, bored.
Feathered lashes, deeply tanned,
Lightly perfumed, shoulders broad.
I’m close enough to see each mark,
Each imperfection on her face.
Each tiny pock screams loud and stark
Like snags upon a cloth of lace.
I have a sudden, strong desire
To run my hand through plaits entwined,
To twirl those strands of blackened fire
And feel the contours of her mind.
If I should stoop and kiss that cheek,
My lips upon imperfect skin,
Would she emit a frightened shriek
At such an unforgiving sin?
Would she slap me loud and hard
Or turn away with panicked shove
And push back deeper in the crowd,
Stung by the barb of strangers’ love?

So I did naught – taboo dictates
Such raw emotion does not flare
Beyond the dull impassioned gates
That fortify each cushioned stare.

I watched her as she left the train,
And joined the queue into the night
To breach the bound’ry into pain
And disappear fore’er from sight.
Undoubted, she will never know
What wonderment her closeness stirred,
Attraction in this leming’d flow
That never dared to speak a word.

I journeyed on – deep-frowned, ashamed
Of how the mere proximity
Of some cheap stranger, lost, unnamed,
Could rouse such torrid thoughts in me.