In the beginning …
Life began in the 1960s
There’s more to the story …
My parents helped make me …
My Musical Autobiography
Life began in the 1960s
Life began in the 1960s
How does an Unbeliever pray
Not on my knees with head all bound in thorns,
not in a pew prostrate before a god,
not stooped, nor bent, a sinner supplicant,
a poor unworthy man afraid to say:
Like as the eagle soars astride the wind,
like as the river flows from spring to sea,
like as erratic stands upright and firm,
a worthy creature proud to stride the land.
No more a child beset with guilt and shame,
but grown attentive to the joy of light,
humble as dust and underwhelmed by night,
a star that shines and whispers love to all.
We move in prayer, our talent in our verse,
we celebrate in time the universe.
Emissions
Idaho – Our Provenance
It is illegal to smoke (mince pies) in these premises,
We will re-open (cream) on Friday 28th at 08:26,
W(h)ines by the bottle,
we sell (humour) gift vouchers.
I sat beside the bag lady
preventing her overcoat
from being (whipped) cream.
Richard’s ebony hair glistened
with perspiration, behind candles
that dripped red calcified wax
to a fine point suspended over
pastry laced with sugar water.
His smile reflected
from the surface of a teaspoon
that had never seen a better day
– just as the jigsaw, fixed to the glass
that protected the map of the island,
cast shadow over Cork
– just as the woman of the house
squeezed a clothes-horse
under the reindeer’s bauble.
“I’m going to Jackson … “
reminded me of Tammy Wynette
and Santa’s brother, last seen
outside Boise wielding a pickaxe and shovel
wanting work whenever women
would watch him waffle on about
“the land of many waters”.
Idaho Cafe is deeper than the Grand Canyon
in affections,
and shorter in afflictions
because bunyons are bound to blush
unseen under square tables.
‘This is forever”, every mince pie,
Esto Perpetua,
there is no Dracula here,
Huckleberries cry.
A locally-owned Breakfast, Lunch, Bapini,
Sweet fix,
with drinks like Idaho
americano, espresso, cappuccino,
marshmallow
– lest you go past the best cafe in Ireland
(voted by aficionados)
without noticing blackboards
full of chalked wines
on the Saturday before Christmas.
Birth
The child was born poor,
among sheep, and cranes settling
on holy water
The people who have ideas
The people who have ideas
breathe, touch, imagine the best,
the same way eagles fly
on air blown in streams that flow
over waterfalls, whirlpools, lakes –
into backwaters,
into oceans.
The IDEAS I met
in the home The Quiet Man built
(alongside the Cross of Cong)
have all come
clad with strings and baggage,
stubble and eau de cologne
from Jo Malone.
A few carried by musical instruments,
some with a stoop,
the odd one with a straight back,
semiconductors
looking for company
Congregation,
and the like.
Ideas encased in characters:
Rewilding man
Heart with a fear of trusting others
Ireland’s first flow consultant
Multi-tasking woman
(who brushed her teeth
and spat into her handbag)
HUDDLING
against the safety of closed paradigms
and spent minds
MINING
for alchemy
and epiphany
TAKEAWAY:
If it’s icy cold,
pee in your pants –
it’ll soon dry out
and keep you warm.
A splash of IDEATION on the road …
near the Hungry Monk.
Heretics listed:
Bureaucracy works
War eliminates fear
Doing the shagging thing
Stop travelling
Make something useless
The green soup for lunch
began life as an idea
in the mind of a vegetable
(Civil Rights for Vegetables)
before you eat words for ingredients.
THIS YEAR
the best interruptions were ideas
that would not keep
behind the Hedge
Desperados
Camerados.
I have no idea
I have no idea
(a poem for CongRegation)
I’ve never given birth to an idea that floated
the wine I’ve drunk, the women I’ve loved,
all permeable membranes that leaked
all blocked arteries
like clods of hair in a drain.
I’ve had multiple births from embryos implanted
like seeds, into my imagination.
I’m big into cultivation, gestation, articulation
and eradication.
There’s an earthworm casting in my brain.
I’m here to sing a song that longs for Cong.
You can’t go wrong among the throng
where you belong
with your ideas on yellow leads and purple cows.
