Category: poetry

You just came to me

You just came to  me 

To Mike Hegarty in his haven
 (with acknowledgement to Seamus Heaney)

Pig-sty to cattle track, anemones to fountain-pen,
you sat in yellowed armchair, among psychiatric alumni,
released into a fighting street-scape,
where burnt-out cars took place of bicycles.
Your warrior-self listened to every voice
with the greeting of a saint
who wrote with a sun-lit plume.

Prince of the messengers,
carrier of connections,
pointing companions around wild flowers,
through the thicket of everyday life,
out into a clearing, ever shadowed,
ever dappled,
your painterly hand ever active,

you spoke of trees in a family field,
the feed from bonamhs that licked your fingertips,
the rub of the beast that reminded you of animated conversations,
the rough warm blanket into which you were born.
You walked every inch of the lane that led from farm-house,
past copulating ragwort, to a table strewn with words
drawn together for the sake of safe passage.

In that armchair, you smiled through dark-rimmed spectacles,
turned a tongue around considered thoughts
that vied for voice.
In a flash, you held back
eager sperm-like phrases
in favour of a diamond-eyed glint,
before you spoke the timbre of imagined rest.

I wondered who you were in that evening circle –
just as I wonder now.
You just came to me –
as if I were high in a mountain stream, surrounded by parakeets,
and the echo of flowers talking to the wind –
as if you put a hand in the pocket of your overcoat,
and produced a map for me to read.

_________________________

Written in memory and honour 
of my friend Mike Hegarty.  
Inspired by "To Mick Joyce in Heaven" 
by Seamus Heaney 
- to be found in "District and Circle" 
- first read on Friday 18 May 2007 in Adare.

Song of my Butterfly 

Song of my Butterfly

No one heard the song of the butterfly, not even my mother, my brothers, nor the dog-walker who strode by our garden and allowed his Bernese Mountain Dog to pee all over my butterfly’s buddleia. 

No one noticed the sigh of my Painted Lady as she mated with the neighbour’s Painted Man – not even my wife, nor our local parish priest who discouraged kissing on Sundays.

No one found the egg the butterfly laid on the hollyhock that grew from the seed that fell from the beak of my favourite thrush until the caterpillar consumed her shell and was seduced by one of the red hot pokers. 

No one cried tears for the butterfly – not even a plain Painted Lady that flapped its wings in Cork and caused a Great Wall in China to collapse. 

If only one person knew the song of my butterfly in time to sing a lullaby that echoed from sky to sky, we might have paid more attention to biosciences. We might have been saved from the consequences. 

The city of London 

The City of London 

Cocktail-shaker for the World
Bridge-builder, fortune-maker
City of greetings, grime and grit
City of tongues
City of preachers, teachers and elephants
City of wars
City of screams and exhibitionists
City of Empire
City of fires, plague and drawing rooms
City of parks, love-makers, trouble-makers, heart-breakers, imperial, ethereal, thirst-slakers, pace-makers, peace-wakers
City of dogs, cats, rats, scavengers and paintbrushes
City of players, symphonic stayers, hyperbolic cares
City of ruins
City of wounds, marches and prayers
City of bubbles, stock-takers
City of pain, disdain, refrain
City of shoes, falafel, matzoh ball soup, chopped liver, peppercorns, cardamom, chillies and curls
City of deaths, debts, resurrections, assumptions
City of refugees
City of the poor
City of the sword
City of slaves, waves, graves, sails
Race-gobblers
City of the clock
City of time and charts
City of natural history, kings, queens, nobility, futility
City of the blitz and bliss and bits
City of the Underground and flight
City of hiding places, stones, Sherlock Holmes
City of reinventions
City of anonymous burdens
Melody-makers, sacrifices
City of the heat and the Crystal Palace
Harbinger of malice
Brain of the Serpentine
City of masons, Livingstone, Gladstone, earthworms, sculptures, sepulchres, sceptics
City of songs and eavesdroppers, towers, bowers, superpowers and sour grapes
City of the chrysalis
Storyteller, seducer of words, fountain pens, notebooks, fish and chips, pie and mash.

City of fountains and ships
City of truth, city of factions, city of the Heath, city of smog, city of the Frost Fair
River banker, clangors, Doppelgangers,
City of joy
City of birth, mirth, thirst,
the witty first city
pitiful playground
foundation of the nation
creation and gestation
pregnant
City of the parties
City of the Open Mind
Martinis
Broad cocktail-shaker for the World.

————–

(Inspired by Carl Sandburg’s poem about Chicago)

 

Reunited

I left the house of my reincarnation
before the swallows returned
the year they cancelled the Grand National.

I walked out the door
before dawn disappeared, drove through a dream
as if in a dismal draft of corked Dolcetto.

I pitched my leaky tent in Wiltshire
’til forced out by a wife’s thirst
for regeneration.

Winter hardened the road I travelled
as I wished to wallow like a pig
in the hot mud Bladud found.

I sailed back to the Province of my birth
in a ferry beset by bleeding ballast,
into the storm of a tiger’s saliva

whipped by Irish bankers, Roman bishops,
windy politicians and uncivil servants.
The rant of ravaged youths, refugees from famine,
coursed through my bloodstream, out my throat
and stained my pen.

I wrote resurrection out of my will.

until I flew to the city of surprised eyes,
composer’s minds,
mouthful feasts

until I sat opposite my child in Southark
speaking of the Golan, green with cotton,
forgetting Masada and the Dead Sea

and lived to swim again
among dreadlocks, hijabs, sidecurls, pale people
and more

until at last I greet myself
arriving at my own house
in my own skin

and we smile again
reunited over broken bread
and the words of one imagination.

Beware 47 year old men

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Beware 47 year old men

They drop like squashed flies
slowly recover into another guise
barely half the size

frail on their feet
after years of fierce pursuit, no heat,
cold comfort from their beat.

Beware 47 year old men

They’ve seen it all before
second and third hand, expecting to soar
past open doors

firm in their pride
locked into a harsh and bitter guide
anger waiting to ride.

Beware 47 year old men

who’ve worked hard
for the reward of a faceless guard
set against anything marred.

Those men fight with flawed spirits
bolstered up on rivets
held together for lovers’ visits.

Beware 47 year old men
I should know, should know again
and again how we topple then.

47 year old men, stand up
slow down and humbly sup,
gather your treasures before they leave the cup.

November 1997

Loving you 

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Loving you 

Loving you

does teach me

day by day

how deep the blocks to love

within me lie.

Loving you

is worth all

mistakes and blind

stupidity

born on my weakest side.

Loving you

is changing me

bringing out

twin creatures :

one dying to bond

the other to be safe.

Oh to be wrapped with you.

November 1997

Mysteries of the Universe

 

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Mysteries of the Universe

Joyful Mysteries
Whose is the sweetest song?
What makes time tick?
When will insight beckon?
How does the Universe celebrate?
Where shall I find my better self?

Sorrowful Mysteries
How have  tears cleaned hungering hearts?
What will expire without experience?
What is hardship hiding from?
Who has evolved from sorrow?
When will my beginning end?

Glorious  Mysteries
How immense is the imagination of being?
How wide is the width of the world?
How real is the resurrection from eternity?
How long will happiness happen?
Where is my land of the living breath?

Only you

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Only you

The weight of the raindrop that trickled
under my waterproof.

The shape of the arm of the snowflake that smashed into my left eye.

The arc of the rainbow that landed
on the dock of the Port of Cork.

The pixels of the iris by which I see
handwriting painted in my black Moleskine.

The taste of your nipple between my infant gums
the day we first met.

The pounding of your gait growing stronger in ears
listening to the “Mad World ” of Gary Jules.

Only you,

and you alone…

You don’t have to be loved

You don’t have to be loved.

You don’t have to be noticed.
You don’t have to have blood seeping from your heart,
arteries opened and veins cut.
You do not have to have a scowl on your face
for people to pay attention.
You don’t have to be dying
(or wanting to die)
for others to see.
You do not have to feel thorns
pressing into your head
for your lover to be uncomfortable enough
to stop and say to themselves

“Are you OK?
What’s up?
You don’t look good to me.
Is anything the matter?
I wish you’d speak.
I am bothered,
it matters to me.”

You do not have to be silent
for your friend to say to you

“What’s the matter?
You look rough.
You seem out of sorts?
You look awful.
What’s up?

You do not have to be loved.
You don’t have to run away.
You only have to let your body breathe.

__________________

Note:
Written after loving “Wild Geese“
by my favourite living poet
Mary Oliver.

Birthday Card

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Birthday Card

I have not known

your other birthdays.

For me

this has been the year

of your birth,

growth and flowering.

I love you for it.

_________________

Photo by Forsaken Fotos 

In Myrtleville one Sunday morning 

 



In Myrtleville one Sunday morning

Two men in green galoshes plodded thru blinding mud and glistening puddles as friesians foraged for food in a field by the sea.

Electrical wire carried current to discourage the herd from wandering.

The men got there and one changed the boundaries so the cows could eat tufts of grass.

Who doesn’t trundle through dung & slurry on a track to better pasture ?

Who doesn’t push towards others who scrabble for scarce supplies to keep them going until the weather turns and growth resumes.?

Who doesn’t hope for someone to move goalposts and let you stock up for the next bit of the journey from birth to dust?

It’s worth watching mud, cattle and men in sunlight – anytime.

Work – lines written in Spring 1997 



Work

Today,

I did two things at work,

that’s all.

And were those things any good?

They gave me company.

Not being anything…

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Not being anything,

nor holding water,

cleaned out of grit,

a lonely man fears he has nothing

and never really had

anything to show for himself.

Light


Black shoulders, white earphones,
she sits on a wooden stool
in the ‘Internet Centre of Excellence’
on Winthrop Street.

Blends into a smartphone,
consuming power,
hooked,
like my dad consumed TV,
sat by his books
in Fort Mary.

Her fingers fit for a keyboard,
carrying a library
in the pocket
of bleached blue jeans,
sipping water
from a SuperValu plastic bottle.

Frank O’Mahony smoked a pipe
in a drawing room,
sat in an armchair covered in faded flowers,
never blotting a book, straining a spine,
creasing a corner, ripping a leaf.
Father sold books.

Eyes glued to screens,
consuming stories,
liquid crystal married to tubular light,
pathways to wider worlds.

They both wore brown shoes.

There are stones



There are stones
in a rushwork basket
by the fireplace
in my living-room
on Whitehill.
Stones
gathered
from the side
of a sea
where
they were subject
to tides.
Now
they lie
dried
together
on top
of each other,
crushing

There are times

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There are times

There are times the rain
is so heavy, and the cloud so
thick I can hardly see.

There are times the dark
is so choking I can hardly
breathe.

There are times the words
are strangled in my throat.

There are times the pain
grips throughout, and I
am completely at its mercy.

And there are times when it’s
much worse than that…

Putting the bastard 2016 to bed

Every year’s a bastard, and every breath drawn in celebration serves but to fool players into premature revelry.  Some kin to light, some kin to dusk. ‘Tis only in dreams afterwards that I swallow the fuss and regurgitate, thrush-like, through humid hair and a throat rasped with stuttering conviction. Throw up those names. Release each from hope. Let their legacy abide.

From January to May, brutality made hay. Released from Ministry, I flourished under the weight of Melissa’s warm voice, hour by hour, and stayed solid long enough for tablets to prove their fragile relevance. No longer dying to wake up dead. No longer dying to wake up dead, I saved Periscopes, wrote down the food Depression served. Exercise is the curse of the despairing classes.

Enough of this shyte – before I know it, I’ll be composing narrative thrash. In the beginning was the sentence – the phrase of life. What doth it profit a Paul if he gain the whole world and lose his pencil.

Reborn among cherries in Michigan, festivities in Logan Square, and a river cruise through the City of the Big Shoulders.

Bastard verse: Lost Love, Prayer, Dear Reader, Lines Written on the Birthday of Walt Whitman, I am a Wood Frog, From the depths of Hell in Summertime.

Wild Geese redeemed the lot. Where would I have been without Mary Oliver, or  Mary Oliver, or Mary Oliver. Whitman may have been ballast – but Mary was my sail. Dreams, Holes in my Heart, Lost.

At last Il Paretaio – Tuscany – horses – the World Champion Ice Cream (champagne & grapefruit) – Sienna rather than Piza.  And then there was Charlie the pony – or was it Ashley the Princess?

It was a year of schools.  From Eglantine to Scoil na nÓg – from Hitchmough’s to Hyde’s – from one teacher to another. Bastard learning. Gin & Tonic. Taking the Mick.

And all the time we were basking in that Summer of Content , a Buffoon gave birth to bile, Brexit came to life – 20 years a dripping . Drip, Drip, Drip – the light went out on Little England  and Little England coughed its way, multiplying cells, an Empire on its last legs. “Leave, Us Alone” – “Give us back our toys“.  You can all rendezvous up your je ne sais quoi. Gute Nacht you coal & steel mongers. Our David, Your Brussels. Fuck Goliath. We have no need for manners – now that we have a Wall for President.

Oh yes, it was exciting to return from the Dead to abandon Dante in the cesspool of Buffoon Trump Tower, feet on putrid ground.

Let’s ignore Aleppo and tweet the Chinese out of existence.  Let’s sit in Blackrock Castle Observatory Café promising to meet again for Xmas lunch.  After my dearest wish has spawned an Age of Extraneous Inebriation, after Leonard Cohen has sung “Resurrection” to the tune of “Retribution“, cleansing the pallet so it’s ready to Stop All The Clocks and arrest Midnight before it strikes the gong for the Ascension into the Great Heavenly American Beast the Cute Hewers love to imitate.

In case you think Nebraska Alaska Montana Louisiana and Lisdoonvarna rule the Universe, I predict there will be Breath in 2017, there will always be an Aleppo – even if there will also be a Coalition with an Enda intent on hugging a Pope.

A bastard mongrel beauty – a #goodcountry waiting to be found.

Born in Aleppo



Born in Aleppo 

I come from a small place in between Paris, Nice, and the Hinterland.

I was born in Aleppo. 

I had friends there. 

Some had shoes, 

others rice. 

I don’t know what most survived on.

I was talking to Charlie Hebdo.

He said  ‘you’ll have to laugh your way through all the hail,

you’ll die many times before Aleppo.’

I believed that line. 

There was always a cat,

somewhere,

ready to pounce  

with a hungry mouth.

Cats are drones. 

One of the girls lost her mother to a cat. 

We were all born in Aleppo. 

It’s as if we came from Africa 

drawn to die 

on the bank of the River of Martyrs

before the smiles reached us. 

#greatestpoemseverwritten No 18

Stop all the clocks …   by WH Auden

 

https://bumpers.fm/e/b1c6htesesgg02ubc08g

Avoid conversations

Conversations are dangerous:more people have been injured during conversations than in all human wars.Conversations kill: more relationships are put to death during conversations than during all the songs ever sung by all the women. Avoid conversations like the plague: too many conversations hurt like earthquakes hurt. If you find a conversation friendly, remember pearls and oysters.


Avoid Conversations

Conversations are dangerous:

more people have been injured during conversations

than in all human wars.

Conversations kill:

more relationships are put to death during conversations

than during all the songs ever sung

by all the women.

Avoid conversations like the plague:

too many conversations hurt

like earthquakes hurt.

If you find a conversation friendly,

remember pearls

and

oysters