The Nivea Way
It’s a long way to blemish-free day,
it’s a long way to go.
It’s the wrong way to cover wrinkles
with the strongest cream, you know.
Goodbye painting daily
Farewell first-world mask
It’s a long long way to Wrinkleful Day
But our hearts lie there.
The Laboratory Way
Copernicus was struck by sun
Galileo toiled on speed
Newton was premature
Darwin sailed to sea
All knew apoplexy
Hawking a singularity
Turing cryptography
Einstein messed with relativity
Aristotle lost his bottle
Let’s go to the Laboratory
Mix the chemistry
Let in the sun
Our failures breed us fun.
Communities are Conversations
Communities are Conversations. Conversations attract Collaborations. Collaborations change Communications. I have noticed strong communities are nearly as strong as poems fit for purpose.
In this day & age, and in this place & stage, the melody of metaphors, allegories and similes is the best way to cut through cant. Unfortunately for many communities, the gestation of the foetus is done, the birth of the Individual has come. Recently …
The Magician turned her back to the sea and spoke to the Wind:
“Come join us in our unity. Take your place at the table, you belong among us. Together we grow stronger than our surroundings. We rise above the ground that supports us. Feel yourself hugged by a multitude of villagers eyed with affection from every squinting window. Come inside your birthright, and sign the book of your life written in invisible ink. Let us understand you better than you understand yourself. Let us guide you past the temptations that fester under your skin. Let us make you whole. Our health, your health, Your health, our health. Unity in unity. Lose yourself in magic. Speak wind, speak our language.“
The Wind spoke:
“You touch me in every orifice. Your smell invites me into your cave. I see your shadows beyond the fire where I was forged, your reflections on my mind. Have I the right to resist, the power to deny, the authority to cry ‘NO’? I shall not be bent into shape like a plashed hedge” whispered the wind. This breath is not for turning. You can keep your unity Community. I’ll be no village clone, I am grown to live alone. I belong to a grander table, better fed, vulnerable as the weather, fragile as glass. I am an elementary particle. Call me Neutrino, I am so small I pass through your imaginations unimpeded and undetected. Surely you see my city, Diversity. May you understand yourself so poorly you sink slowly from your throne. I am the Authority authorised to sing louder than your choir. That’s what you mean to me.”
And the Wind blew the Magician into her sea where she went in search of a victim weaker than an Individual Gust.
Return Return Return
To every thing there is a season
and a time for some re-cycling
all your plastics:
A time to be held, and a time to try;
A time to fold, and a time to claim
all your values;
A time to save, and a time to care;
A time to store, and a time to use
all your rubbish;
A time for your stance against the waste;
A time to build-up, and a time to break down;
A time to pause, and a time to act
all together;
A time for battle against the waste
A time to fill bins, and a time to join hands
all for freedom;
A time to love, and a time to change;
A time to save, and a time for peace
all of our lives.
Your Human Rights
You have the right to be wrong
the right to imagine
to love
to think
to feel
to be disappointed
the right to whisper
to say nothing
to shout, brood, pout
You have the right to be disliked
the right to be ignored
to be sad, stupid and shocked
the right to try, sigh and cry
the right to have many more rights
You have the right to experience
and the right to know
there are consequences for exercising your rights
The Magician and the Wind
The magician turned her back to the sea
and spoke to the wind:
Come join us in our unity,
take your place at the table,
you belong among us.
Together we grow stronger than our surroundings,
we rise above the ground that supports us
Feel yourself hugged by a multitude of villagers
eye’d with affection from every squinting window.
Come inside your birthright
and sign the book of your life
written in invisible ink.
Let us understand you better
than you understand yourself.
Let us guide you past the temptations
that fester under your skin.
Let us make you whole.
Our health, your health
Your health, our health.
Unity in unity.
Lose yourself in magic.
Speak wind, Speak our language.”
The Wind spoke:
You touch me,
in every orifice.
Your smell invites me into your cave
I see your shadows
beyond the fire where I was forged,
your reflections on my mind.
Have I the right to resist,
the power to deny,
The authority to cry no
I shall not be bent into shape like a plashed hedge”
whispered the Wind
This breath is not for turning.
You can keep your unity,
Community
I’ll be no village clone,
I am grown to live alone.
I belong to a grander table,
Better fed,
Vulnerable as the weather,
Fragile as glass.
I am in elementary particle, call me Neutrino
I am so small I pass through your imaginations
Unimpeded and undetected.
Surely you see my city,
Diversity
May you understand yourself
So poorly
That you sink slowly
From your throne.
I am the Authority
authorised to sing
louder than your choir
That’s what you mean to me.”
And the Wind blew the Magician into her sea
where she went in search of a victim
weaker than
an Individual Gust.
Raw
Do not go naked into the flames of Hell
Stay at home with ice cream on your tongue.
In the heat of the moment when Ire screams at you
KILL KILL KILL,
wipe that face off the devil
and smatter her to smithereens.
Remember Madiba,
the man on Devil’s Island
He lives on
Why was Job attacked by pestilence when he was so guiltless?
He’s not to be overlooked.
Stay your hand at home.
It is written
The viper is born to strike
– no malevolence there.
Like the pussy cat that catches the robin
and plays it on
till it dies with feathers flying,
The book proclaims
your pet deserves no blame by you,
Likewise
an enemy deserves freedom from blame.
Eat vanilla, honeycomb, chocolate chip
Consume your stracciatella,
let it cool your fiery throat
Down Down Down …
until the storm is done.
Do not go naked through that bloody trap-door,
there’s a whisper in your ear wishing you well,
a road from Hell.
Here’s why
The black hole was sent
to gift you practice,
patience of Hibiscus
that sucks up the storm
for the sake of the flower
that blooms in the marinade
of imaginary life.
______________
Note:
This is a second draft. (The first draft was published here yesterday, unedited.) It still deserves to be buried for incalculable time.
Someone else might like to see this first.
The Dog And I
There are women in the house
A feast of them in the kitchen
Excited
High-pitched
Well-dressed women
in high heels.
Seven bottles of white wine ready, chilling,
a choice of Gins, ice, quinine,
feminine time
in the back of the house.aa
The front room is for exiles.
Louis sleeps,
Paul composes
It’s too soon to know whether there’ll be leftovers
to go with le vin du Val de Loire.
That’s a masculine tipple
the dog won’t taste.
There’s Netflix for company,
that’s androgynous,
voluminous
for us.
Us men don’t complain.
A house divided is a house subsided,
the women retired to storylines,
men to their separate ways.
After all, what does an English Setter desire from his master who sits enthroned on a sofa
This dog begrudges nothing,
even monkfish tails roasted in Parma ham,
even goats’ cheese coated in pomegranate and cashew nuts,
even balls of something alongside beetroot and blackberries.
They can get sloshed on Vermentino
for all a couple of testosterone junkies care.
May they scoff La Brie et Le Bleu
Sauvages
Formages
Dommages
And when the women find tartes
tantalising
may they feel stuffed.
The jaw that rests on the carpet
is turned away from the piano
the girl of the house used to play
before her lessons.
She’s out tonight
drinking Capri Sun.
That’s one less woman at the table,
one less mouth for scoops of honeycomb ice cream from SuperValu or Liam Ryan or What-You-Ma-Call-Em.
This dog begrudges nothing,
unlike the women who vie for second helpings.
He pays no attention to the hunger of women,
unless they run out of wine,
start telling dirty jokes
or leave early.
Brutus of Troy Was Here
There was nothing cold about it.
The vitality in its veins moved in time with my blood pressure.It was always so.
There was fire within its walls
from the start, since the first sod was turned.It flows all night.
There were ashes glowing
as I flew in and slipped back to nest
inside the city
where strangers become mates.
It will be told.
There’s a world washed by fresh water
flooded by émigrés from Earth.
O River Thames,
tributary,
you’ve nourished us all.
I left my soul behind
I went abroad in Moanbaun woods last nightThe air was crispy sharp and stars alight
Out of the shadow of an old oak tree
stumbled a tall figure following me.
‘ You’ve left your soul behind your back’ she groaned
‘That weight you bore from birth and never owned
it cost a fierce fortune to germinate
and raise from seed divine now rests in state.’ Underground, earthworms slept on roots below
surface, undisturbed by an angel’s flow.
My body freed from care in time for life
Immortal pest intestate cast without a strife. So all I crave and relish on this crust
is Liberty that rises from the dust.
Pick up thy pen
Pick up thy pen
and run
fingers over paper.
Feel the lines,
they crave your attention.
They deserve your touch.
They will suck the ink from your nib.
I promise
you will come
on the page
and wonder
‘How was that for you’.
Grace
She came – like a story – into words
from roots planted deep in the womb of her mother’s mystery.
She came – like a foal – from that womb,
a filly full of windswept curls.
She crawled on kitchen floors – between legs of chairs –
until she stood steady and strode past barricades and cant.
She rode her way into her biography
on ponies that foostered – she put manners on their stride.
She carries the weight of her imagination on her back
every morning – on her way to school.
Are you awake?
I
“Is anyone awake?” said the man in his kitchen.
Is there anybody out there
whose eyes, however brittle, are awake?
Is there anyone there for me?
Is there anyone I can’t see?
II
What about the people across the ocean?
What about the people across the land?
What about the people by the lakeside,
are they all sleeping?
When will they wake?
When will they rise?
Like Lazarus, or like their sleeping dog?
III
Yes, who are these people
who are awake and are not speaking?
Are they there for me?
Do they have any way to see the difference they make,
the meanings they build,
the hours they swill?
IV
It’s time for tea,
the kettle, she boils.
The bag has been thrown in.
My cup is not empty.
The chemistry is about to begin.
V
Who is asleep?
If you are asleep, may you be woken.
If you are awake, may you sleep.
You may be in the dark
ears perked
listening for the commas
There may be wax
earwigs
waiting to soften and fall
Are you still?
your eyes locked?
doorway rusted overnight
When will you ever earn
the flowers in your ears?
Graveyards are singing,
welcome the sound of dawning insight,
clasp the stave of whispering shadow.
Enter the Beast
She’s crossing muddy waters (song lyrics)
[In honour of Robbin T Milne, painter]
Hang up, hang up
Your summer brushes,
Your daytime rushes
Your morning blushes
Hang up, hang up
She’s crossing muddy waters
Going out on the tide
She is crossing muddy waters
Heading for the other side
Because she has to earn her living
Needs more food to keep her going
The paint, it doesn’t come free
Her paintings don’t grow on trees
Hang up, hang up
Those summer brushes,
Your daytime rushes
Those morning blushes
Hang up, hang up
She’s crossing muddy waters
Hanging out upon the sand
She’s crossing muddy waters
She knows you’ll understand
Because her shoes have all worn thin
And her makeup’s all run dry
You know she’ll never win
Until she can afford to cry.
Hang up, hang up
Your summer brushes,
Your daytime rushes
Your morning blushes
Hang up, hang up
She’s crossing muddy waters
Wading through a cotton field
She’s crossing muddy waters
She’ll never ever yield
Because her eyes are losing light
The glass cracked and out of date
You’ll see her virtigo
And always running late
Hang up, hang up
Those summer brushes,
Those daytime rushes
Those morning blushes
Hang up, hang up …
Did Wordsworth capture daffodils?
Did Wordsworth capture daffodils the way bees in my garden capture nectar?
Did DaVinci capture Mona Lisa’s smile the way black birds capture earthworms?
Did Rodin capture the Gates of Hell like Elton John captured Candles in the Wind?
Was Abelard accurate when he said Heloise captured his heart?
And what about Dante’s Beatrice – was anyone captured?
Did my lover capture me?
Have I captured my love?
The way my earthworms capture …
The way Ansel Adams captured Yesemone
And Walt Whitman captured America.
Have you captured anything recently?
A poem in my pocket
I have a poem in my pocket called itch.
It doesn’t have a name, and it certainly doesn’t have a first or last line.
For all I know it might be an epic, or an epigram.
I don’t know when it’s going to come out, when it will reveal its proclivities, what it’ll mean to my grandchildren.
If it collapses, I don’t know how I will feel.
If it turns into a cancer, I don’t know what I’ll do about it.
I don’t think there is a cure – but there might be a remission.
Louis is an English Setter, probably failed his training as a gundog.
Someone gave him to a rescue centre in Cork. All he wants is attention.
He’s a bit of an itch.
He might be the hero of the poem.
My father
My father was a lion.
When he was napping,
I relaxed into hitting golf balls
over the house,
with a wedge.
When he woke up,
he drank Bewley’s coffee
in the kitchen,
in front of the Aga.
He’d been shot with a bullet
in the left shinbone
by a sniper,
from the roof of Cleve’s Factory,
across the Shannon River
in 1921.
My father didn’t limp,
he wore brown brogues,
grey socks, and an Omega.
He was born before Fathers’ Day.
When I was young,
every day was mother’s day:
she wrote the rules,
he approved.
His drawing room game was chess,
his golf game twice a week,
followed by hands of forty-five.
I was his caddie.
He paid two and six pence,
and a bottle of orange lemonade.
Dad was a Chopin man
with straight-back hair,
his forehead marked
from the day a surgeon
drilled into his scull,
and he lost his sense of taste.
He shaved with a cut-throat,
wore cuff-links
and turned shirt collars
in the old days,
before I was born.
His scapular was Franciscan,
from the Third Order.
He insisted on accurate light readings
for family photographs,
his Leika was slow.
Dublin was “the Big Smoke”
where he bought pipes.
What was the name of the plug tobacco?
He recited “Dangerous Dan McGrew”,
“The Hound of Heaven”
and decades of the Rosary.
My father was a Pioneer,
drove a Ford Capri
for a year,
carried cash to the Munster & Leinster,
and ate tripe on Fridays.
My father, carnivore,
carved the meat.
He made sure
we all got second helpings.
No Verse
You’d think
going
to It-
taly
would in-
spire me
to write
poe-
try. No-
thing of
the sort
happened.
So I
came home
empty-
handed
except
for two
mosqui-
to bites.
Rebecca from Wanderlust
I went walking with Rebecca
in Moanbaun Wood,
until I lost her.
People passing by
haven’t seen Rebecca
for half a year.
I miss her way
of walking,
and talking to her.
The thing I loved about Rebecca
is that she was deaf
to me.
But I always felt
she could understand me.
She was great company
underneath the birds,
passing puddles,
greeting gorse,
praising pines.
I saw she had her way of
walking streets.
We strolled in gardens,
went with Wordsworth
up the mountains.
I remember meeting Kierkegaard.
Rebecca Solnit spoke of the arrival
of bipedalism,
and pilgrimages.
I have this niggling feeling
she’ll come back,
I’ve even made a resolution,
if she’s not willing to reappear,
I shall reappear her.
I’m not contemplating
separation or divorce,
she has too many children for that
I couldn’t possibly abandon them.
There’s a cabbage white
fluttering above
the roots of a spruce.
I spy cut logs, alongside
trunks stripped of branches,
and my dog run ahead.
If only Rebecca was here,
I would talk with her.
I would hold her, in my arms,
with fingers, holding tight,
with my tongue, ever so close to hers
There’s nothing like an intimate walk,
where, every few steps,
you get excited again.
Thrush sing at the thought of her,
down there,
where the stream flows
under beech trees,
where streaks of sunlight cut through.
I don’t think Rebecca’s there.
I think she’s still living with me,
and will again
welcome my friends to a wander in woods.
That’s Rebecca’s track record.
From Bath to Cork with baby Grace 