This is pure cliché,
dappled wicker,
stone lit, shadows firm,
warmth of evening song,
comings and goings,
Spanish movements through the bar,
Bombay going down,
Schweppes on ice,
already a little pissed
– Martini Basarana Tanqueray
Ballantines Bacardi Beefeater
Jack Daniels Cointreau –
even the Cutty Sark is too much
now company’s gone
and “Prohibido Fumar” reigns
supreme behind the counter
– what price a coffee now?
[Galicia August 2010]
The coffee’s bitter here,
beans dark, roasted hard,
flavour for waking up
– I see Cezanne on the wall,
a fire extinguisher,
a smoke-free zone,
even water can’t soften the taste,
exploration calls,
echo of earlier conversation,
poplars wave, leaves flash,
sunlight shortening shadows
under apple trees.
A bronzed girl hangs her jacket
on the back of a chair.
(Galicia 6 August 2010)
I will drink sugar,
pour stars of glucose
onto a tea spoon,
sprinkle refined grains
on a surface of Galician
Espresso.
I will cherish the remainder
lingering in this sachet,
wet pad of forefinger
– licking softly –
before cleaning the counter.
I like to flick fallen sweet.
I will go back to my hotel room,
leave behind a night sky.
There’s Venus there,
Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
reflected from sapphire bottle
Gin.
(August 2010)
____________________
Tomaré azúcar,
Echar estrellas de glucosa
A una cucharadita,
Espolvoreando granos refinados
En la superficie del café exprés
Gallego.
Gozaré del resto
Quedando en el sobre,
Almohadilla de dedo
-lamiendo suavemente-
Antes de limpiar la mesa
Me gusta chasquear dulce caído.
Regresaré a la habitación del hotel
Dejando el cielo de noche
Allí esta Venus allá,
Mercurio, Marte, Júpiter, Saturno
Reflejados en la botella de color zafiro
De Gin.
(Translation by a good friend who isn't a poet 2017)
The seaweed lorry
How long have I driven a seaweed lorry to Roundstone
past fuchsia and montbretia?
How long has the wife practised acupuncture,
the daughter dried dulse?
You’d wonder as you pitchfork the algae,
watch strips slip off, litter the lane.
They can take their time,
wait their turn to pass,
I have many more journeys in me,
many more days leading hearse and caravan.
They can all take their turn,
why should they pass?
I’ve driven this way too long now to be forced off it,
seen their urgent béasa,
refused to be edged off my bóthar.
There were houses full
– not enough rooms for the children –
before there weren’t children for the rooms.
I’ve seen them all off,
I’ve still gone back for more seaweed.
_________________________
Image by Jonathan Wilkins
The white man with the toothache complained
“The death of truth”
“The demise of fact”
as if One Truth ever lived.
He wore red hair,
“Subjective trumps objective”
“Trust lost in slipstreams”
as if post- modern chatter
arose blind from ignorance
and there was the matter of his nonpliant feet.
“Authorities pushed aside”
“Authors born at every corner”
and no more news swallowed kosher,
we’ve seen gods sit on cracked toilets.
The white man’s ears were bent
“Let us respect disrespectors,
honour the heralds of doubt.
smash panes of glass with Apps and axe,
shatter the gorgon’s mask,
inhale medicine of liberation,
assassinate a holy trinity,
mend faith in next generation
of wordsmiths, dentists, and fools.”
The red man cried.
Light my fire
Re-light the candle within
kindle the glow
so the spirit flows
from the one source
that matters to me.
It was Seamus to put me up to it.
He was like that, always egging me on,
slipping out of it when we were found out.
It took two of us to corner the bird,
hold the head, steady the pumping feet,
ducks have stronger necks than five year olds expect.
We had the quiet for it,
mother gone to town.
If we were quick, we could bury it.
There was sand in the shed, wet sand
against the wall, a dark corner,
a resting place for feathers.
Seamus dug the hole, scooped back a grave
with bony fingers.
He was a doctor even then.
Our duck might have been going back to nest
as we piled sand, heavier and heavier.
We were both in it.
He was the one who covered the head, pushed the neck under.
Honest, he was the last one to see the wild eye disappear
under the weight of our mound.
He was the last one to touch the duck alive.
I saw the buried bird lose its head,
piled deadening sand on top.
I wanted to make sure…
never thought she’d miss her duck,
there were other things to do.
But Seamus had to let it out, had to be found out, had to point the finger,
young innocent, led astray.
He loved being the baby.
When mother shoved her arm into the grave, she wasn’t long there,
her elbow never got wet.
She pulled her duck out,
alive.
Somewhere in Dublin…
“If we’re to avoid being blamed for this shambolic fraud – we better get a retired judge.”
“Surely that’s asking for trouble?”
“Never, sure won’t it all have blown over before there are any findings.”
“You mean til after the next election?”
“Hasn’t that always worked?”
‘Is there not a better way?”
“To get at the truth?”
“The truth is we have to kill this – did you hear Joe Duffy today?”
“Oh I know. That fecker’s always stirring shit.”
“Maybe we should make him a retired judge. That’d keep him quiet.”
“Joking apart, where’ll we find a judge?
“Noel or Patrick will sort it. They’re good guys.
“Where are you going now?”
“I’ve a statement to make – and after that Drive Time.”
“I’ll tell the lads.”
“Mind you don’t leak this to Micheál.”
“Hah, ha – that’s a good one.”
I’m feeling the fear.
I have to decide which poems to read on Friday evening in Ennis County Clare.
I introduce the reading in Poet’s Corner at 8pm.
By then, I must reject most of the poems – especially several with which I’m besotted.
Sitting in my kitchen in Cork, staring at pages, wielding a scissors,
reluctant to plunge pretty poems into recycling
– I need to procrastinate.
Crowd-source the problem.
Ask the opinion of others.
Be open-minded.
Let the Universe decide.
Out-source the angst to my Guardian Angel.
Wish I had only 13 poems fit for human ears.
Maybe I’ll drop a pile of pages over the bannisters – and pick those that land on top.
How the hell can I tell which ones the audience might love?
I’m not going there to please the audience – surely?
It’s not as if I have a book to sell.
[Let them go to Kindle Store]
Integrity, authenticity, veracity
I am an artist – that means I must ignore the urgings of others.
I must purge myself of any impulse to avoid personal responsibility.
I must be true to my self.
Welcome indecision, welcome mixed feelings, hug the living daylights out of discomfort.
Think of all the brazen bastards who’ve never held a haiku, nor snogged a sonnet.
Maybe I’ll crumple 50 into a sack and get a blindfold woman to sink her fingers in?
Trust anything other than myself.
At least it’s only Tuesday.
I thought I had a plan.
Poets don’t live in a vacuum.
Poetry is not written in a vacuum.
There is always a context, a social context, and always a biography.
I’ve been thinking about this in the context of this blog. Here I publish some of my poetry.
I started sharing some poems here in 2006.
Then the poems were put in a context. They were displayed in a context because, at the same time, I wrote about my experience of coming back to Ireland from the UK. I wrote blog-posts about what it was like to have an infant daughter. I expressed my take on several political issues.
The poems were never displayed in a vacuum.
It’s bothered me now. Since I relaunched “From Bath to Cork with baby Grace” [in its second form] the poems have been published without any context.
There’s no writing here about big social issues. I don’t write about my family, nor about housework, golf, podcasting, social media, nor my paid work.
You meet the poems as you would meet them in a poetry book.
And I don’t think this good enough.
I think readers are very interested in the context of a poem – as reflected in the other things the poet is doing in her or his life – how the poet sees things, how the poet reports on what is noticed.
I think readers of poetry – like everybody else- are more & more curious about what goes on behind the scenes – in the behaviour, mind, emotions and imaginations of writers.
Also I may be enriched by writing about the “world”. I use that world to symbolise the Universe – as I’m capable or motivated to communicate about it. Even communicate with myself about it.
So I’ve made a decision. [I’m going to sleep on it.]
I’m going to add prose on this blog.
I’m going to write freely on any topic under the sun that interests me on the particular day I sit down to write. They may be disconnected sentences. Pieces may be highly structured. There might be a short story – even a vignette. Probably not a novella.
I may rant.
But above all, it will be me. It’ll be my take on something that’s much bigger than me.
[Reader’s can skip all that prose, or quasi- poetic stuff, if they’re not interested.]
The poems will be obvious. It’ll mean there’ll be more stuff here than before.
It’ll mean I can also put up photographs with very little commentary. Many people are visual – rather than text lovers. The visual imagination – or the imaginations of visual people – is every bit as valuable as the imaginations of those who approach the world with preference for sound or text.
There’s a way in which it’ll do me good to write prose. There’s a possibility it’ll help me feel some issues I write about are vital enough to be encapsulated & addressed in poetry.
I’m going to sleep on this now.
For me, this is a very big issue. Perhaps I’m I’m going to break & remake the character of this blog.
But it feels like the right thing to do.
However, you never know what a good sleep can do to a right thing.
https://bumpers.fm/_/embed/b40rvpusfitg01453740
MAY God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.
Though pedantry denies,
It’s plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
Yet never could, although
They say he counted grass,
Count all the praises due
When Sheba was his lass,
When she the iron wrought, or
When from the smithy fire
It shuddered in the water:
Harshness of their desire
That made them stretch and yawn,
pleasure that comes with sleep,
Shudder that made them one.
What else He give or keep
God grant me — no, not here,
For I am not so bold
To hope a thing so dear
Now I am growing old,
But when, if the tale’s true,
The Pestle of the moon
That pounds up all anew
Brings me to birth again —
To find what once I had
And know what once I have known,
Until I am driven mad,
Sleep driven from my bed.
By tenderness and care.
pity, an aching head,
Gnashing of teeth, despair;
And all because of some one
perverse creature of chance,
And live like Solomon
That Sheba led a dance.
We’d all love to rise from the dead
and snatch a second chance
from the teeth of history.
Which of you would refuse resurrection
and leave the stones in place
until the winter breaks?
My death was cold
and stank of feces
left by swallows fit to glide away.
I never knew how long my death would last
until I rose again from the jaws of a mystery made
before the stars exploded
and the universe was saved.
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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…
