After the concession

After the concession

A black bird sits on a telephone line,

suspended between wooden poles

aged by water.

This is no day for tears,

no moment for regrets,

no time for tearing-out hair.

There are other black birds

and a seagull catching light

over the Northside.

There is a hill to descend

a twisting road

past cars

and fading disintegrating leaves.

There’s even sun in my eyes.

It’s easier to say nothing,

to notice the knot,

to register the wish

to lock the toilet door

and simply sit.

Oh yes, there’s reason to be thoughtful,

there’s always reason to reflect,

looking at clouds heavy with mist.

There’s always a will to inaction,

a will to ossify.

Black bird statues

behind a crooked spire,

the one with the lightening rod on top.

The off-licence shut,

the graffiti craves attention,

I see Aer Lingus was looking for my vote

‘smart makes the right choice

for Stateside flights this winter’.

The wounded leopard must go back for more food,

the thirsting camel must trek on,

the beehive must protect and cherish

and guard their queen,

even when forced to swarm.

This is no day for tears,

it’s a day my mother did her best to prepare me for,

and my father knew would come.

Remember Job is more than one man,

and black birds are ever present

whenever there’s a breath to be drawn.

___________________

 

Eulogy for our mum

Our mother doesn’t believe in death
Our grandma doesn’t believe in death
Our great grandmother doesn’t believe in death.
Even after everyone knows she’s passed away
she doesn’t believe in death.

She believes in sign-posts
and the sort of markers that say
you’ve entered a new townland.

Our mum believes in evolution and re-cycling
and believes she’s back with the love of her life
the man she married for thirty years
her husband forever.

Our mum believes in the journey
The journey with people, the journey for people,
the good life.

Our mum is …
Our mum was ready.
Oh, she told her family a long time ago
that she was ready.

She lived her day-to-day with love
as generously as any creature.
She reached out to the widest family of humanity
and she believes that’s the only way to live up,
to live the good life.

Our mum doesn’t believe in death
she believes in Resurrection,
forgiving.

She believes she’s moved on
her work on Earth is done
her work among us is the best she could do.

Our mum believes she’s no saint
she has sinned
she’s made her peace
she is forgiven.

Our mum is in love
a love deeper that the lover who feels
they’ve found the one they were meant to find.

Our mum doesn’t only believe in God
our mum knows her God is love
and love endures for ever.

In the air  there is a sound 

In the air there’s a sound

reviving and bound

for the inner ear,

a note sketched out

below a rug floating

there about three ages

removed from the pages

strewn with grooves

barely crowned.

Words are majesty

regal tenants of the well

resounding 

Utterances as dances

vowing to work

miracles

Places for space and space for places

names that an age back

meant more than nostalgy

Inventions from an page

of cloud cover

blanket-wrap,  infant howls

The wage earned in deep preparation

for entry

along the narrow passage you never remember

except in dreams. 

I write

I write

without pen, keyboard or fingers

I am not inspired

and I don’t carry a muse in my trousers pocket

or in curly hair going thin on top.

I am not more creative

than any of the entire population of China

or the wrinkled man that ate two pork sausages,

runny scrambled eggs,

white buttered jamless toast,

that swilled milky bog-standard tea

in Cafe Beva this morning

before it started to spit a shower

on mourners paying their respects

outside the undertakers next door.

I write in toilets,

while driving a car,

while pretending to hear voices,

and speak in tongues.

I wrote this verse while stuck

in the Jack Lynch Tunnel,

and finished it during a phonecall

in which my therapist said she couldn’t see me before Tuesday.

I never run out of paper

even while I watched Queen of Katwe

in Mahon Point Omniplex last night.

I carry the surface on which I compose

in a compartment some call mind.

I marry my mind with the flow

of unexpressed experience

with dreams that tarry like hovering dragonflies in shade

before emerging to linger

above rushing riverwater.

I write

mindfully.

The thrush has gone away 

The thrush has gone away.

At the very least, the brown wings

have not returned

to weigh down on the branch of the blossom tree.

The rose that rambles over the trellis

is abandoned 

and vulnerable to the vagaries of wind.

At least when the feeding mother lets her weight

bear down on the thorns

there is some stability,

some attention holding the structure.

This may not be a heavy hand, or even a reliable hand,

but it’s like a listening ear, an attentive embrace of the neck,

a something that relieves the waving flowers

of having to stand on their own.

It doesn’t have to be that thrush,

a wagtail caress would be sufficient comfort

to remind my rose

it is never truly alone.

I am a writer

I am a writer
a born writer
published by a womb

Handwritten by a nib from an inkwell
between the lines
a joined-up writer

I am a copy writer
copybooks
essays scribbled from memory

Minutes taken at meetings
reporter, drafter,
instructing others

Propaganda scribe
editor of text
pointed editorials

I am a writer
I want to be published
I have nothing to say
except what you want to hear.

_______

And I am a writer
dream-writer
I create
thoughts I own
feelings I conceive
imaginations I imagine

I write in a vacuum I design for my muse
floating in space.

________

I too am a writer
a bought writer
my labour earns me food, shoes, shelter
I compose with blood, sweat and fingers fit for travel
to Atlantis and Arthritis.

________

I am writing my way through a stone,
split,
as if a schizoid elephant
home from Kubla Kahn

Watching you watching

Watching you watching

her play in the swimming pool

a lizard soaks sun

Extract from the diary of Joseph of Arimathaea (Thursday, 16th May, 33 AD)

… Birds fly
flap wings to rise high.
No human being can lift off
under their own steam.

A dream of a mountaintop,
clouds handong off,
sun lying low in a fountain of shadows,
we’ve come to witness the ascension into Heaven.

The sect gathering  for the send-off:
Jesus is going home
under his own steam
– handy transport, transmigration of matter.

But what if it all goes wrong?
He blows up on take-off?
Remember the teacher
Whatshername – Christa blew up after 73 seconds.

No one’s considered the consequences
of debris falling to Earth
radioactive
Heavenly waste.

Everyone’s standing round waiting for something to ignite
the proceedings. The final farewells.
A lifetime of teaching
generates a multitude of pupils.

I’m the Health and Safety Officer,
the sod who had to make a Risk Assessment,
had to  make out COSSH sheets on water jars
– all because there’s a chance he  might turn water into petroleum spirit.

I’m in change of safety – hah hah,
in charge of “innovative flight events”,
single man assents without a net,
here to ensure no one’s hurt in the slipstream.

Who’s thought to commission a recce of the landing-zone?
Who’s been looking ahead and asking “how safe is it to land in Heaven?”
Typical – so long as the integrity of the risk management system is vindicated.
What do we care if Acts of God intervene!

The Council’s insurance doesn’t cover Almighty interventions.
The ‘best value’ analysis doesn’t call  for consultations on ascensions.
There’s no best practice notes governing what you do on a Thursday
with a small crowd on a remote hillside.

Not one person believes this could open the floodgates.
Who expects trips to Heaven to become fashionable?
Who is thinking ahead?
Why should one tired, approaching-retirement official carry the can?

Jesus, I can’t even get to the man,
he keeps disappearing,
re-appearing.
Ah – hah – enter the dragon, eleven henchmen and mother.

Looks like we’re going to see some action,
countdown to eternity.
I admire the way he’s going first, putting himself on the line,
leadership in action.

Wish I’d thought of bringing the video.
Nothing like being a witness
at the first ever manned flight into Heaven.
Christ, it’s one small step for man.

One giant leap for Mankind…

Flight

Blue shoes in pink

pink carriages in blue.

A clasp of silver buckle

reflects the sliver of light

that reaches into the cabin

bound for Lanzarote.

Geese… I hope she doesn’t need the potty

and hasn’t wet my lap. 

Fighting Through the Tough Times — Life as a Visual Storyteller

My experience of making a living as a creative can be summed up in two sentences. It’s brutal. It’s fulfilling. Most of the time, I can’t see beyond the brutality. Life is a relentless struggle to find work and pay the bills that leaves me sliced open and bloodied. I’m nothing more than a crimson stain mashed into […]

via Fighting Through the Tough Times — Life as a Visual Storyteller

First Thoughts

 

We play on each other’s stages

to music we can’t hear,

sound out an echo

into a strange new background.

 

We meet each other in the familiar

and miss one another in the weather,

speak in diverse tongues

of pictures we’ll never complete.

 

We sound alike on the street,

on the top floor of the bus.

At the hairdresser we are all blown dry

and we all shed skin.

 

That’s where the story ends,

the adventure begins. The day starts

with the mass rising from sleep.

The joints connecting again.

I Love Women



I love women

I admire women
I am jealous of women

I am enriched by women
I have been saved by women

I love the shape of women
… the flaws of women

I am infuriated by women
I love cooking for women

I am irritated by women
I despair of women

I am tickled by women
I write for women

Women have made me a man.

Oscar Wilde ‘The Ballad Of Reading Gaol’ on UK National Poetry Day [31 minutes]

wilde-ballad-beerbohm

For years I’ve wanted to read “The Ballad of Reading Gaol“.

On National Poetry Day in UK (6 October 2016) –  I did it.

 

Live-streaming poetry by Selima Hills & Matthew Sweeney

[Note:  This is 39 minutes.  To see all comments & heart –  click on the Periscope.TV link in the tweet above.]

Paul O’Mahony live-streaming two poems from the anthology  Staying Alive – real poems for unreal times“

“Cow” by Selima Hill (1945 -)  – from 15 minutes 50 seconds in.

“Sleep with a suitcase” by Matthew Sweeney (1951 – ) – from 30 minutes 36 seconds

Irish Water

https://audioboom.com/boos/5078435-love-or-hate-irish-water-political-poem

 

Irish Water
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”

I ramble thirsty as a shroud
from pub to pub and by the riverside.
Paddy Power in sight,
sure I’m right tight
– a death to chasers coming.

(Fresh demand in post,
investment dear,
to plug the pipes that leak rainfall.)

In search of a drop
to quench the thirst
to wet my whistle,
“cad a dhéanfaimid fasta gan báisteach ”
translated into water charge
hailstoning on showers.

(Taxpayers used to annexed wages,
consumers used to value added tax )
Now an extra fee,
you pay more for a slash
extra for a poo.

Water water,
never had so much
to squelch & welsh.
transparent pain, expensive rain,
we conserve you with pleasure,
and hurt pockets
where suffering’s egg is spermed:

I gamble boldly as a sect
that floats on high
o’re tombs of Micheál Kenny.
We Ourselves roll back the stone
and bury both alive
before the cock crows thrice.

As for the whiskey,
we drink it neat
until the Republic sings
the song of wandering Bacchus
from the ocean of the West.

Over-achiever

harlequin-ichthyosis-250x150
Overachiever

The sun overachieved

when she provided light, warmth, direction, security and reassurance

to the solar system.

 

The moon overachieved

when it reflected, drew tides, cast shadows and fed poets

mottled metaphors.

 

The stars overachieved

when they gave Hollywood a reputation, grains of sand a run for their money,

and inspired the search for Graham’s number.

 

There’s a woman with blond hair, tall, blue eyes, imagination of a harlequin,

and an inclination to call herself

overachiever.

Over-thinking as a way of life

Overthinking as a way of life

You have hurt me

Don’t think for a minute

I don’t know you’re about to deny it.

I know you’ve done that to me before

and

you’ve  probably forgotten

or

wiped it conveniently out of your memory

because

it suited you.

You’re always doing that

so

don’t go letting yourself off the hook

because

you’re the one who started this.

Aren’t you?

You might at least apologise.

But

you’ve apologised before

and

that hasn’t changed anything

so

what makes this time any different?

This time you’ve really hurt me

and

I suppose that doesn’t mean anything to you…

(And  so on…)

 

Under-thinking as a way of life

Underthinking as a way of life

I feel

therefore

I am

People who have no imagination

People who have no imagination

‘Twas wet outside the RDS in Ballsbridge,

under the bus shelter there was light against dark outside.

It wasn’t that I had no raincoat

(I’d saved money on showers)

nor the 2,016 strides to the Summit pub

– it was strangers-in-want that held my attention,

the black and the white

Mozambique and Mill Street,

Marrabenta and Riverdance.

They were talking in pauses

and the back of her hand brushed his sleeve.

I bet neither of them remembers

the advertising placed by Adshel.

I was the only  eavesdropper

with tickling drops of Irish moisture

massaging my humour.

You might well say there are “people who have no imagination”

but certainly they weren’t waiting for a lift.

As soon as we wake 

 

https://audioboom.com/boos/5039858-new-poem-as-soon-as-we-wake

 

As soon as we wake

As soon as you wake up,

you’re seduced by the sun

that comes over your horizon

and shines light throughout your land,

sky and heart scape.

 

As soon as I open my eyes,

I’m seduced by BBC News,

emails, notifications, Twitter, Facebook,

Instagram, Anchor, WordPress, Audioboo

and

“From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace“.