Contents
1. An Irish Boulevardier Begins
to Pencil in his Living Will
2. Anaconda
3. Ask the Fuchsias
4. Carnival of the Animal
5. Chipa
6. Crab-apple Juice
7. Crime Scene
8. Croissants and
Language on the Tongue
9. Dandelion Clock
10. I am Depression - Give me a Drink!
11. Ickle Christmas
12. If You had been here Tonight
13. In Our Adventuresome Days
14. In the Troubadour Coffee House
15. Living out of a Suitcase
16. Nutter in Love
17. Old Fart
18. Old Loves
19. On Learning the Accordion
20. Schwantz by Moonlight
21. Shaky Paddy
22. Split
23. The Grave Digger’s Daughter
24. The Meaningless Poetry of Rain
25. The Spot on my Back where my Wings used to be
26. Unused Prescription
27. Wet the Tea!
28. Words of Love
29. Wurra Wurra: The Night of the Long Brooms
30. Your White Shadow
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Contents
Contents
An Irish Boulevardier Begins to Pencil in his Living Will
Anaconda
Ask the Fuchsias
Carnival of the Animal
Chipa
Crab-apple Juice
Crime Scene
Croissants and Language on the Tongue
Dandelion Clock
I am Depression - Give me a Drink!
Ickle Christmas
If you had been here tonight
In Our Adventuresome Days
In the Troubadour Coffee House
Living out of a suitcase
Nutter in Love
Old Fart
Old Loves
On Learning the Accordion
Schwantz by Moonlight
Shaky Paddy
Split
The Grave Digger’s Daughter
The Meaningless Poetry of Rain
The spot on my back where my wings used to be
Unused Prescription
Wet the Tea!
Words of Love
Wurra Wurra: The Night of the Long Brooms
Your White Shadow
An Irish Boulevardier Begins to Pencil in his Living Will
Anaconda
Ask the Fuchsias
Carnival of the Animal
Chipa
Crab-apple Juice
Crime Scene
Croissants and Language on the Tongue
Dandelion Clock
I am Depression - Give me a Drink!
Ickle Christmas
If you had been here tonight
In Our Adventuresome Days
In the Troubadour Coffee House
Living out of a suitcase
Nutter in Love
Old Fart
Old Loves
On Learning the Accordion
Schwantz by Moonlight
Shaky Paddy
Split
The Grave Digger’s Daughter
The Meaningless Poetry of Rain
The spot on my back where my wings used to be
Unused Prescription
Wet the Tea!
Words of Love
Wurra Wurra: The Night of the Long Brooms
Your White Shadow
Preface
I pause from the slow and rather alchemical task of distilling poetry. Since I have already grubbed the disparate ingredients for my latest verse out of some dark pantry on the inside of me and laid them out in a line like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle, I take a little time to do something safe; perhaps brew a pot of coffee or peel a bucket of potatoes or point the cats in the direction of the latest murine intruder. Rats seem attracted to me. It makes me feel that perhaps I am not yet a sinking ship, although I am probably not Saint Francis either.
Now a deep breath is called for and removing the creative alembic for a moment from the burner I ask myself: ‘But after all, what is a poem?’
It is one of the simple questions, like ‘What is God?’ or ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Am I God?’
But before I can begin to answer my first question others spill out like sausages from a sausage machine and pile up in a wriggling pink stack before me demanding equal consideration or at least a quick end in a red hot frying pan.
‘What is a poem?’ And then ‘Where does a poem come from?’ And ‘What makes a piece of writing a poem rather than a piece of prose?’ And ‘Will I make any money out of this book of poetry?’ And ‘Can you explain String Theory to me in one simple paragraph?
This kind of random enquiry causes a disengagement and re-engagement of gears in the small part of my mind that deals with logic. The grinding is awkwardly uncomfortable to the point of pain. For the first time I understand the feelings of a sack of wheat which has learned that it is to be ground down into a loaf of bread. I feel a kind of right angled and unnatural change in the typical latitudinal direction of my thought. I am reminded of the juddering sound of a snipe in the evening sky over my bogland cottage, like finger-nails on the dark blackboard of the sky.
“What is a poem?’
I don’t know. Because rather as a postman does little more than deliver a letter and has no part whatsoever in writing it, I do little more than deliver a poem even though to do this I must write it down. But how it comes to me and what it is a mystery, as is the place it comes from. Well, no! That is not entirely true. It is not a mystery at all! It comes from beyont!
Beyont 1
As I sit and ponder over my pile of freshly peeled potatoes and my mug of steaming coffee and whatever other occupational placebo I have used to dislocate myself from my rented accommodation in the collective unconscious (‘your place of work’ as the taxman would have it) and as I relax into my unpretentious Irish kitchen, this solid place in a solidly objective world of draughts and burning turf, of cooking smells, of rain and smoke and cats, it becomes clear to me that poems come from somewhere else, not from here but from a place I can only describe as beyont.
And where on earth or further afield within the clanging harp strings of the universe is beyont? Well I have often been there so I should have no difficulty in providing a description. And once upon a time I tried to pinpoint the location with reference to the magical act of painting a picture which is how I had occupied my time for the ten years before it came to me that I should publish a collection of poetry. I had written:
“In front of the canvas I stand. I move my arms. I flex my fingers. I stare.
Time, that terrible and incomprehensible enigma, fades to irrelevance and leaks away slowly, vanishing under the studio door.
Paint flows and moves, the clouds of charcoal rise, fall, coalesce.
The void is before me. Darkness covers the face of the earth.
Out of that darkness figures emerge, blinking, arranging themselves randomly here and there on the picture plane, at first without intent or passion, composing themselves like anonymous crowds moving through the Metro. They appear in the paint from elsewhere and jostle for meaning. If there were a Me I would say they come from beyond Me.
I have not invited them. They introduce themselves, borrowing my name with an abrupt lack of etiquette, and having taken up their stations on the canvas they invite me to recognise them.
They invite you too, viewer.”
I think one can say the same things in relation to the inspiration that arrives with the gift of a poem. (I am not referring here to the hard work needed to put the pieces of the jigsaw together!) Rats seem attracted to me. So do words. What does that make me? A rat catcher? A word snarer?
Up to this point I have not even attempted to describe what a poem is but perhaps it is a move in the right direction to find out in my case where poetry comes from. With painting I wanted to explain the source of the picture which time and again seemed to arrive ready made on the canvas in front of me without any effort at all by me and which indeed scarcely merited my signature on the finished work. All I was asked to do was to use my judgement and admit the painting into the world. Or simply reject it and smother it at birth.
What was clear was that a picture and in the same way a line of poetry did not appear to come from my conscious mind at all which is why I use the analogy of a postal delivery. It was delivered from beyont. And when it was not, when I struggled and twisted and turned and focussed mind and logic to bring the task somehow to a printable conclusion it was rarely successful. The painting might just as well have been an ad for a new detergent and the poem a thank-you letter for an unwanted Christmas present.
But the poems which made me rejoice did not come from nowhere.
Beyont is not a nowhere land. I have been there. If I relax properly I am indeed living mostly beyont. I should explain. Beyont is that place where nothing is done which cannot be done one-handed and thinking of something else. It is the place for writing and painting and on a good day the place where in secret and shady places poetry might unexpectedly be found as are found in the woods wild and edible mushrooms. Some say it is a good place to convalesce and perhaps that is why I spend a good deal of time there, like a patient in a deck chair listening to the ocean.
Beyont 2
Beyont can be heavy weather and the tunnel between worlds. Today I shall get up and still walking on dry land I shall cross the threshold and step into beyont. Dry land? Well scarcely! In this part of the West of Ireland the ocean has wings and is often airborne all around me. But the rain and the winds carry the deep meditation of the ocean with them over the bog and into the ash grove and around my house and around me like a magic cloak so that even before I cross the threshold I am well into beyont.
Now the rain comes down. I eat my sodden toast in the doorway. The donkeys are propitiated with washed potato and the rain flies into the garden like a swarm of buzzing bees among the plants and the day rustles alive and I walking wake.
I remain in the scullery doorway looking out through the falling shower. Beyont, on the green hill of my neighbour’s pasture cream cows stand motionless like tired workers in a shower cubicle douched in the downpour, impassively letting the water flow over them. There is no breeze for a moment, as if work has stopped in the bellows department and all stand by watching the line of black counterpanes above the horizon with sheets of white cloud beneath and wall hangings of grey and white and great tears of blue in the wetscape. Beyont is always a perfect landscape tatty with discordant currents, silenced by a lack of decision, purpose, weather-balanced, undecided whether to weep or chuckle or just collapse with the consternation of decision making. I watch and am slowly absorbed. I am an insect swimming about in a flesh eating calyx. My mind is an empty pool. I welcome the sun. I welcome the rain. Anything to get me going. I am in perfect equilibrium. Am I happy? Am I miserable? There seems to be no difference from where I wait poised in the beyont.
The rain stops. Another stealthy entrance by the sunshine, as if it will willy-nilly inseminate the fields with further vigour. The day could be pregnant with anything. Monsters or angels crouch in the wings, waiting to emerge. The leaves drip. The tree trunks steam. The donkeys emerge from their barn and the tin roofs hiss and crack and smoke like a steaming family wedding where hate and feud and horrible dysfunction bubble beneath the surface, the brooding generations of quarto father’s sins and their mothers’ hag-ridden resentment, and are put aside just for the day in Olympian resignation.
Beyont 3
Language is a network disease, an active fungus of association.
There is a synaptic connection of allusions that has that sweet element of creative anonymity built into its structure. Beyont is no-name.
Do you name what a poem is? Well, do you name what a pear tastes like? Well, no, not really. Just eat it. Right off the page.
Now a deep breath is called for and removing the creative alembic for a moment from the burner I ask myself: ‘But after all, what is a poem?’
It is one of the simple questions, like ‘What is God?’ or ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Am I God?’
But before I can begin to answer my first question others spill out like sausages from a sausage machine and pile up in a wriggling pink stack before me demanding equal consideration or at least a quick end in a red hot frying pan.
‘What is a poem?’ And then ‘Where does a poem come from?’ And ‘What makes a piece of writing a poem rather than a piece of prose?’ And ‘Will I make any money out of this book of poetry?’ And ‘Can you explain String Theory to me in one simple paragraph?
This kind of random enquiry causes a disengagement and re-engagement of gears in the small part of my mind that deals with logic. The grinding is awkwardly uncomfortable to the point of pain. For the first time I understand the feelings of a sack of wheat which has learned that it is to be ground down into a loaf of bread. I feel a kind of right angled and unnatural change in the typical latitudinal direction of my thought. I am reminded of the juddering sound of a snipe in the evening sky over my bogland cottage, like finger-nails on the dark blackboard of the sky.
“What is a poem?’
I don’t know. Because rather as a postman does little more than deliver a letter and has no part whatsoever in writing it, I do little more than deliver a poem even though to do this I must write it down. But how it comes to me and what it is a mystery, as is the place it comes from. Well, no! That is not entirely true. It is not a mystery at all! It comes from beyont!
Beyont 1
As I sit and ponder over my pile of freshly peeled potatoes and my mug of steaming coffee and whatever other occupational placebo I have used to dislocate myself from my rented accommodation in the collective unconscious (‘your place of work’ as the taxman would have it) and as I relax into my unpretentious Irish kitchen, this solid place in a solidly objective world of draughts and burning turf, of cooking smells, of rain and smoke and cats, it becomes clear to me that poems come from somewhere else, not from here but from a place I can only describe as beyont.
And where on earth or further afield within the clanging harp strings of the universe is beyont? Well I have often been there so I should have no difficulty in providing a description. And once upon a time I tried to pinpoint the location with reference to the magical act of painting a picture which is how I had occupied my time for the ten years before it came to me that I should publish a collection of poetry. I had written:
“In front of the canvas I stand. I move my arms. I flex my fingers. I stare.
Time, that terrible and incomprehensible enigma, fades to irrelevance and leaks away slowly, vanishing under the studio door.
Paint flows and moves, the clouds of charcoal rise, fall, coalesce.
The void is before me. Darkness covers the face of the earth.
Out of that darkness figures emerge, blinking, arranging themselves randomly here and there on the picture plane, at first without intent or passion, composing themselves like anonymous crowds moving through the Metro. They appear in the paint from elsewhere and jostle for meaning. If there were a Me I would say they come from beyond Me.
I have not invited them. They introduce themselves, borrowing my name with an abrupt lack of etiquette, and having taken up their stations on the canvas they invite me to recognise them.
They invite you too, viewer.”
I think one can say the same things in relation to the inspiration that arrives with the gift of a poem. (I am not referring here to the hard work needed to put the pieces of the jigsaw together!) Rats seem attracted to me. So do words. What does that make me? A rat catcher? A word snarer?
Up to this point I have not even attempted to describe what a poem is but perhaps it is a move in the right direction to find out in my case where poetry comes from. With painting I wanted to explain the source of the picture which time and again seemed to arrive ready made on the canvas in front of me without any effort at all by me and which indeed scarcely merited my signature on the finished work. All I was asked to do was to use my judgement and admit the painting into the world. Or simply reject it and smother it at birth.
What was clear was that a picture and in the same way a line of poetry did not appear to come from my conscious mind at all which is why I use the analogy of a postal delivery. It was delivered from beyont. And when it was not, when I struggled and twisted and turned and focussed mind and logic to bring the task somehow to a printable conclusion it was rarely successful. The painting might just as well have been an ad for a new detergent and the poem a thank-you letter for an unwanted Christmas present.
But the poems which made me rejoice did not come from nowhere.
Beyont is not a nowhere land. I have been there. If I relax properly I am indeed living mostly beyont. I should explain. Beyont is that place where nothing is done which cannot be done one-handed and thinking of something else. It is the place for writing and painting and on a good day the place where in secret and shady places poetry might unexpectedly be found as are found in the woods wild and edible mushrooms. Some say it is a good place to convalesce and perhaps that is why I spend a good deal of time there, like a patient in a deck chair listening to the ocean.
Beyont 2
Beyont can be heavy weather and the tunnel between worlds. Today I shall get up and still walking on dry land I shall cross the threshold and step into beyont. Dry land? Well scarcely! In this part of the West of Ireland the ocean has wings and is often airborne all around me. But the rain and the winds carry the deep meditation of the ocean with them over the bog and into the ash grove and around my house and around me like a magic cloak so that even before I cross the threshold I am well into beyont.
Now the rain comes down. I eat my sodden toast in the doorway. The donkeys are propitiated with washed potato and the rain flies into the garden like a swarm of buzzing bees among the plants and the day rustles alive and I walking wake.
I remain in the scullery doorway looking out through the falling shower. Beyont, on the green hill of my neighbour’s pasture cream cows stand motionless like tired workers in a shower cubicle douched in the downpour, impassively letting the water flow over them. There is no breeze for a moment, as if work has stopped in the bellows department and all stand by watching the line of black counterpanes above the horizon with sheets of white cloud beneath and wall hangings of grey and white and great tears of blue in the wetscape. Beyont is always a perfect landscape tatty with discordant currents, silenced by a lack of decision, purpose, weather-balanced, undecided whether to weep or chuckle or just collapse with the consternation of decision making. I watch and am slowly absorbed. I am an insect swimming about in a flesh eating calyx. My mind is an empty pool. I welcome the sun. I welcome the rain. Anything to get me going. I am in perfect equilibrium. Am I happy? Am I miserable? There seems to be no difference from where I wait poised in the beyont.
The rain stops. Another stealthy entrance by the sunshine, as if it will willy-nilly inseminate the fields with further vigour. The day could be pregnant with anything. Monsters or angels crouch in the wings, waiting to emerge. The leaves drip. The tree trunks steam. The donkeys emerge from their barn and the tin roofs hiss and crack and smoke like a steaming family wedding where hate and feud and horrible dysfunction bubble beneath the surface, the brooding generations of quarto father’s sins and their mothers’ hag-ridden resentment, and are put aside just for the day in Olympian resignation.
Beyont 3
Language is a network disease, an active fungus of association.
There is a synaptic connection of allusions that has that sweet element of creative anonymity built into its structure. Beyont is no-name.
Do you name what a poem is? Well, do you name what a pear tastes like? Well, no, not really. Just eat it. Right off the page.
1. An Irish Boulevardier Begins to Pencil in his Living Will
My generation wore red platform shoes,
and they are still dancing clickety clack
like a pair of wind-up dentures
all along the length of Matt Molloy’s bar.
I am not a godless man.
The Peacock Eyes of God want to see everything for themselves
and I’ll be damned if I didn’t oblige Him
with a pair of sly peepers.
I was raised a Goody Two-shoes,
bursting with celibacy like an overfilled bladder,
but I know God found the feedback dull,
wall to wall prayers and the eyes tight shut.
I know, because very soon He sent me
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.
Now I’m a One-eyed Jack
and although I’m going deaf
I am still able to hear the quacking of the doctors in the hospital pen
wondering why I’m not dead yet.
So for today
I think I’ll glug a bottle of brännvin
and drop my pants and dance
bare as a scarecrow,
still flickering like an old candle but not out,
in front of your welcome fire of birch logs.
And as a newt pixilated,
I’ll burrow under the feathers and tell you about 1965
and how I have preserved it to this day in a small glass bottle.
and they are still dancing clickety clack
like a pair of wind-up dentures
all along the length of Matt Molloy’s bar.
I am not a godless man.
The Peacock Eyes of God want to see everything for themselves
and I’ll be damned if I didn’t oblige Him
with a pair of sly peepers.
I was raised a Goody Two-shoes,
bursting with celibacy like an overfilled bladder,
but I know God found the feedback dull,
wall to wall prayers and the eyes tight shut.
I know, because very soon He sent me
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.
Now I’m a One-eyed Jack
and although I’m going deaf
I am still able to hear the quacking of the doctors in the hospital pen
wondering why I’m not dead yet.
So for today
I think I’ll glug a bottle of brännvin
and drop my pants and dance
bare as a scarecrow,
still flickering like an old candle but not out,
in front of your welcome fire of birch logs.
And as a newt pixilated,
I’ll burrow under the feathers and tell you about 1965
and how I have preserved it to this day in a small glass bottle.
5. Chipa
The scent of wet wood hand
sawn on a January morning
returns to me again the
sunless sweetness of solitude.
I have cut this cottonwood
many times before
but always,
in a sleight of hand
impossible to follow,
leaves gush like leaking sap
from its dead branches.
I have even seen flowers
burst with the speed of comets
from out of the blotchy bark.
They scatter as turf ash does
into the wind-blown skies,
and sometimes I scatter with
them,
for they are able to whirl me
in a dervish dance
deep into my own silence.
A blue dragon fly,
another lotus beast
risen from the mud of the
pond
to put a diadem into the sunless
day,
floated towards me this
morning
riding on a stream,
like the Virgin of Ca’acupé,
sparkling with a halo of tiny
starlets,
each carrying a plate of
freshly baked chipa.
Bread of Heaven, it seems,
although today I would have
preferred wine.
Another person
might have seen them as
midges.
But then
another person
might not know how to get
drunk
on bread.
These flashbacks come more
often now.
I suppose it is Age,
that batty old projectionist,
starting to rewind the
celluloid.
Or a perhaps a closer
proximity
to the Black Hole of Death
has started to stretch those
parts of me
that alcohol was never able
to reach.
sawn on a January morning
returns to me again the
sunless sweetness of solitude.
I have cut this cottonwood
many times before
but always,
in a sleight of hand
impossible to follow,
leaves gush like leaking sap
from its dead branches.
I have even seen flowers
burst with the speed of comets
from out of the blotchy bark.
They scatter as turf ash does
into the wind-blown skies,
and sometimes I scatter with
them,
for they are able to whirl me
in a dervish dance
deep into my own silence.
A blue dragon fly,
another lotus beast
risen from the mud of the
pond
to put a diadem into the sunless
day,
floated towards me this
morning
riding on a stream,
like the Virgin of Ca’acupé,
sparkling with a halo of tiny
starlets,
each carrying a plate of
freshly baked chipa.
Bread of Heaven, it seems,
although today I would have
preferred wine.
Another person
might have seen them as
midges.
But then
another person
might not know how to get
drunk
on bread.
These flashbacks come more
often now.
I suppose it is Age,
that batty old projectionist,
starting to rewind the
celluloid.
Or a perhaps a closer
proximity
to the Black Hole of Death
has started to stretch those
parts of me
that alcohol was never able
to reach.
4. Carnival of the Animal
After the breakup of our
Carnival of the Animal
my plans lay for a while
gathering dust
at the bottom of the press
like good time memories in a
bunch of silk flowers.
Have you noticed how the
gravity of lust
when rubbed up the wrong way
bends time and space in
quarky modes?
When I was green and lovelorn
a straight line was the
shortest distance between two pints.
In my sad and grizzled
anecdotage
it registers only as a flat
line on my heart monitor.
Carnival of the Animal
my plans lay for a while
gathering dust
at the bottom of the press
like good time memories in a
bunch of silk flowers.
Have you noticed how the
gravity of lust
when rubbed up the wrong way
bends time and space in
quarky modes?
When I was green and lovelorn
a straight line was the
shortest distance between two pints.
In my sad and grizzled
anecdotage
it registers only as a flat
line on my heart monitor.
3. Ask the Fuchsias
Out of the ruined houses
nettles leap barking like
wolves,
defensive and territorial,
full of contained aggression.
The ash trees sigh and
whisper quietly;
new comers they,
a green roof rising from the
roofless parlour.
People lived here and left
the year I was born.
They took their livestock and
their roof with them.
The ash trees are too young
to remember.
They know nothing of Death
yet.
They could ask the fuchsias:
they know.
nettles leap barking like
wolves,
defensive and territorial,
full of contained aggression.
The ash trees sigh and
whisper quietly;
new comers they,
a green roof rising from the
roofless parlour.
People lived here and left
the year I was born.
They took their livestock and
their roof with them.
The ash trees are too young
to remember.
They know nothing of Death
yet.
They could ask the fuchsias:
they know.
2. Anaconda
Anaconda
On the other side,
in the deadness of night,
the darktime stories always
begin
with the discovery of a
corpse.
I open my eyes and discover my
own corpse
lying on a red sheet,
and yellow sunlight is spilling
down the wall like breakfast.
Must I always be late for the
day?
Too much bottle!
It is hard to go to bed
sometimes
and so I was up till the grey
part of the morning trying to make it softer,
but with only moderate
success,
unless you count visions as a
soft option.
I am accompanied late at
night by old versions of me,
lonely old wraiths looking
for satisfaction,
and it seems any satisfaction
will do.
What do they want satisfied?
I am not yet prepared to ask.
I walked the house and felt
the velvet curtain of night
touch my unclothed body like
an impertinent cat.
Shadows brushed me and tried
to enter,
but I am not unskilled in
making myself impermeable.
These others are after all just
the spent echoes of earlier ones
but in my darkness they jostle
to take solid shape
and occupy space that is
rightfully mine.
However, thanks to your
tutelage
I am not without compassion.
I reach into the darkness,
hoping something soft to stroke is there,
and not a blackberry bush or
a stoat
or an anaconda.
On the other side,
in the deadness of night,
the darktime stories always
begin
with the discovery of a
corpse.
I open my eyes and discover my
own corpse
lying on a red sheet,
and yellow sunlight is spilling
down the wall like breakfast.
Must I always be late for the
day?
Too much bottle!
It is hard to go to bed
sometimes
and so I was up till the grey
part of the morning trying to make it softer,
but with only moderate
success,
unless you count visions as a
soft option.
I am accompanied late at
night by old versions of me,
lonely old wraiths looking
for satisfaction,
and it seems any satisfaction
will do.
What do they want satisfied?
I am not yet prepared to ask.
I walked the house and felt
the velvet curtain of night
touch my unclothed body like
an impertinent cat.
Shadows brushed me and tried
to enter,
but I am not unskilled in
making myself impermeable.
These others are after all just
the spent echoes of earlier ones
but in my darkness they jostle
to take solid shape
and occupy space that is
rightfully mine.
However, thanks to your
tutelage
I am not without compassion.
I reach into the darkness,
hoping something soft to stroke is there,
and not a blackberry bush or
a stoat
or an anaconda.
10. I am Depression - Give me a Drink!
I am Depression - Give me a Drink!
The dried up geranium in a
terra cotta pot on the windowsill
mutters when I come into the
room late at night.
I suspect it is some kind of
curse.
Perhaps because I have given
it no water for a month.
I didn’t sing to it either.
I am away often, occupying
myself with matters crucial to my sanity.
I do not expect a geranium to
understand this.
This one has many
incarnations to go
before it can even think of
being a rose,
let alone an evolved and sentient plant. I think.
Although I am not too au fait with karmic hierarchies.
As I watch I see it grows a
little.
I am sure that that slight movement
could have been growth!
Although it might have been a
quiet sigh.
It is hard to tell with a
plant so over-cultivated it has never known seed.
This poor dear was raised
from a cutting.
As a shoot it was certainly
underprivileged in the root department!
But it should have got over that
by now.
I notice that it has started
to move like a crab,
sidling sideways towards the
floral curtain. That is not a good sign.
Still I know there is very
little satisfaction around for geraniums these days, particularly not for pink
ones.
And certainly not for brown
dried up wizened ones
that look like a jar full of
fortune teller’s old yarrow stalks.
I bend down and tell it-Forget
the floral curtain! It is an illusion!
And there is no reason for
depression!
It is something that has
soaked in from elsewhere,
perhaps from the old stones
the house is made of,
or maybe it was mixed into
the wet plaster centuries ago
and it has leaked out into
you.
Or from strangers, sidling
up, taking you by osmosis, seeping into you,
rotting you with other
people’s misery. This is not yours. It’s just vrittis!
Stand up and shake it off!
Look through it!
It is mud splattered by
passers by! Or even your own family perhaps!
You only own it by
association, this unease.
I’m sure that made it feel
better.
I fetched a bottle of
schnapps and emptied it into the pot.
That should sort it! I feel good now!
11
The dried up geranium in a
terra cotta pot on the windowsill
mutters when I come into the
room late at night.
I suspect it is some kind of
curse.
Perhaps because I have given
it no water for a month.
I didn’t sing to it either.
I am away often, occupying
myself with matters crucial to my sanity.
I do not expect a geranium to
understand this.
This one has many
incarnations to go
before it can even think of
being a rose,
let alone an evolved and sentient plant. I think.
Although I am not too au fait with karmic hierarchies.
As I watch I see it grows a
little.
I am sure that that slight movement
could have been growth!
Although it might have been a
quiet sigh.
It is hard to tell with a
plant so over-cultivated it has never known seed.
This poor dear was raised
from a cutting.
As a shoot it was certainly
underprivileged in the root department!
But it should have got over that
by now.
I notice that it has started
to move like a crab,
sidling sideways towards the
floral curtain. That is not a good sign.
Still I know there is very
little satisfaction around for geraniums these days, particularly not for pink
ones.
And certainly not for brown
dried up wizened ones
that look like a jar full of
fortune teller’s old yarrow stalks.
I bend down and tell it-Forget
the floral curtain! It is an illusion!
And there is no reason for
depression!
It is something that has
soaked in from elsewhere,
perhaps from the old stones
the house is made of,
or maybe it was mixed into
the wet plaster centuries ago
and it has leaked out into
you.
Or from strangers, sidling
up, taking you by osmosis, seeping into you,
rotting you with other
people’s misery. This is not yours. It’s just vrittis!
Stand up and shake it off!
Look through it!
It is mud splattered by
passers by! Or even your own family perhaps!
You only own it by
association, this unease.
I’m sure that made it feel
better.
I fetched a bottle of
schnapps and emptied it into the pot.
That should sort it! I feel good now!
11
9. Dandelion Clock
It’s only a game!
Your daughter takes a deep
breath
and tinkling with mischief
blows the dandelion clock
into a thousand dangling
parachutes.
The seeds drift upwards,
marking time,
waiting weightless
wondering who will catch up.
While we all giggle together
at the deadly threat posed
by the inevitability of
numbers,
and while we drink iced tea
under a green umbrella,
your daughter tallies time already
lost
and we plunge deeper into the
spent afternoon by default.
It’s only a kid’s game after
all!
A teatime shadow creeps across
the lawn
reaching us from your tame
birch tree,
and before we have time to
notice,
and as inexorably as the final
words of a judge,
the lawn is turned into a quivering
sundial.
Dandelion down falls now like
living snow
and I am blown away by the
beauty of it.
It’s only a kid’s game!
But still I am blown away!
Your daughter takes a deep
breath
and tinkling with mischief
blows the dandelion clock
into a million springtime
dandelions.
I am blown away.
And in the end, so are we
all.
Your daughter takes a deep
breath
and tinkling with mischief
blows the dandelion clock
into a thousand dangling
parachutes.
The seeds drift upwards,
marking time,
waiting weightless
wondering who will catch up.
While we all giggle together
at the deadly threat posed
by the inevitability of
numbers,
and while we drink iced tea
under a green umbrella,
your daughter tallies time already
lost
and we plunge deeper into the
spent afternoon by default.
It’s only a kid’s game after
all!
A teatime shadow creeps across
the lawn
reaching us from your tame
birch tree,
and before we have time to
notice,
and as inexorably as the final
words of a judge,
the lawn is turned into a quivering
sundial.
Dandelion down falls now like
living snow
and I am blown away by the
beauty of it.
It’s only a kid’s game!
But still I am blown away!
Your daughter takes a deep
breath
and tinkling with mischief
blows the dandelion clock
into a million springtime
dandelions.
I am blown away.
And in the end, so are we
all.
8. Croissants and Language on the Tongue
I am sat in the Troubadour
garden beneath rusty lilacs.
After the death and
resurrection of the dandelions
a first autumn breeze came
nosing in and swept the seeds away into another dimension.
This breeze now lingers and
eavesdrops on the café conversation.
I can hardly blame it, for
there are poets a plenty here,
seeding the space left by the
departing piss-a-beds
and replacing the
vacuum-pack chatter of the long gone
swallows
with their own Morse code,
both literary and pheremonal.
The coffee smells good here
too! And it is!
The breeze is in no hurry,
for every zephyr needs a little cash-and-carry gossip to trade with the African
birds.
That breeze had slipped
through the lilacs on uneasy reconnaissance,
and now, beneath the buzz of
café conversation I can hear it probing the dead leaves under the bushes, scrabbling
about like an old man’s hands round a young woman’s waist.
An hourglass, in whatever
incarnation, always incites different kinds of desperation.
Around the marble tabletops and
beneath the rustic decorations
of superannuated farm
implements and broken bits of iron we sit
like a funeral committee discussing
the preparations for a spectacular burial.
That of language, most
probably.
With a mouthful of buttered
croissant my neighbour starts to speak to me.
Smiling a smile of arch
obscurity and spitting small flakes of pastry like a tropical plant disgorging
seeds he says: “the bulimic day creeps
full bellied over the horizon and vomits out of sight!”
I think his management of both
tongue and vocabulary in the same mouth is masterly!
Not to be outdone I reply: “within this limpet pool called time,
clinging to the present moment, I drink my coffee, going nowhere.”
Across the table his wife tries
to smile as she slowly withers
like a plum alone in a fruit
bowl when the family has gone on holiday.
Aah! 1968 was a good year for
me!
garden beneath rusty lilacs.
After the death and
resurrection of the dandelions
a first autumn breeze came
nosing in and swept the seeds away into another dimension.
This breeze now lingers and
eavesdrops on the café conversation.
I can hardly blame it, for
there are poets a plenty here,
seeding the space left by the
departing piss-a-beds
and replacing the
vacuum-pack chatter of the long gone
swallows
with their own Morse code,
both literary and pheremonal.
The coffee smells good here
too! And it is!
The breeze is in no hurry,
for every zephyr needs a little cash-and-carry gossip to trade with the African
birds.
That breeze had slipped
through the lilacs on uneasy reconnaissance,
and now, beneath the buzz of
café conversation I can hear it probing the dead leaves under the bushes, scrabbling
about like an old man’s hands round a young woman’s waist.
An hourglass, in whatever
incarnation, always incites different kinds of desperation.
Around the marble tabletops and
beneath the rustic decorations
of superannuated farm
implements and broken bits of iron we sit
like a funeral committee discussing
the preparations for a spectacular burial.
That of language, most
probably.
With a mouthful of buttered
croissant my neighbour starts to speak to me.
Smiling a smile of arch
obscurity and spitting small flakes of pastry like a tropical plant disgorging
seeds he says: “the bulimic day creeps
full bellied over the horizon and vomits out of sight!”
I think his management of both
tongue and vocabulary in the same mouth is masterly!
Not to be outdone I reply: “within this limpet pool called time,
clinging to the present moment, I drink my coffee, going nowhere.”
Across the table his wife tries
to smile as she slowly withers
like a plum alone in a fruit
bowl when the family has gone on holiday.
Aah! 1968 was a good year for
me!
7. Crime Scene
When I walked past your
window last night
a blizzard of starlight fell
upon me.
Although I am no forensic
scientist,
I knew something had touched
me
and afterwards in the cold
light of the moon
I examined myself and saw
that there remained
icy fingerprints all along my
body, whispering silently.
I am no expert, but they
sounded quite like yours.
That is when I first came to
realise, after the fact,
That I must be a crime scene.
Is there a statute of
limitations on crimes of indifference?
Don’t you talk to me about
loneliness!
You are a seeded sphere of
life tumbling on the breath of the solar wind.
But don’t talk to me about
loneliness.
I am only a single seed blowing
in that unimaginable void.
A half memory wavers on the
path I am walking
like the moonlit tracks of a
snail
on a forgotten veranda.
I shall be careful in future
where I put my feet.
But don’t talk to me about
loneliness.
There is, by the way, no
statute of limitations.
Not for these crimes.
8
window last night
a blizzard of starlight fell
upon me.
Although I am no forensic
scientist,
I knew something had touched
me
and afterwards in the cold
light of the moon
I examined myself and saw
that there remained
icy fingerprints all along my
body, whispering silently.
I am no expert, but they
sounded quite like yours.
That is when I first came to
realise, after the fact,
That I must be a crime scene.
Is there a statute of
limitations on crimes of indifference?
Don’t you talk to me about
loneliness!
You are a seeded sphere of
life tumbling on the breath of the solar wind.
But don’t talk to me about
loneliness.
I am only a single seed blowing
in that unimaginable void.
A half memory wavers on the
path I am walking
like the moonlit tracks of a
snail
on a forgotten veranda.
I shall be careful in future
where I put my feet.
But don’t talk to me about
loneliness.
There is, by the way, no
statute of limitations.
Not for these crimes.
8
6. Crab-apple Juice
There’s still
enough juice in the old crab-apple
for a gullop or
two of scrumpy,
but who to drink
it with now?
Since parts of me
began to drop off
I have been
careful to abandon
the careless
abandon of my springtime
when we hitched up
Motorways out of our minds
and drank
ourselves into the unknown,
silly on thin air
and laughter.
Your news came to
me,
triple filtered
and sour
years later.
You must have been
old
when you died.
I only remember
you young.
Now you are
stretched out for ever
on the faded
candlewick of a cheap motel
holding me as a
mummy holds on to life
And we listen uncomprehending
to the alarum of
sparrows
that has broken
our day.
The years have
shrivelled away like old fruit
and now they
scatter further
like dry leaves in
the wind.
Just like us,
dear.
Still, there’s
enough juice in this old crab-apple
For a mug or two
of scrumpy with somebody.
Surely?
7
enough juice in the old crab-apple
for a gullop or
two of scrumpy,
but who to drink
it with now?
Since parts of me
began to drop off
I have been
careful to abandon
the careless
abandon of my springtime
when we hitched up
Motorways out of our minds
and drank
ourselves into the unknown,
silly on thin air
and laughter.
Your news came to
me,
triple filtered
and sour
years later.
You must have been
old
when you died.
I only remember
you young.
Now you are
stretched out for ever
on the faded
candlewick of a cheap motel
holding me as a
mummy holds on to life
And we listen uncomprehending
to the alarum of
sparrows
that has broken
our day.
The years have
shrivelled away like old fruit
and now they
scatter further
like dry leaves in
the wind.
Just like us,
dear.
Still, there’s
enough juice in this old crab-apple
For a mug or two
of scrumpy with somebody.
Surely?
7
14. In the Troubadour Coffee House
In the Troubadour coffee
house
lady artists
sufficiently decayed to pass
as antiques
discuss opportunities
which they will miss
procrastinating
for safety’s sake
on the water margins
of unwritten books.
Every fifteen minutes
the tables are cleaned and
cleared and polished
so that they may reflect
faces
which are somewhere else,
because it’s too dangerous to
be here.
As for me,
I found myself in tomorrow
today.
It’s easy to lose thirty or
forty years in small change.
It’s only small change after
all is said and done.
Until the bill arrives. After
all is said and done.
house
lady artists
sufficiently decayed to pass
as antiques
discuss opportunities
which they will miss
procrastinating
for safety’s sake
on the water margins
of unwritten books.
Every fifteen minutes
the tables are cleaned and
cleared and polished
so that they may reflect
faces
which are somewhere else,
because it’s too dangerous to
be here.
As for me,
I found myself in tomorrow
today.
It’s easy to lose thirty or
forty years in small change.
It’s only small change after
all is said and done.
Until the bill arrives. After
all is said and done.
13. In Our Adventuresome Days
In our adventuresome days
this was a place we both knew
well,
a small tumbled garden,
choked by the forestry
flattened beneath the heavy
tramp of implanted trees.
There was a brooding energy
here,
almost vindictive in its
insistence
not to be crushed.
The first time we undressed
a wild briar caught my sock
and scratched me like an
angry cat.
I bled red for a long time
beneath the apricot larches,
my fingers sticky as
fiddler’s rosin,
and in the fallen stones I
could hear
the echo of a silent
instrument.
Was that the voice of old
memories
soaked into the walls,
tuned up and biding their
time?
This garden was as silent as
our secret.
The forest had the fragrance
of an abandoned church
and yet, heavy with incense
and devotion,
it was still the perfect site
for a sacrament,
although for us, of a
different persuasion.
In our adventuresome days
this was the place and we
both knew it well.
When we left, smelling of
civet and musk,
we walked our separate ways
to other places.
In our adventuresome days
this was the path and we both
knew it well.
Pine though, and larch
needles accompanied us always then,
muttering inside our
underwear and promising to introduce
others
to the smell of Devil’s Turpentine
as evidence of certain damnation.
In our adventuresome days
certain damnation was a place
we already knew well.
But at least we had the
garden then.
this was a place we both knew
well,
a small tumbled garden,
choked by the forestry
flattened beneath the heavy
tramp of implanted trees.
There was a brooding energy
here,
almost vindictive in its
insistence
not to be crushed.
The first time we undressed
a wild briar caught my sock
and scratched me like an
angry cat.
I bled red for a long time
beneath the apricot larches,
my fingers sticky as
fiddler’s rosin,
and in the fallen stones I
could hear
the echo of a silent
instrument.
Was that the voice of old
memories
soaked into the walls,
tuned up and biding their
time?
This garden was as silent as
our secret.
The forest had the fragrance
of an abandoned church
and yet, heavy with incense
and devotion,
it was still the perfect site
for a sacrament,
although for us, of a
different persuasion.
In our adventuresome days
this was the place and we
both knew it well.
When we left, smelling of
civet and musk,
we walked our separate ways
to other places.
In our adventuresome days
this was the path and we both
knew it well.
Pine though, and larch
needles accompanied us always then,
muttering inside our
underwear and promising to introduce
others
to the smell of Devil’s Turpentine
as evidence of certain damnation.
In our adventuresome days
certain damnation was a place
we already knew well.
But at least we had the
garden then.
12. If you had been here tonight
If you had been here tonight
I would have said
-Sit by the fire with me!
Listen to the burning turf weaving
poetry
out of the dry stalks of the
long lost bog!
And we could take a swig or
two of the water of life,
Jameson’s perhaps or
Bushmill’s or Paddy’s,
and watch prehistory turning
to ashes
right before our eyes.
But you are not here tonight
and it is unwise to step
outside
on the sharp January night that’s
in it.
There is no saying whom you might
meet.
Here the souls of the dead
are everywhere.
They had sooner leave their own
shadows
than leave their own stories
behind.
The gary-gowlan is out there in
his jack-a-lantern boots,
standing guard with his
pitchfork at their graves.
If you had been here tonight
I would have said
-Sit by the fire with me!
Listen to the hissing turf coals
keening those old lost stories.
We can watch prehistory
turning to ash before our eyes.
But that night you were not
here.
Up where the forestry has
levelled walls
and jacked out the keystones
of old cottages
and thrown them about as if
at a stoning
there is a darkness that even
the moon can’t reach.
The night you were not here I
stepped outside
and looked up into my own
darkness.
The unimaginable past fell
around me as starlight.
11
I would have said
-Sit by the fire with me!
Listen to the burning turf weaving
poetry
out of the dry stalks of the
long lost bog!
And we could take a swig or
two of the water of life,
Jameson’s perhaps or
Bushmill’s or Paddy’s,
and watch prehistory turning
to ashes
right before our eyes.
But you are not here tonight
and it is unwise to step
outside
on the sharp January night that’s
in it.
There is no saying whom you might
meet.
Here the souls of the dead
are everywhere.
They had sooner leave their own
shadows
than leave their own stories
behind.
The gary-gowlan is out there in
his jack-a-lantern boots,
standing guard with his
pitchfork at their graves.
If you had been here tonight
I would have said
-Sit by the fire with me!
Listen to the hissing turf coals
keening those old lost stories.
We can watch prehistory
turning to ash before our eyes.
But that night you were not
here.
Up where the forestry has
levelled walls
and jacked out the keystones
of old cottages
and thrown them about as if
at a stoning
there is a darkness that even
the moon can’t reach.
The night you were not here I
stepped outside
and looked up into my own
darkness.
The unimaginable past fell
around me as starlight.
11
11. Ickle Christmas
I wear my masks carelessly on
purpose.
You can always see behind
them if you walk backwards.
Walking backwards she
collapses slowly
like a deck of badly shuffled
Christmas cards.
A ziggurat in the Mesopotamian
desert
could have done it more
gracefully,
and given time and a
competent therapist
I am sure she could have marked
the end of this year’s festive deadline
as lightly as any other feather
duster fairy
seconded from the kitchen by
the Pot Gods
to blow the Christmas cobwebs
away.
In other years I have watched
her
handle herself with the icy
composure of a veiled debutante
as she counted out the season
as delightfully,
as a child with a dandelion
clock.
But this year
Big Christmas had made her
droop like a suet sandwich.
Did I say she went down as gracefully
as a deck of cards?
Whoops!
I meant to say that she hit
the deck like a shot hippopotamus.
I know I should have gone to
help her
but there were three men in
turbans at the door
wreathed in sad smiles.
Thank God it’s already a different
year.
purpose.
You can always see behind
them if you walk backwards.
Walking backwards she
collapses slowly
like a deck of badly shuffled
Christmas cards.
A ziggurat in the Mesopotamian
desert
could have done it more
gracefully,
and given time and a
competent therapist
I am sure she could have marked
the end of this year’s festive deadline
as lightly as any other feather
duster fairy
seconded from the kitchen by
the Pot Gods
to blow the Christmas cobwebs
away.
In other years I have watched
her
handle herself with the icy
composure of a veiled debutante
as she counted out the season
as delightfully,
as a child with a dandelion
clock.
But this year
Big Christmas had made her
droop like a suet sandwich.
Did I say she went down as gracefully
as a deck of cards?
Whoops!
I meant to say that she hit
the deck like a shot hippopotamus.
I know I should have gone to
help her
but there were three men in
turbans at the door
wreathed in sad smiles.
Thank God it’s already a different
year.
18. Old Loves
I have never met a living
person who is dead.
Today I saw the daughter of
the gravedigger again
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
I would have spoken, for I
have things to share,
but old loves, like cold lava
in the street,
clog up the chambers of our hearts
and make us into whimpering archaeology.
I am sure I saw the daughter
of the gravedigger,
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
They swayed like black tulips
in the wind
and from time to time she
disappeared among them
as a boat into a purple sea.
From an old bouquet, dead and
tumbled roses
litter the bedroom window
sill and are as wrinkled and cold
as the sheets of a love bed where
by now
only the most minute traces of
your DNA
could possibly remain as evidence.
I saw the daughter of the
gravedigger walking towards me,
wading through a field of
black horses.
At first I had banked on some
grim scenario,
but now I see that she had
only come
to mock the number of years
in my deposit account.
She swung a whip in her hand,
and wore a high ridiculous hat
crowned with black ostrich
feathers.
Her eyes were very sharp
today, like broken glass.
She did carry a whip in her
hand, of that I am sure,
but when she got closer I saw
it was a spade.
Still, one of the more
comforting aspects of Death
is that it only happens to
other people.
I have never spoken to a
living soul who was dead, have you?
Apart, of course, from the gravedigger’s
daughter.
person who is dead.
Today I saw the daughter of
the gravedigger again
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
I would have spoken, for I
have things to share,
but old loves, like cold lava
in the street,
clog up the chambers of our hearts
and make us into whimpering archaeology.
I am sure I saw the daughter
of the gravedigger,
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
They swayed like black tulips
in the wind
and from time to time she
disappeared among them
as a boat into a purple sea.
From an old bouquet, dead and
tumbled roses
litter the bedroom window
sill and are as wrinkled and cold
as the sheets of a love bed where
by now
only the most minute traces of
your DNA
could possibly remain as evidence.
I saw the daughter of the
gravedigger walking towards me,
wading through a field of
black horses.
At first I had banked on some
grim scenario,
but now I see that she had
only come
to mock the number of years
in my deposit account.
She swung a whip in her hand,
and wore a high ridiculous hat
crowned with black ostrich
feathers.
Her eyes were very sharp
today, like broken glass.
She did carry a whip in her
hand, of that I am sure,
but when she got closer I saw
it was a spade.
Still, one of the more
comforting aspects of Death
is that it only happens to
other people.
I have never spoken to a
living soul who was dead, have you?
Apart, of course, from the gravedigger’s
daughter.
17. Old Fart
I went outside and away from
the warmth of the turf fire.
Between the thunder and the
rainbows
there was a cold west wind I
hadn’t noticed this morning.
I saw dead white snakes
crawling over the earth
like bones from a desecrated
grave.
I knew almost at once that
they were only the unmarked corpses
of last summer’s nasturtiums.
But it took me a moment!
I am slow catching up since
you left.
I still see bright green
nasturtium leaves
clapping along to the July
sunshine,
and a thousand cabbagey
caterpillars
on their ravingnous commute to
a better class of gastronomy.
The golden red flowers still
whisper –‘eat me!’
‘Eat me before it is too
late!’
However this is just a
retinal hiccup.
The dry white wreaths look
nasty now, and full of venom.
I do not know if I want to
catch up.
A crow in a grey tuxedo said:
-‘All your little dolly birds
are over sixty now!
They seek you out because
they remember your behaviour
when you were young and
beautiful and cruel,
for you were a mirror then to
their immaculate pre-marital perfection,
and of course they wanted to
exercise its removal
in your hairy hippy arms.
‘In those days you wouldn’t
be suppressed.
You were free as a fart! I
know you still refuse to be suppressed,
but the motor bike changes
nothing!
You are still free as a fart
but now you are an old fart!’
I thought: -‘Are grey backed
crows wise birds,
or, like doves, just the
latest agricultural vermin?’
As with all the belief
systems into which I have been baptised,
I can never remember the politically
correct sutra.
But I do miss the dolly
birds!
We were the Baby Boomers then,
and we were the majority!
We had the votes! We could do
what we liked!
We are still the majority
now! Never mind the polling booth!
On a pension you can still do
anything you like!
If you can do anything at all.
the warmth of the turf fire.
Between the thunder and the
rainbows
there was a cold west wind I
hadn’t noticed this morning.
I saw dead white snakes
crawling over the earth
like bones from a desecrated
grave.
I knew almost at once that
they were only the unmarked corpses
of last summer’s nasturtiums.
But it took me a moment!
I am slow catching up since
you left.
I still see bright green
nasturtium leaves
clapping along to the July
sunshine,
and a thousand cabbagey
caterpillars
on their ravingnous commute to
a better class of gastronomy.
The golden red flowers still
whisper –‘eat me!’
‘Eat me before it is too
late!’
However this is just a
retinal hiccup.
The dry white wreaths look
nasty now, and full of venom.
I do not know if I want to
catch up.
A crow in a grey tuxedo said:
-‘All your little dolly birds
are over sixty now!
They seek you out because
they remember your behaviour
when you were young and
beautiful and cruel,
for you were a mirror then to
their immaculate pre-marital perfection,
and of course they wanted to
exercise its removal
in your hairy hippy arms.
‘In those days you wouldn’t
be suppressed.
You were free as a fart! I
know you still refuse to be suppressed,
but the motor bike changes
nothing!
You are still free as a fart
but now you are an old fart!’
I thought: -‘Are grey backed
crows wise birds,
or, like doves, just the
latest agricultural vermin?’
As with all the belief
systems into which I have been baptised,
I can never remember the politically
correct sutra.
But I do miss the dolly
birds!
We were the Baby Boomers then,
and we were the majority!
We had the votes! We could do
what we liked!
We are still the majority
now! Never mind the polling booth!
On a pension you can still do
anything you like!
If you can do anything at all.
16. Nutter in Love
You are a peach.
Your soft flesh is to die
for!
But whenever you get stoned
I find I am just left with a
nut.
That makes me feel a right
nutter!
Still, I have to say you
really are a nut to die for,
so everything will be cool,
as long as I reincarnate as a
squirrel.
Your soft flesh is to die
for!
But whenever you get stoned
I find I am just left with a
nut.
That makes me feel a right
nutter!
Still, I have to say you
really are a nut to die for,
so everything will be cool,
as long as I reincarnate as a
squirrel.
15. Living out of a suitcase
In order not to pressure you
to commit yourself
I visit your bedroom as I
would visit a hotel lobby,
with my bags always packed.
Of course from the first you
always had me eating out of your hand
but I never imagined that
after all these years
I would still be living out
of a suitcase.
A bedroom is a place that
some people think is for sleeping
although that is the kind of
bedtime story
that had never occurred to me
until I met you.
A bed had always presented
itself to me
as a kind of well-sprung
signpost,
but each day I notice that on
yours the lettering changes,
and rearranges itself into
yet another incomprehensible riddle.
In autumn when the season
starts to pack for its winter journey
I find myself worried by the
ticking seconds of airborne dandelion seed.
I wonder if the content of my
suitcase is timeless
or whether there is a black
and white bar code printed in there somewhere
that conceals a sell-by date.
In order not to pressure you
to commit yourself however,
I visit your bedroom as I
would visit a hotel lobby,
with my bags always packed.
Of course I know you love me.
For now anyway.
But I never imagined that
after all these years
I would still be loving out
of a suitcase.
to commit yourself
I visit your bedroom as I
would visit a hotel lobby,
with my bags always packed.
Of course from the first you
always had me eating out of your hand
but I never imagined that
after all these years
I would still be living out
of a suitcase.
A bedroom is a place that
some people think is for sleeping
although that is the kind of
bedtime story
that had never occurred to me
until I met you.
A bed had always presented
itself to me
as a kind of well-sprung
signpost,
but each day I notice that on
yours the lettering changes,
and rearranges itself into
yet another incomprehensible riddle.
In autumn when the season
starts to pack for its winter journey
I find myself worried by the
ticking seconds of airborne dandelion seed.
I wonder if the content of my
suitcase is timeless
or whether there is a black
and white bar code printed in there somewhere
that conceals a sell-by date.
In order not to pressure you
to commit yourself however,
I visit your bedroom as I
would visit a hotel lobby,
with my bags always packed.
Of course I know you love me.
For now anyway.
But I never imagined that
after all these years
I would still be loving out
of a suitcase.
23. The Grave Digger’s Daughter
The Grave Digger’s Daughter
Since you left me
I have been consorting with
the daughter of the grave digger.
She trains the midnight horses that will pull my black hearse
in such grave and funebrial majesty
that I shall relish the next bed
you have chosen for me,
even though it comes with a
mouthful of earth.
So soon after your departure you
may think me promiscuous
to place a bed and a
gravedigger’s daughter
in such close proximity to
myself
within the same thought.
But do you remember those words
of love spoken,
lying beneath the pines on
the dark loam of the forest
so long ago in our
unsanctified days?
Even poetry turns to dust as
time turns black,
and love dries into a very hard
ash.
All these things arrive on a sweet
rustling breeze
but each leaves in a mouthful
of earth.
Since you left me
I have been consorting with
the grave digger’s daughter.
Since you left me
I have been consorting with
the daughter of the grave digger.
She trains the midnight horses that will pull my black hearse
in such grave and funebrial majesty
that I shall relish the next bed
you have chosen for me,
even though it comes with a
mouthful of earth.
So soon after your departure you
may think me promiscuous
to place a bed and a
gravedigger’s daughter
in such close proximity to
myself
within the same thought.
But do you remember those words
of love spoken,
lying beneath the pines on
the dark loam of the forest
so long ago in our
unsanctified days?
Even poetry turns to dust as
time turns black,
and love dries into a very hard
ash.
All these things arrive on a sweet
rustling breeze
but each leaves in a mouthful
of earth.
Since you left me
I have been consorting with
the grave digger’s daughter.
22. Split
I too have tried to fly at
right angles
but without success.
Somewhere above our black
meadow
now marked as mine
a snipe brakes noisily
pulling the same stunt.
Beyond the ink wet field
we settled on,
pale ditches buck and shudder
like dragons in the
half-truth of dusk.
This side of the night
I spread my bed and lie in
it.
right angles
but without success.
Somewhere above our black
meadow
now marked as mine
a snipe brakes noisily
pulling the same stunt.
Beyond the ink wet field
we settled on,
pale ditches buck and shudder
like dragons in the
half-truth of dusk.
This side of the night
I spread my bed and lie in
it.
21. Shaky Paddy
Shaky Paddy
On New Year’s Day in the
morning
when Jumbo jets come tumbling
over Knock
scribbling their graffiti on
the thin clean air,
and the brass harp knocker
raps in the wind
like an unexpected guest at
my door,
I am afraid.
I am afraid of Shaky Paddy
On New Year’s Day in the
afternoon
I am afraid,
as I take my walk beneath a
sky now scrubbed blue.
I can see sloes peering from
the bushes
like black eyes after a party
and pieces of rainbow, caught
on thorns,
dangle limply pretending to
be litter.
Perhaps they are litter.
Shaky Paddy has been here.
On New Year’s Day in the
evening
I am afraid.
Last night I could hear those
green rumours
that infest your dreams like
aphids
feeding on your sap in the
darkness.
Now you feel dried up to
dust,
and that sharp thing that
lies between us
like a broken wine glass in
the bed
will not let me sleep.
I am afraid
Shaky Paddy has come to stay.
On New Year’s Day in the
morning
when Jumbo jets come tumbling
over Knock
scribbling their graffiti on
the thin clean air,
and the brass harp knocker
raps in the wind
like an unexpected guest at
my door,
I am afraid.
I am afraid of Shaky Paddy
On New Year’s Day in the
afternoon
I am afraid,
as I take my walk beneath a
sky now scrubbed blue.
I can see sloes peering from
the bushes
like black eyes after a party
and pieces of rainbow, caught
on thorns,
dangle limply pretending to
be litter.
Perhaps they are litter.
Shaky Paddy has been here.
On New Year’s Day in the
evening
I am afraid.
Last night I could hear those
green rumours
that infest your dreams like
aphids
feeding on your sap in the
darkness.
Now you feel dried up to
dust,
and that sharp thing that
lies between us
like a broken wine glass in
the bed
will not let me sleep.
I am afraid
Shaky Paddy has come to stay.
20. Schwantz by Moonlight
Schwantz by Moonlight
Under the butter yellow moon
Schwantz flies with the grace
of a slug looking for his acorn.
The fleshed arrow of a snipe
judders to a halt above him in the night,
but in his dreams he is one
pointed.
He knows only his eternal
quest.
Poor sad rumbling rampart of
sorrow!
Acorns grow up to the sky,
Schwantz, but until they are planted
look for them first on the
ground!
Take a lesson from your
relative the pig,
a sausage meat and grocery
product beloved of your whole family!
Under the butter yellow moon
a thin winter wind sidles
about in the rushes,
cold and indifferent as a
snake,
counting the dead lambs
like an insomniac willing
oblivion.
Does that remind you of
anyone?
I went from adolescence to
old age,
he said, without a single year
of psycho-therapy.
It cost too much.
Yes, but you end up paying.
See how the sheep move
under the butter yellow moon,
damp shadows, going nowhere,
lacking the cruel purpose of
the wind.
I’ll wet his tea, said Mam,
but when she came back with Da’s
mug
he had gone to the factory
without a single year of
psycho-therapy.
As for me, I went from
adolescence to senility
without a single intervening
year of adultery.
Under the butter yellow moon
Schwantz flies with the grace
of a slug looking for his acorn.
Under the butter yellow moon
Schwantz flies with the grace
of a slug looking for his acorn.
The fleshed arrow of a snipe
judders to a halt above him in the night,
but in his dreams he is one
pointed.
He knows only his eternal
quest.
Poor sad rumbling rampart of
sorrow!
Acorns grow up to the sky,
Schwantz, but until they are planted
look for them first on the
ground!
Take a lesson from your
relative the pig,
a sausage meat and grocery
product beloved of your whole family!
Under the butter yellow moon
a thin winter wind sidles
about in the rushes,
cold and indifferent as a
snake,
counting the dead lambs
like an insomniac willing
oblivion.
Does that remind you of
anyone?
I went from adolescence to
old age,
he said, without a single year
of psycho-therapy.
It cost too much.
Yes, but you end up paying.
See how the sheep move
under the butter yellow moon,
damp shadows, going nowhere,
lacking the cruel purpose of
the wind.
I’ll wet his tea, said Mam,
but when she came back with Da’s
mug
he had gone to the factory
without a single year of
psycho-therapy.
As for me, I went from
adolescence to senility
without a single intervening
year of adultery.
Under the butter yellow moon
Schwantz flies with the grace
of a slug looking for his acorn.
19. On Learning the Accordion
On Learning the Accordion
I’m a guitarist but I’m
learning the accordion
so that I can go to a sesiún
and listen to myself.
You can’t hear faic on a guitar at a sesiún.
Unless, that is, you arrive
with a van load of amplifiers
and the intention to be important.
I’m too old for importance.
If I wanted to be important
I’d join a gym.
Or go on a demonstration.
Or go on a demonstration and
write a letter to somebody.
You have to be careful with
letters though.
The difference between importance and impotence
is only a copla letters.
You have to be careful with
accordions too.
The difference between
guitars and accordions is that
it takes much longer to smash
an accordion.
I’m an accordionist but I’m
thinking of learning the machine gun.
I’m a guitarist but I’m
learning the accordion
so that I can go to a sesiún
and listen to myself.
You can’t hear faic on a guitar at a sesiún.
Unless, that is, you arrive
with a van load of amplifiers
and the intention to be important.
I’m too old for importance.
If I wanted to be important
I’d join a gym.
Or go on a demonstration.
Or go on a demonstration and
write a letter to somebody.
You have to be careful with
letters though.
The difference between importance and impotence
is only a copla letters.
You have to be careful with
accordions too.
The difference between
guitars and accordions is that
it takes much longer to smash
an accordion.
I’m an accordionist but I’m
thinking of learning the machine gun.
24. The Meaningless Poetry of Rain
That was a faraway
place, off there, fifty years ago,
at Bobby’s Bar on
Franco’s Costa
Brava,
squeezed between Barcelona
and the bare and
tragic hills that overlooked the ocean.
The valleys were
full of paths and the paths full of dust,
untrodden, and old
abandoned houses.
The trees stood
always motionless, like old people at a funeral.
They moved me
often enough
as I walked
through the scattered ruins they observed,
never knowing why
I felt so sad
or what might once
have happened there.
So very far away,
on the sharp edge of youth,
with childish
things put behind me by default
and the rest of
life, like a dark impenetrable thicket barring my path.
It is clear now
that I had defaulted somewhere along the way
and had not picked
up all the essential equipment I was to need
to finish my
journey in a satisfactory manner.
Unless, that is,
it was the journey that mattered,
and not even the
Devil cared where I ended up afterwards.
I learned my first
trade there,
practicing my
guitar by the terracotta fountain under the tangerine tree and beside what
turned out to be,
when it burst one
day into amazing Martian Invader Technicolor bloom,
a pomegranate
bush,
cruel, thorned and
beautiful.
This was a place I
had no need to know again,
although the
memories linger
like Saturday
night perfume during Sunday morning prayers.
I retained for
later use the pomegranate bush’s safe isolation of being, penetrated only by a
consciousness of lizards and locusts
and the meaningless
poetry of rain.
place, off there, fifty years ago,
at Bobby’s Bar on
Franco’s Costa
Brava,
squeezed between Barcelona
and the bare and
tragic hills that overlooked the ocean.
The valleys were
full of paths and the paths full of dust,
untrodden, and old
abandoned houses.
The trees stood
always motionless, like old people at a funeral.
They moved me
often enough
as I walked
through the scattered ruins they observed,
never knowing why
I felt so sad
or what might once
have happened there.
So very far away,
on the sharp edge of youth,
with childish
things put behind me by default
and the rest of
life, like a dark impenetrable thicket barring my path.
It is clear now
that I had defaulted somewhere along the way
and had not picked
up all the essential equipment I was to need
to finish my
journey in a satisfactory manner.
Unless, that is,
it was the journey that mattered,
and not even the
Devil cared where I ended up afterwards.
I learned my first
trade there,
practicing my
guitar by the terracotta fountain under the tangerine tree and beside what
turned out to be,
when it burst one
day into amazing Martian Invader Technicolor bloom,
a pomegranate
bush,
cruel, thorned and
beautiful.
This was a place I
had no need to know again,
although the
memories linger
like Saturday
night perfume during Sunday morning prayers.
I retained for
later use the pomegranate bush’s safe isolation of being, penetrated only by a
consciousness of lizards and locusts
and the meaningless
poetry of rain.
25. The spot on my back where my wings used to be
On this bóithrín butterflies abound
fluttering like escaped
confetti in the afternoon sun.
Here a brown dark and yellow
spotted creature
disguised as a fallen leaf
conceals itself close to
where red admirals and peacocks
brazenly flaunt their gaudy
nakedness.
It crouches lower,
and trembles under a bracken
shadow on the hot asphalt.
I bend down to know it more
closely
and the spot on my back where
my wings used to be
itches.
fluttering like escaped
confetti in the afternoon sun.
Here a brown dark and yellow
spotted creature
disguised as a fallen leaf
conceals itself close to
where red admirals and peacocks
brazenly flaunt their gaudy
nakedness.
It crouches lower,
and trembles under a bracken
shadow on the hot asphalt.
I bend down to know it more
closely
and the spot on my back where
my wings used to be
itches.
26. Unused Prescription
There were love letters in
your desk,
fly-blown sheets of endearment
carelessly stacked.
It must have been an
exasperating vigil,
waiting so long for fulfilment,
and then to find the words
as useless as a prescription left
behind in the medicine cabinet
after the patient has died.
Or recovered.
In love I suppose that is the
same thing.
I burned them.
I do not need another
prescription for misery.
Cremation is satisfyingly
final,
like burial at sea.
your desk,
fly-blown sheets of endearment
carelessly stacked.
It must have been an
exasperating vigil,
waiting so long for fulfilment,
and then to find the words
as useless as a prescription left
behind in the medicine cabinet
after the patient has died.
Or recovered.
In love I suppose that is the
same thing.
I burned them.
I do not need another
prescription for misery.
Cremation is satisfyingly
final,
like burial at sea.
27. Wet the Tea!
How is my outside today?
In a pink dressing gown I
step out.
The sun snaps shut like a
Venetian blind!
The first drops of rain
whistle past me like grape shot!
Who have I offended today?
I curse the garden nymphs.
Who are these activist women?
Wet the tea!!
The thunder claps twice,
applauding ominously.
Rumbles of discontent run
through the bean rows,
and a flicker of red gnome
caps bolting.
Who have I offended today?
White light flickers behind
the black forestry horizon.
Broom sticks rattle in the
pottery.
Wet the tea!
I laugh out loud, feeling the
wind in my face.
My dressing gown blows up with
a cackle
and I flash
forked lightning for the
neighbours.
I’m bright as Bacchus today,
prancing down the slabs
breathing life from an oxygen
bottle.
On the compost heap green
umbrella leaves
creep like caterpillars over
the steaming mound
and the nasturtium flowers
they engender
grin at me with orange faces
like painted bridesmaids at a
traveller wedding.
Wet the tea!
Who shall I offend today?
I’m ready!
In a pink dressing gown I
step out.
The sun snaps shut like a
Venetian blind!
The first drops of rain
whistle past me like grape shot!
Who have I offended today?
I curse the garden nymphs.
Who are these activist women?
Wet the tea!!
The thunder claps twice,
applauding ominously.
Rumbles of discontent run
through the bean rows,
and a flicker of red gnome
caps bolting.
Who have I offended today?
White light flickers behind
the black forestry horizon.
Broom sticks rattle in the
pottery.
Wet the tea!
I laugh out loud, feeling the
wind in my face.
My dressing gown blows up with
a cackle
and I flash
forked lightning for the
neighbours.
I’m bright as Bacchus today,
prancing down the slabs
breathing life from an oxygen
bottle.
On the compost heap green
umbrella leaves
creep like caterpillars over
the steaming mound
and the nasturtium flowers
they engender
grin at me with orange faces
like painted bridesmaids at a
traveller wedding.
Wet the tea!
Who shall I offend today?
I’m ready!
28. Words of Love
A scrap of poetry motionless in the hedge,
camouflaged,
I thought it was a leaf,
until it rose into the air and began to sing
and I recognised your voice,
emerging sweetly from the pile of gibbles
you call your sauntering outfit.
Since you took me to your bed
I have learned words I never heard before.
Your mood,
so infinitely dark,
glitters with a sharp grief
far blacker than the midnight caoróg’s shell.
I’ll add in your aspiration,
hopeless as the toy sword
on the arse end of a gary-gowlan.
And from the dusty kippins
as you light a malm of turf mole,
a rising cloud of bees
transmutes into a hundred clumsy blue bottles,
good not for honey
but for the maggoty tidying up of corpses.
And now you want to die?
What kind of a response is that
from a beloved dictionary?
camouflaged,
I thought it was a leaf,
until it rose into the air and began to sing
and I recognised your voice,
emerging sweetly from the pile of gibbles
you call your sauntering outfit.
Since you took me to your bed
I have learned words I never heard before.
Your mood,
so infinitely dark,
glitters with a sharp grief
far blacker than the midnight caoróg’s shell.
I’ll add in your aspiration,
hopeless as the toy sword
on the arse end of a gary-gowlan.
And from the dusty kippins
as you light a malm of turf mole,
a rising cloud of bees
transmutes into a hundred clumsy blue bottles,
good not for honey
but for the maggoty tidying up of corpses.
And now you want to die?
What kind of a response is that
from a beloved dictionary?
29. Wurra Wurra: The Night of the Long Brooms
In the press there are days folded like clean linen
waiting for the dirt.
Inside the press a clock keeps ticking
and they say it is only a matter of time.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
And then three women, naked and wild as the storm driven wind in the chimney’s breast,
Stepping in on this Night of the Dead and of all the Holy Saints stealthily,
rag-haired, broom-clad, besom-handed, bucket-swinging, brush-proud.
From the black shadows they drove the ciarógs and the clocks
and the millipedes and the wood lice and the silverfish
and the daddy long legs and the black spiders,
herding them silently out of this sad and dusty bachelor gaff
and off its surface of unswept regret.
For this is the echoless hole of entropy that a connubial extraction leaves behind.
Since our separation it has been mine.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
In the press there are days folded like clean linen
waiting for the dirt.
In the closet a clock keeps ticking
and they say it is only a matter of time.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
waiting for the dirt.
Inside the press a clock keeps ticking
and they say it is only a matter of time.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
And then three women, naked and wild as the storm driven wind in the chimney’s breast,
Stepping in on this Night of the Dead and of all the Holy Saints stealthily,
rag-haired, broom-clad, besom-handed, bucket-swinging, brush-proud.
From the black shadows they drove the ciarógs and the clocks
and the millipedes and the wood lice and the silverfish
and the daddy long legs and the black spiders,
herding them silently out of this sad and dusty bachelor gaff
and off its surface of unswept regret.
For this is the echoless hole of entropy that a connubial extraction leaves behind.
Since our separation it has been mine.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
In the press there are days folded like clean linen
waiting for the dirt.
In the closet a clock keeps ticking
and they say it is only a matter of time.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
30. Your White Shadow
Last night under a huge sky
I stepped outside and peering upwards
saw you float silently past,
in the white and silent shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and not seeing me.
You are a seeded sphere of life tumbling on the moon’s breath,
a silent incantation as you pass me by
casting your white shadow against my black darkness.
I am entranced by the beauty of your form.
Your dandelion clock counts imaginary hours
but each one is registered in a living breath
as if there is some sense in that childish tally.
And always I am entranced by the beauty of the form.
Last night under a huge sky I stepped outside
and peering upwards saw you sail silently past
in the white and threatening shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and seeing me too well.
This morning you are gone
like fingerprints on a river.
It is hard to gather you as evidence.
I have looked for moon dust
but all I find is empty bottles.
You will say they are mine.
Last night under a huge sky
I stepped outside and peered upwards
You floated silently past,
in the white and silent shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and not seeing me at all.
I stepped outside and peering upwards
saw you float silently past,
in the white and silent shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and not seeing me.
You are a seeded sphere of life tumbling on the moon’s breath,
a silent incantation as you pass me by
casting your white shadow against my black darkness.
I am entranced by the beauty of your form.
Your dandelion clock counts imaginary hours
but each one is registered in a living breath
as if there is some sense in that childish tally.
And always I am entranced by the beauty of the form.
Last night under a huge sky I stepped outside
and peering upwards saw you sail silently past
in the white and threatening shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and seeing me too well.
This morning you are gone
like fingerprints on a river.
It is hard to gather you as evidence.
I have looked for moon dust
but all I find is empty bottles.
You will say they are mine.
Last night under a huge sky
I stepped outside and peered upwards
You floated silently past,
in the white and silent shape of an owl,
eyes glittering with moon dust,
seeing me, and not seeing me at all.
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