My mind is silting up,
which is rarely helpful.

Quoth Arthur.  And below him, saw he all manner of nasty things.

To live under,
for a while.

Living under them,
be nice.

an inner essence flitter away to the wasteland,
and dwell in the hermitage of my thoughts and resolutions

In God's Holy Trousers

Waist: 32'
Inside Leg: 34'
Outside Leg: ∞

without socks is bad for the general health of the World, and should be avoided.

Tiocfaidh an Samhradh leis an lae,
is rachaidh na laethannta leis an Samhradh.

With sticks.

Just about.

Please slow down,
can't you see I'm driving an old *** cart along?

Bertold Brechtfast

Robert Rope Burns

John B. Very Keane

Sean O'SuitCasey

Sir Thomas Grievous Malody

Percy Shelley Beach

Terry Hatchet

Iain Canal Banks

lalalalalalala

No, no, no.

la la la

No, wrong.  

The Lee Lang Night and Weep m'dear, the lee lang night and weep.

Better, try again.  

Lalalalalala.*

Superb.

Hey man, I was just down at the club, and I heard some swingin' blank verse.

Today the Irish people witnessed an eclipse in their senses. The morning came over all queer.  Nobody noticed, except the king of bookworms in the book of Kells, and the mice in the Campanile.   I witnessed the eclipse from a windowless room on the 4th floor of the Arts block.  Edmund Spenser's poem, The Faerie Queene,  shall henceforth be named, Long ****, by jury of 5 English Lit. Students and a Lecturer.  Also, Sinn Fein plans to build Jerusalem in Ireland's green and pleasant land.  

Lines written last night over a cup of sugary tea in a public house in North Dublin.

Mount Blank is beautiful, so I'm told.... and a poem follows

Shelley got away with it - I wouldn't.

There was a man,
who had a book;
The book was bad,
so was the man.

Most people sweat euros and pounds,
I sweat coffee and gin.  
Here I am, in the ooze of my existence,
Laughing and smiling,
counting smiles on my fingertips,
quantifying my existence:
fizzle and pop, smile till you drop.

Here, all the words in the world,
they are no good to me,
more or less, they are useless,
that much is plain to see.  

These barren syllables mock me,
scorn at my delight,
profundity and beauty desert me,
in mouldering hours of night.

Here the gravity of my world,
certainty in despondency,
what a tall and terrible load,
the language of impotency.

It is raised a corpulent Spirit,
dangling it legs suggestively,
over the abyss of national identity,
an ideological state apparatus, BANG!

Mind the gap of danger when boarding and alighting trains.

WHO ARE YOU?
I am he.
WHO ARE YOU?
I am he.
WHO ARE YOU?
I am he.
WHO ARE YOU?
I am he.
WHO ARE YOU?
......
WHO ARE YOU?
I am he.

To escape for a moment the flagrant mediocrity of hummdrummcommutertaxreturnquiltedjacketfilingcabinetcivilservants­pellcheckingcontractsigninghandshaking, oppressively banal, repetitive, shitness of everyday (notomittingthedayindayoutsuburbanlivingwiththeparentssingleprete­nsiousartsstudentdogpissinginthevegetablegarden blandness of this awfulcrapshortanddissapointing) life?

So, Mr Nimoy,
Your time has finally come,
Your long and prosperous life is done,
And now your being typecast in a better place.
Nomore will you voyage through space,
Or sing those silly songs on youtube.
It was always your tube, Nimoy,
When you paced the bridge of the Enterprise.  
Now you've been beamed up for good,
And your first officer's log is closed.

Fills you with majesty it does, this ****** place –
a few stars above.  
When light left this one, Napoleon walked the earth.  
This other, Julius Caesar.  
Wonderful -  The whole dreadful lot of it.  
A train approaches  – headlights and what have you,
colouring the sky pink, like everything else around here –
this strip of crust, this bay, these obscure designs of a people,
moralisers and chastisers and spell checkers breathing temperate breaths.  in and out all day for 160 ka, or there about.  
haughty on pretence – out there on July 26th 1807, the Rochdale sank with a pop, a bang and a glug,
The Prince of Wales wouldn’t be left behind. GLUG GLUG GLUG.  
and the night came over all funny just then,
fizzled into something else for a short while and returned to its current state.  
NOBODY NOTICED

Oh ye men of Greece and Rome,
Too long have ye laboured,
Feel you not what is to come,
the grass by the wall of the ruin?  

Leave ye down your tools, ancient peoples,
know you not what is to come?  
See you not the pass of many years,
the grass through pavements old?

Great enterprise never sprung from a fertile land,
Go ye into the desert, and there build your temples,
Amongst the sands and beneath the sun,
where grass can never grow.  

Here the  lines and here the verse,
Here the vaults and chimneys,
Hark the turning of the days,
eek the tall and terrible days.  

Lo, the falling of a chimney,
Lo, the crack of stones to splinter,
Lo, the old oak tree stands yawning.
better to build from bushes and thorn.  

Have at your lawnmowers, ye council men,
And see what good it does you,
Think ye can halt the rise and fall,
of strong towers left to ruin?

Have at your anoraks, and have at your coats,
Clouds gather above and rankle the parapet,
Here stood a roof, here a joist, here a beam,
blackened in the soot and flames –  here falls the rain.  

Have at your sickles, and have at your hammers,
Go back to steppe and sod from whence ye came,
And never more disturb the sepulchral vaults,
where lie long dead men of Greece and Rome.

Erstens:

Muss ich denn?
Du musst.

Soll ich denn?
Du sollst.

Willst ich denn?
Du willst.  

Zweitens:

Liebst du?
Ein Bischen.

Lebst du?
Ein Bischen.  

Schlafst du?  
Wenn es klingelt, schlafe ich -  
wenn der Himmel brennt, und die grosse Götter lacheln.  
Funken und Hörner, sozusagen.  

Ich schlafe meistens nicht.

Verwundert?

When Michael Collins came, first from the courts of England,
which in low and lofty Londoun lately were helde,
while Thames there with treachery and treasoun did truly ring,
was Ireland ill split and beset with ignoble stryfe.  
Yet there a land lately formed was, where still folk lyve on mydllerde.

Though it is not in this warlike time of Dev that we our tale do set,
after these tymes of troubling stryfe, contentioun salted still the land.

Fine Fail and Fine Gael, then foes many yeres remained
till noblest amongst them, in qualities none lacking,
did do battle in old Dublin and vanquish the dred enemy.  
That mon who dreded nought, nightly then held his court in fair Dail Eirinn.  
Enda was called that man, and everysince has his noble courte endured.  

There, as Chrystmasse came, was assembled his cabinet fayre:
there Sir Wilmore the red, who waited on the grete lorde in readiness.  
There with grete courtesey, the kings coins to keep, sat Sir Noonan the balde.  
There Sir Reilly, learned in lore of leach and herb, who on erde had little left to lerne.  
Eek Sir Varadkar the gaye who granted was, the grete kinges horses to groome.  
Laste, the lovely layde Burton, who, the rede rose of Wilmore would long after carry.  

Other knyghtes numerous were there, but of these now, nought will I
tell,
for fallen to feasting were this fayre companye al and fayne would I not,
in tedious trials of descriptioun, your patience for to trye.

So....
Well
So....
Well then
So....
Indeed
So....
So indeed
I must point out...
Please Don't.  
I won't.

So, O2 are now 3.  
Thank you for telling me that, 50202.
They are going to keep me posted on changes.  
I can't wait.

So, was this Aeneas, who called on Jove to strike him dead, or else end his wanderings?  Was this Aeneas who wept on the deck of his ship?

Malcontent breads poetry as flies circle dungheaps and lay their larvae within.  

This was Aeneas, the cheerful man who wept on board his ship.  

Somewhere between College Park and Westland Row I sank for a moment into the earth.

This was Aeneas, the good.  

So, with the chimneys of the city as rosary beads, I shake my fist at Jove, and repeat the words of Aeneas.

On Dollymount Strand there is a man,
who picks up sand in his hands,
and lets it slip through his fingers,
and fall back to the earth.  

Fie, Gentle soul,
preserve your wit,
and carry on humanity
to the next ages
with your enduring symbolism.  

Rest not day or night, let sand slip through your hands, and save me from contemplation of my own existence:
Wretched state of terminal reciprocation.

A great many people cross the Liffey and dance on the shore,
At Ringsend the Pigeon House falls to earth, the dust settles,
Cuchulain leaps from Bull to Bull and retreats into the mountains.  
I linger for some time watching the waters pass beneath ha’penny bridge.
I’ll find me a garret, and in that garret,
Curse in undertones Windows Vista,
******* to the **** stanzas of Homer,
Drink cold coffee with the blood of a nation,
Finally, say with surety,
Here is a poem which has taken everything, and given nothing,
Here is everything that meant something to somebody at some time.

Well then, Jyuss swee Charlie, I suppose.
I hope your French is better than mine, dearest reader.  
And I hope you can draw better than me,
so Scribble on dearest reader.  
If all the world were paper, there would be no grip stronger than that of thumb and forefingers.  
If the world be paper, say with me, reader,
'Come the three corners of the word in arms,
and we shall shock them.'

Look Ye upon all that I have done,
and scorn me for for the resolutions I make.  
Laugh in the mornings when I rise from bed,
scorn me then and dwell on my predicament:
I shall waste another hour or two,
and in time solemnity takes hold,
as sea over land: hard rocks to pebbles,
pebbles to dust.  How feeble now the dust!
Look ye at the toiling men and women,  
at the grand facade of Custom House Quay;
This building they floated on a swamp.  
Turn ye and look once again at me,
Look ye upon all that I have done,
look at dust and ash of dust and earth.

Janus has a grand auld pair of heads:

One looks backwards on all the **** and grime, on the ****, on the limescale, on the mould, on the excrement, on the muck and grit and gunge and gunk, on all that wastage of human time, toiling away, scraping at the rot and the filth and slime, and besmearing the earth afresh, and blessing it.

The other looks forwards on all the **** and grime, on the ****, on the limescale, on the mould, on the excrement, on the muck and grit and gunge and gunk, on all that wastage of human time, toiling away, scraping at the rot and the filth and slime, and besmearing the earth afresh, and blessing it.

Who is to say,
we cannot break our bond with the earth,
that we are too strongly tethered?
Not I for one.
Nor stone age man who leaps to death in mimicry of the birds,
nor the prisoner who, in confinement,
looks to the sky,
framed with the walls wherein he lies,
and says to himself, or herself, nay, I cannot fly.
And could I fly, I would touch the earth again,
or else burn up in the stratosphere.  
Nay, nor the wild fowl, who may traverse 100 miles at a stretch,
ere they return to the earth.  
Nor ashes carried in the air and bourn away upon the trade winds.  
Who would admit an eternal debt to the earth,
which by every step we repay?  
Least of all them overcome with wonder,
at infinite depth, at scale, at cold beauty,
at the splendid simulacrum of the cosmos.  
Who then would hold me back by a leg or an arm,
who would through envy deny a splendid assimilation with the vasty domains of the other,
for what word, what momentary vocalisation of the earthbound
can in all justice give it name?  
But in good faith, commit my body to it,
and I shall move throughout the eternal regions,
and circle in infinite revelry.
Deny me not this wild vanity,
commit not my body to the earth,
and I shall not call you cur, who walks upon the earth,
and there for evermore is tethered.

Kindly,

*******.

Sincerely,
Me

Here Now - Where?
There
-Far
          near
  -right of Berehaven.

         Lookout!
  everywhere.
... fast moving.

  - on the right-

followed       by      the left

                          __ A great many places

Yet, not very many.  
But always:

Here Now - Where?

THERE

Dear Lord!
Yes?
Oh, hello, I didn't think you were listening.  
I was
Evidently.
I always listen
Well... goodbye then.  
*Yes, goodbye

Arthur dear, don’t fret.

Papers, papers, get your papers.  

I have never been to the sea.  I always wanted to go to the sea.  

No, never since my husband died.  

Oh aye, a sight to behold.  

The rascals of Ballydrim out in force.  

The maid peept out the window.

The fryar and the nun.  

An old man is a bed full of bones.  

Is he not, is it not, is it not?

Rose is red and rose is white.  

New new nothing.  

Row well ye mariners.  

I have never seen the sea.  

The pauper and the layman, the priest and the scoundrel, all moving
with intent.  

Sometimes, fleetingly, never anything less.  

Profound, very, yes dreadfully profound.  

Labour in vaine.  

In great concentric circles about the time your husband died.  

Biting the bullets one by one, out on the green fields of Amerikay.  

Interest rates climbing on the national stew fund.  Spiralling into a new dawn of exoneration of traditional values.  

Gracie did all those things and more.  

And the quaker danced.

Rose is red and rose is red.  

For judge and jury.  

Very very far.

Quite near actually.  

Further than strictly possible.  

In all reason dear.  

75 miles from the sea.  Exactly.

And another.

And another.

AND another.  

Drawing to a conclusion.

Bliss.  

Seemingly.

Fleetingly.  

(pause)

Have at thy coat old woman!

no

Oh FIE!

You transgress

I transgress?

You transgress

No, you transgress.  I have stuck to the brief.

You have not adhered

Have not adhered?  I adhere in every direction.  I have adhered left, right, up, down, and occasionally in circles.  

Oxford comma or no Oxford comma?

Twice the usual number

You rat

YOU rat

You fool

YOU fool

you transgress

-time passes
-it does
-yes, dreadfully

Geoffrey Saucer

Siegfried Bassoon

W.B. Yeast

Sylvia Bath Tub

Adrienne Ditch

James Joist

Samuel Bucket

Edgar Allan ***

Reasons for the 'no' vote: shipbuilding, NATO/EU membership, David Cameron would be very upset, etc... ad infinitum...    

Reasons for the 'yes' vote: It would be far more interesting for the rest of us to watch Scotland make a hames of the transition.

Says one: Repent.

Says another: No.

Says one to another: Repent.  

Says another: No.

Says one: Repent.  

Says another: No.  

Says one: Repent.

Says another: I will not.  

Says one: Oh, alright then.  Have a nice day.

Says the young to the old
on often nights,
why are you here?

Says the old to the young
on dreary nights,
I'm here because I strove.  

Says the young to the old,
on dreary nights,
It can't be so.  

Says the old to the young
on dreary nights,
It is, and shall be.  

And before the morning,
time to wretch and moan,
life lifts you up,
when you think you've got it,
and plunges you back down.

"Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust"

Undertaker wipes hand on trouser leg
wipes away the
Earth
Ashes
Dust