HAVING THE TIME

my first Dutch disco
clinging to the wall
your cliched wallflower

a beautiful blonde
enquires of me
"Have you got the time?"

"Yes it's just about
midnight"
she looks nonplused

"No no!" she smiles
you have the time
...yes?"

only realise
she's asking
me to dance

we hit the floor
she a whirling dervish
a tornado on legs

"What..!" she yells
above Blondie's
"Rip her to shreds!"

"...is your name please?"
"Donall!" I yell back
she looks aghast

slaps me hard
across the face
storms off

just then JE T'AIME
is spun by the DJ
just for fun

"Oh, my love
Like the undecided wave
You’re the wave, me the naked island"

couples clinch
and smooch
I do the walk of shame

her had imprinted
on my burning cheek
cling to the wall

trying to disappear
into its pattern
of flowers


"Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,"
Yeats whispers in my ear

"Leave it out, W.B."
I snap at the dead
poet's ghost

Yeats laughs dances off
"I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag."

for ever after
I ask Dutch friends
"Now don't get mad but..."

I take a step back
"What does Donall
mean in Dutch?"

"Why...nothing?" they answer
"Nothing!" I say
"Yes...nothing!" they affirm

and so the mystery remains
I still feel the sting of her
slap all these years after

HIDE AND GO SEEK

"You know...
Granny's dead?"

"Yes. . ?"

"How long is she gong to be
dead for?"

"Well. . ?"

I think she
senses I

don't know
the answers.

She walks away
holding her dolly by the hand.

"It's just...Dolly misses her."

She throws the words
casually over her shoulder

then steps away into
a doorway

filled with the morning's
sunlight.

Granny smiles
from her photograph

trapped behind
the glass.

"...99...100. . !"
floats on the summer air.

My daughter's voice
sing-songing

"Here I come..."
( the hide and seek of )

"...ready or not. . . "
(life).

SUCH GENTLE VIOLENCE

unseen
a shoal of fishes
turn &...turns again

above them
a moon covers her nakedness
with a passing cloud

the lovers make love
with such a gentle
violence

the waves argue
insistently with the shore
"Shhhh,,,!" says the shore "...shhhh!"

a noise stops
and becomes
a mouse

mouse
stops
gazes into an owl's eyes

its shriek lost
in the faraway barking
of a little brown dog

the lovers at long last
asleep
turn and turn again in the heat

a small breeze
whispers its secrets
to the warm dark

unseen
a shoal of fishes turn &
turn again

CENTAUR

Hiding in the hay
me a terrified little boy
& my uncle like a terrified little boy

the voices in his head telling him to be afraid
of all strangers...changes.

He’s been like this
since the day his Dad(my unknown grandfather)
died.

My Aunt’s voice
searching for us...searching us out.

Her shouts like bloodhounds
hunting us down

her words angry & cruel.

Her angry voice slurring us into:
“DonallSeanie! ”

as if we had fused into one being
a metamorphosis of us.

The hay cooks us
and we swelter in our hidey hole

A chicken sits on top
of my uncle’s cap

as if his mind had
materialised into this shape.

He rocks himself
and rocks me.

“Shhhh...boy...shhhh! ”
comforting both him & me.

“Don’t leave me! ”
he clucks

the words scattered around him
like newly laid eggs.

I settle into his silence.

My Aunt’s threats freezing us
in this terrible heat.

His chest hair
tickles my nose.

The cut on my left big toe
throbs through the open sandal.

My uncle cries in fear.

I wipe away the tear
with the ***** edge of my sleeve.

We escape to
the West field

me riding his shoulders

transformed into
a legendary creature

that only exists in myths
fleeing from the realness

...of reality.

THE FOREVER KISS

between this second &
the next...Time somehow
goes astray: here - the kiss

the camera captures us
with its black & white click
we all shadows and sunlight

the camera perched
upon a rugged rock
proud to have taken it by itself

us now
this "that" framed photo
kissed every morning by the sun

I watch us as
the photograph comes alive &
we step out into the wallpaper

we run amongst
the Paisley patterned paper
like a giant surreal field

here by the light switch
would have run the river
we cross it on a sunbeam

and where the mountain stood
now stands an overflowing bookcase
we scamper amongst its tomes

we our younger selves
arrive at the French window
where our town should be

our little animated us
so black & white & tiny
passing through the darkening glass

the sunlight of this today
newly beginning to
fade away

this sunset now
an unimaginable
40 years away

I let them run
escape their photographic fate
caught in the aspic of youth not age

this photograph we
unaware of death and that now
there is only...me

between this second &
the next: Time somehow
goes astray: here...the forever kiss.

OPENINGS
(for Onelia)

The openings of famous novels
follow me around

for days on end

or just lounge around
waiting for me to say them.

The opening of MOBY ****
has gone for a ***.

The opening of A TALE OF
TWO CITIES

has fallen asleep
by the radiator.

The opening of PRIDE
& PREJUCIDE
is sipping a cup of Earl Grey
tea.

“Call me Ishmael...Call me Ishmael! ”
pleads the opening
of MOBY ****
returning from the loo.

“Have you washed your hands? ”
I ask it.

“It was the best of the worst of times...”
declaims the Dickens
confused upon awakening.

“Say me...say me! ”
they all clamour...crowding around me.

I just stare
at them in silence

wondering how
I got into this.

MEETING W.B. YEATS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Curled up in a cuddle

fused into
the one telling the one listening

my big sister
recites Yeats

She whispers:

“Come away o human child...”

as the thunderstorm breaks outside
“...to the waters and the wild...”

as the night breaks open
over the poem

“...to a world more full of weeping...”

the lightning illuminates each line
“...than you will ever understand...”

I cry into her body great heaving sobs
And she says: “Shhh...shhh.. it’s alright! ”

and I only half believe her
her death etched into my mind.