BRUSHSTROKES

her voice
caresses him in Japanese
the syllables of his name

enacted out
by the brushstrokes
of her voice

as if she drew him
in mid-air
and he hung there

alive
in the calligraphy of her
love

FLYING INTO FOREVER

the geese flew on and out
of my childhood

leaving me returning
each new year

to find that same moment
when I was 9

seeing the geese now
with different eyes

but somehow still
that little boy

seeing them
for the first time

the geese flying on and out
into forever. . .

. . .snow has fallen
in love with the world

dressing everything in
the same crisp white quiet

icicles hang from
the blue tricycle

a lost green glove creeps across the front yard

soon my daughter
all 9 years of her

will awake to find
the dream made real

a forgotten doll
gazes up at me

from the bottom of
the frozen pond

I write you a Christmas card
as I do each year

sign it love
as I always do

forgetting that

you are dead.

"WE TAKE NO NOTE OF TIME BUT FROM ITS LOSS"

I ****** you from
your dying

place you here
outside time

words and memory
conspire

make you forever
the boy you were

tell you to go play
on a day

you could
never forget.

Go on father
be this child

who never can
believe he can die.

*

“The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.”

"By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours:

Where is tomorrow? In another world. . ."

Fragments of Young's poem fled through my mind as my Da lay dying. In my mind I talked to him all the time and sang songs to him. I tried to place him beyond this hour...bring him back to a past where he was but a boy and happy.

Night Thoughts

Edward Young (1742-1745)

OUTRUNNING THE WORLD

You ran and
the world couldn't keep up with you.

Here, in your third year
you discovered falling.

As if the world had
tripped up.

You look at your grazed knee
amazed at your self.

Blood oozes
from your chubby little skin.

I cry.
You do not.

You are just amazed that
there is an inside to you

that can somehow
leak out.

You dip a finger in
taste the redness.

Your laughter
is a spring

that bubbles out.

You can not understand
my tears.

My feeling your pain
on your behalf.

Or in this case
your "not-pain."

"Daddy - not cry!"
you comfort me.

You dry my eyes
with golden curls.

"Tilly run again...see?"

And you do so
to prove a point.

And once again
you are immortal

outrun the world.

Leaving your father
further and further

behind you.

You run into your future.
Become your self.

A tiny thin scar
the only reminder

of a pain only I
can remember.

THE LATEST SCORE

I feel you
in my bones.

You walk when
I walk.

The shadow of you
in my voice.

You talk when
I talk.

"How you. .
.get in there?"

I laugh
with your laughter.

"Don't believe in graves!"
you answer

breathing with my breath
speaking the wordless words.

"Don't believe in death...
either!"

you add to your hypothesis
as if further proof were needed.

You jump around
in my blood

hijacking my pulse.

"Hiya bud!"
you say

thinking with my thoughts
in that same slow easy drawl.

"This is where
the dead go

. . .when they die."

I know the living
ghost of my brother

. . .would never lie.

"Hey...!" says
my never forgotten brother

"...go easy on the ghost stuff!"
he smiles.

"Don't believe in ghosts either!"

"The dead live
inside those they love..."

I complete the sentence
for him

thinking now
with his thoughts.

Now we both laugh
with the same laugh.

"So, what's the latest score?"

"Look likes...we're winning!"

EMOTIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Here, I dig up
what remains

the myths
of us

fossils found
of thought

thought long ago

traces of us
lost to time

lost time
glinting now

behind glass
with labels to tell us

who we
were

who we thought
we were.

There, the lost
contact lens

brings a tear
to the eye

made more rare by
time passing by

prized now not
for function

becoming precious
an ordinary treasure

in an alchemy
of memory

full fathomed five
we be

believing in the truth
that was always a lie.

Here, the snake
entering the eye

socket of
a skull

( the stillness of
silence )

one plastic
the other for real.

The myth of us
sacrificed

upon the altar
of now

so allowing us to be

( altering as it see fits )

to be
just you & me

our selves again
( owning who we are )

escaping into
a future.

WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

Removing his spectacles
the doctor pinched

the bridge
of his nose

rubbed his eyes roughly

closed them
open them again.

Rain trickled down
the window pane.

Outside
a red tricycle

stood its ground
as if

it were an art
installation.

It's red made more red
by the rain's fury.

Beside it a white teddy bear
soaked to the skin

a sodden thing.

It couldn't be more sorrier

"Well....doctor...well...?"
the mother pleaded.

He turned to her
his words lost

in the thunder.

*

Once upon a time ago when I was in my youth I met a delightful old man on a train who looked like he could have been the country doctor in countless b&w movies. He called me "young fella me lad!" We traded all of THE WASTE LAND between us...line for line...."i grow old I grow old...I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled!" After we had dispensed with THE WASTE LAND we started on every poem we knew. He was surprised that I knew what I knew. I started to recite ~William Carlos Williams RED WHEELBARROW for him and he started crying. It turned out that in his youth he had indeed been a young doctor. He was called to a bedside where a little girl was dying and he had to tell the mother. She wouldn't accept this from him and clinging to the hope that he was young and looked even younger that he didn't know what was what. He looked out the window before he had to tell her and saw what he saw. Williams was also a doctor and I had read somewhere that he too looked out a window and saw.....the rest is poetry. So much depends upon....

GOING ON WITH ME

never did like
my own
birthday

all that cakes
and candles
stuff

you could keep it
strictly
for the birds

every day was
my birthday
far as I could see

Birthdays...
who'd
have 'em....eh

but to have one
is the only way to go
on to be someone

miss one and
you're gone
out like a candle

every birthday
always called
my Mam

after all she did
all the hard work
when push came to shove

all I did was arrive
thank her for
having me

"Ahhh  go on with ya!"
she'd forever
laugh

this always the best
bit of my birthday
celebrating my mother

AT LEAST WE'LL  ALWAYS  HAVE GUILDFORD

Ahhhh Love...
I never needed to go
to fantastic destinations
exquisite places
such sights to see

You:
were always my only
place to be
the where I wanted to be
no need for me to travel
seeing I was already there
you all my exotic wonders
a cup of Earl Grey and thee

all I ever wanted  was
your smile blossoming into laughter

THE MAKER OF MAPS

throw the sheet over her
start tracing her contours
"I'm making a life size map of you!"

it has to be a scale of 1:1
the map
creases with laughter

after we hang this
map of you upon the wall
"Mapmaking tickles!" she tells me

"Well...time for the real thing!"
I consult the map
set out to explore you

my fingers
those brave mountaineers
scale your left breast

ahhh this view of you
worth the climb
my fingers rest

and so I begin the descent
the map telling me
where to go

wєℓ¢Θмє

There was a knock
on the door.

I opened it.

The river stood there
dripping all over

the welcome mat.

It had dragged along
birds...trees...bits of sky

an old worn summer.

"Hi...!" it rippled
". . .remember me?"

"Sure..." I said

"You said you would never forget me!"

"How could I?" I said

It grinned
like that summer all over again.

"Come in...come in!" I said

It hung up the trees and sky
on the hat rack.

It sat in the bath
talking of this 'n' that.

"Wow..!" I thought
still listening to the river

talk of all the times
we'd spent together.

Memory sure does play
some funny tricks

on the mind.

"Well..." it said
"I guess I better be going!"

It put back on the trees and birds
wore the sky at a jaunty angle.

"You haven't changed a bit!" I said
kissing it goodbye.

"You've got old..." it smiled
"...so very very old!"

I laughed.
"I'm not that little boy I was!"

It wished me well.

The door closed.

Its footsteps
lost in time.

I was missing it
already.

*

This is the river and song of my childhood. The Own na Buidhe ran at the bottom of my uncle's field so it was a real thing to me as well as part of this beautiful song that I cherished. And the song had my name in it!

"When Donal swore, aye o'er and o'er..."

My sister Junie used to sing it to me as we lay in the field and the river looked up at us shy with the mention of its name.
This is the river that comes to visit me! Not just any old river but. . .
my river...my song...my name!

"When Donal swore, aye o'er and o'er. . ."

TOUCHING SUMMER

the world is caught
in net curtains
summer struggles to free itself

she wants to touch
summer for the last time
the net curtains go quiet

she sees her self
as a child
with a big big grin

a hairy gooseberry
like a translucent marble
that the sun hides in

she asks her self
what they used to call them
"Goosegogs!" her self tells her

the goosegog bursts
upon her tiny tongue
she both likes it and doesn't

she winces as
the cancer bites
the day falls from her hands

she leaves summer behind
for the last time
the window full of night

SHARING WING BIRDS

A moon
the colour of sorrow.

Rain falling
like regret.

The memory
of your beauty

awakened by
the music

tiptoes on moonlit feet
slowly silently

across the moon coloured
lawn.

A cat
(immune to human emotion)yawns

silhouetted against
an Autumn moon.

He listens
to our human words

more out of boredom
than anything else

as if we were characters
in a play

enacting words that will be
forever spoken:

“Let us be sharing-wing-birds
...that thing of legend...

with only one eye
only one wing

only by sharing wings
can we fly! ”

Chiselled into
a night gone by

the words remain
engraved upon the air.

The cat wonders
how do humans do that

...& why?
He pads quietly

through  and
through the words

the memory of us
bristling his fur.

Dearest. . . .


                I know you know the old adage that
you can’t take it with you when you go but

I have only two treasures

ephemeral  as they may be
the feel of your hand in mind
the touch of your mind

your breath upon my cheek
the kiss about to be

I’ll outwit death as yet  steal them with my dying breath.

See the machinery of death unfurl within me
the perfection of its final stop -  a thing of beauty.

Now: in a future. . .you

lie sleeping sunlight warm upon your face
(I, no heavy handed ghost)

leave only a feeling of intense comfort

that makes you smile without the knowing why. . .

NEVER SO ALONE AS HERE
(in memory of my mother Ita)

a night
scattered with stars
each star so clear

in its perfect
isolation
you feel as if you are

about to pluck it
from its position
examine it

put it
exactly
back

watch as time & the world
come apart
(watch as neither match)  

each minute
like a bead of prayer
fumbled through fingers

in its litany of despair
a rosary of
hopelessness

the back of her hand
resting in the palm of mine
stupidly the thought

crossing my mind
“She made
this hand...”

and now she searches
for her dying
sees it reflected

in our faces

our grief her mirror
each star
a tear

in the perfection
of its isolation
never so alone


as here as now
the Milky Way
spilt across the sky

AN ORDINARY DAY IN 1863

from out of the silence
a bell's voice
steps out on the air

shattering the frozen blue
of a sky cluttered with
the shriek of seagulls

a tiny church
packed to the brim
with humans singing hymns

the dead talking
to themselves
all the time

the living
never listening to
what they have to say

praising this
the newest
of days

a morning
opening to
the future

a leaf falling
on a broken grave
a lichen-eaten name

two aliens
observing all
as it happens

discovering
and quoting
Shakespeare to each other

"Lord
what fools
these mortals be!"

WILD WAVES CRASHING
ABOUT THE OLD HEAD OF KINSALE

I scramble
into your bed

like I'd do when I was 2
or four or more.

Rub your back for you
(you my 95 year old child )
until sleep gathers you in.

Just like you did for me
when I was your little boy.

I listen to you as slowly slowly
your dreams capture you.

I love your each and every breath.

And when you awake
two hours later

there I am
still rubbing your back.

You smile and tell me
your mother would do the same

when you were a tiny boy
waves crashing about the Old Head of Kinsale.

So here we all are
the back rubbers of the ages

all in the one place
sharing different times

comforting soothing
easing all the pain

waves crashing about the Old Head of Kinsale.  

*
I would rub his back for him and the warmth and friction and affection would calm him down and he would drift off to sleep but then if I stopped he would begin wake up again and start to cough...so I continued for two hours and he finally woke up rested. He was surprised to see me still there rubbing his back for him. Said his mother would do that for him when he was small and I said you used to do it for me when I was small. So there in that one magical moment were all the backrubbers paying no attention at all to the different times and all time became this one moment.

His mother used always be terrified of him lying on his belly and looking over the edge of the cliff at the furious waves eating the land. He would then run down to Mrs. Fitz who had a big gramophone and she would always play him and he never tired of it...the instrumental OVER THE WAVES which would become in time THE LOVLIEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR as sung my Maria Lanza.

He would often sing it to me or play it on his harmonica or accordion and I was enthralled by it and him and amazed that he could have been a small boy just as I was!

I simply adored him and he was the loveliest man and the most gentle of souls.


One day I sneaked back into life and was able to write a new poem and start the Vole News Letter on Michael Donaghy and post posts. The next two days I had become mist fading into a nothingness.

But here I am now with my Granny and me Da….guess it must be my turn now to be walking by the Old Head of Kinsale and the wild waves singing to me. I couldn’t be in a more wonderful place

YOUR LITTLEST SMILE

Death, rather diffident
(rather shy)

comes to me & says:

'It is time to die.'

'Ok...' I say '...when? '

'...like, this moment? '

'This second...? '

I struggle
with my heart attack

as Death
(feeling bad about it)

reposes my artefacts.

Outside, a van pulls up
with neat Gothic script

DEATH - REMOVALS.
it spells out in big bold letters.

I like it.

Death's got style
(& a nice smile)

& is a kind...
...of groovy guy.

Or is he a lady...
...boy...it's hard to tell

this here heart attack
sure hurts like hell.

'Ok, boys - take it all
away! '

Death's little helpers
all big bruisers all over 7' 2'
(former nightclub bouncers)

set to it with a will.

They take away
the blue sky
under which I had first kissed you.

They take away that night
sky under which I had kissed you more.

They took away
the little day to day
things

I always loved

the shape of your mouth

your continuously falling hair
brushed impatiently away

from your eyes

...your eyes...

the smell of your perfume
in an empty room

the littlest of your smiles
I had saved
for a rainy day

meanwhile
like a living Houdini

I had done it

somehow wrestled out
of the heart attack's strait jacket.

'****! ' Death
spat in a peevish manner.

'How, in God's name
did you do that? '

Death, sighed:
'Ok, kid...ya got me
- this time! '

'Right, boys... put it all back!
Put everything back! '

Les boys, scowl at me
as if to say: ' I'll remember you
...sunny Jim! '

'You...' Death
snarled from the side of his mouth

annoyed now
(no more Mr. Nice Guy)

'You...I'll see you
again! '

A tear...trickled down
my cheek

(unable to speak)
all I could do

was glance down

(your littlest smile)

clasped tightly
in my hand.

THE ***** WHISPERER

Little did Donall Dempsey realise that when he woke up that morning( his head full of Canaries)he would step from the ship to not his home but to The Twilight Zone of The Catheter Club. Here in intensive care his body not his own but in medical hands trying to deal with what the hell was wrong with this usually reliable body.

"Do you know
what a
catheter is Donall"

(oh you're not
gonna do that...
but do that so they did)

two brave NHS nurses
worked womanfully
but all to no avail

I tried to escape
into the Greek
etymology

"to ****** into"
or "to send down"
but it didn't help any

"Kathíemai!" I yelled
in badly pronounced
broken Greek

"Call Chloe!"
the cry went out
and Chloe came

she tucked a lock
of blonde hair
behind her left ear

"They call me
'The ***** Whisperer'
if anyone can I can

and so she sets
to work on me
explaining procedure

as only
a Chloe can
in simple laywoman terms

"You know when
you are trying to
get in fancy club

but a big fat bouncer
won't gain you
admittance

well your prostate
is that big fat
******* bouncer!"

"I see..." I say
not really
seeing

but not even a Chloe
can manage it
this time

but then
a nice unassuming
Chinese chap

does it
with ease
Chloe looks miffed

so here I am
tied to a bag
of my own *****

afraid to guess
what else is
in store for m4

"καθίεμα!" I swear
my Greek at least
seems to be improving

LES PAS PERDUS

"What did I do
in the war?"
I kept on trying not to be dead

all my friends were no good
at staying alive
( I keep them alive in my head )

the voices of the dead
shouting why are you
still alive & not I

good ole' Fred
lost his head
easy as a nursery rhyme

Tom holding
his guts in his hands
trying to stuff them back in

all we found of john
were his boots
with his feet still in them

"What did I do
in the war?"
I kept on trying not to be dead

I kept on trying
I kept on trying
to get back to you

*

LES PAS PERDUS (stepping stones or the lost steps )halfway buried stones forming a walkway. The stepping stones between one generation and the next....the war to end all wars merely produced the next war. He and his father were making such a path together as the old man told of his time and the horror that is contained in a survivor's head. Also the very act of surviving creates an agonising guilt that gnaws at the soul. He would often cry and say better men than he died...why not me...why not me. And he would see his dead friends everywhere.

THE MEMORY OF MARMALADE
(For Michael Donaghy 1954 – 2004)


ah howya Michael
strange to be meeting ya
off the coast of Casablanca

now don’t say it –
that would be too
corny altogether

‘At least we’ll
always have
Haringey!’

ah ye devil ya,
ya said it
didn’t ya

‘well I heard ya
reading my poems
to your wife

so I thought
I’d just drop in
like

for an auld chat
not let a little thing
like death come between us’

a moment
as it happens
where I was

only a second
from falling off
the edge of the world

into that great
wide nothingness
that awaits all of us

sometime or another
and all my mind
had to offer me

was this tiny fragment
my first memory of
marmalade of all things

as if it were
the most precious
moment ever

sun bursting
through marmalade
held forever

on the edge
of a shining
silver knife

so beautiful
like a tiny jewel
that the mind could taste

before
the body
could

and the lovely
slice of a smile
that was my father

and if this was
to be my dying
this would be the last

thing seen
and sure if it was
wouldn’t it be

a great memory
to go out
on

and you Michael  
I remember you
whipping out

a penny whistle
where it was hiding
in an inside pocket

playing something
unknown
to me

telling me
it didn’t have
a name as yet

maybe the dance
of the fingers but
that could change

the next time
you played always
a new beginning

now you smile
it’s become
the memory of marmalade

don’t forget
put my father’s smile
in it will ya

‘I will surely’
he smiled,
as the ship turned

towards an horizon
I couldn’t
recognise

and the deck quoits
went quiet
and I lost my shadow

and indeed
that was a good thought
to go out on

‘Dónall auld fella
you’re getting your quoits
and shuffleboard mixed up 

you’d better go on living
ya’ave still got a lot
to learn’

and the marmalade
dances as Michael
plays it into being

and my father
and I
oh we’re smiling

BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
( For brother Brian

Each night
I would follow you

through the rituals
of what you had to do

being Daddy.

I wanted to be Daddy too.

Mimicking your gait
becoming an exact

copy
of you

trailing along
in your footsteps

like a lone seagull
following in the wake

of some great ship
of state

watching the water
burn

'til it was all bubbles

then letting it
calm down

before filling my mother's
hot water bottle

carrying it to her side
like a lover's gift.

I was
your little shadow.  

She'd always smile:
"Thank you Danny! "

"That's alright love"
was always the answer.

These the ritualistic words
in the hot water bottle ceremony.

Then he'd teach the clock
to ****

adjusting it with his hands
and wind up Time

so that it spit tick & tocks
all through the night

then go lock doors
turn keys
draw bolts.

"That's it, son!"

I used to imagine
being you

and now I am
my own man

winding up Time

bringing my missus
the gift of a hot water bottle

(the gift of me)  

both equally
heart warming.

'Thank you Donall! '
she always smiles.

'That's all right love! '
I always answer.

Me the man
I am

because of you.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

the river stood up
its head in the clouds
marched off to find the sea

it took the river time
to find its feet but when it did
it ran & ran & ran

tired now the river
took the bus
spilling some of itself goin' 'round a bend

the river
kicked off the bus
for not having a proper ticket

the river
trying to hitch a ride
no luck

mini skirted blonde
tells the trucker
"This here river's with me!"

river weary now
just wants to lay it self down
and meander

at last the sea dawned
the river plunged in
losing itself in its joy

OMBRES
de nous-mêmes
ANCIENS

April in Paris
John Donne has indigestion
pines for words from the Isle of Wight

"...whether I be
increased by a child or
diminished by the loss of a wife..."

his baby is born
dead
his wife lives

words...words
these creatures
made of ink

he begins his Anniversaries
Elizabeth Drury becomes a symbol
for the death of youth and beauty

Ben Johnson scorns
such
extreme lamentation

"If it had been written of
the ****** Mary
...it had been something!"

"...she, she is dead; she's dead:
how wan a ghost
this our world is..."

"the imputation of having said
so much
...to say as well as I could...

an Emperor is
about to be
elected

the busy old sun
rests for a moment in
an empty room

*

Being in Paris and like Mr. Donne suffering from a cold....only hundreds of years apart...so that he( and his life )entered my thoughts as I flâneur'd about the Paris of now and then so that the now and then and the then and now came together in my slightly out-of-kiltered mind.

INVISIBLE BLUE PLAQUES
(for Janice)

Someone or other
lived & died here.

Some other someone
wrote their most

famous work
there.

Every so often
a blue plaque informs us

as we journey
through town

(rain falling down)    

of Blah Blah
who blah’d & blah’d here

or was
blah’d there

... who cares?

In my mind
I ***** invisible
blue plaques

to commemorate
us.

Here: we kissed
(did we not?)    
...a mere minute ago.

Here: we turned
& laughed

on the corner of this everyday
road.

Here: we laughed
& hugged

on a pedestrian crossing

(a pedestrian
crossing)    

whistling at our
ardour

a taxi honking
at our armour.

All over London
our invisible
blue plaques

commemorate
us

&
that

we once
passed this way

so deeply
in love.

AND SO

a latch
shuts the night
out

a turn of key
puts the town
to rest whilst

outside a cat
and a milk bottle
gaze at the moon

yellow and overblown
and now Mr. Cat
with swish of tail

vanishes into the shadows
as the milk bottle
falls and rolls away

its note left
on the pavement.
Inside a clock has run out

of tick-tocks
until it is wound up
by a sleepy eyed man

so that
it speaks of
time again

the house dozes
the lawn yawns
everything is

just so
and so
....goodnight

MR. DADDY SOFT SOFT

Always her fascination with me
shaving.

This her early morning ritual
observing each action

as if it were holy.

I hide my face in foam.

“Santa Claus! Santa Claus!”
she chants

winces with delight as the razor
(she gulps)          

goes over my bump without
(gasp)slicing it off.

The shaving uncovers the me she knows.

“Soft…soft. . .Mr. Daddy Soft Soft!”
she gurgles in a lather of laughter.

“Me now…now me!” she pleads with me.


I take the brush…coat her reflection with foam.
I shave her…with the tip of my little finger.

Her reflection sniggers & she sniggers too.

Later, in the early evening
she appears  

bearded in fresh  cream.

She shaves herself with a lollipop stick.
“Me... Daddy now...see!”

I cha cha cha her on the tips of my toes
as she clings to my fingertips

the living room dances around us

One delighted half shaved little girl.

One delighted soft soft Mr. Daddy.

THE WIND WALKS AMONGST THE CHANDELIER

a chandelier
hung from a tree
the sunlight in love with it

"No room for it
in my little house
I thought I'd give it to the tree!"

"Well, have you ever
seen a chandelier hung from a tree?
No, well...there ya go!"

the tree looked happy
wearing its chandelier
as if it had grown it itself

a bird alights
on the tree's chandelier
a sunset caught up in it

*

It was strictly for the birds and the bees( and the tree)who seemed to love it...it was only a broken plastic thingy but the idea of hanging it on the tree was what made it work...it was very surreal like coming across a Dali painting but after a while you just accepted that...well...there it was...the wind liked playing with it too. All it takes is one man with one novel idea and there...ya go!

A friend has sent me a picture of a chandelier in a tree! Ha ha I thought this only existed in my memory of Ted in Cornwall! I hadn't a camera then and didn't write poetry so it just sort of languished there in my mind until it got jogged into recollection! We used to drink Mint Juleps under it and talk into the sunset. He used to have bottle trees as well so I thought the chandelier tree was just an extension of this. At night he would run an extension to it and it would just exist in the sky like a rather large firefly. I liked its daylight incarnation best as then it was strictly the tree's. Once electricity was added it became more ours...albeit a rather strange "ours' but still ours to drink mint juleps under until dawn lit a fire under it and it was time to go to bed.

"O, HOW SHALL SUMMER'S HONEY BREATH HOLD OUT""

each hive
a tiny planet
inhabited by bees

the beekeeper
looking for all the world
like a medieval astronaut

"God..." think the bees
coming in a puff of smoke
they fall silent

God takes off his face
throws down his gauntlets
becomes our father

"Good.." grins God
our father
"...that should do the trick!"

we watch the honeycomb
floating in its jar
fantastic as an alien being

the comb hangs above me
most of it drizzles into my mouth
the rest in eyes and hair

when father isn't looking
I put the cage on my face
pretend I'm a fencer

far away in a field
a bee
chatting up a flower

the bees and we all asleep
God's hand and face
a still life on the table

*
I wanted to get it from all perspectives...this simple job of work...from the bee's point of view to the kids to the dad and then the scene when all are tucked up in their beds...even God.

The title of course is stolen from Shakes's Sonnet 65

And of course...the bees...the dad..the kids...this particular summer whose "whose action is no stronger than a flower?" are saved from the might of time by....

O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Alas I am not a beekeeper...this was told to me by a friend remembering growing up with her beekeeper dad as we flicked through her photo album after he was gone...the poem is a bric a brac hodge podge of the things she told me...the things I could see...you might have notice that one of God's hands is missing in the final verse...but that's another story. They were playing boats with the gauntlets in the river by the house and one of God's gloves just got...carried away! Daddy didn't know 'til the next day that one of his beekeeper gloves had gone to heaven and boy there was hell to pay!
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Sonnet 65:
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE KIND OF THINGS POETS THINK/DO

all its little life
the triangle longed to be
a circle

"I want to get around!"
it piped up
in its little Isosceles voice

"It's...it's preposterous!"
screamed his mother Scalenely
"...whoever heard of such a thing!"

"You should be proud of your lines!"
scolded its grandpa
Equilaterally

"A triangle can not be..."
said his Papa in a right angled kind of way
"...anything other than a triangle!"

"I always felt I was a circle
trapped inside
a triangle's body!"

one day a passing poet
eavesdropped in an idle moment
on what the lines were saying

"Why ever not...why
ever not" said the poet
poet chaps tend to think like that

so he erased the brave
little Isosceles
drew him again as a circle

"Wheee!"
laughed the former Isosceles triangle
delighting in its circle-ness

this is the kind of things
poets think of...

. . .poets do.



‘Art is nothing but this slow trek to discover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence [your] heart first opened.’

So said Camus...I never forgot my first circle and triangle and dodecahedron . I was sad I couldn't get the dodecahedron into the poem but then a poet is a person of many faces and facets so I guess it gets represented in this symbolic way.

A poet I guess, to be more precise, would more likely be a pyritohedron because it has an irregular pentagonal dodecahedron, having the same topology as the regular one but pyritohedral symmetry while the tetartoid has tetrahedral symmetry.

When one thinks that there are 6,384,634 topologically distinct convex dodecahedra, excluding mirror images—the number of vertices ranges from 8 to 20. (Two polyhedra are "topologically distinct" if they have intrinsically different arrangements of faces and vertices, such that it is impossible to distort one into the other simply by changing the lengths of edges or the angles between edges or faces)one can see the vistas that loom large in the eye of the poet and the choices constructed as stellations of the convex form. It's a kind of...I don't know... geometric degree of freedom with limiting cases ...ahhh you have to do it to understand it really. Now to get back to that Camus feeling about writing and the utter simplicity of the circle and how a triangle forms in the mind...it's a long slow trek.

But then as Nietzsche always was telling me, "Donal..."  he'd be forever saying:

"We have art so as not to die of reality!" or was it "We have art lest we perish from the truth." It was hard to make out his mumblings from under that grand moustache.

"Are you a moustache or a man?" I'd joke back at him.



How lots of things get written...trying to make it interesting for my little girl by "story-ing" so she could take it on board in an imaginative way. Just the simple task of teaching her how to draw circles and triangles by hand and without thought...just the pleasure of Klee's "taking a line for a walk." Not an explanation of mathematical thought...she was only five but a fun way to get her to know how these things form when a pencil wants to draw them...bonky or with a ruler. The story helped push her into knowledge slowly and with ease.

IT WAS A NIGHT WHEN FLIGHT HADN'T YET BEEN INVENTED

He had a face
like a FOR SALE

sign that
had been there for ever

with the kind of moustache
that smart-aleck kids

would draw upon
a poster of the Mona Lisa.

His eyes were kind - Dalí-ish
as when the great painter

announced his
own greatness.

Behind him
a yellow half-moon

posed
perched upon his head

as if it was his
own peculiar particular pet

otherwise he was
nondescript

a no-one
that no one would notice.

An announcement announced
that the flight to Dublin

would be delayed
indefinitely.

Outside the snow was
impossible.

It was a night
when flight

hadn't yet been
invented

and only snow
took to the air.

I only noticed him
because a tear

silently and slowly
trickled down

his left cheek
and hung suspended there

for a century it seemed
before falling on the book

before him
that he wasn't reading

only holding as if
in defence against the world

and I wondered what
his grief was.

*

It was our first Christmas  without our mother and I wanted to be there for my father. But the snow was fearsome and no flights were to be had...you had to go to the airport and stand in line outside the closed terminal to have even a chance to maybe be lucky. After three hours I got lucky and made it home. An old man was sitting on his suitcase and holding a book upside down. pretending to read and crying silently to himself.I was in the same state myself and his grief was the embodiment of mine. Looking up at the darkness as giant flakes of snow fell upon us it was as if we had been transported back to a time when flight hadn't yet been invented and the heavens were inviolate and could not be touched.

IN THE HERON'S EYE

you swim
into yourself
the lake doubles you

your swimming reflection
trying to claw its way
into you

from the lake emerges
a head like a bust then a bust then
the whole delicious nakedness of you

your reflection
hides inside you
when you leave the lake

naked
being chased
by your shadow

the heron's shadow
stares through the water's skin
at the fish within

in the heron's eye
the fish already
- caught

a leaf
floats on the tree's reflection
fish swims amongst its branches

we swim amongst clouds & trees
rain taps on the top of the lake
we laugh underwater

piercing the water's skin
thin blades of sunlight
we swim we swim

COLOURING THE WORLD.

Auntie Peggy...
gave us the world.

We held it tentatively
between finger and thumb.

Hardly able to believe
what we could see.

There we were( & she )
trapped  in the first ever

colour photo we
had ever seen.

And so we saw
that grass was green

as were Uncle Michael's
corduroys.

We looked and looked
again to confirm

that the photo had got it
exactly right.

Somehow that world
was lost by us

and we can only see it
through the eyes of

Auntie Peggy's photos.
where everything remains

just so.

And redder and bluer and greener
than anyone could know

"BALLEA...BALLEA...BALLEA!"
( for Mary Forde )

"Ahhhh howya!" says the sun
looking pleased with the world
it has just constructed

I throw off sleep
& run into the light
the world blossoming into being

here was my favourite tree
that the night had swallowed
& had tried to swallow me

here was a bird
I didn't know
trying to talk to me

I admit I am not
very good
at the bird language

but I catch its drift
get the jist
"Open your eyes...open your eyes!"

the river had somehow
been put back just
in time for the morning

and although the cow
had eaten so much grass
there seemed to be so much more

"Greeeeeen!" sang the grass
at the sky's "Blueeeeeeeee!"
the sky laughs with birds

this my uncle's farm
newly minted out of morning
it sings its song

"Ballea...Ballea...Ballea!"
we chant its name
running out to play

*

Ahhh beloved of places....this is heaven to Curragh Dempseys! This is where the soul will return to if me is still me. This is it on its last legs but Granny's nasturtiums were still blooming and feral cats slunk about the place as if they owned it.

FOLLOW THE LEADER

she is the creator
of worlds
she being 3

does not know how
a world
can be

a world
is only
how she makes it

daily she
creates it
in her own image

music is a thing
that dances
in the blood.

a butterfly is a miracle
she is just as yet
unaccustomed to

a flower
is a piece
of living magic

her dolls
speak to her
( in her own voice)

ten tulips
bow to her
she bows to them

a daddy is
a somebody
who knows nothing

who has to be
taught
everything.

she knows
there is nothing
that can not be

facts are replaced
by imagination
...the art of seeing

a purple sun
shines
in a yellow yellow world

see she has
drawn it so
and so it is so

and I her disciple
follow the little leader
as she teaches me

how to be
the world that she
can see

( half invention
  half discovery )
as she leads

me back to
the land
of childhood

I believed I had
long ago
lost forever

*

She was my teacher...making me in her own image...showing me how I could live in the world without dying into adulthood. I became as a little child and she gave me the gift of the world she created.

"DÓNALL DEMPSEY INDEED!"

'LLANÓD YESPMED?"
he squinted at my driver's licence.

"It's pronounced CLANÓD!"
I said with extreme exasperation.

"Y'are not from these here parts
. . .are ya fella?"
he drawled dryly

squinting closer firstly at me then
back again to my !D.

"I'm of Welsh/Turkish extraction
but I was born on Venus!"

I explained as if to
a little kid.

"Ha ha...haha!" he snorted
a tiny trickle of snot

yo-yoing up and down
his hairy left nostril.

"Ha ha...if you were to
spell yer name backwards
it would spell:

Dónall Dempsey!"

I was not amused.

"Ya know...that crazy hairy
Irish earthling poet dude!"

"I'm not him!"
I fumed.

"Alright...alright...keep yer
antenas on...geeeez!"

He handed me back
my Id ID.

Tipped his hat.
Wiped his nose across his sleeve.

"Welcome to Mars.
You drive carefully now!"

I stepped on the rocket boosters.

Left him eating my stardust.

"****** customs!"
I yelled to myself.

"Huh...Dónall Dempsey
...indeed!"

*

To make taking the roll call more interesting I got them to write their names backwards and they loved this indea and wouldn't let go. Then I got them to write stories about this new character they had become. I of course did the same excerise as they did and I thought my backwards name sounded like a Welsh/Turkish/Venusian who was a future space trucker who was having a bad day and was being held up by a redneck customs man with disgusting nostril hygiene.


Without any intro I would tell a class to take a blank piece of paper and exactly and neatly write their name in the very middle of the page. Then I would go around to look at them and go "No...no...no!" They would look at me in great surmise. "I meant...backwards!" So painfully as if it were a hard maths question they would backward themselves and ask me how to pronounce themselves. And then with their new "selves" I would get them to invent who they "now" were. They went at this with great gusto and characters born purely form pure sound would be created right in front of me> They're "I" had changed into a hee hee hee "HE" and suddenly there were all these different people running around in their minds. They even drew these new "thems" and the playground resounded to the new sounding Nairbs and Yrams who had sloughed off their usual monikers to be born anew as an inventive character.

I would never not do what I would tell the kids to do...so I became this LLANOD YESPMED who had problems with a border guard somewhere in the 25th century.

THE MAKER OF WORLDS

"Who made the world?"
and the cane
and the chanting

did their work
"God
made the world."

the church's Catechism
teaching him
by force...by rote

he smiles now at this
the only scrap
he can remember

"Good God...
it was I
who made my world.!"

here
at the centre of
my tiny universe

my thoughts
made the world
out of nothing

that tree was my tree
that nobody else
could see

the same
as I saw it
I a creator of my self

now
that Death
comes to visit him

he talks
to himself
Death sitting silently

the pain eats him up
from the inside
gnaws at him

as if he were a bone
***** the marrow
out of him

the world fading
to a bicycle bell and
children's skip rope laughter

he hears his voice
questioning
"Who made ***** tonk angels?"

the sacred
and the profane
a mash up in his brain

Kitty Wells voice
swims back to him
cutting through seas of time

"It wasn't God who made
***** tonk angels
as you said in the words of your song

too many times
married men
think they're still single

and that's caused
many a good girl
to go wrong!"

but now
the time has come
that is no time

he has abandoned
God
he sees the world

falling
out of his hand
he walks towards the light

*

A friend of mine who suffered a heart attack but survived to tell the tale...saved just in time by his friend the milkman who always came in for a cuppa. He found him fallen underneath a dark glass table and did the necessary to keep him with us and called an ambulance. He told me that as the heart attack had laid him low he was gazing through this table like a glass darkly! He asked me if I knew any of the Cathy( what we kids called the church's question and answer indoctrination)and I said only that first question. He said me too and that then dovetailed into one of his favourite Kitty Wells song! It made a good funny story he said but by God it hurt like hell.

My poor mother would sometimes burst into this song( no ***** tonk angel she)when she was doing the mountain of ironing that having 10 kids had brought into being. So to me too it had a loving memory and would invade my mind anytime I did my ironing. We drank a drink to not being dead and sang IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE ***** TONK ANGELS loudly and with great gusto. It is always good to cheat Mr. Death even if we knew he would come back knocking one fine day.

THAT KIND OF NOTHING

it was that nothing kind of day
her ghost walked away thinking
"So this is what it's like to be dead?"

she sits inside her self
her body nothing but
borrowed badly fitting clothes

she makes her mouth
do talking
the ventriloquist of her self

her face in the mirror
just a painting
from some long long ago

she does dishes
like a robot learning
how to be human

can't tell you
what it is
only what it isn't

a sad shy smile
holding the whole lot of her
together...some...how. . .  

*

My friend lost her husband..these are just some of the ways she tried to break through her grief with words but mostly all was a numb silence where even tears were banished. I remember her laughing hysterically and saying he would be so ******* that he was dead and would refuse point blank to believe in his own death and that he was beside her and the only place to could meet was in their shared silence.

'I AM INFINITAS!"

here is
our wooden
O

it is
our zero
yellow

there is a 7
...but
it is missing

the puppy's
chewing
an orange 2

"Puppy...
. . .puppy
noooo!!!!"

the admonished
puppy
looks astonished

"This is a good
chew this orange 2."
it whimpers

she her self is four
and
...a little bit more

"When will I be
this one?"
"That's an eight!" I tell her

"It will take you four more years...
...of being you
to be it!"

The 8 has fallen
shhhh on its side asleep
...become an infinity

"Ahhh...infinitas!"
my little infant this
is what...you really are.

this unboundedness
of you
an infinity of you

forever after when
asked what age she is
she'd always answer

with a hearty laugh.
'I AM
INFINITAS!"

*

She had danced and sung and sung and danced. Now she was tired she retired to her favourite place...climbing up on my lap and treadling like a kitten she settled down to watch Kirk Douglas with me. Kirk was being Spartacus and everyone was claiming to be him at this juncture. She had heard the famous line as "I AM SPARK PLUGS!" and now rested from her exertions of watching and trying to make sense of a Hollywood movie...she ran around all over again dancing and singing: "I'M SPARK PLUGS...NO I'M SPAR K PLUGS!"

I used to teach her her letters and her numbers by means of a peashooter and wooden coloured alphabet and gaudy colourful numbers. Rather like Sir Thomas Moore teaching his daughters their letters by means of archery. The 8 lying down and having a rest and becoming an infinity symbol led to her next great statement which she always loved to proclaim as her little self identity..."I....AM...INFINITAS!"

MEETING HIM AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME

a flock of nerds
grazing upon
the cocktail sausage table

"...nerds/bores..."
she corrected herself
their spectacles flashing at her

all eyes were upon her
they licked their lips lasciviously
as if the one man

they sipped in synchronisation
their Adam's apples
bobbing up & down

she felt like a gazelle
amongst a pride
of rather skinny lions

he stood there
oozing caddishness
"Any port in a storm!" she smirked

she was aware of his
reputation
the hair on her arms bristling

"I say..." she said
"Is it true what people
make up about you?"

"All lies 'cept the true bits!"
he grinned
biting his moustache

the pack of nerds/bores
looked at her amazed
"Surely she. . .!"

ah but surely
she was
she laughed a little too loudly

their Adam's apples
reminded her of ballcocks
in flushing toilets

"Well, to be honest..."
he admitted mathematically
"90% true...10% lies!"

"...and so it was
I met your grandfather
and he became my chap!"

he always claimed
I tamed him with a smile
"...easy...easy as that..."

he was as delicious
as his reputation suggested
but I had the monopoly on him

a rather raffish looking
Raffles type
smiles salaciously in b&w

now
even the light
is growing old

we put his photo
back on the mantle piece
she always tells this story

we leave her
talking to his photo
as if it were real

she's always meeting him
for the first time
again and again

we drive away
the large nursing home
becoming smaller and smaller

THE SMELL OF TIME

my shadow
stick in hand
leads me through streets

as if flesh and
blood were unreal
the cobbles try to trip me

the sun
falls like rain
making golden the town

a squashed pomegranate
its seeds scattered
on a yellow patch of light

the smell of time
almost unbearable to the dead
and to the living

an unescorted soap bubble
ventures across the street
bursts on a cat's whiskers

the cat black as black
lives in its own private time
independent of the world's

for a fleeting second as I
pass by and appear in
a reflection on a brass door ****

an old woman
drowning in a shadow
becomes a shadow

her violet eyes close
time winds backwards to
her first kiss

my shadow escapes
leaving me all alone
wondering who I am

a ghost's laughter
time is
nowhere to be seen

*

All the disconnected joined up in an emotional join-the-dots...what the mind in camera mode elects to notice...the happenstance of life...an emotional osmosis...culminating in the death of the lady with the "Elizabeth Taylor eyes."

I had passed by her when she was alive and when I returned I heard people speak of her death...I didn't know her....but she was said to have been a great beauty in her youth and was much sought after and fought over.

She had just eaten her rice congee with rousong and zha cai as she did everyday at the same time.

The details were all totally independent of each other and were busy just happening to themselves. I was only aware of the woman's presence in passing and when I passed back that way she had vanished and a crowd was in her place debating all the details of her life....hence my knowing of them and so all the beads of thought that can happen at a moment's notice got strung as a necklace of happenings and her death which I hadn't witnessed except from overhearing the witnesses speak of her provoked the last three lines and how easy it is to be here and not here in the time that Time evaporates. The cat with the bubble on its whiskers was the last thing I observed before I entered the circumstance and commotion of her death.

All the disconnected joined up in an emotional join-the-dots...what the mind in camera mode elects to notice...the happenstance of life...an emotional osmosis...culminating in the death of the lady with the Elizabeth Taylor eyes. I had passed by her when she was alive and when I returned I heard people speak of her death...I didn't know her....but she was said to have been a great beauty in her youth and was much sought after and fought over. She had just eaten her rice congee with rousong and zha cai as she did everyday at the same time.

AUDENESQUE

As I walked out one morning,
walking down Auden Street,
No crowds upon the pavement,
No sound of people’s feet.

The nightmare it had happened
And Time had run away.
Blake’s rose it had sickened,
No tomorrow...now...no today.

Jack had been eaten by the giant.
The fairy tale had turned Grimm.
History? A tale told by an idiot...
Good God? Nobody believed in him!

I looked, looked in the mirror
And nothing of me could I see?
Desert and Glacier laughed in my face
mocking: “To be. . .not to be!”

It was late, late in the evening,
The world we had known was gone.
And I the only ghost left living
To ponder how it all went wrong.

**

Riffing off of Auden's wonderful ballad...

As I Walked Out One Evening
W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

**

We were doing a poetry class with a famous poet and were supposed to write lyrics but he changed it to ballads. We were given 10 minutes to do one. When I read this he asked did you really write this right now and I said of course. He said it was no good so I slunk away under a stone. When we had a face to face meeting he told that it was very good and he had only been pulling my leg. You live and learn I guess.

SPEAK TO ME IN THE VOICES OF BIRDS

all the statues
start to talk
all at once

in the voices of various birds
I watch as their thoughts
take to the skies

now they fall silent
or speak only
in raindrops dripping from foliage

the rain puts
tears in their eyes
or gives the ends

of their
cracked noses
a snotty cold

a few heads
lie scattered
at their marbled feet

eyes closed
with lichen
lips sealed with green

they say nothing
only watch
the silence deepen

an earwig
crawls across
an eye

a passing guide
with a flock
of tourists

blah blah blahs
about the lives and lies
the statues once lived

and of the what
and who
they were

the statues
looked bored
having heard it all before

even in
Hungarian  
and Bulgarian

"Speak to me again...  
" I plead
"...in the language of birds!"

but all
their thoughts
have flown away

PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST THIS HUMAN

The verbs all slide 'bout
in my mouth but

I just can't get 'em out!

I swallow all my nouns &
adjectives & curses

clinging to
my soft palate.

I think "ouCH!"
but can't say it.

"*******..." I think some more
"*******!"

as my swearing doesn't seem to be
working!

"Well. . ." I think
"...at least I can still think..I think!"

I try to string a
couple a words together.

Somehow manage to
spit out some vowels!

"O!" I oh. "Eeee!" I eeee.

The consonants mutter to themselves
"...gggghhhhh fck t!"

The bump blooms
on the back of my head.

Blood laughs all over
my hair.

A notice appears
in my mind.

My mind's eye wonders why it is
written in double.

PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST
THIS HUMAN.

NORMAL HUMAN WILL BE
RESUMED AS SOON AS

...POSSIBLE!

"AHHHHH...MEN!"

Mary's
mobile
bleeps.

Text.
( First 3 notes of SHAFT ).

It was the angel
Gabriel.

"Yo Mary babeeee!
Guess who's gonna be

the mother of God!"

She's all fingers
and thumbs.

Can't get used to
this new technology.

Preferred the blinding
flash of light

floaty dudes
who were a bit of alright.

She just sends
a "?" back.

Quick as a flash
Gabe texts her back.

"Hey girllll
it's you!"

She texts a curt
!!!NO WAY!!!

Mary panics: " Jesus Christ
I'm way too young to be

having the Son of God!"

She smothers her mobile
under a pillow.

Hoping that it will
just go away.

"BleepbleepbloodyBLEEP!"
it muffles messages.

When she dares to look next
there are like. . .!

69 unread
texts.

"I swear to God!"
she tells herself.
"I'm not having it!"

She deletes
the lot.

Un-friends Gabe & God.

Uses a word that isn't
nice!

"Good riddance to a bad lot!"
she convinces herself.

"I want to be my own
woman!"

Puts on the scarletest lippy.
Cleopatra's her eyes.

Hits the town.
Paints it red.

Ends up in a seedy
karaoke joint

G&T in one hand
mike in the other

belting out:

"Once I was afraid...
I was petrified. . !"

*

How the Annunciation would have panned out in today's technical world of mores and morals and mobiles.

SPRING  DON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER

"Ok..!"  shouted Spring
"I know y'are in there..!"

Spring had the house
surrounded.

It had trees stationed
all about my abode

aiming their apple blossom
straight at me.

Already their perfume
had invaded the room.

I had turned into
THE INCREDIBLE SULK

sunk into
a blue funk

there was to be
no escape from.

Even my reflection wouldn't
look at me.

"OK..!' shouted Spring yet again
"...just look out your window....

surely you can see you
don't stand a chance!"

I couldn't help my self
I gave a panicked glance.

Platoons of daffodils
waiting to charge the house

yelling in yellow.

"Ok fella...this is your last chance
I'm going count to then...."

"Alright....alright...it's a fair cop
I'll come quietly!"

I kicked open the door
hands held above my head.

The trees had me
cornered.

The sunlight had me
blinded.

Happiness...sheer ******...happiness
grabbed me by the heart.

"Ok kid...easy now...easy!"
Spring soothed me

"Everything's gonna be ok...
...Ok?"

I sobbed on its shoulder
threw my despair away.

*

I had broken up with my girlfriend and was absolutely desolate. I would go to work and come home and just sit in my room and stare at the white white walls and the little window as it changed from light to dark and back again and...back again. I just cried and cried. Then one day I was walking to work not paying any attention to anything when all of a sudden I was greeted by a bunch of crocus and they were the first things to enter my mind and catch my imagination.

After a year I had finally noticed that something beautiful could possibly happen. And like the ancient mariner I blessed them even though I could not bless myself and I was blessed for loving the crocus just for the beauty of themselves.

The healing had begun and the voice of that wonderful English anchorite Julian of Norwich penetrated my loss and anguish and revealed to me that yes...yes...believe it or not.. . .

‘all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,’

The poem wrote itself inside my head and by the time the Underground had delivered me to my place of work it had emerged into hastily scribbled form and later that day beside the little window and the white white walls I typed it up and ceased crying bit by bit by bit.

IS TUSA...MO THEACH RÚNDA BEAG
(You Are...My Little Secret House)

my house
a hedge
on my uncle's farm

that only existed
in summer
holiday land

In terms of time
it is the year
called 1963

but that is neither
here nor there
for this is the timeless time

of a small boy who
wishes to be
invisible

found when falling
from a tree
into a fairy tale

hedge of many
years standing
thick and tangled with time

door
?
there is no door

one has
to beat
one's way in

the only door is
pain
and determination

endure the sting
of nettle
the scratch of briar

crying is
the only thing
not allowed

burrs clinging
to curls
and geansaí

transforming you
into a wild
creature

dock leaves stand near by
to take the sting
out of things

the hedge
closing
behind you

but once inside
it blossoms out into
a makeshift  palace

that only
a child could
cherish

a hedgehog
keeps
house

the other
occupants
various creepy crawlies

sunlight now
and then
comes to visit

sometimes
the rain
drops in

gossiping in
drips
and drabs

a roof of bird song
and green
sunlight

a wall of pig squeals
and chicken clucks
moos and barkings

I a creature
amongst
other creatures

sharing this
the same
moment

grateful
I am
for their acceptance

oh I must go. . .
a butterfly
needs to talk to me

LÁ FHÉILE BRIDE - SAINT BRIGID'S DAY

( for Noreen )

even Brigid's statue
protects the little birds
nestling behind her

and as a little garsún
wasn't it to the birds
I would pray

believing that Brigid
was releasing them
to Spring skies

*

St. Brigid's Garrison Church in the Curragh Camp where I was born...this statue was woven into the fabric of my childhood. Birds used to nest behind her wooden cloak. Her cross is the only cross I can bear and was a staple of every Irish home when my childhood was in full bloom. Great story of her going to ask the King for a bit of land to build a convent on and he laughed and said you can have as much as your cloak can cover. So being the good saint she was....she spread her cloak and it covered miles and miles. Never mess with a saint!

Of course it is also the beginning of Imbolc (pronounced 'im'olk')that good old Pagan festival if you are that way inclined.

An Irish word that was originally thought to mean 'in the belly' although many people translate it as 'ewe's milk' (oi-melc)all associated with the pregnancy of ewe and the giving of milk. The Curragh Plains are of course festooned with many many sheep so that made it all the more real for us.

It is a festival based on seasonal changes associated with the onset of lambing and the blooming of the Blackthorn.

She is the Goddess of among other things....those curious creatures we call....poets.

Indeed wasn't auld Jemmy de Joist born the very next day in the wake of her feast day and the days beginning to lengthend.

An old proverb from Scotland tells us....
Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir.

The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.

Spring has indeed been sprung from the depths of winter.

The Statue of St. Brigid & Children can be seen over the main entrance. The statue is eight feet in height and was carved in teak by the late Oisin Kelly who is best known for his The Children of Lir (1964) in the Garden of Remembrance,, Jim Larkin (1977) O'Connell Street and his Chariot of Life (1982) at the Irish Life Center.

And didn't auld Seamus give him a mention in his second "Glanmore Sonnet."

"'These things are not secrets but mysteries',
Oisin Kelly told me years ago
In Belfast, hankering after stone
That connived with the chisel, as if the grain
Remembered what the mallet tapped to know."

So from the wee buachaill I once was I could join the dots from statue to statue and all the way into a Heaney sonnet Brigid lore of yore.

SCHRODINGER'S DOG

Unlike
Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's dog

was always
there

under his feet

hungry for
...his Master's voice...a pat...the sound of his step...

The cat
(like anybody's cat)

couldn't give
a toss

(but that was neither
here nor there) .

It's hard to tell

if it's alive or if
it ain't.

It's one
lazzzzzzy cat.

He's never there
(when you want him to be)

and always there
(when you don't want him to be.)

Quark the cat
was just one big paradox.

The dog
was old and faithful

always
in the box

asleep or gnawing
a bone in thought.

The cat couldn't care
less

a source
of constant

anxiety

about its
whereabouts

and the state
of its health.

Being
neither

here nor
there

or somewhere
else entirely

as if it lived
in a parallel universe.

Lived in a world
of its own.

Thus the theory of
Schrödinger's Cat

proved
(beyond doubt)

that although
cats are nice an' all dat

dogs
are a scientist's

best friend.

*

In 1935, Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in quantum mechanics. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) : in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.[

*

There was a leak in my cistern in the brain stem. I didn't like to play dice with my universe so I called a quantum mechanic in. I asked him if it was bad. He said: Well, it is or it isn't...depending on how you look at it.. It's good for me...bad for you! '

'Now, about that cat? '

'Not that old chestnut....the cat is over 70 now...just fix the cistern will ya! I had the cat poisoned...so that's that! '

'Ohhhhh! '

'Anyway...it was a hypothetical cat! '

'Ya mean it wasn't real? '

'Oh...what is real?

He seemed considerably saddened by this and left without charging for the cistern.
I hate when after all this time Animal Rights activists disguise themselves as plumbers in order to rescue the ****** cat that is neither alive or dead.

Next time it leaks...I'll call a vet.

MEETING MY FATHER AFTER HIS DEATH

Time is a jigsaw
piece
from another

puzzle
other than
this one

that can never ever
fit
some even missing

one a Jackson Pollack
the other another
Jackson Pollack

Death laughs
at my efforts
Time shrinks to a nothing

my father
has evaporated
from this photo

here are his clothes
empty
without him

here
an harmonica
growing dust

I snip bits off of different pieces
in order to make them
fit by force if necessary

and slowly an imperfect
picture forms
made of memories

made of times
held together only
by the glue of love