"what's the longest you stayed up?" jack asks.

"oooh, 5 days, a week. who knows?"

they take the shots, touch glasses,
throw down the bourbon.

"I wonder if animals have dreams?" jack says,
I wonder if dogs dream?"

"sure they do, dogs, cats, squirrels, birds," bob is nodding
his head up and down." it's all biochemical.

"not insects."

"why not? fleas, June bugs, moths. it's all biochemical, mix in electrical impulses, you got love and dreams. jack,

tell your dreams to me."

"BE DE HOKEY!"

uncle's old hat
inhabited now
by a black feral cat

I remember the laugh
always fixed
beneath that hat

forever tilted back
ready with the quick quip
tongue in cheek

his green corduroy trousers
nothing but rags
to shine shoes

first colour photo
we'd ever seen
those green corduroys

were really green
as if the photo was
necessary to prove it

attacking with a pin
the dirt caught
in the green ridges

"See that tree?" he'd tell me
that used to be me but
I grew out of it!"

words loved him
and would do anything
he said

I the small boy
wearing the fabled hat
in the act of being him

wearing the much too big
green corduroys
rolled up...held up by braces

"Be de hokey!"
I'd exclaim
quoting him

"Be de Holy Dublin!"
his catch phrases on my lips
creasing him up

"Hey ya little *****!"
( pretending to be mad )
"Yer better than that Charlie Chaplin!"

me bathing his feet
in a basin after
he put the cows to bed

a black cat
inhabits the now
curled up in Mikey's old hat

*

Dry, droll, laconic and ironic...he taught me just by the example of himself how to create a world from just a bunch of works and shape them until they fitted your thought. Everything could be so surreal and real with him at the one and the same time.The man who made me the poet I am today. One of the three Corkmen who were the treasure of my childhood.

I once went for an interview to get into some college up in Dublin and failed miserably. To merely put me at my ease the interviewer said who are your heroes and I at once said: "My Da, my uncles Seanie and Mikey!" And the interviewer said:" No...I mean real heroes!" And I said:"My Da, my uncles Seanie and Michael." i knew even then that these were the men who were everything to me and shaped who I would be!" Their teachings were tender and gentle and I soaked them up by some emotional osmosis. I still claim that the best part of me today is...THEM.

I so wanted to be you
wanting

the rotting wagon tongue the
lunar dust

I wanted your west
your dying towns

the salmon that swam
upstream

and the girl that giggled and scissor kicked
in your drink

because

I'm a poet and what might
have depressed others

was lush and fertile landscape
to me

but when I traveled your America
I saw saw it

through much cheaper sun glasses
the kind

you might buy at a truck stop
or someplace

like Wall Drug
or an Indian smoke shop

with a neon war bonnet
and that

made all the difference

The Gordian Knot?
¹ The mesh of civilization.

To untie it is to understand it,
To know it.
This is to TIGHTEN it.

To cleave it is to try to conquer it;
It all comes undone,
Never to be re-strung.

You can be Prometheus,
Who was actually always celebrated,
Or you can be Aeneas -
The one who was really ChAINhed to the rock.

What matters is learning,
² All else is for naught.