"mael" poems
Against the sands of Clontarf
You can hear the Ocean roar;
And, within the waves, a whisper,
of men in battle and in lore.
Brian led the men of Munster
that Good Friday, Ten Fourteen.
His opponent was the brother
of his good for nothing queen.
The men of Leinster were allied
with Vikings from abroad.
Mael Morda, king of Leinster
Was the leader of their horde.
Five thousand men of Munster
were arrayed upon the heights.
The foeman came in Dragon ships
And here began the fight.
Brian prayed for victory
as his six sons led his side.
The slaughter was tremendous
And blood red ran the tide.
The Viking, Bodir, found Brian
Kneeling, praying, in his tent .
His battle axe laid Brian low
And soon his life was spent.
The Viking ships were scattered
By the angry, raging sea.
Thus many of their men were drowned
in their attempt to flee.
It was a famous victory
retold in verse and song.
Both sides were decimated
So many brave sons gone.
Our national identity
Was born of this shared past.
Nine centuries were still to come
ere Ireland would be free at last.
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 5:31 PM UTC
questioning my core competency
_______________________________
*man or woman, an irrelevancy,
we all believe that we possess
certain core competencies that
reflect our managerial skills, the
hows of how we organize and smooth
the daily mishmash of our otherwise
would-be-totally-hellish-lives*
minor stuff, that have the risk potency
of the skinny tail of the curve, where the
highly improbable
seems to happen as if regularly scheduled.
let the gas tank go to E, worse, unnoticeably,
but on a small isle, with no AAA, a single gas station,
in howling wind, and summer rain mael-strom,
forced to risk a brief trip over hilly terrain, fearful of
being gas poor on the stuck-side of the road, with
no one to call, no savior to summon, and my sense
of self, now shattered-glass on the side of the road.
*did I mention that the night prior when the situation
was yellow lit to get my immediate attention, I had
forgotten my instrumental human connectivity, my
Inshallah cell phone (1), at our dining out restaraunt,
making necessary a seven point four mile R/T detour,
to preserve my integrity, pride, communicability, and
the few(er) left, shards of my lesser antilles’ ego and pride.*
turns out that even on E, for long periods, you still
can go some distance for the car designers, all liars,
to nice people like me, leave a gallon reserve undisclosed,
for the vain and statically stupid of which I am a member.
more details of my ineptness, shameful, shall not be herein revealed, but when we meet, gladly be disclosed over alcohol.
*but it is now between the hours of nine and ten AM, and despite
imbibing 22.5. ozs. of Jamaican coffee, I return to bed,
having made it to the local station with gnawed knuckles,
and chewed lower lip,
lower the shades, announce to no one in particular, hello,
do not disturb, for-up-all-night-poet-ite, is exhausted the
exhaust of depression, for his core competencies have
been renamed, now and forever, his*
gored incompetencies!
p.s. E, having consulted the owner’s manual,
stands for more precisely ,
Empty Headed
Jul 16, 2023
Jul 16, 2023 at 10:14 AM UTC