I hadn't been there in ages, hadn't visited, I had no reason to
But then the Covid virus struck and Dublin where I was working was put into quarantine
I wasn't allowed to go up there anymore to work,
And I had no computer at home and no broadband/ WiFi at the time
So they sent me down to the Old Town
It was nice driving down the motorway, it was Autumn and the leaves they were all changing colour
The different shades of red, brown green and yellow
With the sun shining on the mountains and on the bay
It felt almost like I was going on my holidays,
The Old Town it had changed so much, there were all these new buildings,
Retail parks on the outskirts, hotels, new schools, civic buildings... coffee shops
It was lovely and clean and tidy
Like those living there were really proud of it,
The old town I'd known it was there also, in the background, a bit dusty now
There was the big old gothic church my Dad used take us to, to Mass some Sundays
There was the Port and the big ships along the Quay
There was the secondary school I was meant to go to... had we stayed...it looked old, a bit dilapidated now
I wondered was it still being used as a school,
In the Main Street there were still old names of shops that I recognized
The shoe shop where my Mom used buy us shoes
The chemist where my brother got his glasses... the Bakery
The cinema where we seen our first movie "The Magnificent Seven", it was all done up now... all different...
In the office things were... well...weird! ghostly!
A big modern office and some days I was the only one there, just me all on my own
Was like something out of a Sci-fi movie
Other days maybe two or three might come in to join me
All the others of course, they were all working from home,
Often I'd find my mind just filling with old memories and nostalgia...
I could hear the old ghosts calling, calling me to go back
I knew... I knew I had to go back there
Back to where it had all begun for me
The little seaside village where I was born.

So going home I took the coastal road not the motorway
Just the sight of the headland and the blue mountains sloping down to the sea
With the lighthouse there at the end
Just seeing them again gave me an old feeling of my father, my Dad
And then the village itself, the seafront... all the colourfully painted shops,
Sweet shops & novelty shops, the amusement arcade, pubs and hotels and B&B's  (Bed and Breakfasts)
After being away for nearly fifty years, it still looked...it still looked pretty much the same, was hard to believe
I stopped my car and went into a little supermarket shop to get a sandwich for the next day
As I looked around, I seen these two mature ladies there, they were around my own age
I thought to myself 'I might have gone to school with you once many years ago, one of you might even have been my wife had we stayed here and not moved away
I might have lived a more normal, a different life'
But then I thought 'Life is never that simple, is it'.
Outside I decided to go for a walk, to look around and reminisce.

There was the path, the pavement I used go to school on with my brothers
It was like returning to the scene of a crime
How I used to dread going to school sometimes
There was a teacher, a lady teacher that used scare me a lot, she terrified me so
I remember I got sick in class on several occasions
She put me outside once sitting on an upturned bin
I can still remember sitting there on that bin in the sun, feeling so lost and that I was a really bad boy, wishing I was home
I remember I used to get hives, itches on my skin
My Mom used keep me at home
She was afraid, she thought I'd give them to the other kids
I missed the addition and subtraction tables at school because of this
To this day I still don't know what 7 + 5 is, instead I bring it to 10, I know 5 is 3 + 2, so I say 7 + 3 is 10 and 2 is 12
And I know all the doubles, 7 + 6 is 6 + 6 is 12 and 1 is 13, funny that
How I used to dread going to school
Until that was... until one day I did well at something and I received some praise
Then things seemed to change after that, I wasn't as bothered anymore, I think then I realized I was doing better than some of the others in my class and that seemed to make a difference
I remembered sitting beside pretty little girls who used have lovely pink pencil cases with lots of fancy colourful things
Whereas me I barely had a pencil, a rubber (eraser) and a ruler
They were strange lovely creatures, the Girls with their lovely long hair and their cute little faces...
I remembered walking home on my own, with my little schoolbag on my back with all my books in it
It was such a beautiful place, the view with the beach and the sea and the faraway blue mountains
And yet, I used to worry about so many things
It's like even then it was all about...all about survival...
There was the big Chapel on the hill
Once before the Summer holidays they were looking for altar boys and someone put my name forward
Then on the first morning back to school after the Summer holidays
The teacher said you better get down to the church right away, like fast!! you're on the altar this morning !!!
I was terrified, I didn't know what I had to do, no one told me anything
So there I was on my own kneeling on this cold hard marble altar and it was hurting my knees something terrible
And the priest he's talking about God and the Devil and Evil or Hell or whatever
And all these people, the whole congregation their all staring up at us
And I'm petrified, and I started to get faint and nauseas
The priest had to stop the Mass
I can't remember if I got sick or passed out
I was so embarrassed and thought afterwards I was such a terrible bad person, I knew it'd be all around the school the story.

I walked on...our house was gone, knocked down, where there used to be three houses together attached, now there was only the end house
Our house used to be the middle house
It didn't look right now, the symmetry looked all wrong
It was like there was two missing teeth
Why did they have to knock it down ? I wondered. It saddened me a bit...

At another house I stopped, this used to have a shop, a small shop,  the shop was no longer there
This was my Best Friend's house, all the days we used to play football together in the back garden
Kicking the ball to each other
With our jumpers/ sweaters as goalposts
The first to score ten would win the game
I...I usually won
I always found you easy to read, it's like you only ran in straight lines,
I think you were a bit in awe of me for some reason
Maybe you wouldn't have been my friend if you'd beaten me
How did we become friends anyway, I wondered
I suppose coming home from school
We lived on the same road and were in the same class, we'd have met each other
I had two older brothers whereas you were the oldest
So our families would have had a different dynamic
I remember you had a delightfully silly younger brother
I remember your Mom, she was very pretty, she was a lot younger than my Mom
You used bring me in and give me a meal sometimes, we'd all sit and watch TV
There was a different feeling when I was in your house...a different atmosphere
But when your Dad would come home, he was a bit scary
And I knew it was then time for me to go home
You'd wonder afterwards what the lovely Mom saw in the scary Dad, adults they were a bit peculiar.

We were inseparable in those days, many mornings you'd hear the knock on the door
And the familiar greeting
"Hello Mrs B---, Is G---- in, is he coming out to play?"
We were always playing soccer up the garden
Or down on the beach, going out for miles to meet the tide, catching *****, looking under  stones to see what we might find
I remember we were very entrepreneurial
In the Summer we used collect returnable glass mineral bottles, Orange and Lemonade and Coca Cola
And we'd bring them back to the shop and get money back for them
And then we'd have a royal feast, we'd buy bottles of Orange and bags of crisps and ice cream pops and chocolate bars,
Remember all the different Ice pops there used to be, Choc Ices and Brunches and Orange splits, 99's... Ice cream cones
Chocolate bars, Smarties and Malteasers, Milky Bars and Milky Ways, Dairy Milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and Love hearts with little love messages written on them
We used hang around the amusement arcade, play the slot machines, maybe help some old lady collect her winnings, she might give us a tip
There was the bumper cars and the swingboats and music playing all the time on the jukeboxes
It was the seventies (the 70's) and glam rock was all the rage
Marc Bolan and T-Rex, and Slade and The Sweet and a million others
So many great songs, we couldn't wait to grow up and become one of those amazing creatures we saw on the telly
I'd never lived since as intensely as I did back then,
We'd stay out till late
We were like young hustlers going around,
It seemed the days they were never long enough, all the things we got up to,
We'd Caddy in the local golf course
And retrieve lost ***** from the ditches...
Heh! Remember... remember that time... the Brennan sisters, we were up one day near the school
There was building work going on
And there was this big high mound of clay
So we climbed to the top to take in the view
And then the two Brennan sisters came over
They lived nearby
They were in our class at school, we knew them only to see
They were smiling and laughing and giggling
They beckoned for us to come and follow them
We went wondering what was going on here
They led us back to their house, I think their parents must have been out
One of them came up to us and smiled
And then she pulled down her pants and showed it to us in all its wonderful glorious splendour
It was amazing... incredible... such a sight
Her beautiful...her splendid... her lovely... bare Bottom!
I remember thinking it was like a lovely ripe pear
One of Life's great mysteries had just been unveiled
And her there with this huge impish grin,
When we were going home we promised each other we'd not tell anyone, our parents, not even the priest in confession
About that great vision we'd just witnessed
It was the height of naughtiness
Yea! Those were the days...

I wondered, 'Whatever became of you Old Friend ?
I looked you up online but couldn't find your name anywhere, couldn't find anything about you
Were you even still alive ?
50 years was a long time, I'd barely made it this far myself, and I had a lot of scars to show for it
I thought rather amusingly that I should knock on your door
Maybe you were still living there,
But what was I hoping to find ? I wondered...
"Whose at the door ?", a woman's Voice inside might say,
"Just... just some crazy guy talking about 50 years ago" her dutiful husband would reply
That's probably how it would go
I felt like I was Rip Van Winkle awakening after being asleep for 100 years or in my case 50 years
What did I hope to find
What did I hope to see, an old man now just like myself
And I bet you'd tell me your opinions on the government and the economy
And how the village had changed over the years and how other old schoolmates of ours had got on in life
But No! that's not what I wanted to hear or see
I wanted to see you there again just like you were as a little kid
Your lovely youthful face smiling back at me
And you'd say, "I'll get the ball and we'll have a game, the first to ten wins"
This was what I was looking for, this was what I wanted to hear.

We were very close, were going to grow up together, go to the same schools...college
We'd always be friends
We'd meet all the trials of life together....
I hope Life worked out well for you, my friend
In a way...in a way I almost didn't want to know
If I learned you did well in Life I'd probably only get jealous
I'd start to think I was better than you and that I should have had those things you had
Life, this world it makes enemies of us all... eventually
It divides, is all about competing and comparing... and beating (I suppose).

I still remember that last night before I left forever
We were down on the beach, it was twilight, the tide was coming in... the waves slowly advancing
Just like in life I had no power to stop it, to change things,
I had no say, I didn't want to go and leave you Old Friend
No! I didn't want to go....

Thank you...thank you for being my friend, for being there
For all the time you gave me, I hope I didn't hurt you in any way.

I have a photograph, one solitary old black and white photo of the two of us
We're sitting on a barrel in our back garden on either side of my Dad whose in the middle
You look a bit uncertain, unsure of yourself, probably lost in the dynamic of my family,
I look at you and I think
"Whatever happened to you.... Beautiful Friend, whatever became of you"
And then I look at myself as well, and I think, I whisper
"Whatever became of me as well".

a grandchild
   for her 9th birthday
very happy
    to be away from her older
   as well as her younger sister
  for a while
spent a  long weekend
with her grands

   they picked her up
   schoolbag and bathing suit
   and guitar & everything else

she had already mentioned
   that French Toast for breakfast
would be REALLY nice
and that’s what she got
together with chocolate milk
   1 minute in the microwave,
   according to her wish
patiently reading her book
while the oldies got their act together
   in their slow morning routine

they all went birthday shopping
   & out for lunch
she read her book again while the oldies
    were snoring their nap
& then they all had great fun
    swimming and horsing around in the public pool

watching some TV  
   & improving her ping-pong game
happy & tired
after dinner some goodnight reading
doughnuts and hot chocolate for breakfast
next morning
   and then
    with grandma’s help
printing out a card for Mom on Mother’s day
AND baking real  brownies as a gift….

a happy & proud 9-year old
   was delivered to her parents
& presented her mother with the card
   & the brownies & the new dress
   & the homework all done

somehow
the guitar practice had gotten lost

yet she was the envy of her siblings
for the day

           * *

I had a bone, so I threw it in the bush... I guess this ***** doesn't believe in things that are far fetched.
Out of your schoolbag, give me pen & ruler, cause this is where I will draw the line.
Nowadays I get curious... (Like a young boy who never got the answer to the Question, "Where do babies come from?")
Sometimes life and living are completely two different things: Like a young mother telling a biology student that he never had a Father...  
I'm a Skinny guy with big fat imagination... Size doesn't matter, Does that make you feel any better?
Nah! We both know where babies come from. But we both don't know which direction babies are going to...
Nine-months later, the truth always comes out... I am Father to Poetry... But I'm not yet ready to be Father, so the EXIT sign is a must...

#Hello, Goodbye.

The teeth of hierarchy flash
a scowled curse in quick lightening.

This hard edge does not hunger for food.

His, is a stare into a desert battle-ground:
dry-rasping, gaunt and unforgiving,

A Goliath.
And me - envious of stones in the desert.
The '*******’ in the eye of his razor.

My punishment waits like a
missionary’s head in a bucket
(its smile still praising in a tribal trophy necklace).

His armoured lips sip hot-dipped darkness
deep from the volcano.

The boy in class with my blood in his schoolbag.
The teacher dripping words of impatience onto my flight plan.

Head down, writing escape from the demon
Furiously - until the last bell.



MChallis © 2015

I fell asleep
To the smell of antiseptic,
Sterilizer, biogesic,
And the cold touch of metal
Rods that only seem
To grow colder
With the touch of hospital
Left in the student's
Ward - a whistle

Permeates the silence
Of seniors
Painlessly sleeping away
Hours upon
Hours until graduation -
A coming of age -
An escapism from past papers
And teachers who have
Themselves given up
On them.

And the lights you
See are as bright
And as empty as those blinking
Feebly
In that of the school doctor's
Office, one not really
Blinking more of
Washed, and supported
Wobbling by daylight
Seeping in through peeling blinds,
Unable to see too much -
The headaches and stomachaches
Have rendered him numb
To the feeling.

And lunch comes
And out blows the whistle to
Signify the end
Of playtime for
The young ones, start
Of playtime for
The older ones,

Whistle blowing muffled
By the septic tank glass
Doors of this sacred outhouse,
Wards muffling the cries of children
As they flee the quadrangle,
Once mad, twice elated,
Still innocent, untired,
Not needing to fake sick
And rest their heads softly

Upon thin soft beds with
Towels wrapped haphazardly
Behind their backs,
Nostalgia, it was

Laughter, I swear it was louder
When we used to run,
When our eyes lit up like
The sun petering in through
The doctor's orifices,

When our bruises and bumps
Smelled like betadine,
Not sleep
And cups of sterile water downed
To mask the scent of
Fake cough syrup,
And cuts gotten from fiddled syringes,
Bruised ankles
Bent over undersized beds,

And not running over
Uneven pavement,
Ankles brushing tablecloth,
Schoolbag,
Basketball and frisbee,

And the screaming.

Oh, how I miss
The screaming.

with all my  tensions i came to a quite place
waterfall nearby and single bench to sit
from where you can look entire surface
i don't knew what it had that made me fit

I picked up my schoolbag and went on my way,
seeing those beautiful things which no one can pay,
I saw those green grass which stood straight,
my watch showed the message I was late.

I went to my busy city,
everywhere , every time noisy,
at once from terrace I was able to see,
village life with all its glee.

A school bag against a wall,
paint peeling at the edges, grass growing
upwards, clinging to life
between the cracks of the pavement.

A hand on the school bag
clenched around the handle,
fingers pressed together,
curled, and the nails press into the heel of the palm.
They leave dark little crescents.

A boy;
he curls tighter against the wall,
a shadow throws itself over the bruise on his chin.

The boy pulls his school bag towards him,
rests his bruise on it. His fingers grasp
at the worn weave of it.
Eyes close, wrinkle shut.
Obscure all other senses,
so hearing is the sharpest.

Not yet, not yet. No footsteps yet.

Breath shudders, suppressed
from flaring nostrils.
Barely escapes from his lungs,
that are squished against all his other organs,
in that winding space of a box
compressing all of his organs.

No footsteps, no footsteps yet.

Breathe, breathe.

Footsteps.

Laughter, slinking around the corner,
ahead of the approaching group.
It plunges into the taught space of his ears.
Echoes there.
Thumps against his skull.
Footsteps.

A school bag, pressed tight against a boy,
who wraps his person around it,
begs it to be a shield.

A hand, curling into a fist.
Footsteps.

A boy,
and three others.
Three grin,
one does not.
He can't see their teeth, his eyes are stuck tight.

"Look at this pathetic ****."
A slap of sole on pavement.
A boy stepping forward,
body harsh.

A flinch.

A laugh.

"******* hell, I can't even be bothered."

Footsteps.

A high, quiet sob.

Fingers on a schoolbag, loosen.

I’ve become  invisible
Maybe it’s a virus and I’ve just got a touch,
The automatic shop door didn’t open so I’m left in a lurch,
Even when  I stood on the spot once blessed by the church.
Then the shop attendant missed me in the queue,
A car nearly knocked me on the footpath too.
Clearly I’m unseen.

As this progresses will my eyelids become translucent?
With my eyes shut how will I sleep?
Maybe I should wear dark glasses and not take a peek.
If I wear clothes will it be funny?
I will definitely get a job as a shop window dummy.
Is that what happens in the invisible limbos,
We become manikins in shop windows,  
Watching the world looking at them,
What we the invisible will be able to tell.

From my shop window I imagine at half past eight,
The people hang out or just walk past straight.
Starting with the kids skipping school,
Uniform tucked in schoolbag to fool,
Shopping bag used for energy joule,
Inhaling glue this hallucinatory fuel.
Each step these children take,
One step closer to heartbreak.

Then the anxious wife meeting her lover.  
Leaving behind her domestic bliss,
Sealed this morning with a husband’s watery kiss.
Waiting awkwardly in her Totoro dress,
One button behind and a zip does the rest .
Trying hard to be invisible too
This could all end in her being blue.

The rushing shop manager dressed in a suit.
Cuffs worn thin, pens in a group,
Red, blue and black,
A tick for success or none for the lack.
Mumbling along the company mantra,
“Think outside the box” there’s as good fella.
The only box he has ever known,
Are the imaginary boundaries in which he has grown.


A dog and his master trundle along.
He has been dead for years as he moves on,
Wearing a shroud of a used up life,
The dog squats down beside the tree of life.
Observing this stool in the daylight,
He compares to the Hematochezia he did last night.

A husband contemplating murdering his wife,
As the news of her lover has just come to light.  
He looks at the manikin with some delight,
Seduced by its empty invisible soul,  
Only to discover he owns that hole.

Then evening descends the lights are all up,
When work is all over it’s off to the pub.
Not for the invisible manikin though,
Who stays in the window dressed in a bride’s trousseau.
An invisible exhibitionist this poor sod,
So when you walk past it's polite to nod.
Now I’ll take two Aspirin and a cup of coco
And hope to God this invisibility will go go.

Grim drops slowly through the window
His front door's broken, the lock is gone
On the way home from school he saw an omen
It told him tonight would be long.

Grim shouts his mother get your lazy **** over here
And Grim shouts his father get in here and bring me a beer.

Grim drops his schoolbag and walks to the kitchen
And plonks down a beer on the table for father to drink
With his TV show watching the Simpsons
As mother lies hazily under the influence
Grim leaks slowly up the staircase
Into his room with the chain on the door

He pours himself into bed, lies on his back
He looks at the clock and he's sure
Eleven eleven, it's one one one one
It's the omen his demons have told him about

Wish on a star they said, and if that doesn't work
Wait til the clock pulls you out of all doubt.

Grim waits for nightfall
He doesn't have dinner
He's been getting thinner
But no one has seen.

He seeps from the bedroom
Down stairs and through hallways
He knows he is going where he hasn't been.

Grim please don't do it his friends would all say
(If he had any friends but he doesn't)

You know teachers despair of him
Teenagers laugh at him
Old ladies scared of him

GO ****** GO

Grim sets his face to determined
He runs down the path to the cliff
He launches himself from the edge and he flies

For a wonderful moment
A heartrending moment
A glorious screamingly awesomest moment

And then...

Then all is Grim.

they call me a nymphet
my narrow hips budding *******
my glowing skin rosebud lips
in the sun where i rest...
older women are fat and cold
with porous skin and dyed hair
they haven't their blades like gold
salient and bare
they haven't their thighs like ivory
of thin ivory are mine
i'm british and brattish
they're just fine
they call me a nymphet
with my schoolbag hanging
from my frail shoulder
decadent and delicate
please just for a while
not a nymphet
but a hurting child

My! The beach it looks so cool today
With the sun shining down, the tide in
The golden sands, the lovely blue sea
How I'd love to be down there now,
    messing about among the rocks
Fishing for *****, looking in the rock
    pools
Paddling through the water,
    swimming out in the tide,
Having a picnic with my Mom; she'd
    have the blanket laid out
For us all to sit upon
She'd have lovely scones with butter
    and strawberry jam
And lovely hot sugary tea
And "Go on, go get an ice cream from
    the ice cream man".

But No! I can't, I've got to go to school
    today
With this heavy schoolbag strapped to
    my back with all my books in it
Yea, I got to go to school today and
    face the scary teacher
The way she shouts at us and
    brandishes that ruler of hers
And she'll slap you if you don't have
    the right answer
Scary! Scary! Teacher
She's not at all like my Mother, my
    Mom she's so soft and kindly.....
And she worries a lot I can tell, Mom
    you mustn't worry,
She looks so sad sometimes I could cry.

At school how time, it moves so slow
O! I wish, how I wish I didn't have to  
    go
As children we're all thrown together,
    it gets so noisy and there's quarrels
And some of the bigger boys from the
   older classes
Their nasty, they push you around
    and want to fight with you.

Coming back to class from the
    toilets sometimes, on my own
I stop there & look out the door at
    the empty playground
The leaves blowing in the wind, the
    sparrows busy about
And then I look at the school gates and
    I think
" Beyond those school gates lies Home"
How I wish then I could just run home
I'd run and I'd run
Run past the gates of the houses with
    their angry barking dogs
I'd run ! Run the whole way, I wouldn't
    stop:
I want to be at home with my Mom
Up in my room with my books, my
    comics and toy soldiers.

But No! they say the Guard(policeman)
    he'd be doing his rounds now
And if he was to see you, he'd catch
    you
And then there'd be trouble then, Big
    Big! Trouble!!!
Mum would be brought down and Dad
    would have to be told too
At least, that's what they tell me,
More trouble for Mum
So I can't - I must go to school then.

Yes! I've got to go to school today and
    face again the scary teacher
At least I got my homework done, but
    there's still so much
I don't understand...so many things...
    so many things to learn,
Scary! Scary! Teacher! she never looks
    happy
She laughs at us and calls us bad
    names
Just sitting there we tighten up inside,
    under her gaze
And we pray "please don't ask me,
    please don't ask me
Please don't call out my name",
How we watch that clock up on the
    wall
Praying for 3 o'clock to arrive.

Why is it I had to come to this place?
    Why!!!
I don't want to be here, I want to be at
     home with my Mom.

Yes! I'd love to be down there today on
    the beach
But I got to go to school today.

SPEEDING TO THE FULL STOP

She went to school so nicely dressed, schoolbag in hand.
Her mother blessed her little head, adjusting her school band.
She is the hope of mother and her home.
They see in her the pledge that life will bloom.

Days turn and in a wink she is a mum.
She sends her child to school and waits for her to come.
Her child in turn becomes her life and hope,
and days go on while we are drunk with dope.

What is the reason for all that great fuss?
Life goes on while we are in lightspeed bus.
We are so happy and we live with hope
while days go on just having one full stop.

The sun is born with glorious shine,
and each man says, " Today is mine."
All of a sudden it folds up in past,
and life goes by; no days or hope will last.

BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
___________

WE THREE

Sweeney goes down
on one knee

gathers the ball
safely to himself

before releasing to
the foot of Dwyer.

"Dinger!" he yelps
with pin point accuaracy .

"Thanks Ger!"
Dinger smirks as he chips

the ball over his own
and the defender's head

pivoting/turning
on the proverbial sixpence.

Dinger Dwyer
scorches down the left wing.

Then stops...lays back
at an angle of say 43 degrees.

Impossible to prove
without a protractor

in order to create the cross
that will arrive to me...Dempsey

in exactly say
another 7.7 seconds.

"Dinger!Dinger!Dinger!" I yell
like a little bell on legs.

"Ok memory...
can we stop it there?"

"Sure boss!"
Memory complies.

Time stops.
Enabling us to see Dinger

leap from his body
and run to where

he expects to place
the ball ...right...there

He draws an X
on the air

just like the Spot
the Ball competitions.

He has already chiselled
the ballistic progress of the ball

upon this summer evening
clear as a diagram.

Dinger then runs back
to his slanted body and

pops back into
his self again.

"Ok Memory you can
roll it from there!"

We gasp at
the perfect parabola of the pass.

I am not where
I should be.

Both the Murphy boys
have manged to turn me.

So that now I am
running backwards to

the waiting cross
"Blast. . .!" I am

not going to get
on the end of it.

No magnificent right footer.
No ****** brilliant header.

So I fling myself
straight up in the air

settle there as if I were
reclining on an invisible chaise lounge.

And: almost casually
indeed elegantly

raise a lazy right leg
going for the overhead

bicycle kick
that usually has me

fall flat on face
or ouch ****.

Shaking my skeleton
to the core.

I have the physics
of it down pat.

Even the quantum uncertainty
I only laugh at.

I am a human
vector.

"Only connect!"
Foster whispers in my ear.

Time. Now.
Timeless.

I with all the time
in the world

****** into this
one second.

This second of all
seconds.

The ball whistles
past Mike Murphy's left ear.

A real stinger.
I thank God for a Dinger.

It rockets between
the jumpers and schoolbag goalposts.

Rolls all the way
past the Power Station and beyond

to Sgt. Major Dwyer's plot
who stops  foot on a *****'s lug.

Chases away
a persistent wasp.

My mother across the road
at No. 31 O' Higgins Road

lulls her newest newborn
lullabies him in his pram.

This is the only time
I will ever be

great
morphing  into my hero

Denis Law.
I now a Law unto my self.

I and my icon
blending into one.

The one armed raised salute
fingers gripping the cuff of the shirt

all the better to wipe
the snotty nose.

It seems as if
it couldn't have

been any other way
than this.

The Sweeney/Dwyer/Dempsey magic.
We the small Gods of this little time

that exist now
only in my mind.

Shakespeare is going mad
in the commentary box

his voice echoing in so
many wireless sets

the Bard's spittle
flecking the mic.

"How now, my hearts?"
Shakespeare searches for the words.

"Did you never see
the picture of we three."