BEYOND THE CLOUDS

He runs
for the sheer joy

of being
a little boy.

"Brian...Brian!"
I try to rein him in

with my voice but
he escapes even that.

"Watch out...watch out!"
I throw the words at him

"Or you'll hit
that cloud!"

Two clouds glower at him
and he stops in his tracks

suddenly uncertain if
that is possible.

And so perspective
cowers my little brother

and he runs back
holds my hand.

We tiptoe past
the threatening clouds

leaving them behind
he laughing nervously.

Now far far from that time
beyond even death

I call his name
and he turns

runs and
takes my hand.

The clouds can only
look on.

WALKING FROM THE RISING SUN TO KILDARE TOWN.

I take up
my stick &

walk:
back into my past.

Planting the countryside
of my youth

with each step
the years falling away.

The young me unfolds
into being.

The flag of self unfurls
snaps into the lost moment.

My shadow strides
ahead of me

impatient with this
flesh and blood man.

My shadow stops
waits for me to

catch up
catch my breath.

He stares at me
with broken dandelion eyes

a green milk bottle top
mimics a nose

a leaf acted
as a smile.

I laugh at this me
created by chance

and happenstance
step once more

into my shadow's footsteps
let it lead the way.

A tree which had been
there since I had been three

sarcastically remarks" "Oh, is it
yer self that's...in it?"

"It is!" says I
addressing the sky

spread before me
a vast blue field.

Furze blazes
with yellow.

Horses turn to
the gallops.

The sudden thunder of hooves
jockeying with laughter.

I left here to
make something of myself.

I, then...a nervous nobody
returning now

a mere nothing
a success only at failure.

I recite Hopkins
to a straying sheep.

The sheep suspiciously
regards this poet

hitting his stride now
"Nothing is so..."

The sheep coughs.

"... beautiful as
Spring!"

I tell a passing cloud
who is in too much of a hurry.

The poet's proud words
falling by the wayside

as me-then and
the me of now

stroll down
(cane nonchalantly in hand)
memory lane.

The Future hiding just

up around the

corner.

*

Set off with my chipped ankle and on a stick forgetting how far it would be....so it was my past revisited me and came to view this hobbly old man who claimed he was once this young boy!
All it proved was that I was an auld codger who didn't know his left foot from his right! But by God I can limp a good 4 miles as well as any other auld fella.

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 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 bluer greener
than anyone could ever know

LET DEATH BE IRISH

"I see Death..." she whispers
" like a retirement plan
living was such hard work."

she talks as if
Death itself
was standing by her bed

"The grapes and fruit?
no I never eat 'em
I just sketch 'em!"

sunlight slithers
across the hospital floor
sneaks under her bed

"My reflection
escapes the mirror.
Nothing  but...nothing there."

"As for my shadow
it comes...it goes
a slave of the sun."

"Only my ghost
sits on my bed
chats to me

about how
things
are to be."

"I hope Death is Irish
and says:  'Ah howya pet
are ya comin' or wot?'"

*

When I used to visit her before she got so ill I would always call out to her: 'Ah howya pet are ya comin' or wot?'" and she would take my arm and we would trundle off around her garden or the park if she could mangae it that day.

When she was in hospital and could no longer even stand up I would put her arm through mine and we would go for a walk in words as I would tell her what was to be seen.

She loved this as much as the real thing and to her now it was even the more realer as I held her up with my voice perambulating through an imaginary park.

When she wanted one of these flignt of fancy walks she would always say to me:' Ah howya pet are ya comin' or wot?'" And off we would go walking in the footsteps of my voice.

IN THE AFTER-TIME

" Alice thought she
had never seen such

a curious croquet
ground in all her life; "

It was somewheres near
Roswell

18 something and something
there or there...abouts

& Billy the Kid &
the boys have just

...paused:

in their croquet
for a tintype photo.

Billy's the guy
in the cardigan sweater.

Him & his gang
( the Regulators )

are posing like
they were a prototype

for
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

or the band
THE BAND.

Pure Americana.

Billy the cardi-cowboy and
his gang of croquet playing outlaws...

Not exactly how
one would have  somehow

imagined them
. . .passing the time.

One of the outlaw...eh...gentlemen

points out that
Billy

" . . .the Kid has spooned
his shot!"

A ricochet of tobacco coloured
spittle hits a spittoon.

Silence congeals
about the accusation.

Now, whether Billy has
merely pushed the ball

silently through rather than
soundly hit it

is:
neither here nor there.

A cold revolver
clicks &

"I says I hit it...I hit it
get it?"

The other gentleman outlaw
begs to agree.

"Ok, Billy boy...keep yer
cardi on!"

And so, we leave them
there

in the croquet craze of
1878.

Time like a yellow ball
hit through hoop after

hoop until: it arrives
at this

present...NOW!

And a photo found in a store
for a dollar or a few dollars more

repays the expense
by morphing into

the 5 million dollar
photo.

But I hit the ball
back through hoop after

hoop after hoop

until it arrives back
at Billy's boot.

And a voice cries:
"Ok, kid...play!"

EVEN NOW, NOW, VERY NOW...

here your laughter
fastened to the air
with a little twistof memory

Time
spell stopped
as it were

your laughter
pinned to this
particular place

this
little scrap of sky
and field

that to an unobservant  eye
would mean nothing
...nothing at all

but see,your laughter
unfurls its flag of self
snapping in the stiff wind

of what's
lost is
lost

this
simple second
alive for ever

I pick it as
I would a flower
untouched

by either
time or
death

*

The title is from Othello...


“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”

Guy de Maupassant

THE LAST PATCH OF DARK

the night had come & gone
pulling up its last patch of dark
gone like a carney in the morning

now there was
just a patch of dry grass
the sun sitting on it

the night had left
behind it a few scattered condoms
beer cans and a discombobulated *******

now that the day held sway
it was hard to imagine
the night had ever been

the ******* had blown away
children caught condoms on a stick
only the beer cans remained

soon the day
grew tired of itself
shadows gnawing at its sunlight

and so the night returned
whether it was a new night or the old one
was difficult to tell

*

The night before laughter spilling out into the dark as performers strutted their stuff...clowns fell over themselves and then just the gone-ness of it all leaving just the ******* and whatever was left behind. It seemed as if humanity had been wiped out...desolate was the word.

WE ARE LEGEND...WE ARE MYTH

"Donall
Seanie...
SeanieDonall!"

My uncle & me
we are legend
we are myth

escaping from my auntie's voice
tracking us down
I sitting in the saddle of his neck

his curls my reins
traveling the world
on his giant shoulders

my uncle hearing
voices in his head
afraid of other humans

who hunt the thoughts
he's thinking
wanting to keep himself for himself

our beings fused
into one joyfulness
uncle & boy morphing into centaur

we are legend we are myth
we hide in haystacks
from her hounding voice

roam fields where ever empty spaces
takes us until there is only us
he more little boy than even I

"Keep me company!"
he pleaded
his thoughts all curly like his hair

we now one another
the last lost centaur
galloping off into a time

that no longer exists
we are legend
we are myth

*

and the boy grew out of my head
where I had stuffed him on my shoulders
and I became his walker of worlds

galloping across fields
running away from the voices
inside my head

that eat my thoughts
this boy I uncle
has become my mind for me

minds me
soothes the voices lies to the voices
tells them  I have vanished

into the mystery of myself
and the voices fall for it
I watch them retreat

I move my feet n giant steps
the boy growing out of my head
sees the world for me

tames the world for me
so that I can laugh whinny & neigh
like the human horse I have become

no longer confused
fused into one being
him & me

drinking in a sunset
sniffing rain on the wind
galloping across time time.

. . time
time. . .
out of mind

I FOREVER HIS GRAVE

he stares at the German
the German stares at him
one of them is dead...he hopes...it's not him

the German's blonde hair
streaked through
with mud and blood

he could be looking
almost at himself
they share the same face

the same moustache
the same mole
on the left cheek

Death's little joke
it looks like he has
killed himself

he's surprised
to find himself
still alive

"I had to **** him
in order to be in
the next moment!"

"Odd to think
that your death was necessary
for me to be alive!"

the wallet shows
a typical family...a typical wife
her name is Hildegard

they long for him
to come home
to them

"I've no one
waiting for me
not even myself!"

here he remains
buried in my mind
I forever his grave


*

This comes from a nice old fellow I used to look after and he told me all his WW2 stories and of his Da's in the First World War. He told me of his Da having to **** a German in hand to hand combat...the first man he had ever killed and how much physically they had both looked like each other so much so that he thought he was killing himself. He had to **** many more men in his war but this first man was the one he always remembered. Not only because they could have been twins but because this was the taboo of killing broken and the next time and the next time didn't matter. They came through a misty graveyard and both soldiers were surprised and startled to see each other. Later the graveyard was bombed and the long dead and the recently dead were thrown up into the air. After experiencing such horror....real life back at home...could never be the same. He said he was forever killing that one German.

SONG OF THE SCYTHE

my uncle
sits cross-legged
the shiny sickle

of the scythe
held in
his hands

as if he had pulled down a moon
wrestled it to the ground
tamed it

he looks like a friendly
Death
having a tea break

nothing dies
in these seconds
the world holds its breath

the scythe winces
with light
so sharp it can cut thought

it cuts through
what I am
thinking now

the whetstone sings
to the curve
of the metal

it cuts through Time
sharper sharper each time
my mind bleeds

it cuts through each successive
second so that each second is
separate from the rest

the song the whetstone
sings to the scythe
scares me

my Uncle
takes a horsehair
from Dolly’s tail so

softly she thinks it’s still there
the scythe eagerly
divides it into two

Dolly whinnies
nuzzles him
affectionately

he runs his thumb
along the blade
blood sings in the open air

he ***** it
“Perfect! ”
he smiles

“Perfect! ”
the world
catches its breath

*

Waiting for my turn to go on at Brighton...my poems placed carefully upon the table didn't realise how near a nite light was and up go the poems in flames. A barman had to come down and put me out with a tea towel. Just then I'm called upon to read and there is just enough of the poem left alive for me to read!

ALWAYS

stillborn
you are still
our little girl

BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian D)  

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 Dónall! '
she always
smiles

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

me the man
I am
because of you

CHIPS AND LAUGHTER

the knife
is pulled out of
the back

the poison
is spat out and
the dead come back

they stand
before us
joyful

& our joy joins theirs
like waves
that crash

upon the sands
of our senses
& Time turns back

to the ordinary moment
we stand
& clap

these our actors
(which we see before us)
take their bow

soak up
the applause
& dash behind

the safety of the curtain
that has come down
between their world & ours

we enter into
the coldness of the night
our breaths like spirits

speaking for us
the actors' dreams
still clutched like flowers

in our hands
& wander on
drawn now

to the lovely laughter
of our Hamlet
eating chips with Ophelia


and so
our play
ends


*

Found the backstage antics more fascinating than the play itself...all the dramas that the human lives have to contain whilst sustaining being a Hamlet during the two hour traffic of the stage just to maintain the illusion of the story for us. Meanwhile back at the real human being...

DO THE MATH

the eternal triangle
she more equilateral
hubby more isosceles/lover really scalene

husband a right angle
she an acute
lover definitely a bit obtuse

she saw her men
as a better behaved
set of simultaneous equations

exponential emotions
quite easily done
the Q.E.D. of it all

MY EARLY LIFE AS A CHILD

when I was a child
I lived without time
never gave it second thought

I lived in the now
there was no before or after
I was merely me

being me
in an eternal
present

much like the cat
who never gave tomorrow
the time of day

it appeared that I
had always existed
and would forever do

just
to be
that was me

a piece of sunlight
tripping over a stone
a footstep left in mud

was world enough
to be going on with
just to be the miracle

time it seemed
had never owned me
I was just Planet Dónall

Dempsey-ing along
to my heart's content
laughter my only language

in love with
a world and the world
madly in love with me

CREATING THE WORLD

the sky was walking
around the world
the land trying to keep up

the weather can not
make its up its mind
what to be

"Whatever!"
the weather
thinks to itself

the sky was keeping
its clouds in order
whilst managing a sunset

the land was out of breath
becoming only a shadow
of its former self

the sky and the land
now the same dark
until the moon is turned on

*

Waking with my little one she suddenly came out with the fact that 'the sky was walking around the world' and so the rest of the words made themselves up on the spot. A poet should always carry his three year old for inspiration....she always seeing the world in her own image. Tilly creating the world.

TIME'S ARROW

so: once again
my time machine
fails to work

I curse
and now
my mobile is gone

missing
where ever
could it be

but unbeknownst to me
my mobile has been
transported

back into
the very distant
past

where Cleopatra
takes a selfie
and laughs

she even adopts
the selfie pout
loves her magic machine

takes pic after pic
does my nose look
too big in this

previous pics
depict her with
"Caesar babeee!"

and here she is
on a date eating dates
with that honey Anthony

the last
with an asp
as the battery dies

the mobile
now lost
in time

oh the things
my mobile has seen
you wouldn't believe

whilst here
I am
stuck in the present

failed scientist
crying into his beer
wondering where

it all went
wrong going over
his calculations yet again

and wondering
where oh where
can his mobile be

reading an article
about a sacred
Egyptian artefact

only recently
discovered
and well well

what do you know
if that isn't
my own i-phone...

THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.

THE LAST LIGHT LINGERS

"This is my body..."
he announces
to himself

"This is my blood..."
the world slipping
in and out of view.

"By Christ I should have been a priest!"
he thinks he shouts
but is quiet

"Although I never had belief!"
he informs a crow
interested only in itself

a headlight
besprinkles the street
like cut-glass confetti

he gives himself
absolution
confesses to himself

a siren
startles
the crow away

the last light
lingers
at the end of day

*

My friend had come off his motorbike and he came to...and saw his bones sticking out of his arm and his leg at an ungainly odd angle. And he thought "Hold on this is my body...how can it broken like this?" Then blood starting pooling around his head and it was like as if he was giving instruction to himself...."******* mate this is your blood!" He had thought first he was watching a movie and had to explain to himself that this was him that all this was happening to He was a former Catholic so he realised he was saying the words of the priest raising the Host so that caused him no end of amusement. Then there was the crow and the glass and siren and then he woke up in hospital. They brought in a priest because of his Irish accent and he shouted as much as his broken ribs allowed him..."Get the priest...get the priest...!" And they said "He is here my child!" And he finished his sentence "...AWAY FROM ME!" He said if he was going to die he was going to die on his own terms rather than a church he didn't believe in. "I spent all my life trying to escape my Catholic upbringing and not even death was going to put me back in that emotional cage ever again.!"

'THE EXQUISITE AIR UPON THEIR SUMMITS'

'With what transporting
sensation...' I gasp
'...the air altogether inspired?'

I breathe it all in
'...as often as
a showy October would allow!'

I watch the leaves leave
'What feelings
have they?'

if only the air
could talk
what does it think

of the trees
changing
their dresses

or standing stark
naked now
at the height of winter

Miss Austen
breaks into my mind
scattering my senses

'And just who do you
think you are, Sir!"
Jane rages

"And what are you
doing with my words!'
she fumes

I try to explain
that it is an in-text
quotes poem

'La Sir, I may be
dead but not dead
to the world

I have kept abreast
of recent literary
conventions!

Pray Sir, I beg you
put my words back
where you found them!'

"But Jane..."
I implore her
"Look at the leaves!"

she turns on her heel
leaving my mind
throwing her words at me

'It is not everyone
who has your passion
for dead leaves!"

*

My In-text quotes poem borrowed from Miss Austen's SENSE AND SENSIBILITY for which I profoundly apologised to the lady all to no avail and I could not escape her wrath

THE SECRETION OF MEMORY

in an attic
( mottled with age)
mirror gazes upon mirror

a web attaches
( spun by a rather theatrical spider )
a primitive computer to a wall

a mouse scurries over
a dusty keyboard
the keys hungry for words

a tattered kite
stares at a sky
the clouds racing by

here is where
objects go to die
when the world abandons them

I too
an object abandoned
by my self

THE OPENING OF THE HAIR


my crying
short cropped little girl
all slobber, snuffles and snot


hair cut off
because of a school lice infection
sobs her heart out


"I can't open my hair
I want to open
my hair like Mummy!"


Mummy trots in
with her high ponytail
let's lose her flowing locks      


tresses cascading
over shoulders with
an almost audible splash


a red river runs
down her back
the effect is  wondrous


as if the hair sang
its heart out a madrigal
a little ordinary miracle

mummy takes her
dressmaker's scissors
cuts jaggedly her magic hair


as if breaking a spell
a crescendo
of clips and snips


a red river
weeps
at her feet


Tilly gasps
in awed
astonishment


my crying short-cropped
little girl
my crying short-cropped woman


both so
uncannily alike
now even more so


"Me and you Tilly
me and you
will grow our hair together


and when we've done
we will open our hair
and let it down for daddy!"


*

My little girl loved watching her mother let down her hair or put it up.  So did I as it happens...she had a red river of hair that flowed down her back and it was a wonder of our world to see the hair fall so gracefully as if it were an alive thing. A magical creature.

Tilly used to call this action...the opening of the hair as if it was a wonderful ceremony. She came up with it herself and it was only much much later when engaged in Shakespeare studies that I actually found it was an Elizabethan expression.  The other expression I found was a "cup of news!" So here is my cup of news!


When the lice infection struck Tilly had to lose her hair and was distraught. She just sobbed and sobbed to lose her golden curls so that Queen Mummy took drastic action and sayeth; "Off with my hair!"  And so she sacrificed her glorious hair for the sake of her little one. It was like an Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. When I came home to this solution I also cut off all my hair. And so we were as one. I took a Polaroid of all us baldy one and placed it next to a photo of us in our glorious hairy day.s The family that goes bald together...stays together.  All for one and one for all. Tilly was delighted now with our new fashion statement and glad not to be the only one.

It was quite a while before the "opening of the hair' ceremony could be held once more.

SPEECH LESS
(for B. B.)

the page looked
at me
blankly

the words
gathered
inside my head

but refused
to come
out

'Sorry mate...
we're on
strike! '

'But why...? '
I cried.
"Why!"

'Do we have to
spell it out
for you? '

'Write...write...write! '
'That's all
you do! '

'You 'ave us up
all ****** night
it just ain't right! '

'No...I...don't! '
I lied...
blatantly

'Oh...who was that
sentence I saw you
with last night? '

'That was no sentence...
that was
my haiku! '

'And those
poor vowels
...the howls! '

'Look, mate...
we're consonants
so we can take it

but
...a vowel's
a vowel! '

'Now, it's just our luck
that we've gone & got
ourselves an Irish poet

who is prone
to a little
internal vowel rhyme! '

'Assonance! '
I said.
'Bless you Guv but

I don't cares wot
you'se call it! '
all we hear

all night long is
O...E...
I...U! '

and with
that
they left

the whole ****** alphabet
abseiling out of my head
marching down my forearm

the whole ****** platoon
now on my patella
now turning at the door

saying: 'See ya fella!
Call yourself.. a ****** poet! '
they jeered

we're off to
Bryan Baker's head!
Now...there's a poet!'

slam!
the door was silent
they were gone

I was...
...I was
...speech-less!

THE ONE ABOUT...

"Did you hear the one about..."
Death's
already laughing

"...a fireman, a butcher & a janitor
walked into a War..."
Death loves to tell this joke

Sometimes Death changes the details
"...a guy from Omaha, Ohio & Nebraska
walked into a War..."

"...and the shell fell into
the hole they were cowering in..."
Death cracks up

"...an 18 year old & two guys of twenty
walked into a War. . ."
"Wot's yer poison?" Death snickers

"...some guys called Sam, Hank & Frank
walked into a bar in a War and
they don't ever ever walk out..."

METAMORPHOSES

My smile
floating

in my compact
mirror

as I get carried along
in a river of people

flowing down
High Holborn

stiletto-ing back to work
with the other temps

laughing gaily
amongst ourselves

looking forward to
a weekend’s Paintballing.

I add a little more
scarlet to my smile.

My smile
gazes back at me

almost in love
with itself.

I trap it
in its little prison

snap
it

shut.

Burdened by
my beauty

almost sick
to death of it.

What others would die for
I’d die to be without.

I shiver
in the sunlight

feeling un-really
real.

It’s not easy
being a myth

especially in these times
of disbelief.

I still recoil
in horror when people recall

that hoary old story
of how I was loved

...by a river.

Oh really Arethusa!

I gather up
my green hair

into a ponytail.

Oh those ****** Greeks
and the stories they tell!

Now I am a millennium
or two

...older

I remain still
as beautiful as ever.

Suddenly a voice
comes after me

his shadow
casting itself over me.

Oh ye Gods!

Surely not here…not now…not…again!

“Hey darlin’…why leave
why such a hurry? ”

Alpheus
that old river God

disguised as a cartoon
bowler-hatted-pinstriped-brolly-carrying English gent.

But the wrong vernacular
gave him away.

The river Yob
as he was known  even back then.

I tried to pretend
I was mist on a mountain.

But he
wasn’t having any of it.

His voice
pursued me

his shadow
the shape of my terror.

Panic’d…perspiring
I turned into a stream

made a run
for it.

The English gent
dissolved as he

poured himself
into his true form.

I could feel his
strong undercurrent

how his waters
wanted to mingle with mine.

I started crying
which only  made matters worse.

And yes…yes
he caught me of course

chased not longer chaste
filled with his lust
  
& it all happens
all over again.

Who’d be a nymph…eh?
Lusted after…turned into a tree or river.

It’s enough
to drive you nuts.

Ye fu&*%ing Gods
I hate being a myth!

It’s a curse
having to go through it

every time someone reads it.

It’s so…frustrating!

Tired now.
Ooops this is…my stop!

I shoved Hughes’s
OVID

back in
my rucksack

leapt off just
as the door closes.

There seemed to be some
commotion on the street

and **** and double ****
Holborn Underground

was closed
due to flooding.

DA VINCI'S GHOST

I listen to
classical guitar in the dark

with only a single
candle for company.

These my teenage years.

Music and flame
travel through my mind

unveiling thought.

Da Vinci's
Vitruvian man

pinned to the wall
with most pins missing.

He comes alive
in the candle's flicker.

Gets into a flap
each time the door opens.

Little brother is spooked
by that Vitruvian stare

but is fascinated by the fact
that he exists

within a circle
within a square.

Like a priest I
dress my self in the garb

of Leonardo's words.

"Write what the soul is.

Illustrate whence comes....madness.
Whence...tears.
Whence...dreams!"

The whences make him wince.

As he sees it:  "...it is like a man
travelling through time

in his dream machine
and arriving at his own

dying
becoming his own

ghost."

Our mother's voice
calls him

and he is grateful to escape
his own thought.



Now, here I am
at your death

as you step inside
the circle
(inside the square).

You stare back at me
with that Vitruvian stare

and I " try to write
what the soul is."



And this is what I was listening to when he came in and encountered the Da Vinci. Back then he was only my little nine year old brother. The drawing spooked him but the music he liked.

Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte-Ravel-Julian Bream & John Williams Together

THE MAP OF LANGUAGE


"Ma!" you say
"DA!' you say
your words create us

"BA! BA! BA!"
she tells the mirror
just who she is

she follows
the map of language
arriving at a new word

unable to discover
a word
she invents her own

uses words
to map
her universe

words
the how of what
is

like everything else
she puts it in her mouth
tastes the word

...SI PUÒ VIVERE IN QUESTO FUOCO

After the war
we returned

ourselves
(but not)
our selves

to Our Country
right or wrong

that was like a life sized
replica of what

we had left

only alien
to us now.

We were guilty
(guilty as hell)

of surviving
this hell

that made ghosts
of so many

& we these
ghosts of flesh and blood

haunting the living
envious of them

and their ability to forget
by remembering.

We hoarded
our tears

we couldn't cry

went on living
because...because

we didn't know how
to die

each moment
a battle

we could never win.

LOOKING JUST LIKE MY PHOTO

I look just like my photo
(impersonating my self)
even have me fooled

I walk around in a blaze of grief
pretending to be the me
I can no longer be

even my reflection
can't look me in the eye
my shadow tries to escape me

your death is as
everywhere as weather
is

your birthday arrives
without you
the night is hollow

your death alters the
world...changes it &
puts it back in exactly

the same place
(an exact copy)that
doesn't fool me

the season of loss arrives
the leaves flee before me
the world no longer knows me

UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH

The three Blind Mice.

The Three Blind Mice.

They didn’t tell  ya  the same thing twice
(&             they wasn’t             very nice) .

And they wasn’t blind...see? ..that was just a blind.
(They wore shades to hide their eyes)      
Maestros with a switch - blade knife.

They ran all the vice
& any opposition had already lost their lives.

But fk it...lately... the farmer’s wife
(it was rumoured that she had done
the old man in... taken over everything)      
and was now muscling in on  

their  territory.

They didn’t like it

They  weren’t used to being told
what they could ‘n’ couldn’t do.

Confrontation & respect was due.

Both ***** bore a tattoo
that proclaimed in Latin:  

“Trouble & strive! ”
& “F* you! ”

Her other tattoo(just above her ***** hair)      
stated in mock Gothic script:

”Abandon hope all ye who enter here! ”

One night the Farmer’s wife decided
to  separate   the men   from    the mice

Had ‘em: -  rubbed out

courtesy of a ****** known locally only
as “Slasher Gore.”

Now the three blind mice don’t see so good no more.

See...

...being dead ain’t good for the sight.

Ain’t dat right...?

Meanwhile back at the ranch
meet the new big Mama of Vice

T H E    F A R M E R ’ S    W I F E

just like it spells out in nasty neon light

twinkling...twinkling

  
   obscuring the starlight.

FAIRYTALE

I sit by your bedside
watching your dying.

Only Love
nails me to this pain.

I unable to escape
your dying.

I tell you
Irish legends
& Hans Christian Anderson

as you become
again

(if only for a little while)

the child
you used to be

once upon a time

when wonder & delight
were new
as daylight.

“Tell me Lir! ”

“Tell me the Children of Lir! ”

I tell
of how

they are turned into swans
& the loneliness of eternity.

I too knit nettles
to break the spell

throw the garment over
your cancer’d body

so you can
return again
to being

the human
I have known.

This dying is cruel
beyond belief.

An insult
to your life.

I love you so much I would **** you
if I could **** you
but I...can’t.

I want every breath
of you

not to be your last.

You journey to your death
dancing with your pain

my little mermaid
my little ballerina

I guard
your dying

a Constant
Tin Soldier

as you become
foam

foam
on the sea.

Just a day ago
******* a sultana

I held
on the tip of my fingertip

telling me to call your name.

“I love
living in your voice! ”

“So nice...so nice! ”

And I a blind Prince

wandering now
lost in the fairy tale

of your Death.

I close
your eyes.

kiss the last warmth
of your lips.

FALLING INTO THE PAST

the tick tick of the bike
a dog barks
letter on a Welcome mat

the midnight tick of time
the house sighs
Dad's whistle

ambushed by the smell
of honeysuckle
I fall into the Past

red barn
blue sky
a summer to last forever

Caruso 78
I listen to the scratches
like Time trying to sing along

I kiss the whorl
of a fingertip then
the all of you

your body
drifting away from me
on a tide of hurt

'I don't like the way
your eyes
touch me! '

starlings fly up
I walk upon close bitten grass
a sheep laughs

a car rusts on the beach
the roofless house
looks out to sea

the sea is sleeping
I watch it breathing
wonder what it's dreaming

the house hunkers down
its window eyes
gaze upon the coming storm

crouching under a cloud
a mountain
frightened by the storm

walking upon
the meniscus of sleep
unable to dive in

& here you are
years later looking like
an out of focus photo of your self


*


I was going on with the details she told me about...the break up with her husband and all the things she saw when it was happening and burned themselves into her mind. Then years years later I discover the photograph of her then and the photograph contains some of those details. She is out of focus because she doesn't want to be in the photo and moves away just as the shutter is clicked. So we too step out of the poem and her life. All the details mean something to me as I can still hear them all in her voice....the little details that she observed through her tears. Now when she has died and the photo turns up I can tie together all she told me and all what the photo contains and marry them together to tell more of her story. He had cheated on her and she was heartbroken and couldn't stand his presence. Meanwhile the ordinary world still goes on despite her heartbreak and her life about to change. She was kissing his fingertips and then kissing him more and more when he suddenly blurted out that he had had an affair but that it was all over now and it didn't mean anything. But she couldn't live with that. When I came to write it I mostly remembered all the details she told me about rather than the complete whole story and that is what my mind latched onto. If I wrote it today I would probably come in on a different trajectory and it would be a completely different poem and made entirely different choices. But I like what I have captured here and it is more closer to her perception of how it all panned out. It was her voice and I only shaped it into the poem trying to retain her sense of it all. The last verse is my discovering the photograph and all the grief I experienced on seeing what was once only a voice talking to me in the night and crying and crying as she went over all the details again and again.

HERE I BE!

South of the buzzing
of a hairy bumble bee

North of the big dog’s bark

West of the breeze
tickling  cherry blossom trees

East of the sunlight
stealing over the fields

that’s where

you will
find me.

*

I ESSERE QUI!

Sud del ronzio
di un peloso bombò

A nord del grande cane abbaia

A ovest della brezza
il solletico alberi di ciliegio in fiore

Est della luce del sole
rubare i campi

ecco dove
troverete me.

*

"Where were you Tilly?" I asked innocently. "I was by the big cloud pretending to be a tiger beside the worm...look!" And with that she produced the worm she had been hiding behind her back. So she had gone to the bottom of the garden...hopefully not to eat 'em.

So I thought I also would get my bearings the three year old Tilly way! I was singing Ariel's "Where the bee ***** there **** I..." so I guess this got cross-pollinated with where and who I was. It takes a little girl to teach one how to live in the world in the rightest of ways.

My little girl's sense of where she was...as if it were written in the sky and the world was simply there to do her bidding. She used her own personal co-ordinates to bring in a thought to land.

". . .ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE. . ."

The War? I was so
glad to get out of it alive
even if it was as someone else

who...I was...died
it was the only way to survive
I became a stranger to my self

I had been so scared
I was going to die
now I'm scared of being alive

I watched better men than
me...die so...easily
I hated me for surviving

I still hear their laughter
how real they were
more realer now than I

the dead stare at me
silently
envying me this life

"Here: have it...take it!"
I scream at them
they stare at me silently

i feel as if I've cheated them
out of their future
"I got...lucky...that's all!"

when I get to
the bottom of
the bottle I

put the ***** top back on
trap them inside
the bottle's emptiness

the passing midnight cars
light up the ***** yellow walls
wallpaper roses blossom out of the dark

I reach for the next bottle
they stare at me silently
"I got lucky...that's...all!"

*

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

George Eliot ~  MIDDLEMARCH"

THROUGH CENTURIES OF JUNE
(  for Pinakini Naik )

The stone
stood its ground.

And waited
for me to run

after it. . .

it had flown through the sky
attached to my cry.

Now it was asleep
in the sun

wrapped in its own
silence.

I grasped it
in a fist.

Let my warmth
enter it.

Then spoke to the stone
in the littlest of sound.

"Stone.?" I addressed it
"Do you want to fly

again into the blue
of summer?"

The stone gave a little shadow
of a smile.

I took that
for its: "yeSSSS!"

My hand flung it
to the far away.

Then: raced after
its parabola.

Time chased me
to a tree with a bird

trapped inside
its song.

My stone lay
at the tree's feet

awaiting the next
throw. .

This world
of two

when friend stone
and I

played
with forever.

The great big blue
smiling with all of its summer.

I DREAMPT THAT I DWELT

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side"

my father would hum or sing
or da da dah'd as he sawed.

"And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride."

A shining smile of nails
as he hammered the tune home.

Carpentry was for me
songs and words and stories.

Tall tales and wood shavings
from my father's "reminiscings'".

Saw dust floating in a summer
were to me atoms made visible.

I played with wood instead
of planning it.

The various tools transformed
with one imaginative leap.

Hand drill and spirit level
became Star Trek ships

attacked by a fleet
of tape measures.

Hacksaws...jigsaws were
all the one to me really.

And yes I knew that tooth spacing
and tooth shape were important in a saw.

A wavy set and milled teeth for plastic and metals.
A side set and ground tooth for a fast clean cut with wood.

But to me they were merely the teeth
of various pterodactyls in my Harryhausen mood.

And yes I planed wood
but only to release the genie of the pine.

The scent a magic
carpet ride.

And I planed and planed
until there was nothing left

but the graceful curl of
a sea of wood shavings.

Later he would laugh
when I brought him Carroll's parody.

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
went wobble-wobble on the walls..."

Or an Orwell even...

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?"

Or auld Jimmy the Joist
and his warping words

"When you dreamt that you'd wealth
in marble arch do you ever think of pool beg slowe."

Cracking up when
Finnegans Wake'd

"... at this passing moment
by localoption in the birds' lodging,

me pheasants among,
where I'll dreamt that I'll dwealth

mid warblers' walls when throstles and choughs
to my sigh hiehied,..."

"Ahhh Dónall lad yer a great one
for the books but

ya never took to the wood
it was always words words words!"

"But I also dreamt, which charmed me most
That you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same"

THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.  


*

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”— James Joyce, “Ulysses”

MEISJE MET DE PAREL

only now
many years later
the missing pearl earring

finally turns up
the last part
of the jigsaw

the rest of it
thrown away
when it couldn't be

found
now the pearl earring
the only piece left

she frames it
in a large gold frame
the girl now to be imagined

the pearl earring
itself and
itself only

A WOMAN IS CRYING

in the next room
a woman
is crying

a moon
perches upon an hotel sign
unmoved

as a new millennium
dawns
as bright as neon

the woman
still crying
her unknown

despair
shifting silently
from one century to another

human grief
unchanged
from age

to age
a woman is
crying


*


An hotel in the Big Apple as the town blinked blue and painted itself red before mellowing into yellow and began the whole sequence again and again. The woman next door was sobbing her heart out for hours and did not cease when the 20th became the 21st century. She seemed to be crying for the whole world...what had gone before...what was to come. Grief and sadness one of the things that makes us human.

"BE DE HOKEY!"

uncle taps me
on the head
"How are you in there?"

the only one who
could walk into my mind
to see how I was

he'd take my grief
tear it into pieces
scatter it to the wind

then he'd take me
by my hand
"Let's see where the happiness is!"

and always he'd find
where the happiness
was hiding

whether it be
in a wildflower
or a nest of blue eggs

or how he
showed me how
to see the world in words

and wonder always
flew to him
perched upon his shoulder

and oh his lovely laughter
and his catch phrase
"Be the hokey!

*

This was the man who kept me alive when my sister died....he reached inside me and filled me with his wonder of words and his love of the world. Always the same old question: "How are you in there?"  He is the reason that I try to put the world in words. I owe him everything. And so it was wonderful to bring him and his words to the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford and say "See what ya made me?"

And of course he said as he always said or still says in my mind. . ."BE DE HOKEY!"

MINE IS THE SUNLIGHT

all night
the dark
held up the sky

nailing time
to time
with tiny silver studs

until a star fell and
the dark
surrendered to the light

morning and its moments
birds composing the score
living notes

on the staff notation
that runs from pole to pole
slicing the sky

into its various sections
adding a tree
here and there

capturing
a family
of clouds

the terrific traffic
of an orchestra
tuning up

a train
cutting across a plain
far away cows looking like toys

a lark throwing itself
against a heaven
as if it could break through

into an eternity beyond
the infinity that
is us

PAYSAGE TRISTE

at age
9 or 10
(who can remember when)  

an early Eliot
pens
little verses

(sunlight & shadow
frolicking across the page
as he writes)  

- his hand moving rapidly
from left to right –
of that intense

“sadness
of having to
start school

again
every
Monday morning.”

see how
to his tiny mind
THE WASTE LAND

stretches before him
stretches before him
stretches before him

*   *   *

INTRO TO THE OUTRO: Writing  PAYSAGE TRISTE

Valerie Eliot talking about Tom in 1966 informs us that the great man “...at the age of 9 or 10 wrote a few little verses about the sadness of having to start school again every Monday morning.”

One can imagine, after so many cakes and ices, this little child forcing the moment to its crisis & thinking it impossible to say just what he means.

And indeed there will be Time…and he will grow old...grow old...and he will have to grapple with overwhelming questions dropped upon his plate and wonder whether he dare(“Do it Tom…do it! ”)   eat a peach...and yes part your hair behind... never mind what the human voices say...dream on...dream on...

...and hear the mermaids singing each to each and despite what you think they will…sing to you!

Trust me! You’ll be alright mate...why you’ll do “the police in different voices” and I (for one)   shall be for ever...amazed. This is a love song for that little boy.

“Hurry up please... it’s Time! ”

Ah bless... poor little T.S.

I break through the time barrier and give the little chap a hug and a kiss.

Good night sweet Thomas…good night...good night..goodnight!

AND TIME A THIEF

She hugged her books
to her *******.

Her ******* hardening into
her Othello and Algebra.

She watched his mouth
move

alive with words
she heard nothing of

only
her name

"...yadayadaMARY...
...yada yada MARY!"

A bead of sweat
trickled between her *******.

She tried to catch
her breath and

what he was saying but
it only gave her hiccups.

She squirmed
under his gaze

a butterfly
held by a pin

pleasure that was
pain.

"And that was how
I met your Dad!"

She tells this story
only when she's very very

tipsy
crying now

for the girl she was
- then:

the Shakespeare & Maths
pressed to her chest

the world
awaiting her.

CHASING ANGELS...FLEEING DEMONS

The morning was
a mountain

that had to be
climbed because

it was there.

She wasn't going to let
the mountain conquer her.

The whiskey helped.

She sat through endless
early morning TV.

She wondered if one could die
of endless early morning TV.

The gone cold fried eggs
with the subbed out cigarette

in its centre
like a flying saucer

invaded her
sense of self

"Is this what I've
come to...?"

she asked a mirror.

The mirror kept shtum .

The plate smashed to smithereens
on the cinnamon coloured wall

leaving a satisfying stain
resembling Argentina

trailing down like a Rorschach test
of how she was

feeling.

Another whiskey wouldn't
hurt...would it?


*

“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

A SMALL YARD IN THE CENTRE OF IRELAND
( For Jeremy Loynes )

every morning
the small yard
stole some sunlight

just enough
to cover itself
in gold

before the shadows
stole it
back again

it was only
a small yard
in the centre of Ireland

hosting a coal bunker
a mangle
and an outside loo

the visiting cat
and the small child
knew exactly when

to dash out
and soak up
the precious glow

the yard gloried
in the gift
of such sunlight

and the child
who grew and grew
to become the man

who never told anyone
of the stolen
sunshine

until the words
gave the secret away
whispered it to the page

*

The small yard used to belong to the house that was called No. 31 O'Higgins Road in the county of Kildare. It no longer exists and has vanished into the air losing all the time it was. This was the small universe of both child and cat so much beloved by both of them. Only I can travel back there...find my way there...following the trail of memory and be there whenever my mind needs a place to hide as the man becomes the child he was once upon a long long time ago.

SANCTUARY

this one perfect moment
time rearing up like a wave
that never ever breaks

the train's scream
the dog's bark
chiseled into the silence

dancing to
the bandstand's music
a flock of flags

birds
writing themselves...un-writing themselves
across a page of sky

this moment
flees from time
claims sanctuary in my mind

"THE EARTH IS LIKE A CHILD THAT KNOWS POEMS BY HEART."

the night
had stuffed the dark
into every crevice

of the house
and his life
awoke to a big blue sky

holding a crocus
in the palm
of its morning

the world was
springing into being
all around him

as if existence had
changed its mind and
decided to stay

a solitary oak
reached
a gnarled hand

and snatched a cloud
( that happened
to be passing by )

out of the air
just like
that

the cloud
struggled
to break free

the oak
gave a hearty laugh
and let it go

the cloud scurried away
fretfully looking
over its shoulder

"So, what kept ya?"
he asked Spring
Spring...just smiled

NO DIRECTIONS
(in memory of my mother Ita)

South of Sorrow
North North West
of Pain

I search for you &...
...lose you
yet again

I calculate
your absence
by the stars

& you are near
though
you are far

I wander through
this Wilderness of Loss
...is this what loving you has cost?

East of Loneliness
West of Grief
...If only for one brief...

... your voice echoes inside my head
... I see you smile & laugh
... pretend that you're not dead

*

I wrote this for my mother but my younger brother Brain asked me to read it at his funeral. I laughed and said I would be long dead before him. But his heartattack at a young age proved otherwise. I read it from the pulpit looking down at his photo on his coffin and couldn't believe I was in this terrible position. To my horror the congregation applauded as if it was a gig!

SNOW FALLS

She wakes to a morning
with no reason for living

cries in the mirror
to be forgiven.

Puts on her make-up
takes off her clothes

sits there & bleeds
until she can’t feel

the blood in her veins
...runs cold.

The razorblade
bleeds...bleeds.

The cat cries
to be fed.

The batteries in her Walkman
go dead.

The Rachmaninov stops.

A letter she will never read
drops on the Welcome mat.

A mobile rings & rings &...stops.

A member of a minor political party
looking for her vote

rings the doorbell twice
slips on the ice    &   ruins his coat.

Curses.

A man laughs at another man’s joke.
It’s a big laugh...he’s a big bloke.

Laughter invades the square.

There’s a chill in the air.

A friend calls for her
(to go on a blind date)  

...she doesn’t hear.

Snow...
...snow...
...snow falls.

ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES

( for Bud on his birthday that was never to be )

Never to be
met by you again

at the airport
with a hastily scribbled sign:

"WAITING FOR GOD...
KNOWS WHO!"

Or telling me you were
expecting the Cat in the Hat.

One year a tip-top topper...
...the next a battered bowler.

Always. . .
your smile

my gold coin

your laughter
my treasure.

"Ahhhh Jaysus, Bud...tears?"
cries the ghost of you.

"It's all I get these days!
Dying is so...annoying!"

"Oh, before I go. . !"
the ghost of you smirks

before fading away
into an EXIT sign.

"I love the purple
fedora!"