"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.

Living life is a painting scheme,
Creating colors to cover up the blanks,
Trying our best to break away.
We re-saturate,
The bleak shades of our face,
Replacing something organic,
With chemical compounds.
Suddenly evolving beyond natural gleam,
Distorting to fit twisted cookie cutter shapes,
We execute the order,
Of this lustful modern god.
There was beauty in the earthen iron's shape,
Forgotten glory, bent to grim reality,
Turning away from standing in the looking glass,
Becoming indistinguishable again.

I used to think
home had a door.
A key.
A roof that remembered my name.

But I’ve lived in places
that never made space for my silence.
Places that knew my footsteps
but not my fears.

I carry pieces of home
in chipped mugs,
in songs that smell like childhood,
in people I no longer speak to.

Sometimes, home is a voice,
cracked with laughter
in a place I had to leave.

Sometimes, it’s a moment
sunlight on tired skin,
or the way someone says
“You can rest here.”

I’ve learned
that belonging doesn’t always mean staying,
and leaving doesn’t mean forgetting.

Home isn’t always where you were born.
Sometimes,
it’s where you stopped pretending.
I don’t know if I’ve found mine yet.
But I know what it isn’t.
And that’s something.

I see the shape of things
As they shift
And slowly change.

I feel the weight it brings
As they chisel
And carve their names.

As the clouds move through their lives
They stretch, and pull apart.
No cloud will ever be the way
It was back at its start.

Maybe we are as those clouds,
Reshaping as we go.
No need to be ashamed nor proud.
Simply travel where winds blow.

Maybe we could learn from them,
Who exist but do not fight.
Face reality with grace, and then
Do the same in the windy night.

Oh say, can you see?
As they carve up your rights
Ideals once proudly held,
Now lay gasping and bleeding.
Future pride and bright hopes
Face a perilous might;
Those who rampage through life,
Destroying and feeding.
Through the raucous and flare
Declaring justice “unfair”,
Lacking proof that they’re right,
But they don’t seem to care.
Oh say, do you still think yourselves free and brave?
Or is it the land of the fee
And the home of the depraved?