Face

A face in a window

told me all I needed to know

about age.

The colourlessness, darkness,

confinement. 

A face that stared through me,

that saw or not,

cared not ─

blank as its countenance ─

for all that moved. 

A face

on a north-facing window-sill,

turned outward

for that day

toward the sun on the other side.

 

A Moment Certified By Lovers

A Moment Certified By Lovers.

 

It's a certifiable moment

a punch-drunk second

a pulse's high tide.

 

A dog eats grass

a water drop shivers

a barrel fills to its brim

an apple falls 
a body drifts 

a face buckles

a lover screams.

 

At the tip of an orgasm

passion powders;

the creek turns to dust.

 

 

 

                                           from Sunfire, (Dedalus Press, 1997)

Three Scenes from a Midland Town

Three Scenes from a Midland Town

1.

Marty Regan’s shiny coffins are loitering

along the out-house wall.

Lukie Dyer, waiting outside Anderson’s pub,

fag burnt close to the knuckles,

is doubled over in a fit of coughing. 

2.

Toothless,

Pete Boland’s  grin

floods his face.

His eyes are

salmon leaping.

3.

After mass

the pints

on Murphy’s counter

are a meeting of stout clerics.

 

A Primitive Death

One eye a bog-hole, the other a slab,

bleached blue of a childhood memory.

I walked on water, sank in the marble,

its thought engulfing me,

its emptiness a net.

Looking at You

 

How her face changes when she is sleeping. I have not seen that face before, where is she?

Where do the zillions go in the sleeping hours?

And when she comes back, her mask reset; will this face be taut beneath,  waiting for the next night's darkness?

 

Looking At You.  

 

Now asleep:

Are you young again?  

When your body loosens out

And your eyes needn't see me

And your face unravels from its cares;  

Is it me you'll want to escape from?  

To run back, hurdling over the years,

To seek out your first lover, and to nestle

In that small space of time before doubts began.

 

 

Static State

“Parents who never showed their love, complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty, complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; law-makers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life's sun to develop them, are loud in their moralisings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of nature are disregarded.”

Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby on a universal truth. It is seems to me, not much has changed: the state turns to state bodies in education, health and justice to deal with familial issues, and they moralise according to the prevailing winds of the time.

 “Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers”.

More Distrust

With the mask removed,

his face was old, shrunken;

too human; less than, almost. 

We had forgotten, lost proportion,

it came as a shock;

that’s true. 

It was a morning of masks,

that was the currency;

my eyes grew too big.

Though this poem relates to a different issue altogether, there is something in it that applies to the current controversy involving the Garda force and the Government.

I think we have for too long allowed our politicians, wearing their politician hats, to prevaricate, issue bucket-loads of disingenuous verbiage, condescend at will to the general public.Too often the side-step that is so obviously a shoring up of their own positions; that lack of honesty, and utter lack of moral backbone.

But we too seem to have lost  perspective; so long seeing their public 'masks', we seem to have lost proportion. Should shovel-loads of prevarication etc. not be taken as a failure by our 'leaders' to  account to those whom they are supposed to represent. And should the growing distrust of our politicians not be put down to their mis-handling of leadership, ineptitude in responsible positions.

The inability of those with responsibility to apologise is always worrying, but we should not accept it as the currency.


.