Cruise Missiles

           

Jesus, the padre prayed,

direct these missiles onto the heads

of our enemies.

Except that’s not what he said. He said

we pray that these missiles will be efficient

in their function.

Then. Up Jesus,

ride them clean down their throats.

Except, of course, he didn’t say that either;

but blessed them with holy water.

After that, the missiles were dispatched,

American missionaries to Europe.

CROWD CONTROL

THE DOGS:

     

        taut with anticipation, snapping photographs of persons

        for their own special consideration.

THE HANDLERS:

     

        at ease with that satisfying tug in their fists;

        the occasional pulling up of a dog

        (an enthusiastic dog must learn to relish).

THE SUPPLY OF DOG HANDLERS:

        boys with that bristling love for smashing glass

        cooped up in their heads.

       

THE HANDLERS OF THE DOG HANDLERS:

       with their passion for cleansing always tugging;

       their keen awareness of humanity’s stain ever present .

Workshop Blues

‘My days weep,

I think of you through my tears,

My blood red tears.’

Okay. You’ve definitely got the mood, but try not to be so gothic. Maybe leave out the blood red tears.

‘My days weep,

I think of you through my sorrow;

My lost rose’

Yeah, that’s a nice poignant note, "lost rose". Unfortunately there’s been a lot of roses over the years; can you say it without the rose. Say it as though you are describing your grief to me in person.

‘My grief is like a thorn;

It makes me cry for you,

My lost flower.’

I'd say leave out flowers altogether. Express your sadness as though we’re having a conversation across a table.

'How can I go on,

my grief cuts me like a blade

for the loss of my own darling Chrissy'

Now we're getting there, but try to be less overtly poetic. 

‘I’m very down

Since Chrissy left.

And I don't need a fucking workhop to say that.'

St Féichín arrives on High Island

It is recounted in the Annals of the Ciarraige Aí that St Féichín, having been  invited back to Connacht to convert the people of Omey, one day said to the elders that he had experienced a vision in which God directed him to build a church on an island out beyond; where the fires of hell nightly sinks down into the sea.

It is said that he led a group of monks followed by the people of Omey down to the shore, from where he proceeded to walk into the tide. The monks followed him, wading waist-deep into water, beseeching him to turn back, but he refused. Never once looking back, never once turning his face from a point somewhere out on the horizon, he ploughed onward into waves, leaving his half-bodied, distraught followers looking after him with tears, hidden by the spray, streaming down their faces.

It was at the precise moment his head disappeared beneath the waves that they saw him lifted out the water, fully upright and heading still in the direction he had chosen.  He walked on rounded, smooth rocks that seemed to materialise with each step he took, and in this way walked onward, out from Omey, even though it was a rough and unpleasant sea.

They watched him grow small and smaller as he walked over the waves; many felt he was leaving them, but a cry went up and crowds ran to the currachs, dragged them out onto the water and followed him.

Four miles he walked, through surging seas and blinding spray. The currachs following him, tossed light as splinters on the waves, voices travelling fitfully over the din, spume carried horizontally into the faces of the monks and oarsmen. Rain was hail in their faces; cloud, sky and ocean their only visible destination; but they kept rowing.

It is believed that when Féichín arrived at the sheer face of High Island, a stone leapt into the air so he stepped directly onto dry land.

The weather eased, a hemisphere of calm settled on the grass-roofed rocks. And as the currachs entered into the shelter, they saw him on a cliff-top, a five-pointed star exulting in the emerging evening light, the sun from behind the clouds:fingers of God radiating around him.

The oars lifted from the waters drained streams like spittle back into the sea; gannets were easing along the thermals, and Féichín had the eyes of Omey on him.

Meeting an attractive acquaintance on her night out

I meet her outside a nightclub

CHRIST!

Unsure suddenly of making sensible

must speak composed

must maintain face articulate

my full windscreen

and me one instantly pony puny small

feeling stuck

totally

decide

to make me scarce

Flame

Nurtured in the bend of each other,

shaped, turned, unshaped,

we travel light as air.

Time furled in this one flame,

ourselves, our dreams one;

this momentary incandescence everything.

On The Beach

When, at the end of the beach, I turned

to face that gleaming scimitar of strand,

the filigreed waves  hurdling landward,

ripple patterns beneath my feet ,

the scythe of oyster-catchers by the water,

their chevron markings perfect in that light,

I was euphoric in the magnificence of it all?

And as I walked, I felt the completeness of my belonging,

impermanence too like those scarves of sand blowing

ahead of the wind, and not at all sad for that;

recognizing suddenly that transience is the definitive condition;

that the earth unmakes everything, and, in never-ending cycles,

brings it to shine at the edge of the sea.

In this mood

In this mood

things become more defined:

the silver sugar bowl, beyond reflective,

becomes the collection of objects around it;

the shadows between the fruit in the bowl

as dark and mysterious as those in a forest;

scale somehow immaterial; detail precise.

Colours become experiences: I look inside red

as I’d look into the flow of a river; browns

have the richness of burnished mahogany,

a grain within the colour, a dynamic.

Reaching for the sugar, I watch my hand, from mid-arm,

travelling over the table like a boat heading out to sea.

It seems my eyes are sucking out my energy;

creating this crisp perception from my concrete,

leaving me in darkness amongst the brilliance of things.

The Beginning of Science

Long before Saint Patrick,

leather-footed musicians

would keyhole dawn

to catch the sun in ice candles.

They played those flames on strings,

their spikes of sound,

for children’s whistling eyes and lunatics,

who, in their distance, danced.

Fire caged in ice, ice in their hand;

music lit from within;

ambition began;

separation became a beauty.