Trap

I was in a hawthorn,
trapped in its branches;
all arms, hands and fingers
prevailing on me not to struggle.

I was an exhibit in a jar
ragged and shock-eyed,
praying for a passer-by
where ravens perch still for hours.

I was a storm-blown tatter
caught in another’s stitching;
my cries drifting into the sky
nonchalant like dandelion seeds.

(from Turn Your Head)

The Exciters

The Exciters was a showband from Roscommon - now there’s a name to tick all the boxes. The local ballroom was Fairyland, (we had a way with names back then). Back in the sixties, Reynolds’ ballrooms promised almost heavenly delights: Dreamland, Cloudland, Roseland and (wait for it) Wonderland. The promise involved careful cultivating from the ruck to the dance-floor to mineral bar back to dance-floor to balcony to rear of dancehall. Meanwhile bicycles, cars, Honda 50’s, tractors, vans, passion wagons of all sorts waited with bated breath, sometimes with glorious expectation, sometimes with an over-powering whiff of sheep dung.

This is by way of introducing the following poem, but it also gives me the opportunity to recommend a visit to the Irish Showband website which brings back all of the above. < http://www.irish-showbands.com/index.html>


Last Tuesday Fabulous Arthur Quinn
was Found Dead in his House.


Fabulous Arthur Quinn
and The Rhythm Fountain,
Cloudland, 1967.

They saw the advertisement
in the Roscommon Herald.
It was in a box under the bed.

The Fountain must have dried up
quickly; Arthur worked
in the meat factory for years.

Left with a broken wrist in 1983
and went home,
he can’t have been that old.

They said Fabulous Arthur
must have stared at his ceiling
for at least 6 days without blinking.

from Turn Your Head, Dedalus Press

Blue-veined old hands:

I never saw them coming
till they were spread bleak
as the limbs of Winter trees
across vacant heavens.

When I said I loved you
I lashed at the wall
with a stick of oar weed
picked off the strand.

Cantankerous old fool:
never saw him coming
till words I spat out
fell like lightning turned
to twigs of rotten wood.


from "Turn Your Head"

Poems to do with Lovers, Loving and Loving no More

People change, time moves them along,their loves change like trees, like fires, like buildings.Most keep the narratives in their heads or poets "tell it slant". From Sunfire and Turn Your Head:


Visit


When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,
we slip into one.

When you pass

cups miss mouths,
ladders slip,
buckets crash down,

cars veer,
cyclists swerve,
drunkards sober up,

poles and policemen collide,
business men miss kerbs,
schoolboys drool.

Me? I’m just your wing mirror,
enjoying the devastation
behind you.


-----------------

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.

Fifteen Irises from my Black Humour to You.


The mallards go off like a shot gun;
each a storm of wings
and black as a keyhole.

The pond, empty now,
is gripped in a glacial sulk.

Fifteen irises from my black humour to you,
their shadows only;
the pond will part with no more.

Sure Sight

The following, a love poem from "Turn Your Head"

Sure Sight


I see
pearl-like
dawn
in
your face

a desolate
blue
yonder
in
your irises

the wash
of slivered
moonlight
in
your smile

I know of
nowhere
less trodden
more
perfect

I contract
to be
forever
an explorer
in that universe.

Angry Ex-capitalist

A friend and I used to argue the merits of capitalism/socialism, he being very much in favour of the former. He shot upwards quickly, but at a point in this rise (well into management) found himself not quite at home with the mindset and his career went into reverse. I never said I told you so and, of course, I could never tell him the following poem was about him.

Mind you, people have a very bad memory when it comes to hiccups in their political thinking.A communist I know completely dis-remembered that he had justified Stalin's violent methods after the Soviet system collapsed; and those that trumpeted the victory of capitalism at that time, have been very silent about the current breakdown in their runaway capitalism system.C'est la vie!

This poem was in my second collection "Turn Your Head"

Angry


Among the blocks of the establishment;
a flawless rise bolted your trust;

success was cement,
all loose notions were pebble-dashed.

Now you revise:
the establishment, its self-righteous system:

how many bodies like you
have fallen from the sides to point the pyramid ?

And how many times did you skate over principles,
that I remember, you once held dearly?

Poems about Love

I’m surprised how many poems I have written that relate to relationships both in and out of love.

I could do a reading presenting them in a logical order to tell a story, but then I’d have the makings of a play, and that would probably be more entertaining. Then I remember Sam Shephard and Joseph Chaikin’s “Savage Love” (read it at http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~dxu/poetry/savage.html) and so the play thing’s been done; and that’s why stuff ends on the shelf.

Meanwhile here’s the backbone of my proposed story,3 poems that were included in the collections "Sunfire" and "Turn Your Head"

1

When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,
we slip into one.

2

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.


3


He, who covered my body
with snail-trails,
whose hands were wrack
swept over my skin,
kisses on my back
a colony of shell fish.

He, who would have crossed a mountain range
for an hour between my thighs
now crawls over me
with wizened passion.
Gutted of love,
he comes clawing,
scavenging;
and insults me with lies
that have made greater pincers
of his mouth than his hands.

What does he see in me?

Meat to excite him,
his groper's desires,
even his fingertips betray him.
But no more,
the erotic becomes ugly,
decrepit manoeuvres disconnected
from their original meanings;
the touches stain you.

I have watched him slither from my gaze
a thousand times a night
while slipping the word love
from his vocabulary;
watched him develope this communication
of knives and forks.

Artists with Poetry in their Hearts

I have been told more than once that I have a tendency towards melancholy. It shows in the writing and it shows in my choices when I go searching for inspiration. Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth are two american artists that never fail to stir that mood in me.If I allow myself to wallow in their art, invariably a poem will begin to form in my head.On this side of the water Martin Gale sometimes evokes similar moods and his work has echoes of both american artists.


Old Man


The tyre hanging in the garden
is proof that children used to play there;
but in the breeze it’s a shaking head.

Today snowflakes flying by
leave the sycamore white on its northern side.
The garden is still: no snowman, no footprints.

The tyre is an old man;
with an old voice he explains
“I cannot remember names, truth is

I hung too close to the trunk to be of use;
the sycamore branches bolted upwards,
to this day they’ve never spread out.”

from "Turn Your Head" published by Dedalus Press



Anyway it's nice to be able to include some examples of this art in the following presentations from Youtube; Wyeth on top, Hopper below.