The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

How did he get there?

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

And who sees him?

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

Bodhrán

As pipes catch the foxhunt and the whistle the blackbird, the bodhrán catches the sounds of country-life. A good bodhrán player plays like he's left the window open on life long ago.

Bodhrán.

                 

Tick of spokes

Tap of bones

Swish of rushes

Slap of stones.

Needles flicking reel-rhythm,

Stitches mesmerized into obedience.

Scythe in the grass,

Shovel in the clay,

Flail on the corn,

Pitchfork hay.

Breathing

We take it for granted. And then comes dying, we stand around the bed watching the work that is breathing. And you think my father is dying and he must work; work harder than he has all his life. How merciless is death that makes you toil to pass through its gate.

Breathing

Now my father's life

is breathing.

Heavy work.

He has already slipped away

to be alone

while we outside

mark every breath

like lap timers.

Now come the spaces:

a breath

is an isolated thing.

Finally one breath

arrives alone.

I feel a soul has left,

but just then

I see, so clearly,

it was hope

that slipped out of the room.

Abandoned House in Donegal

The calendar

collapsed in the centre;

her chair facing

the wind;

the  tv

hanging in the wardrobe;

her bed stopped

at July 8^th, 1986;

a bottle of eau de cologne

howling through the broken door;

two dresses 

and a blouse down to its last drop..

February sunshine silvers bare branches.

She, sitting at her kitchen table,

turns her hands upward to run her eyes

down the insides of her arms,

to see how the water will drain

when the clouds burst.

She lights a cigarette,

then sits in the snake-pit

listening to the slitherings around her,

till deafened, she flails at them

so they become smoke.

February; heavy drops knock on her window

and she, conscious of  the thinness of  glass,

of the thousand mile spate that's around her,

crosses to the hob to make tea,

to forget  branches. 

Hughie

Hughie thinks of sex without faces;

he often thinks this way

because there never was a welcoming face,

so he never had sex,

and this July he'll be 46.

Hughie lives alone and is settled in his ways;

people think him peculiar,

never ask him to join them in the pub

or wherever.

He is growing more peculiar, they say.

Hughie has an office job;

colleagues bid him good morning at coffee-break

but sit at a different table.

He eats his lunch in the Arms bar,

and always sits facing  the wall.

Beautiful Killing

"One of the things we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States” 

With one word, Trump demonstrates the obscenity of our acquiescence in the never ending killing industry. 20 million people facing famine in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria; how far would $110bn go?

Our greatness measured in heaped up bodies.

Our refinement in not contemplating them.

Dead

His marbleised features are set at neutral;

a look that never was his.

So this is not him,

but was so recently.

Container and contents perhaps?

How does one distinguish?

Attitude

Intended to catch the 'does he take sugar' attitude to people with physical disability, the poem relies on the word 'owns' being recognized in the spirit I intended; I'm not that I've achieved it. 

Attitude.

Who owns the child

with the withered arm-wings,

who carries the mutation that weighs a ton;

who, when the air is full of flight, hops

and hops and hops.

See how the children littering the yard

launch like torn pages into careless flight.

Like gulls they hog the sunlight

while a sea worries far below.

This is the currency.

But who owns that child,

the child with the withered arm-wings.

The other day Louise and I promised each other our lives without speaking.

We made love and stayed in each other’s arms

for a long time without opening our eyes or talking,

                          but enjoying the lisping leaves and the guttering of the stream                            
between the yellow stones.

                Those sounds in our ears and the sun’s breath on our bodies           

held us, one heart.

For there is nothing to say that is not understood

when two feel themselves one because they are within each other’s arms.

Short Coversation

The moon is a hubcap

  fallen off the earth.

I am a pendulum

  treading time.

“I'm blind”

   says the moon.

 “I'm paralyzed”

    says I.

  "Let's go"

    says the moon.

  "Where"

    says I. 

  

  

A Balmy Day in July

On a balmy day in July,

I sat outside with a few tins,

watching wispy white clouds

alter shape, and the afternoon too

as, sooner than wished,

the sun moved westward.

And that was the day, missiles,

delivered by the US,

killed 56 civilians in Syria.

I suspect that none of those 56

considered that tax-payers,

in the country the sun was travelling to,

would pay for these products

and their delivery

from God’s round blue sky.

"Never smile at a crocodile and never give Messi that much space"

Simile, hyperbole, metaphor, idiom: Ray Hudson should be mandatory on all ‘creative writing’ courses.

Messi scored the winner against Real Madrid last Sunday and Ray’s celebration was epic.

"The menacing man arrives and sinks his flaming spear into the hearts of Real Madrid ……………..born in the crossfire hurricane, and he is jumping jack flash right here.............. Messi, you could drop a Tarantula into his shorts and he'd still be cool………………… As cool as the seeds inside of a cucumber".

Earlier he described Messi ‘s finish as “cleaner than Neutrogena” and “ wonderful control. He tattoos the ball to his feet.”

Mind you it’s hard to beat some of the praise he has previously showered on Messi, here are a few more:

“Defenders try to follow him on Facebook and he comes out on Twitter.”

“He burgulates the defence. He violates the intrusion. And in football, it’s legal!”

“Messi needs help like a shark needs a dentist”

Watch:        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQZQADpna9Q

The trees in the moonlight

The trees in the moonlight are silent,

and the trees in the pond are still.

If there is malice,

it is not here by the pond in the moonlight.

Neither violence

nor hatred

nor greed.

There are no prejudices here,
but, sadness, oh my God,
sadness fills the air with the voices of thousands
whose throats have been slit,

here, where the trees are silent in the moonlight

by the pond.

An Alternative Interpretation of Megalithic Art

There's been a lot of water collecting in this blog lately, but before pumping it dry, here's one more interpretation of the megalithic art at Loughcrew and and other megalithic sites in Ireland.

Conwell engraving: detail from Cairn L, Loughcrew c. 1870

Concentric rings,

raindrops’ pockmarks,

undulations,  zigzags.

Rivers teeming life and light  ̶̶

smithereens of sun,  

spicules of stars  ̶

we took them from the water,

embellished the stones,

so they would flow into the bodies of our dead,

who would run with the rivers,

live to be old as the earth

shine bright as the stars.