Peninsula

A peninsula: shingle, cockle and barnacle shells, strips of desiccated wrack,

greened with sea-holly. The wooden cabin, though frequently lashed with spray,

was salted dry, and coloured somewhere between bone and limestone;

I lived there for five months before you came.

From the land our light seemed no more than a single candle burning;

the clothes on our line had the appearance of  rags,

and the smoke from our fire curled into the sky with a nonchalance

that suggested our daily struggles with lighting washed up timbers.

You’ll remember the shingle made walking difficult; with each step the stones rolled.

You said it sounded like the grinding of a mouth full of loose teeth; but, around the bay,

 a billion stones rolled thunderously with each beached wave;

and the  breeding terns came at us like boomerangs.

Nights: we were  unlit stars perhaps, but at one with the universe, free and alive

 in the unbroken expanse of shore, sea and sky; we had  space

 to be colossal, to exhilarate; and moonlight, our spotlight to roar songs into the cosmos,

to take the universe’s light into our eyes and exult in it.

Came the day of migration: wings outstretched, muscles fluid, necks craned to our separate
destinations; we, without backward glances, took to the air

with eyes big enough to countenance the curve of the earth, greedy enough to fly it;

and left our peninsula, a finger  pointing to somewhere .

As a chaos

1.

As a chaos of jagged girders,

black against the sky,

looks like pain;

yet it makes a beautiful ugliness.

2.

That day’s electrodes, bare and unprotected,

were waiting for me. From the moment I awoke,

nothing was ever going to halt

their run to me from that future.

3.

I met my moment on the street;

it made jazz in my bones;

lifted me

oh, much higher than I can ever sing.

4.

Sir, I said, these particles vibrate,

you hear them on a still night

and after that, you will always hear them.

They smash glass if you do not control it.

Self-creating Fluidity in Nature

When dense enough,

murmuration or shoal,

a flow becomes a fluid,

self-created;  

all parts align, cluster and stream

according to physical  laws.

Living parts, starling or herring,

generate intra-forces  that govern

the whole, the system,

effecting dynamics  recognizable

throughout nature.

She Leaves

She leaves

a country of mountain tops,

pencil points in nothing

and crosses on current arrows

to where the sun shines on a space.

Angels

look over the rails,

cheering ferries on the sea

of her worries  ̶  

or that is where she bobs  ̶

among all the sparklets

on the seatop.

And fears

scratch their fingernails

down the glass

she has left;

not left,

left,

not left.

Growing Up

  

  

    

  Shortly you will trace lines,

  leave,

  join the herds,

  leave a trail among the trails

  meandering over the hills.

 

  We are part of some eccentric’s

  geometry;

  I wish I could tell you more,

  my little love.

Life is glass

I fall, fuck up my face;

my arms and fingers

pouring blood

and I don’t even feel it.

Life is glass.

I discover that I can’t mind myself:

I can’t make the decisions

that protect me.

I meet my broken face in a mirror;

it accuses me.

I stare at it;

I stare at myself.

Light

1.

The longer I am paddling this canoe:

the more distant my destination,

the less I am.

2.

The less you see in me,

the less I see in me,

the more is light.

3.

The more is light,

the less I dream,

the more all is dream.

Reminiscence

When I reminisce about my childhood,

I am running with my schoolbag on my back;

exulting in the speed: one leg extended forward,

the other crooked at the knee,  foot in mid-air;

and a broad grin across my face, brimming happiness.

The church is in the background with a brilliantly coloured Calvary grotto,

and there’s the school and the Harrison Hall, all shining

against a cloudless azure sky.

And all of that is gone

as suddenly as a blizzard  strikes with the flick of a wrist. 

Films in your face

I am watching the film in your face:

your enjoyment crinkling

at the corners of your eyes,

teeth catching your lower lip,

blood draining from the pressure,

draining back as soon.

Furrows on your forehead,

I am smiling at your absorption,

want to stub them out with my thumb

but you catch me looking

so I turn back to the screen

till your face is mine again.

The words on my lips

remain unsaid. A time may come

when, not having words,

I will wish I had spoken; a time

when love being tested, I could say,

I used to watch films in your face.

Literary Events this week/weekend in Roscommon and Leitrim

Late notice this, but not too late if you live in the north midlands or northwest. A very engaging two days of talks and readings entitled Irish Women in Literature. Speakers include Nuala O'Connor, Prof. Luke Gibbons, Professor Christine Kinealy, Jessamine O'Connor and others. Free readings, but booking necessary.

also this weekend in Carrick-on-Shannon

Irish Mountain Festival in Carrick -on-Shannon 6th - 8th Oct. 

Participants include celebrated American writer and folklorist Henry Glassie, King of the Castle author Eugene McCabe and Ireland Professor of Poetry Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, novelist Pat McCabe, migrant rights campaigner Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and London Imam and sean-nós singer Muhammad Al-Hussaini  among the participants at the festival in Carrick-on-Shannon.Tickets €60/€40

The End of Love, A Chill Awakening

Ending

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 develop this communication

of knives and forks.

I saw my brother

One day, after I was dead, I saw my brother.

He was talking to a neighbour over the wall;

I called out to him, but he didn’t hear; in truth his hearing was poor.

My anxiety rose; I called louder and louder. I could not move,

I was watching him, scanning his profile; and knowing what I know so well,

knew that this was no mirage nor dream, and so, my anxiety quickened.

It is almost impossible to describe the stress: so close, so immediate;

the blood boiling in the veins of my temples. It would not have been so intense

but he was my brother, and had there been fire between him and I, I would have persevered.

But I could not break outside myself, could not come one decibel nearer, even with that heartbreak.  

A Poem: An Image

Image© Matthew Gammon

Roscommon County Council are hosting an exhibition entitled, 'A Poem: An Image', in the Civic Offices in Roscommon which will is running until Oct 20th. It comprises 16 poems written in response to 16 images, and is definitely worth visiting.

My poem, Returning, was written in response to Matthew Gammon's moving and very evocative image shown above. 

Returning

Houses are funny: boxes really, boxes of memories,

even in decay,

even though the memories are peeling.

The walls, soaked with voices, breathing out their memories

which settle, a fine dust around you.

You, who entered, no longer here;

you, who is here, transfixed in this presence of the past;

an in-between place: you and spirits

and yourself that once was;

and it all settling, a fine dust around you.

Escalation 2017

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

That’s it, I’m going to kill you and everyone who knows you.

You can’t, cos I’m going to kill you and everyone who knows you first.

There I told you; you’re mad.

You’re nuts.

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

The Light of Innocence

The lake: shape of a dress thrown haphazardly onto the ground.

One  evening late, all the people of the village came to divest

 themselves of their sins,  washed them into the lake,

which swallowing , simultaneously caught hold of the sky,

held it in a petrified grasp; sky that never had  a care.

Two swans, two mute glories, some distance apart;

two matches  frozen at the point of flaming  appeared on the water

at the precise moment of the immersion. People say

their plumage shone with unearthly brightness.  It is said in the village

that they appear every time a sinner  divests himself of his sin;

that the light is the light of innocence.