Dread of an Apparition

The Dread of an Apparition

The most effective means
of avoiding a death fright
by apparition
might have been my blanket
but for the thinness of its cover
and the need to obey
Heaven's commands
which do not stop at blankets.
The problem was Mary's
predilection for teens
and my undoubted piety.
Therefore I can say
without any hesitation,
my earliest plans to reject Catholicism,
thereby putting myself
safely beyond the fence,
were due to apparitions;
their lightning
and ghastly messages. 





                                 

God Creates Barnesmore in a Week

Monday was murky, the house was all percussion with rain;

God made the mountains and hills, but minimally:

mere suggestions of fir, fern, sally, of uneven slope in the foreground;

beyond that, the cloud gathered like smoke, thickened white as toothpaste,

so there was nothing to see, just a blankness,

and He was pleased with that.

Tuesday, similar; the road with the grass traffic-line

puddled and shining; the lawn an exuberance of green growth,

of docks gleefully extending themselves, all needing to be mown.

He left the mountains out completely; just made the hawthorns beyond

the garden-fence, and left the rest to whatever He wished to dream up,

and He was happy with that.

Wednesday morning the clouds had shifted and He knew

He was going to have to mow the lawn.

He went at the mountains again, inserting undulations,

rocky outcrops, streams, ravines, stretches of evergreen forestry

and above it all bare rocky crests.

He stood on the footpath, hands on hips, surveying it all

And was very pleased.

Thursday too was fine. He took out one of the fold-up chairs

and sat surveying the geography he had created.

Saw that it must fit into a wider landscape, so sculpted hills,

more gentle in curvature and ever decreasing in height

and flattened them eventually into gentle pastures that tipped

down towards the sea, a silvery sliver at edge of His view,

and He was again quite pleased.

Friday, less than satisfied with the whole thing, He put sheep

round-backed onto the slopes and set them moving to and fro like amoebae,

birds flitting through the near distance, swallows swooping

and a magpie perched on the electric wire just over from the house,

then more sheep, shock-eyed, and foul-arsed foraging up to the fence;

and He was pleased.

Saturday, clouds rolling in from the west, was spent erasing, restyling,

erasing, reordering the whole scene. Feverishly, all day long

tippexing out sections which led Him into that chain of changes;

most of the day the summits were absent like the head off a statue,

the week's fine details obliterated and recast at speed, until, near evening

the clouds cleared, and He eventually packed it in

and seemed satisfied.

Sunday, He was slow to rise, and when he did, attacked the Sunday

newspapers. Later He watched The Sunday Match, and, to tell the truth,

I don’t think He looked at the hills all that day.

Raspberries

Raspberries prefer to die than be captured;

keep the bowl beneath them as you pick.

They have a hankering for tall wet grass;

turn into blood between your fingers,

squash in an instant, drip away to safety.

All I’m saying is, don’t take them for granted;

they have a turn of speed, and they get away.

What is true

What is true 

is that we have given deception sanction,

emboldened the abuse of power.

We have loosened the last rock of answerable governance,

 given liars our permission to lie to us,

made our democracies unsafe, morality defunct;

given a nod to the prcatice of  dictatorships.

.

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.

Brian O'Doherty Exhibition in Roscommon

 Roscommon Arts Centre is launching its re-developed visual art space with ‘Coming Home’, an exhibition of works by Brian O’Doherty.  The title is apt as O’Doherty was born in Ballaghaderreen in 1928, and received the freedom of Co. Roscommon in 2018. The exhibition opens on Friday, May 31^st, and continues until July 26^th.

Blue Man

There is a man,

dead of night,

clutching his shins,

making a hemisphere

to cage his pain.

 A blue man,

                                     middle of the street,

                                     roaring,

                                     arguing

                                     with traffic markings.

There is a man,

he is a plastic bag

filled with his own storm,

the white line

 pouring into his mouth.