The noise of short wave,

then your voice comes through

as home might sound

in the midst of Armageddon.

Untitled

 

All of us in a boat.

Sitting there.

Our blood on the water.

Our reflections in the blood.

All of us looking.

The boat unmoving.

The water undisturbed.

No one talking.

Evening settling in.

A chill with the dimming.

This poem is inspired by Peter Doig's 'Figures in Red Boat'. It's a fantastic image which I purposely left out of the post to allow the poem achieve its own effect. However, if you’re not familiar with the painting, do a search and stay with it for a while; I think it is very thought-provoking.

Waves of Men Thrown at Guns

 

Waves of men thrown at the guns

like water thrown on a fire;

the geography of their births

costing them their lives.

Who should “ask what you can do

for your country”?

Rock and clay recognize no borders;

sacrificing lives for a line on a map

is no service to a nation

but  makes a bonfire of its people.

Remnant of an Empire

 

Pool of water

you pick beauty, like an apple,

from this panoply

and set it there,

a fragment from a canvas

lying in the gutter.

I look down 

on The Four Courts

austere and grand

like Ozymandias,

“sneer of cold command”

half sunk in the sand;

remnant of an empire

shivering

in an April breeze.

We all live in here

 

We all live in here;

teeming around each other,

drinking from the same tap,

turning in our beds in unison;

recycling our breaths.

Sooner or later, each of us

turns up at our neighbour’s

offering worn-out clay,

coming away with a mirror

and the wood from a kitchen table.

Going Home

 

Deep

like an ocean.

Moonlight dim

and silent.

Empty

like a dancehall

that was once ........

Not my heyday.

Forty years earlier,

cycling

in the early hours

through countryside

like a dream.

That memory

an exhibit

now;

collected,

preserved in a jar

with label’s print

barely legible.

Was carefree then,

pedalling

your way home;

happy countryside.

Happy life.

Unseen turn.

Exhilaration that.

Pumped up heart

huge with joy,

youthful expectation

unbattered.

Quiet suddenly.

In that countryside

a front wheel spinning.

The fish 

that is solitary

in the ocean

is essential to the stillness

that is around it.

Stillness

that is  a consiracy

waiting.

And the stone walls

suddenly 

stone-deaf to whistling.

On the Canal

 

In the dim light of a December evening

swans, bright as lit matches, are gliding

over the streaming oarweed of traffic lights

on their way to Harold’s Cross Bridge.

Ghostly on winter’s glass,

oblivious to the world’s commotion,

passing without trace, blind to their own beauty

and all the more beautiful for that.

Woods

 

                 Light falling

                 like snow through the leaves.

                                                   Walking among the anemones:

                                                   my giant’s feet

                                                   sinking into that sprawl of city lights.

The woods silent,

its million ears pricked.

A wet day

 

I stay inside,

inside myself.

Raindrops leave

perfect rings on the sand;

BB King sings

with his lips in a perfect o

but that’s not

what I want to say.

A child never spoke,

not in a year

except once

to say no.

I thought about that

and surmised

his parents

had left him short.

Rain magnifies

the grey of clouds.

The electric wires

sag;

yes, and on days like this

I remember.

What I remember most:

a gable end

when a window was

my world.

That boy never smiled,

not once that year.

Green, vibrant in rain,

but  chilly,

encages

but seems infinite.

The oyster catchers move along

but nothing changes;

I drop the magazine

pick up the laptop

and the rain

pressing harder against the window;

I will read the magazine;

he refuses to look up.

 

Sitting at your grave

brings nothing but absence.

Memory is you now,

I carry you in my head,

within me wherever I go.

A Series of Donegal Bay Haiku

I've seldom used the haiku format; however, not having a prolonged piece of poetry to mind but having some impressions on scenes I come across every day, haiku suddenly appeared to be a very useful choice. So, here then is my 'bash' at haiku.

Showers in the bay,

unfurled clouds their sails –

the Killybegs Regatta.

Oystercatchers hunched

searching for shell fish

are spattered ink on a page.

The white cloud is clinging

to the mountainside

as tight as unwashed hair.

The oystercatchers

that were flecks on the strand

take to flight chevron shaped.

A hail shower

extends upward into cumulus –

atomic bomb.

Two Rings

 

Meteorites

trailing the circuses

we’ve lived.

Curling,

shaping to each other

as though time

will eventually interlock us;

two rings.

Form Haze of Childhood

 

From haze of childhood

you grew into yourself,

defined and definite,

glad to be out of it.

Glad to be away,

living within your own fences,

fierce about that:

your privacy, rights.

And still the emptiness

that only past can fill,

you deny it

but it refuses to deny you.

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.

Parasite Man on Mother Earth

 We are naturally quick to deal with parasites be they lethal or not; we don't like them. Our own parasitic nature seems to bother us less though the list of our damage-making is horrendous. This list confirms us as a deadly parasite

Parasite Man on Mother Earth

secreting toxins,

poisoning the water,

depleting the oxygen,

destroying the lungs,

blocking the veins,

contaminating the blood,

raising the temperature,

removing nutrients,

desiccating the skin,

disrupting biorhythms,

inflicting wounds,

impeding defence systems.