| Post Scripts (May 20, 2010. Issue 17.)
After a year and a day of Pearl Harbour
Your eyes would be this blue….
Should I sit here on the street?
Haven’t I had enough of streets?
All my life, hasn’t that been enough?
Inside, the safety of the cafe is
Like a tomb, full of concrete and steel.
So I sit on the street side, eat from un- labelled tins,
Tired of everything.
What pearls?
Only swine.
What tombs?
Only wet cardboard bodies.
Sucked into the current.
Paradise is not so very far from this.
Remember, she sat on the White Stone Bridge
Talking about how she and another woman,
Both singing, both draped in doves, stood above Mount Fuji.
Appropriately deified
By waiting photographers,
Black and white
Smudged
Yet attempting to fly.
Remember, you losing your way
In Frisco over some slick little penis,
Piercing your armour with its determined
Burrowing motion only to slip out with a whimper,
Leaving you to know – you should have known better.
Later, out on the veranda, squatting over
An enamelled basin, your hands a smear full of pleasure
Needing nothing then from any man.
After a year and a day,
My thoughts snake until broken
Stream along that gentle surf
Deserted now except by occasional reptiles
Come to feed on whatever it is they find attractive
Here in the harbour of lost cities –
I walk alone accidentally remembering
What lovers?
What ambitions?
What crimes?
Against what humanity?
These haunt my waking hours
Run rampant through my sleep.
Although these days it’s difficult to tell the difference,
Like yesterday or what may have been a yesterday,
Was that really someone on the beach? Someone running?
My pursuit sucked away by sand until I’m spinning.
So what happens?
After a year and a day of pearl Harbour
How can I tell?
The days
The sleep
Waking
Walking
Standing
Talking
All
Dreaming.
Sometimes I make believe your pastel messages from Europe, still come.
I spend hours writing back
Drop you a line
Confetti
Over the Arizona.
Once I hid your letters all over the place
So after forgetting where they were I’d accidentally find them
Sometimes I still do – find them.
They are the real ghosts here.
Run rope against my skin. Stick myself with things.
Lay in the sun until reassured by burns.
It got that difficult to tell –
Alive or dead? Asleep, awake?
For a while these things mattered
But now, no longer into pain
I mostly keep to the shade.
So sometimes are those sails on the horizon?
Trails of smoke as if from ship?
I don’t know. Maybe I am just dreaming,
Just waiting for news from the mainland,
Just waiting for the phone to wake me up.
After a year and a day of Pearl Harbour,
You know, I really don’t give a fuck
Either way there’s 9,227 cigarettes to go.
z z z
e e e
r r r
PPS xxx- o o o
Table of Contents
Three Poems (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)
Angus Gets It Right
breathe in the fever
perfect wood wind violin
single note shape sigh release
weightless tongues
sweet water curls up
fine black pearls clung
each finger brought to your rowan mouth
until unable to bear it any more
laugh and plunge
this time even deeper
<> <> <>
where are you singing?
where are you dancing?
tonight in open spaces of my heart
memories keeping us together or apart
when life is only looking back
trading places with the dark
wisdom drawn with silver sticks
without books without roots
unspeakable night this time
I will not medicate fear
I will not dogma soul
I will wide open in the dark
Looking For Work In Dublin
The same girl sitting on different buses going by over and over I knew if I saw her one more time the rest of the world would completely liquefy and go with her. Wishing to avoid that whirlpool of a thing I knocked back the coffee, paid and left keeping my eyes firmly focused on the sidewalk made my way to Eccles Street. Sidewalk, crosswalk not daring to look up risking my life in the traffic like a blind man saving the world.
In the crumbling doorways tilted columns boarded windows planning permission posters all along the way safe to be looked at on the right side of the street I had no fear of buses as the decaying signs of Eccles street lead me down to the Georgian centre for saving the ruined life of city boys saving ruins among the ruins 90 days repairs a lifetime then out with you maybe meet again in some emergency of violence queued up amidst the hospital flu wishing you weren’t here.
there must be some as yet undiscovered carpet to sweep you under.
On my helter skelter straight way down to the bus station maybe O’Connell street. instead some nameless to me slope of a road not to far is that the tower of Ulysses where once Telemachus watched black mass Mulligan sacred shaving interrupted by old Ireland who may have forgotten her own tongue but remembering to bring the milk had her tits compared to moocows and other things I cannot now remember. everything old once was new like some profundity this rolls around in my brain tickling something in me I’m not sure of any more than why.
Cutting across I decide on O’Connell, I am afraid of the city only now when I am so indecisive about destinations as if there is some gang of violence waiting for that sign I send of not knowing where I’m going. Jackals of the lost man wandering seeking safety in the numbers of O’Connell, safe among the herds, oblivious to the old, ignorant of the new. penniless. No merchants sanctuary, a foreigner among the African languages and Friesian competitors, children named Rosalitta frown then smile, German hippies Burberry plaid guitars,
Somehow I don’t belong except to old bullet holes on the GPO, rusted tin enamelled placards above the discount shop on Talbot, soldier statues, new inns ward, eroded Grecian friezes on greasy brick work, stained glass window cracked holes. Noticing no one seems to notice like me wanting to some how take the time to repair myself, remind myself, inquire of the passer byes as to whom they attribute freedom to.
We are in a hurry to forget, do our best to not remember.
There has never been another day like today
There has never been another way
It has always been so
World without life
Amen.
A long cat stretch beach of green benches
Cobble stone tides break debris from yesterday’s storm
Soggy cardboard
Bleached pigeon bones
Desperate for sunglasses
Into the leather sleeves of my dreams
Old Shirt
days
walking laying
sleeping eating
over-steamed radiators
warm spells February spring
But
the colour is good
fit is right and when I catch myself
passing mirrors in hallways
bathrooms
shop windows
turned off televisions
Stop
and/or
glance
who am I
breath caught a moment
Old shirt smell
still me
still who I was
and am now
in need of a shower |
