DOING MY FATHERS TIME
He was one of the longest detainees in Ireland.
A member of the British army in the 50s.
Detention is 48 hours he was detained for
nine months under the special powers act.
An I.R.A man, a bastard literally. Coin collector,
I stole every rare penny he had
bigamist bastard, I laughed in his face
when he beat me.
As a boy, I found Japanese torture mags in the attic, not porn.
Some say he was an abuser, I have no proof of that.
I wouldn't put anything past him, he was rotten to the core,
he knew that I knew something in him was wrong,
He couldn't look me in the eye, we never spoke.
my life was full without that bastard.
i ran away from home four times age 16 I beat him to the ground
and ran to London. My mother gave me all I needed
it was i him from, her humanity, he wanted m being.
I became a creative writing tutor.
Some of my students went on to be published poet my mothers
humanity was inside, to think he asked me to prime a case bomb.
imagine asking your son to kill. He ordered my sister to carry a gun under a red coat, I was asked to burn that coat little.
He told me to listen to police messages, they sent out an A. P. B.
for a girl in a red coat, I burnt the coat, that was the early seventies
You done what you were told I never told him I heard it on the radio.
She spent six in Midleton juvenile center for girls
imagine doing that to your own daughter.
Mum was in armagh womens prison, my sister
was in Midletown
my father was in the Crumlin road jail
I was left to run the streets, mitched school for six months
tried to burn the school, broke 24 windows
one for every slap with the black-jack, expelled.
My was released on bail, he went on the run
to a cottage in hackballscross, just mile from Mucker
Patrick Kavanagh country. I didn't know then what poetry was
I called that time freedom winds all the world was not at war
it was then I started to question republicanism. I grew up reading the secret army and Micheal Collins were the only books in my home and my mothers encyclopedia of Hollywood.
So I grew with swashbuckling Errol Flynn in an Irish army uniform.
Little did I know that cottage with no running water
no electricity parrfiin lamps and no toilet was
used to run guns across the border.
when men called I was sent to the shed with a chemical
toilet that stand of jeyes like fluid and a dog with three legs and one
eye beaten by British army rifle butts nearly dead.
He was my companion, he followed me everywhere
He kept me sane they called him the O. C. of dogs.
He took a job as mechanic sprayer/panel beater
rented a house and we became normal.
My year off school had ended
to be like him a negat,
I was a little
put it
I took a
stroke lost all long-term memory.
Snippets flicker back but I cant cling on partial locked-in-syndrome so these pomes
are my memory. I remember a boy in my mothers hand visiting him in crumlin road
jail like dungeon
