THE FIRST DAY

 

At the foot of duffles lane just a mile from Mucker.

Poetry was everywhere but I didn’t know what

Poetry was back then. You took the hatred from

My heart, showed me another way, Peace.

 

My father was a gun-runner but I hurt nobody.

Your words came to me out of the blue like

dust in a Monaghan graveyard looking back at no-

man's land, Paddy left his mark.

 

How I latched onto Kavanagh's gait was a step

I will never know. His words hooked into me

and lured me into the bright shillings of March

Like Cal, who was born on the first day of spring

Said, ‘why not say what happened

Dundalk has a grip on me like

No other just two or three but

His words ring so true, between

Boy and man. Before I went to

Dublin town, as if I followed him.

 

Didn’t know what I was doing

Still don’t know today and don’t

Want to know. Went to the Tech

When form teacher recited Shake-

Spear or Paddy Kavanagh I fell in

To a trance, Belfast was in Julius

Cesar at the Adelphi cinema.

 

Where I snook in just fourteen

To see the exorcist. Two girls

Asked us to walk them home

But we ran all the way along

black paths under bridges

scared stiff wasn’t the word.

 

Poetry began to form back then

Something inside was forming

A story, a boy becoming a man.

Dark paths have taken me home

Right up to this day, stroked.

 

Forty years ago today all by

The words of painted memory.

I can smell Harp brewery from here

Fermenting a yeast-like substance.

 

     Poetry like sunshine is free.

 HOUSING ASSOCIATION MILDEW

 

H.A. I met a man today who

Painted my walls in memory.

I was a message-boy again riding

The streets of Dundalk in a big black

bike delivering meat for Gunne’s-

beef-Rock’s pork butchers. Everyday

I played snooker, racked up to go.

 

Dundalk then was a crazy town

A town I loved so well, the I.R.A.

Were on the run like dad. The Irish 

army let loose at weekends throw 

the Gypsies into that mix they fought 

like a pack and dogs.

 

Between fourteen and sixteen

I captured Dundalk’s magic mad-

Ness. My first job was on the square

A gay man selling novelty toys.

 

He put his hand on my leg said

He would take me to Dublin

When he went for lunch sold

Everything for a pittance, he was

On his last legs touching me.

 

I went home with a box of money

A wallpaper table that has decorated

Three homes, like a street trader, yelling

Everything must go, just a boy

Touched by perversion.

 

Dealing with my own sexuality,

Felt like there was a musk of lust

Emanating, they were coming out

Of the woodwork but I was having

None of it, I kicked my sister's boy-

Friend up the head for wanting

To touch my brother for three fags.

 

I woke to his face standing over

My bunk bed fondling me but

My mother knew something was

Wrong, followed and caught him.

Threw the pervert out, I thought

There was something wrong with me.

 

Scholl thought me a weak little boy

From Belfast, Fr mc Shane tried it on.

He got a dig in the head and I ran.

It came to a head outside the arcade

One night where pinballs rolled.

 

I went for a piss behind a tree

And a hand appeared from no-

Where got my mates and chased

it down to a school shelter.

 

With a plank that the kids sit on

I beat him to a pulp, my friends

Had to pull me off him.

 

I had my fill of perverts, stapled

A van driver to a palette for box

Making air compressed crates

I think they got my message.

The Dundalk violence was the norm.

I didn’t belong To no one,

my own man.

 

The ramparts of Chuhulans castle

Part of me, a remnant of the past.

The razed to the ground ruins,

Decteras gift.