KAVANAGH'S DITCH

CONNEMARA QUEEN

The buzz of the tent's zip opens the day,
a skylark, toss of the sea. I move down
from the hills of Connemara down with
the shifting light, I move down through
black rock veined in white marble.

My shadow on the shore of Renvyle, like
an island the ocean reveals to me, a stone
thrown up from the bile of the sea.
I move down to see her formed in stone
among the rockpools.

Her breast swells the ocean left behind,
and one weeps into a pool. I move further
down into the deep ravine, where
the sound of children on the beach falls
silent. I'm alone with her, the elegant con-
tours of her flesh formed by the sea.

Her torso falls away beneath the pool
of salted water. Her bodily fluids seep
from the pink encrustations of her womb
to the broken shells. Her head is enormous,
holding secrets and she cries white marble tears.

She knows violence and speaks with 
a barnacled tongue, like something 
created by Picasso or Henry Moore. She's
my Connemara queen! I gently stroke her
thighs, her quim. I hold myself dripping
on the contours of her flesh and leave for
her master will be here to wash over me.

I climbed the mountain graveyard

Above the violent, divided city,

Above the peace line that stood between us

In the living -room.

 

Your plot, all weeds and wild grass, cries 

out for order.

The fallen wooden cross bears no name;

But you are there. Like a sculptor

With clay, I reach inward, my hands

As delicate as salmon wings riding

The white water, struggling

The strong currents of grief.

 

I brush the soiled tears from your eyes

And you wake in me, swimming

And glistening in mine. My hands

Shape the clay moulding our wounded past.

 

          POETRY LIKE SUNSHINE IS FREE

4. The heavens opened and flooded

down on us through a summer sky but

not a sinner moved.

The sound I would love to hear reading

My poems, but there are no ego trips here

And no praise for the man upstairs; this is

Just the earth, the sea, and the sky paying

homage, a standing ovation.

RECAPTURING MEMORY

Did I grip the mobile staircase and my
mother's hand, looking up at the massive 
steel bird, asking myself how it would stay up?
Shaking with fear, she heard and felt me.
she held me, our minds and hearts en-
twinned. My mother and I had a special
bond to this day that I can't explain. 

Two sick bags later, the plane taxied, and I was 
kneeling on the back seat of a taxi, watching 
he hills of Antrim. The poem has fallen just like 
the plane and taxied on this runway into its 
own form, so it must be proper, the words merged 

To find this form like a poem within a poem.

NOTHING TO DECLARE

Drifting into a daydream 

I can't dream visual holo-

grams, lots of my poetry 

came from my book of 

dreams below my pillow. 

I wrote down dreamscapes

before my feet hit the floor 

and I started to need to remember.

I miss that magic of trying

to merge two worlds.

That could be what poetry is.

A checkpoint Charley Border-

post. A man in a black coat 

tips his hat, waving you into 

no man's land. Now, I need help  

even with drawing a blank.

the qwerty number letters un-

focus on the screen keyboard

like a philosopher stone-

hieroglyph.

Time doesn't grey matter in 

my world, It holds no weight. 

One day, I was at that checkpoint 

now it's a wordplay cryptic cross

word puzzle without a clue.

INTRODUCTION

I OPENED THE HALF DOOR OF THE COTTAGE 

IN HACKBALLSCROSS IN CO LOUTH. A GLOWING 

RED DAWN SHOT THROUGH THE DITCH. 

WE WERE JUST A STONES THROW AWAY 

FROM PATRICK KAVANAGH'S

TOWNLAND OF MUCKER. 

FROM THE DAWN DITCH CAME MY POWER

ANIMAL, A FOX SKULKED OUT TO  GLARE INTO ME.

EVER SINCE THAT DAY WHEN I WAS JUST FOURTEEN.

I NEVER SAW A DAWN IT, BEING FROM THE INNER 

THE CITY OF LONDON BELFAST. MY HEART BEAT WILD. I CAN'T 

RECALL I JUST KNOW I WAS THERE JUST FEET FROM 

A WILD ANIMAL, AFTER MOMENTS, HE WENT ON 

AS IF ACCEPTING ME INTO HIS NATURE.

NATURE AND POETRY WERE IN THE AIR. I SEEN

LIFE FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE.

I KNEW NOTHING BUT BOMBS BULLETS

I SEEN LIFE WAS ALL AT WAR; IT FLIPPED MY WAY

OF THINKING.

I CAN'T REMEMBER JUST WHAT I FELT THAT DAY

 I JUST KNOW IT WAS MAGIC. I HAD A STROKE

AND LOST ALL LONG-TERM MEMORY. I CAN'T EVEN 

REMEMBER MY CHILDREN MY CHILDHOOD 

AND TWENTY YEARS OF  MARRIAGE.

SINCE THAT DAY, THE FOX HAS APPEARED IN MY PLACE-

ART IS THE VERY REASON I AM A WRITER.

THIS MIGHT BE A SHAM-MANIC BLOG, BUT EVEN IF IT

DOES JOG MY MEMORY. I PUT TOGETHER A YOUTUBE

 VIDEO OF HOW MANY  TIMES THE FOX HAS 

APPEARED IN MY ART AND POEMS. I THINK THERE 

HAS ALWAYS BEEN A SHAMANIC BODHRAN BEAT 

TO MY POEMS. A FOX THOUGHT HAS 

BEEN LOCKED IN ME.N

GO TO TOTEM-

BRYO ON YOUTUBE

THE FOX HAS BEEN COMING UP FOR YEARS

EVEN IF I HAVE NO MEMORY.

FIREWEED

The mist moves over Islandmagee, and blue horizons are no longer seen. 

I'm here at The Poets House, locked 

in a poetry workshop: "Invasion".

As the mist begins to clear, I see

purple, the head of Thistledown.

I reach to touch the colour green, my skin welts with nettling pain.

I move inland along climbing narrow

twisting lanes, smugglers' paths.

The blemished earth of invading

armies from other defeated shores.

The nettle stings have disappeared

but the gulls cry in my heart; I move

inland like fireweed on this burnt

encrusted land.

A FOX THOUGHT

For Ted Hughes

I imagine the landscape of your poems:

A sacred wood, a pagan burial ground

Where the eyes of wild lifeblood red

devour prey.  

Surrounded by the darkness

of gothic tales. Cold moons fall on

a perpetual November sky.

Winter soil on your chalk-white flesh

Deep in the womb of your savage earth.

The nonchalant delight of your toil, free

from the vulva noose.  

That something else is alive, unseen, black

 velvet feathers oiled in crude sway within 

black rainbows and peck your birds-eye 

tomb vision.

TRAGIC-BEAUTY

For Janice x

Waiting for the Tory Island ferry.

We sat on the concrete steps.

Leading down to the sea.

Looking into its depth was like

Seeing through a concave glass.

Piles of distorted dogfish, heaped

On the ocean floor, huddled

together in the oblong shape

Of the plastic trays that littered

The harbour. Large black crab

Scurried across their limp under-

Bellies. It all seemed like a waste.

Below is the spillage of diesel on

Water. James Simmons, my men-

Tor sat beside me. Somehow,

I knew that the sight of that dog-

Fish conjured images of his daughter.

Crushed by a horse somewhere in

Denmark. The scent of fish and drying

Blood lingered in my nostrils, reflecting.

A melancholy aroma. The gangplank

Went out, and we scurried aboard.

I was glad to leave the harbour behind.

Although the waste twisted me

Through the craggy inlets of Donegal.

The sun beat down on Tory, on the tiny.

Islands or our exposed skin. The children

Played freely on the dust road, the bar-

Man hosed down. There was a tragic-beauty

In the cliff face, I remembered from Donegal.

It was a shame to leave Tory behind, good.

Guinness, the Irish language, like I've never

Heard before, and the small wonderful.

Sense of the island's freedom.

The Fox {after Rilke's Panther)

 

Back and forth he goes between

The kitchen and the main room.

 His gaze behind vertical blinds

 It is like the bars of a caged animal.

 

So, exhausted, it doesn't hold

a thing with no memory behind

a thousand bars and behind

the bars, no world.

 

He wheelchairs the space over

and over the movement of his

the powerful chair is like a ritual

dander around which his will

is paralyzed.

 

Only at times do his pupils rise

Rushes down through the intense

muscles plunge into the heart

and mind becomes a pome.

 

 

.