.jpg)
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
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.
INTRODUCTION
GO TO TOTEM-
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.
INTRODUCTIONI 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
BRYO ON YOUTUBE
.jpg)
TRAGIC-BEAUTY
.jpg)
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.
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.
.
%20a3%20fox%202.jpg)
.jpg)
