Volcanologist, Virologist, 

Covid-19 

‘fucked’ Spike Milligan

 

 J.H.I.S.S

At the John Hewitt summer school. Memory doesn’t flicker 

behind my eye but I feel the sense I was there, the sense of wonder 

meeting people like Pat mc Cabe, Cherry Smyth, Dermot Seymour 

and  Alice, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Billy Collins, etc. 

I’m not name-dropping, you know who you are? I miss you, 

I really had a wonderful life driving around the country setting up 

creative writing workshops. Megan Johnston this might be just a job 

for you but for me, it was a part-full-time vocation, you can sack me over 

and over for saying fuck you in an email to a friend, you will never get rid

Of me you didn’t sack me I fucked your triviality. I Know better.

Poetry like sunshine is free. My heart doesn’t belong to you, I was gonna say

‘BITCH’ but  I won't stoop, I’ll swoon. Thank you all for the magic, for a year

Or so I set up the verbal arts in Portyup not down. For a time I linked Derry-

Dublin to Craigavon, Eden-avon Magic through poetry you live on in me.

 WRITE ON

 

The two-prong bulb sits

In the three-prong light upon

The right hemisphere.

IN THE VEIN OF ROCK'N' ROLL HEART  

 I like most art forms don't like ballet

And new wave bling movies, just 

drive me away I guess I like darkness 

it can be light, deep down inside I got 

a poetic he-art. Yeah-yeah-, 

deep deep down inside I got a poetic heart.

Oh, poetarty lookin' for a good time

Just a poetic heart, art heart.

Lookin' for a good time

I don't like massages or something mean to say, 

feel.I wish people like that would just go away

I guess I'm just stipud I cant

Edit differentiate, Poetry like

sunshine is free,

Searchin' for time?

 

The two prong bulb sits

In the three prong light up on

The right hemisphere.

 IMPERFECT DAY

Lou, lou, lou, theres no-

One like you, New York

City man I miss you on

My dirty avenue. Zom-

Me such an imperfect

Day, 

Blacked out cant see 

the sun but its in my 

being deep deep

Down in Creedmore.

Up, up, up is down

Down,down, medi-

Cated triptified on

A tell-tail heart, poe-t

Raven nevermore up

On the portal of poetry

Like sunshine it's free 

on this imperfect day.

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.

 

 

                                                              rock-steady eddie

Brits on the street, moon-

landing on T.V. Snipers

bullet lodged in frame.

                                                                     A Fox and hen

sky blue beetle

SKY BLUE BEETLE

 

Painted with gloss household paint.

I took it for a spin to Dublin, pulled

up at the border checkpoint. Held-

The radio was held up by a bullet

Cartridge box. I signed on the dole

in Dublin, Gardiner street.

A dole-hopper I signed North and South 

I was I was Irish/English, taking well-

fare I deserved. After being held for hours, 

the bullet box was torn to shreds. 

On the way back I heard ‘Blue Monday’, 

pulled in as I heard nothing like it, this

Was my sky-blue Monday. Restore-

ation nation a dole-hopper going my way.

A test pot enameled underneath, as New Order 

said, ‘how much do you need’. 

I got what I needed.

 

 

 I said, ‘go fuck off’

into myself since the day

I knew dad a cunt.

Said this sixteen years

kicked back, now got own back

cry now, you bastard.