NO PAIN, NO GAIN For the kids I paid the price of footplate highway I felt every bump and scar on my one and only, one way. But It was great to be out among w onderful people. My back was w ell and truly broke when I got back. Was I in a dingy dungeon in days of old? Were these the last words written in a cell? A cell of disability to show not tell or the other way around, who knows. I write this, for all the lovely people. I don’t get out much you can tell e very twinge was felt in closed eye Reaction but it was worth it To dip into the well, give me the ink- Well if nothing else, the gallows Were right in front of me, my past Is somewhere else, but I’m in the Moment I was found, on new ground.
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PLACEBO EFFECT I believe that Patrick Kavanagh and Raymond Carver gave me a poetic energy. In nineteen seventy-four my father was released from nine months detainment in Crumlin road jail and the maze prison. The longest detainee in Ireland, he went on the run and we lived in a little cottage with no electricity or running water seven miles from Dundalk, Hackballscross, just a mile from Kavanagh country, Mucker. He truly was my mucker, I ran in the fields he walked in with my trusted Companion Muttley the dog, we, he chased cattle like he used to chase British soldiers. With only one eye and three legs, beaten by the butts of British army rifles. It was the first time in my life that I felt that all the world was not at war, before that day I felt this war was a part of me and I a part of it. Now we have peace and all those gun running days are over. Years later a friend lent me a book by Raymond Carver and it blew my mind and stirred my active imagination and turn
THE SITTER For Vincent Blue and golden, red and brown your flesh color shines through. Translucent like those piercing eyes that look from you. Vincent this is for you, my painted words. I hope this shows you in a light That you are used to, Van Gogh Van Goff how we pronounce is Nothing to do with you, the light Encircles your eyes like Pools of water you seen through A spyrol of existence, shining you. I want to paint your picture but In words. I hope I can do you justice Like the pleasure you gave to me. Tone and tone on shadow like you Used to portray, this is not a canvas Just a clean white space filled with Strokes from a brush stroked blue. I have no memory of my own so You will have to do, dead I hope You don’t mind being the sitter.
BURN YOUR BONES I’m looking at the trees because That’s all there is to look at Existence non-existence, beauty Is beautiful although their bare. The sun shines through the naked Branch and lights up my day. It and I keep reaching higher like A bud does in blue/grey sky. I hear the blackbirds out there Cawing nurturing nature’s way. I can see the bottom/top today. Nature has its way of showing it all It throws a coin, nearest to the wall. It shows me I have won just like The blackbirds caw, there’s food on That their soil, nourishment for Another day to feast not to toil. Roots they make me stronger reach down ever higher, you can burn your bones on this funeral pyre.
MISALLIANCE Structures sacred in stroke time- Now, why are they no good to me. I want to make something when Recalled not imagined but memory Eludes me? I hear the mumble Of my own tongue. The painters Vision is a lens, it trembles to caress my sight. Everything I write is the bare- thread art of eye. Shot-snap, grouped life on high, un-balanced paralyzed fact misalliance. ‘yet why not say what happened’, Robert Lowell said. Pray for the accuracy of grace. Giving rise to the suns illumination Yearning, stealing like a tide Across a map, solid, passing poor Facts. To give each figure in the photo A living name. #191 on top 500 poets
THE DAY GOD DIED ON HOLY CROSS HILL I only remember now because I writ it down It was nineteen seventy or seventy-one I climbed the steps like a good Christian boy Armed with a missal and all of my joy. Gunfire burst behind me on the Crumlin Road For god and ulster, the sky was told. I looked up to the great doors threw my missal away And ran home crying, I cried all the way To this day, I still can’t fathom why he done that Three people lay dead at his feet, flat. All for green and orange on holy cross hill. I can’t live with that god within my shoes That day you burst my bubble, gave me the blues. Now I give it back to you, in bleeding words God, you are a bastard who lives dies by the sword. I want nothing to do with you, ill follow the way The way is true and tender, beauty is a beautiful day. Death is part of life I know but this was for your cause You have torn us all to shreds for this peaceful pause. The English and the Irish are at