DOIN' FINE!

I told you
that I love you.
I told you

what I was going to
do to you
when I got you

all to
myself
alone

I told you...
there was sudden
laughter on the line

“I think you got
the wrong
number love

but keep
talking
...you’re doin’ fine! ”

IS THAT IT?

Time runs out
warps into itself
strata after strata

diminishing into
a dot before me
that I vanish into

Future-Past-the Now
all one
and the same

so this is what
Death is
I'm not impressed

the silence solidifies
Memory contrives
to put the world back

together like
a cut-out
Dada collage

a postcard blue sky
hastily assembled
against some remembered

building famous for something
or other and
a photo of you

ripped out of
an I don't know
stuck in place

glue seeping
around edges
like a white blood

Life is
an Hannah Höch
photomontage

Time congeals
like a fried egg with
a ciggie stuck in its yoke

I laugh at memory's
vain attempts
"Don't bother!" I tell it

in a voice like
the white space
between written words

the world swirls anti-
clockwise down
the plug hole of reality

If this is Death
as I say I'm not
impressed

*

Jan had fallen and hurt her head at Valletta...a great big blue ****** bruise. I was very worried about her and she awoke in the early hours of the morning. I got up to make her tea. I had a very sore throat....could hardly swallow my own saliva. I was waiting for the kettle to boil and idly bite into a slice of bread with delicious Maltese marmalade. I had just made the tea when I found I was unable to swallow the last bite...it got stuck in my throat and I was busy losing consciousness. Time was running away from me and everything was going black. Jan said I just collapsed and crashed to the floor...all I knew was that the world had gone away and everything was dark. Our Maltese friend said that the famous arch in Gozo that collapsed had collapsed from the bottom...."...like a too large lady on too high high heels." I was obviously doing my charades impression of the Gozo arch meeting its end. I too was busy meeting my end....but just before the world was cut from under my feet I dashed a slurp of tea into me which must have in turn helped to make the bolus of bread go down just in time. When consciousness lapped back into my skull I was only aware of water in my mouth and coming out of my nose....I thought I was drowning in the dark and had no notion how I had fallen into such a notion of an ocean. Jan was beside her self and then beside me as I made it back just in time to crawl back into life and the being of me...

FINE YOUNG THING

“Oh, I was...a fine young thing! ”
“Ya shoulda seen me then! ”

“Lindyhopping Lindy! ”
“Dat’s wot de’s called me! ”

“God! I was good! ”
“I was better than good! ”

“I was to be dug...dig! ”

I laugh as she jive talks me.

“Here...ya don’t believe me! ”
“I’ll show ya! ”

And she proceeds to
show me
how & wow!

Flinging her fragile frame
into a crazy crazy dance routine
...*******!

God! She nearly gives me
a heart attack just watching her.

Doesn’t look a day over 40(she’s a nifty sixty) .

She busts a move(never breaks sweat)
dances me off my feet(I bust a gut) .

Bless her.. little cotton socks.
“Well, young fellow...was I lying? ”

“You...you’re(I gasp) “...the bee’s knees.. the cat’s pyjamas

I try to catch my breath
(it went that away)
I nurse a hernia.

“Ah, you young guys these days
you just ain’t the same! ”

“Why, me & Jim would dance for hours! ”

“We was the best jumpin’ jivers! ”

“Shoulda seen us dancing to“Jeeperscreepers! ”
“Man...we was something else! ”

Then she goes... makes us both
a nice cup of tea

with a dash of brandy in it for me
(“Thought ya needed it! ”) .

Spring waltzes in and
dances with the curtains.

Louis Jordan sings:

“There ain’t nobody here
but us chickens

...there ain’t nobody here

but

us! ”

THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS

The sun a crazy crayoned
yellow swirl

with a sky so blue it has
completely used up the blue crayon.

This is Memory’s drawing of...
...a moment from 1972

complete with furze declaring:
“WE ARE YELLOW TOO!”

I sit stick-person-like upon an Irish hill
upon which perches the old English graveyard.

I read to English soldiers from 1872
MARY BARTON and  NORTH AND SOUTH and such like.

A captive audience of broken Celtic crosses.

They listen with all of themselves.

They listen through wild flowers and grasses
holding fast to the sound of my living

voice.

And when sun showers
Interrupt the text of my breath

I climb inside
some tumble-down-tomb

and read so that
even the rain stops

to listen & then

I freewheel down the hill
back to the world of tea.

My dead soldiers
eagerly awaiting

tomorrow’s chapter.  

*

Reading for my Leaving Cert. If you have ever seen the John Huston version of Joyce's THE DEAD then...you have seen the entrance to this graveyard. and a few of its graves covered in snow..it's briefly glimpsed as the voiceover narrates the beautiful passage "...: snow is falling all over Ireland...."

THE THINNESS OF A SHADOW

from the very last time
I saw you
to the story

of your death
unable to comprehend
that you do not exist

you to me
are living
yet

you an early morning
silhouette
looking at clouds

as was your want
a living
breathing entity

every moment
now made more
precious than the last

I hold you so
in thought
refusing to let you go

and so
it is
always so

your footstep
as you
cross the floor

whistling Wish
you were
here

the story
of your death
I refuse to believe in

as if it happened
to a someone else
another Brian...not mine

You stepping through
the door
so full of light

stepping through time
"Come on Bud...
I gotta go!"

your death
the shibboleth
I can not utter

you forever always
this
early morning silhouette

JULIAN IS WRITING A POEM      

"The thud, thud of a horse's hoof
does not alarm fish."  

MIND UNDER WATER - 1883
Richard Jefferies



Fishes flee him.

They can feel his thoughts
touch them.

Here, Creux Harbour
on the Island of Sark.

Mummy fish tries not to laugh
as her little darlings dart...

It's only a poet!"
she tells her younglings

"thinking thoughts
they won't hurt you.

Julian's vibrations
pass through them.

"It's what poets do
before they turn the world  into words"

The little fish listen
with open mouths.

"As far as I can tell...it's a Julian
one of the cleverest kind one can find

a man composed of equal parts
wit and charm

an all shall be well and
all shall be well type of guy."

Julian is thinking
of nothing

but horses.
Horses.

The fish don't
even get a look in.

He sees the great shires
being swum in the harbour.

Such a magnificence
of being

decanted from land
to sea

the great hooves
treading water

free to be themselves
enjoying their day at the sea's side.

Julian is alive
with this image

the sheer
awe of it all.

The fishes think
nothing of it.

They are used to horses
galloping among them.

It's the vibrations
of the poet's thoughts

that tickles them.

"But our Mam..?""
a small fry ventures

"...there are no horses
here....and now?"

"Ahhh that doesn't bother poets
ya see...they see

both what is there and not there
or what may be!"

She quotes the great 16th century fish
"Nothing is so but thinking make it so!"

Later, at the Candie Gardens
on another island altogether

Julian sits, sips...
a double espresso.

And again.
A double espresso..

We see the words flow
onto the page

charged with the grandeur
of the great shires

as the little fishes look on
amused at the poet's

coffee coloured thoughts.


**

We left Julian Stannard at the table as we went to pursue the museum that awaited us inside. I jokingly commanded Julien to use the time to write a poem. And when we came back to him...indeed he had. A great poem about writing with the sun and horses swimming in the bay at Sark. One felt humbled by his ability and the ease with which over a double expresso he could write so brilliantly. I was hoping that some of that ease would rub off on me but alas no.

I was like a little raft watching an ocean liner pass by in the night.  

All hail the Julian who shall be 'the poet' for ever hereafter.

"BEWARE THE DONALL DEMPSEY MY SON!"

the frog slid
slowly down
my throat

its legs sticking out of
my mouth...
still kicking

the world
was running away
into the final darkness

my eyes were robbed
of trees and sun
the day being stolen from me

"Death by frog!"
how unlikely
a dying

the bullies all
short-trousered
lads like me

the moment sculpted
from the sunlight
of 1963

then either the frog gave
a desperate last minute kick
or I silently yelled

and expelled
friend frog who
having escaped death

by swallowing
hopped it
lost itself in the long grass

perhaps the horrible tale
of down-the-gullet
is told still

to its descendants
far removed from
that sunny day.

"Better watch out..." Mamma Frog
would make her voice shiver
making her little tiddlers tremble

with trepidation
"...or the Donall Dempsey
will get you!"

*

I was having a bad day....nothing going my way....but still Kim Moore  managed to wring this out of me in her wonderful writing workshop. She applied a Chinese burn to my mind and out popped this in a seven and a half minute sprint of the mind. I was halfway through reliving the trauma of a frog being shoved down my throat to gales of laughter when I suddenly thought "What about the poor frog? How did he cope?"

What did he tell the other frogs and how in the world of frogs it became the tallest of tall tales and my name entered the lexicon of frog horror stories that have been passed down through generations of frog families despite being the innocent victim! All the frog heard in its terrification was my name chanted over and over again in great grievous glee "Ha ha ha...Donall Dempsey!"

Me and friend frog were in this tormenting together. But despite all this my name has gone down in frog history as if I were a Grendel or a Grendel's mother or a Jabberwocky. Just say Donall Dempsey and see what the reaction is...faster than a Basho plop and splash.

Still have nightmares about it! Another time they took off my pants and I had to run all the way home bottomless. In memory no one can hear you scream.

But no one thought of the poor frog...except me. I hope he didn't think bad of me...it wasn't my fault.

Frog saved both our lives by kicking free....his own and mine as I was being held down and could struggle. He saved me from choking on him and I probably gave one last choking cough to expel him from inside of me.

When in France I couldn't even look at a frog's leg without choking.

Ahhh but a bullied frog in the throat is worth a poem in the mind. Both friend frog and myself surviving to tell the tale.