future grandads

This blood-dripping
saddle says to me
that my lord
(that old bastard)
will possibly not
be cantering, cantering
home for tea

on spreading green swards
under a monkey-puzzle tree

because, in fact,
he's beastly dead.

He was a very silly
man, we all agree
and it was not
come to think of it
a very bad thing that
he died in glorious battle
for the sake of family.

Well, now
he's dead
fancy that.

We'll have to look
more or less
to the future
in which certain
things will happen
not, perhaps, good
things, but we are
secure, for the moment
I think, I truly believe
among nervous friends
and the usual plague
of greasy sycophants

but but but
there is danger still
as ever and always
that the whole
wobbly edifice
so haphazardly built
by our drunken forefathers
will crumble and fall
down
down
down.

I would vote
if we had elections
I would walk
if I had legs
I would salute
if I had arms
I would laugh
if my mouth
wasn't ripped
apart and covered
with bandages.

War is not so bad
not really,
you can pick up
a few things
here and there
as long as you
don't get killed
or maimed
forever.

You have to
go your own way
you have to wing it, baby
and isn't that what
we all believe?
leaving the others
the civilians
the refugees
the starving survivors
to pick up the pieces
or fall down dead, so sorry
in the rubble of broken dreams.

Being young
helps, that's
what it's all about
really, it's true, not thinking
when we have to drag out
one more screaming
prisoner. Kill em all
is what I say, guilty
and innocent alike, dirty
smelly fuckers.

You sit at home, but
democracy is a tough job.

You sit at home, and
I envy you at times
I want to go to the Mall
I want to go to the movies
I want to drink in the smell
of a blonde-haired girl
or a brown-haired girl
or any sweet-smelling girl at all
while I clean and oil
my M-16, my feminine beauty
my waking and sleeping
constant companion
and I know that you
can't do what I can do

I can kill people.

When I go home
I can work in the store
stacking shelves
but I think I might
go to college instead.
I think I'd like
to become a lawyer.

cyberlove (noli tangere)

in cool
slithering
corridors
the stalactites
of resentment
like sharp icicles
of uncertainty
thrust themselves
downwards
in rigid frozen
form //: from
the obscure
dis ... connected
dizzy heights
of gun-toting
gateway
secure communities
totally, totally
environmentally
protected
so that nothing
bad could possibly
ever happen
either now
or in the future
exists the thing
she thinks
he calls
his brain
or the thing
he thinks
she calls
her own.

Rue du Bonne Chance

Madame Vavasour
trips the light
fantastic,
orgiastic,
dans le Rue
du Sauvignon.

L’onion
in zee hand
is worse too
in zee Boosh.

Alors, quel’ homme!!
Inky- dinky
Quest ce-que tu dire?
Never push
when you can shove instead.

Hola, parlez vous?
(Oui, oui, on y va chez nous!)

Life is short,
soon comes le Morte
and by report
the silent resentful dead
remain dead for a very very very
long time.

My crime
was complex, yet quite simple,
my best girl had a pimple
and the blowtorch
came to hand.
Franz Ferdinand
war ein “echter Wiener”
In Bosnia-Hercegovina,
Jetzt tot, der lieber Mann,
his white on white tunic
now so dunkel-rot
and poor morganatic Sophie
shot and squealed and bled,
equally, beastly dead.

La veille ogresse avec les dents jaunes
No, that was Queen Victoria,
a completely different storia.

In another place, another time
some other crime
transpires; now the fires
of Hell burn low:
the Devil’s stokers want to strike
instead they just “go slow”.
They don’t much like
their permanent condition
and seek the Devil’s permission
for a 3-week summer break
in Purgatory. Nugatory, I fear,
such hopes, the rise and fall of tropes:
after all, they have made their beds
along with other nasty deads.

And it’s only them feckin Paddies
(such an awful lot of them down here)
who keep acting queer, obstreperous laddies,
getting into fights,
demanding non-existent rights.
So, the Devil, well, he’s right annoyed
and consults his adviser, Sigmund Freud
(yes, of course, he’s down here too,
an under keeper of this shabby zoo,
a critic and constant scathing belittler
of his hopeless assistant, Adolf Hitler).
Ah, feck this crowd, says the Devil,
would you ever get on the phone to Neville
Chamberlain? He’s one of the pure
blithering idiots beyond,
he’s easily fooled and easily conned.
Tell him to ask that fella God
if he’s ready to do a trade?
He can have the Irish, the whole bleedin’ crew,
and all he has to do
is send me some Baptists and Quakers
and a slew of pious Protestants.
They’ll work without the bother of getting paid
and pay attention to the borders;
best of all, at my beck and call,
they will obey my Standing Orders!!

Madame Vavasour
is not a hoor
but a woman of a certain age
with a mind “en clair”
who thought, this world is so unfair
with young girls placed in a cage:
Alors, she reflected, what can I do,
If not be unfair too?
Her raging business success
has got her on the Fortune 500
along with all the other crooks and liars.
On the smouldering funeral pyres
of our moribund civilization
a final oration
falls due to our Captains of Industry!
Damaged people, with nervous tics and snuffles,
who root out money like pigs find truffles.

On the Chateau d’If
d’Whether, du When,
the wind blows from the south.
Ah, Bisto!
cries out the Count of Monte Christo,
rinsing out his … armpits;
today I believe I shall them deceive,
Voila! Heu, heu .. oui, sacre bleu!!
Vite, vite, vite, doleur!
Zee tricoleur
will fly over all zee nations
and reparations
will be honoured, on presentation
of a duly signed and stamped receipt
at Burlington Court, 114 the Strand.
Ah, life would surely be grand
with loads of unearned money!
But life is brutal, grasping, sick,
a carny trick --
but sometimes very funny.
Things happen.
Things happen some more.
Things happen some more some more.
You can’t help but love it.

War criminals
die peacefully in their beds
while their innocent victims
die in agony, in hundreds of thousands:
that’s the way things are.
In my little car
I drive ten thousand miles
across the weeping frontiers.

Tears
do nothing.
Nothing changes,
Nothing improves.
Power remains a heartless game
in every generation.
The occasion
of death is incidental,
accidental, and necessary.
It moves all people aside.
It ranges wide.

Texas/Japan

East Jesus

Nowhere, East Texas,
set down on the courthouse square,
walk over to the store,
dark and dim, take a moment or two,
adjust from the outside glare.
Three pair
of cold unfriendly eyes
look me up and down:
Where you from, boy?
Uhh, Dallas.
You stayin long?
No, sir.
Good.
Can I buy some stuff, is that OK?
If your money's good
yewkun bah whut yew lakh.
No satisfaction
in that transaction: walk out
and some lizard-like lounging lout
spits a gob of tobacco
right in the shadow of my shoes.
This is totally calculated, calibrated,
so I look in his rattlesnake eyes
and think "fuck, I'm outta luck"
but don't look shook or frustrated.
"Y'all have a nice day now,"
I drawl with a smile and a wink,
(you need a Stetson to really pull this off,
you tug at the brim and look constipated)
hoo, that made that bastard blink!
Scoot back quick into the car,
ignition, ignition, ignition!!
get me the fuck outta here!
Whoa, slow down, drive almighty slow,
only a goddam fool would fail to know
that the county sheriff is around the bend,
"Well, well, pull over mah little friend"
and he don't take checks or credit cards.
Ahh, Texas.
I dunno.
Give it back to Mexico?

Snow

The bells of hell
go ting-aling-aling
and ring-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not me.
O mournful mournful is my role
as horror-struck I view
the used-up hanky of your soul
dissolve into the blue.
O Death where is thy sting-aling-aling
O grave thy mysteries?
The grumpy armadilloes
scuttle across hot and heartless highways
and get whacked by SUVs.
O we may weep into our pillows,
we may weep in our mental lanes and byways,
emotion can be such a tease.
Her name is Yuki
and she tells me that means snow.
I know. She has bad teeth but a nice smile,
and like all girls, she wants to be liked,
and not chased and used and thrown away
and cast into the blue.
My feelings, sorry, don't run deep.
I'd really rather go to sleep.

When girls ignore guys
people smile and call it a game;
when guys ignore girls
it's suddenly not the same,
somehow, that's not funny.

Billy Wilson

Baby, let me drive your car,
let me drive you, honey,
it's so funny to come so far
in such a short time:
hey, ain't no crime,
basking in the neon in my flashy suit
and my twenty-seven dollar necktie,
guaranteed imitation
Thai silk. Pass the milk
and drink up your coffee, baby,
we gonna have ourselves some fun
before this day is done.
I like you, girl, but I just LOVE your machine,
tuned-up, growling, smooth, and clean.
I'm holding steady, rough and ready,
but I can sure be kind --
Yes, ma'am, wham-bam,
ya-hoo ... hey, you don't mind?
If I act like a prisoner on reprieve
it's because I got compassionate leave
(my grandmother died for the second time)
and very soon I gotta go back
to f**kin Iraq, shoot down
another two dozen ragheads
or get blown to sh**.
There ain't no sense in it.
They say there are 35 million
of these goddam people
and we sure as hell can't shoot them all.
We'd like to. Greasing is so easy,
and nobody don't say nothing.
What the hell, survive. Stay alive,
and blow them all to hell.
Might as well. Drop bombs from the air,
we don't care. Ay-rabs suck,
hey, what the f**k!!
Say, baby, you wanna get married
when I come home?
Just don't sell that car.
Or we could go to Vegas
and live in sin
at the Holiday Inn.

USA!
your daddy was a preacher
USA!
my mommy was a teacher
USA!
Damn, it's a great country,
you can't help but love it.

The Summer of 1914

The summer of nineteen-fourteen
has been made idyllic
through the prism of memory:

nostalgic images of a lazy purling stream
meandering through the peaceful village
under a buzz of bees and hummingbird wings;
of high teas with strawberry and cream,
of respectful peasants at their tillage,
of order and stability in all things.

Poof! It was nothing of the sort.
One can objectively report
and the diarists of the time will readily confess
that the world was already in a mess,
quite ready and willing to go to war,
and had been for some time before.

The apogee of pride and prosperity
reached its peak around eighteen eighty six
at home, and in farflung British dominions;
the Empire commenced its slide downhill
with the Second Irish Home Rule Bill;
and Victorian gentlemen, with asperity,
were wont, ever afterwards, to fix
that date in their opinions.

By mathematical extraction
(learned at school as subtraction)
there are twenty-eight years left adrift
between 1886 and 1914;
and, as can be wryly foreseen,
this will allow the blame to shift
for decline and contamination
on that hapless generation.

Conscience made brief appearances
and (inevitable) disappearances
as the ancient ruling classes
gave ground to the growling masses.
Under brave Parnell, until he fell,
(hounded to his death by his own countrymen, I might add,
Irish jackals will only attack a wounded lion, bedad!!)
the Irish had set out to leave the UK,
and it's eminently fair to say
this was not the first nor last temptation
to do so by that occupied nation.
(Let's leave it at that: today, at least,
Ireland is five-sixths OK. Up the Republic!!)

But in Britain at the time, what was going on?
Even now, today, it's not easy to say:
Blind conviction gave way to "I surmise" or "I feel",
and the bedrock the Empire had been born upon
was slowly, steadily, being whittled away:
an empire taken for granted, yet not quite real.
Extending the benefits of English civilization
became a minor not major consideration;
the extraction of profit was no longer the aim,
so what, indeed, was the point of the game?
Power and pride, perhaps,
and in the event of a lapse
overseas employment for wayward sons
and a chance to try out new guns.

Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.

So don't you bloody dare rebel!!
We'll send you straight to hell
with shot and shell!!

After the Crimean ( 1856-58 ) disaster,
slowly, and then faster and faster,
the despised but tough little British Army
trained on rebellious natives.
They were ever victorious
happy and glorious
in India (1857) and China (1860),
in Ethiopia (1868) and Zululand (1879)
and ever and always
on the wild and woolly Afghan frontier.

When the Boers said, "What's mine is mine!"
the country thought there'd be nothing to it,
(that would be South Africa -- 1899)
but, after three long years, lived to rue it.
The Boers -- Dutch white settlers -- arose
and the world stood up and said ... Yesss!!!
when the Army suffered a series of blows.
At last, at last, there will be redress
for all those years of arrogance!

The Army went on to win in the end,
after initial and surprising defeat,
dealt out, to malicious glee, by "European" opponents
for a change; one should consider the range
and consider the various components
of this war -- the barbed wire, the machine guns,
the concrete blockhouses, the concentration camps,
all the features that would so soon repeat
with ruthless exponential brutality,
the new twentieth-century reality.
Only this time in Europe.

Britain "won" the First World War
at least until Hitler came along;
then they had to fight the Second Half
of the extended German War as well
for which I confess, one can do no less
than admire them. They stood up
when the rest of the world stood down.
Including America.

So that was the final end,
in victory, of the farflung British Empire.
The eccentric awkward island remains
querulously independent to this day.
Rapidly, after very little delay
most of the red and the pink bits on the map
have faded and gone away.
Yet who can say
that this is a bad thing?

Is there a lesson for our American cousins?
Damn right, there is. I'm coming to it,
in fact, what do you think I'm writing for?
Look upon this poem as a metaphor.
I know you don't like us to call you "Yanks",
Yanks. And I don't want to seem to attack
you (you can be so-o-o sensitive!!). So Iraq
and the Idiot and his Cronies, on this occasion,
will be airbrushed out of the equation.
A poet can talk and he sometimes sings.
This time I'm not singing but talking.
I think, on the whole, you should be walking
Home. Leave it. You sure as hell don't need it.
The British found out the hard way
that tyranny, which is what Empire is,
does not befit a free people.

It hurts the people at home
just as much as the "natives" overseas:
even more, in some ways.

America has its own history of defiance,
real enough at the time, now Disneyfied,
and unfortunately ill-remembered,
turned into mush marshmallow.
Geo Washington and the cherry tree!
But a Republic is not an Empire,
not if its citizens remain vigilant.
Avoid it like poison. Keep the soldiers home.
Do not become another Rome.

planxty

The butter churn was out in the yard,
the cream poured slowly, then mixed:
"Tizhh a haard elbow izh needed, boyo"!
My country cousins laughed at me
as well they might. At night
cycling home from the cinema,
seven or eight miles along darkened roads,
belching still from greasy chips
splashed with salt and vinegar,
we would pass the silent graveyard
and Michael, in his twenties, my hero,
would start up with his stories.

Tis a well known fact, he'd say,
on this very stretch of the road,
there's a man in the graveyard beyond
who stands up in the night
and comes after young fellas like you!!
And with a whoop and a shout
he'd race away from me, gone in an instant,
and there would be me, trembling, fearful,
my 12-year-old heart beating like a hammer.

An Clar! old, deep, and mysterious:
standing stones, ruined castles, ten thousand years
of history even before the famous elections;
dense, strange, marvellous things
have always been happening here
and do so now. The music, as ever,
remains the very best in Ireland --
with a cool little nod to Donegal!

Blackberry bushes line the narrow lanes
and in the summer, you can walk along
nodding, politely, to the cows in the fields,
(should you stand at a gate, they will
all of them, all, come down to you)
and if you happen to recite your poetry
to their appreciative liquid eyes,
they may well indulge in a casual dump
(ladies?? ladies!!) and flick the flies away:
ahh, what can you say? You're home.

Damaged in Transit

When things start to go wrong
panic rises, with a tightness
in your chest, with a lightness
in your head. Time seems long.
Dull colours, bled, take on a sharper edge,
but this, of course, is an illusion.
It adds to your sense of confusion
as your life creeps out on a ledge.
Breathe deep, you have been here before:
idiot, risk-taker, chancer,
laughing moonlight dancer.
I don't ...
I don't believe I can take any more.
I can't go on. I must go on.
This is the end. This is the
End: No, this is
the last beginning.

Consider, if you will, the crocodile

The crocodile
in the Nile
knows something
we don't know;
he may give your legs a playful tug
and look, my goodness, very smug
but his mind
is far from slow!
Day by day
in his calm and careful way
he reflects on depictions
of hieroglyph inscriptions
and, there in the Nile,
once in a while,
he will chew and swallow
Egyptians.

My Own Mata Hari

Last night I saw you
clearly, for the first time,
with all your untruths exposed,
with all the explanations
swept away, with all the lies
stripped down. For a year
you have been using me,
pretending to love me,
pretending to be cheating
on your dimwit husband
who now turns out
not to be your husband at all,
instead, your political
controller.

Now you say
your child is in danger
(which I believe)
and you beg me, tearfully,
to help you
because
I am the "only friend"
you have
in spite of all the lies,
in spite of all the deception,
not to mention
the fake orgasms.

And I think
it is on this latter ground
that my equivocal heart
closes down on you.
You can lie.
You can lie.
But how could you lie about that?

Women do this all the time,
you say. Maybe so.
But you?

-----------------------

Ich weiss nicht was
Ich werden will ....
People want love
Instead they kill.

EFL (English as a Foreign Language)

This gap-toothed
grinning baboon
runs a chain of schools
and sucks in
two million
dollars
each year
out of which
he seems to be willing
to pay me
2000 bucks a month
(before deductions)
if I meet
his rather
hard-to-fathom
requirements.
Mister Bobby, he says,
but my friends
just call me Bob
(and you can call me Robert).
No, no, Mister Bobby,
nice and fliendly, students like,
I like, his gold teeth
gleam, a wide smile
dazzles but never reaches
his flat
blackcurrant eyes.
We have many girl
so we need handsome boy,
tall, blue eye, you know?
As I said, Mister Sato,
I have a Master's degree
in English, seven years
of experience
teaching EFL
in Spain, Russia
and Saudi Arabia.
Oh -- ho ho ho ho ho !
Very good, very good,
you never date girls, OK?
Excuse me?
You teach, no touch,
no go outside, OK?
You mean my students?
Hai, hai, hai!!
Girl maybe like you, come school,
but you nevah nevah nevah
OK?
For businessmens
we have
blonde American ladies
with big, haha,
(he juggles his chest)
but no touch, no see
outside, same
like you, OK?
I begin
to understand
the intellectual
level
of this business.
You no join union
(a spit and a hiss)
you give me also
your passport
I take care
everything.
No Ploblem.
Big smile.
Sweaty handshake.
I need a job.
I'm broke.
I'm in debt to the guys
who have let me crash
in their tiny Tokyo apartment.
I must get a job,
I must get a job
but hang on ....
wait a second!

Khulan

My father was killed
fighting the Russians
says sloe-eyed
Khulan, and now
I am learning Chinese;

Khulan has a shy
gracious smile, a three-year-old
daughter, an absent
shadowy husband,
and she speaks
impeccable British English;

Khulan grazes my cheek
with her slim
cool fingers, smiles
from the mysterious
dark pools
of her almond eyes;

I am falling in love
with this vision from Mongolia,
but these days, sadly,
I tend to fall in love
with every 30-something girl

sadly, and gladly ....

I smile, I speak,
but only a croak emerges:
God, she is so beautiful!

The River

Brownie, you've done a heck of a job!




The lights shine down
on the sullen dark waters,
turbidly, sluggishly flowing:
Man, you bad ol' river ....

Come down to Kansas City.
Come down with your St. Louis woman.
Let's just see what you can do.
Me and the boys will be waiting.

When I met you back in Tennessee
You lied when you told me he'd left you.
You lied through your pretty little smiles,
You lied. And once again I believed you.

Here he comes and on his sloping shoulders
He carries all the miseries of Missouri:
The failed clothing stores, the sick veterans,
All the too many tired and bust-out hopes.

Down around that bend by the hogspit,
That's where we lost young Clare Louise.
She'da bin fifteen last November --
Not a day goes by when I don't recall.

My great-grandaddy Luther LaBeaune
had a pencil moustache, he smoked cheroots.
He wore a tight-fitting flowery weskit.
He got shot on the riverboat, aces over threes.

Huck and Jim ain't you no never mind.
Hoo, boy, you never done talk to nigras.
No sirree, you never done talk to them.
Back in them days you never done SEE them.

The Cajun boys ain't like you and me.
They live in little towns along the bayou.
They eat strange food, they sing strange songs,
and when you walk up, goddam, they disappear.

The Micks beat up on the wharfside nigras
to get their jobs, they was dyin' in the swamps,
and that's what you never hear about N'Awlins,
how the slaves, black and white, fought each other.

The lights shine down
on the sullen dark waters,
sluggishly, turbidly flowing:
Man, you bad ol' river ....

You must know somethin'
You don't say nuthin'
You just keep
Rolling
along

Toh-Koh (Climbing Upwards)

Before you start: This poem should be considered as a translation. It is certainly not my own original work -- but, at the same time, it is.

There is a great deal more guesswork involved when translating from classical Chinese than, say, from a contemporary European language.

The signposts are the "Kanji" -- the Chinese ideographs. Each of them stands for a separate thing or action or idea. They act as concrete guidelines across the centuries but their juxtaposition and the absence of clues leaves a great deal open for modern interpretation.

What got me started was this: I got talking about this poem with a Japanese teacher at my school who teaches "Classics" (i.e. Chinese and early Japanese literature) and it soon became apparent that the standard English translation -- the one that shows up on dozens of sites on the Internet; every single site, in fact! -- was putting an interpretation on this text that was aesthetically pleasing (Western-style) but in some ways very inaccurate. It didn't respect the deliberate use of repetitive words, for one thing, and introduced the simile of "spray from a waterfall" which simply didn't exist in the original.

For that reason I decided to re-translate the poem. I don't know if I've done any better (and I'd be delighted to hear from anyone who reads Chinese!!) but I went back to the original -- as it was written 1250 years ago -- and took it from there. Here we go:

Climbing Upwards


Shen Zou 'Poet on a Mountain Top' Ming Dynasty ca. 1500

Under a cutting wind from the open sky, the monkeys are sadly keening,
Over clear lake waters, over white sands, the birds are flying home;
The autumn leaves come fluttering, fluttering down,
The never-ending river keeps flowing along, keeps flowing along ....

Ten thousand leagues, the sadness of an autumn traveller,
A hundred years of sorrows attend me, all alone I climb;
Misfortunes press down on me, there is frost upon my brow,
There are floods of weariness. Dust gathers in my wine cup.

Here's the standard translation:

In a sharp gale from the wide sky apes are whimpering,
Birds are flying homeward over the clear lake and white sand,
Leaves are dropping down like the spray of a waterfall,
While I watch the long river always rolling on.

I have come three thousand miles away. Sad now with autumn
And with my hundred years of woe, I climb this height alone.
Ill fortune has laid a bitter frost on my temples,
Heart-ache and weariness are a thick dust in my wine.

It's very similar ... but it's not the same.

You can check out the Chinese original (plus standard translation) at the following website

What is really cool about this site is that if you pass your cursor over any one of the Chinese characters, the English meaning will pop up. When I consider those many long years of 1000-page dictionaries .... !!

If you are still with me, check out the Kanji:

Wind - sharp/cutting/biting - heaven - high - monkey(s) - cry - lament;
Lake - clear/pristine/pure - sand - white -bird(s) - fly - return/revolve ;
Without - boundary - falling - tree - mournful- mournful - down
Not - limit - long - river/waters - roll - roll - come;
10,000 - Ri* - sad - autumn - always - made/constructed - guest;
100 - year(s) - many - illnesses - alone - climb - station;
difficult - disaster - bitter - hate - complicated - frost - temple/brow;
heavy rain - flood - new - stop/pause/settle/ -muddy/dusty - wine -cup

*Ri - a Chinese measure of distance

I have a visual understanding of this poem: I can feel what the guy is saying. Say what you will, but these poems are visual events, not just when printed, but in the controlled explosions of brushed ink on paper. Thank God for print -- they are almost totally illegible otherwise!

Finally, and I've been saving this for last, Tu Fu, or Du Fu -- To-Ho in Japanese -- was one of a pair of near-legendary poets who became famous (celebrities, superstars) within their own lifetimes during the T'ang Dynasty in China, a period which lasted from 618 to 906 AD. The T'ang interval is generally considered by most Chinese to be the introduction to the early-modern period of their long history. They had concluded their "Middle Ages" in about 1000 BC, around the time of the Battle of Troy. The other famous poet was Li Po, or Li Tai-po (Rihaku in Japanese), a wonderfully attractive person who features in an earlier posting on this Blog, entitled Ezra Pound in China

Down the Alley in D-Town

On my way home, down through the alley,
I nearly tripped over him,
stretched out in his trenchcoat:
another bad drunk, thinks I,
until he grips hard on my ankle
and says, Son, do you love Ireland?
This was an unexpected question.
I suppose I do, sir, says I,
now will you let go of me leg, please?
Listen to me, son, I haven't long to live
and ye're a good lad, I can tell.
I've a thing in my pocket, now,
it's a thing I plan to give you ...
are ye with me now, me stout gossoon?
Would you let go of me leg, sir,
says I with the panic rising.
I will, says he, with a rasping sigh,
but his grip had actually tightened.
I have the Naval Plans for the invasion of France
(Oh, right, thinks I, this is all we need.)
You must take these papers direct to the King!
But, sir, says I, we have no king,
we are the free and independent
and poverty-stricken Irish nation!
Ah, so the rumours are true, says he.
Indeed, sir, now would you care for an amberlance,
sorry, an ambeedance, one of them yokes
for to carry you away? I would not,
says he, anything without an honest
upstanding horse in front of it, is entirely
suspect, a matter for the gravest concern.
Oh, to be sure, says I, but why
will we be invading France? Divil blast ye,
son, do you not know a thing about code?
Sorry, says I, rubbing on my leg
(he'd let go by now), but can you tell me,
sir, what has you stretched out in the alley?
Haven't I been shot, says he, annoyed,
have you no idea what it means to be shot?
Well, it would hurt, says I, I suppose. Hurt?
says he, it hurts like the bloody blue blazes!
I'm sorry for your trouble, can I get home now?
Ye cannot! Amn't I just after telling you
that the future of the Empire ......
Tis a Republic we are, says I, now,
Ahhh Republic me arse, says he,
aren't we the same feckin people,
the fishermen, the farmers,
the gombeen men, the hoors?
Well, you have a point, says I.
And isn't it dear old Ireland,
he says to me, that calls to us,
like a lonely stag across the moors?
Like a what, sir?
Like a stag!! One of them lads
with the horns on top of their heads, like,
have ye never read a buik?
Oh, but I have, sir, says I.
Well, then, ye'll know what I'll say to you next:
there's Caitlin, Kathleen ni Houlihan,
the personification of our nation,
the pure young girl, the virgin bride,
the ideal we believe in, as we
count our money and scratch our balls,
ye've heard tell of her? Oh, and I have,
says I, many a time and oft, here and there
among the neighbours. Tis been very nice,
sir, but I've to go now, I'll be late for me tea.
Young man, he roars out of him, I AM Kathleen!!
Drunk and shot, sprawled out in the alley,
here as ye find me, for a moment, perhaps,
there may be some lingering doubt,
some slight scintilla, some shadow of disbelief,
but I AM her, here before you, the eternal
feminine symbol of Ireland!! So you are,
sir, and will I go and call that amberlance?
Listen, ye scut, ye hoor's melt, I AM that pale-cheeked
lass, with raven hair and lips like blood upon the snow,
a knowing child who has sent out men to die!!
Not a bother on you, sir, been a great pleasure,
had a grand time talking, but I'll be off now so ....
Not so fast, me young spalpeen!
You will take my message to the King
as I lie here (gasp) alone and dying.
But we have no King, says I.
Ahh, but we do, says he.
And he whispered a name in my ear.

I carried his message to the man he mentioned.
Our country, since then, has become rich
beyond all dreams of avarice. The alley,
when I went back in the morning, wasn't there,
hadn't been there for a century, they told me.

Foreign Correspondent

Chinga su madre
you filthy foreign
gringo, step away
from my line of sight!!!!!
He spat this out in Spanish
and this was
my introduction
to foreign correspondence
as the bullets
whacked into the walls
over us and around us
but, thankfully,
not quite into us.
Got him, he grunted,
and so I peeped,
quickly, out the window,
and said, No, you missed.
Bad mistake.
He glared at me
with his red-rimmed eyes
and when he pointed the rifle at my head
I could actually see
the split-second decision
in his eyes, the frown,
the little blink,
when he decided
not to shoot me.
It was then, at that moment, that I understood
the first principle
of eyewitness reporting:
report not what you see,
report what people tell you.

Well, that was Nicaragua
(or was it El Salvador?)
back in the Reagan 1980s.
I moved on to Lebanon
where the civil war was
so confusing, even the locals
couldn’t tell me what was going down.
The US Marines got blasted
and everyone looked so damned pleased,
as if they’d done it themselves,
which everyone hastened to inform me
they hadn’t. Big cheesy grins.
Therefore nobody was responsible,
everyone was totally innocent
and it was a total non-event
as the 280 plus bodies
were dug out of the rubble ….

report not what you see,
report what people tell you.

My newspaper wanted bathetic
details, like which poor kid
came from Oklahoma.
Like who cares!!
Maybe people in Oklahoma.
My three previous stories had been spiked
because I had no solid proof
apart from the fact that everybody
local knew exactly
what had gone down:
It was the Iranians.
It was the Iranians.
It was the Iranians.
Got that? Well, it was never printed.
The Americans, wisely, withdrew
(they could still do that then)
after blasting the unoffending coastline
with volleys of 18 inch shells,
murdering a few hundred women and children,
shit happens, from the USS New Jersey.
Makes sense; it’s kinda hard
to swagger away
unless you leave some death behind you.

Now I was beginning to understand
the things I could write
and the other things I couldn’t.
The only people who shot at me
and quite seriously tried to kill me
were the Israelis: they did that
oh, about 15-20 times, for them
it is always a joke, and when
with distress and piss-streaked trousers
I wrote in a white heat
about the last of my narrow escapes,
the newspaper yanked the story,
told me I was too “emotionally involved”
plus the incident had never happened
according to Israeli Army Radio.
Like, right, sure, get your ass over here,
see what these people do, day in day out,
But nope, sorry pal, “We have growing concerns
with regard to your objectivity, and would
wish to remind you that this corporation
expects the highest level of professional conduct”
These are bullets, man,
They blow holes in you.
The BBC guys lost their driver last week
because some bored little jerks in a tank
decided to blow him up, displaying
the local level of professional conduct.

The Girl Who Promised to Come Back, Came Back, Then Disappeared

She arrived in-country
early April, the 7th or 8th,
after six months of telephone calls
from me
to her mobile phone
in Moscow.
Six months before that
we had been
tight together,
here in Japan.
“I can’t wait,”
(she said)
“to see you again!”
Ah, anticipation,
the mother of all delights!

She arrived, wholly
unexpected, so young,
so vibrant, so
scandalously beautiful!!
There at the Gaijin bar
where so often before
we had moaned and groaned
about the difficulties
of our separate
situations, and where,
for brief periods
(usually around 2 AM)
we held hands
and gazed, wonderingly,
uncomprehendingly,
into one another’s
affectionate, large, and smiling
eyes.

Now, against all the odds,
she had come back!!
Saul, who was there, tells me
that she insisted
laughingly, then pleadingly,
that I must be summoned!
Saul demurred,
pointing out the lateness of the hour
(it was, again, 2 AM)
and, with that, the possibility
passed: and in that moment,
that hushed respect for sleep,
I believe I lost her.
Yes, I would have gone,
roused from my tangled bed
I would have been at her side
(push a comb through my hair)
in twenty, say, twenty-five
minutes: how everything then
might have changed.
How everything then
might have changed!

That was three weeks ago.
Since then, she’s been
down in Nagoya, stroking
tired Japanese businessmen
in the hostess bar
she works in now,
making the kind of money
(tips are pocketed)
that university professors
can only dream of
in dear old Mother Russia.

But that was three weeks ago:
six months of
long-distance telephone calls,
six months of
“I can’t wait”
reduces down
to total silence.
Not a word.
Not a peep.
Not a dicky-bird.
She might as well
be wiped off the face of the earth
(has she? … these Russian Mafia guys?)
except I know, I know
she’s still there.



What has happened?
F**ked if I know, pal.
One moment it was
great, the grand reunion,
and the next it was a blank wall
of total, impenetrable silence.
Is she OK? Oh, yeah, sure she is,
Russians are total survivors,
especially the “unprotected” women
who are tough as nails.

But why hasn’t she got in touch?
Twenty-five different reasons,
perhaps, but I don’t know
which one it is …….
This silence, this wall of silence
is doing my head in
(I actually like her a lot)
and I don’t know
what the hell is going on.
What a bitch.
What an angel.
But which what is which?

OK, Russians,
(bear with me)
are not quite like you and me:
they have a peculiar
sense of time, so that
when we respond to messages
after the lapse of a couple of days
we apologize; but for them
ten days, two weeks
is no big deal; so that
you never really know
if they are messing around with you
or just going about their
ho-hum daily business.
And the girls …
Well, the girls add to that.

So you never
really really know
after a month, or two months,
(it’s been just 3 weeks)
whether you are still in the picture
or yesterday’s breakfast.
Things
may not be moving,
necessarily,
(to quote Hirohito, the Japanese Emperor)
in the direction
that we may have wished.
Am I slowly going
frantic? Yes.
Am I rapidly losing
hope? No.
Not at all. Pooh-pooh.
This girl is entirely charming,
so loving, so gentle, and she has
a very sharp eye for bargains;
she knows how not
to spend her money
when other people will do so instead.
She would make
an excellent, economical companion
although cynical about men
(“No, no, not you!!” she tells me)
because of her lucrative,
ameliorative,
but perhaps not chosen trade.

O where O where
is the wee “devochka”
lost now in the wilds
of Central Japan?
Smiling, yes, so dutifully,
and topping up the drinks
(the watered-down whiskey)
of golden-toothed Orientals,
she slips, perhaps, the secret tips
into her little bag,
(the bar wants to take a whacking cut!)
and smiles again. She is paid
for relentless smiling, and she
possibly, no probably,
never never thinks of me.

Yo Mavrone, O Mavrone!!
That such a thing should occur ….

O where O where
Is my blue-eyed girl?
(I sought her behind the stadium)
Ya-da-la, Ya-da-la,
Ya-da, da-laddy –AH!!
(Sing it, Van the Man).
She ain’t there.
She will never be there.
Silence crushes all sweet silent hope;
it flicks its fingers at belief.

Open, now, your books to the lesson:
I know she liked me
(she may, for a fleeting moment, have actually loved me)
but I think she began to think
with a growing sense of awareness
that a young girl has to make her way
in this lonely, dangerous world
by staying away from the impecunious young
and older men with visions
and she has to pay
close attention, carefully and politely,
to checkbook calculations.

But I know,
I just know in my heart,
somehow, I will see her again!




Дружба может закончиться по многим различным причинам. Ссоры и разногласия и предательства - ясные и простые причины. Более трудно понять, почему дружба заканчивается без любой причины....

Two Poems

Passchendaele

When your life's f**ked up and each day is a curse,
It helps to remember, things could be worse;

When the spark of resistance fails to light,
It is a mark of persistence to stand and fight;

In the times when hope burns dim and low,
There remains one thing I will always know;

Whenever this life whacks and smacks me,
When an enemy (or so-called friend) attacks me --

One thought jerks me back, one thought without fail:
I was not sent to die ... at Passchendaele!

-------------------------

Passchendaele (glorified as the Third Battle of Ypres) is the epitome of the mindless industrial slaughter of the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of men -- on both sides -- died in agony in a sea of mud under relentless driving rain. Shells and machine gun bullets accounted for most, but thousands (yes, thousands!) simply drowned in the waterlogged swamps of the battlefield. It was the closest thing to hell on earth our planet has ever seen.

--------------------------

One faintly interesting feature of this poem (upon reflection) is that you can move around any of the first four couplets and it will still make sense. Sort of.

Lance Corporal

My heart fell down me trousers,
Jayz, ye lousers,
would ye never let me gang awah?

There be nowt more new to be said,
amn't I almost dead?
Will I have a drop of whiskey? I will.

Yerra, God, that's good. Simple and plain.
Halfway sane.
Tell me, lads, yer names again?

Is it Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Ho-ho, listen, never marry,
Never marry the first young lass what arsks yeh!
Wheeze.
Wheeze.
That were a joke.

I'm old, decrepit, and bollock
naked under this here blanket,
just like the Scots under their kilts.
Hee, hee, hee.
Cough, cough, spit.
Where's that bloody whiskey?

The parson went over after the battle,
large and fat and smarmy,
and used his little officer's cane
to flick over the kilts
on the bare dead buttocks,
to make it decent, like.

I had no time for him
or his old-time silly religion
lost long before. They sent us over
to fight for King and Country.
The King never did bugger all for me,
and the "Country" did fook all as well:
I coom over because I were sent.
And because of the lads, in course.

I'm a hundred and fookin seven this year,
here in this bleedin' hospital,
not thinking of heaven,
not thinking of anything much, in fact.
I'm trying to forget:
still trying to forget.
The television crews
want to put me on the news --
"Last Survivor Succumbs"
let them suck their bleedin' thumbs.
I have nothing to say.
I have nothing to say to that shower.
I have a lot I would like to say
to Bert, and Titch and Tommy G,
to Jimbo, Fishface, Tandragee,
and to that young Lieutenant what's-his-face.
All dead. Killed eighty fookin years ago
in front of my eyes. No surprise.
There is so much I want to say to them
but cannot. The words won't come.

People hover beside this bed,
waiting for me to die. Ghouls.
I have nothing more to say to them.
If I close my eyes, with luck I'll try
to elude them, to join my dead young comrades
in the overarching sky.

It's me, I'll say,
so don't be afraid.
So sorry, boys,
I were slightly delayed.

Departures

Leaving this life is not so hard.
It's the thought
of being dead, permanently,
that doesn't quite appeal.
An absence of existence
mocks the resistance
that makes this life so real.
Surreal?
Anyway,
you can be led, half mentally,
traded, sold, and bought --
like a dealer throws a card.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue.
Read out these words at night, alone --
I was a poet, I was young*

KISS, clearly means
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
So do not go gentle
into that good night;
gather together your mental
defences, stand and fight.

In spite of public opinion,
Death has no lasting dominion.
Shake the bars of the cage,
fight and rage,
and when you go down, finally,
all anger, teeth, and claws,
make the most frightful,
and embarrassing,
and difficult
and excruciating
trouble you can cause.

Do not go gentle, do not
go gentle into that good night!
Rage against
the dying of the light!
Do not go soft on me,
do not go soft on me
at the end.

-------------------------------------------------

* James Ellroy Flecker (1884-1915)

Quotations have been pulled from Dylan Thomas:

RIP-tide

It's hard to believe
every walking talking
person you see
is on the high road to the grave,
and nothing and no-one can save
them, sooner or later
they'll all be bagged and tagged,
burned to a turn
or tipped into little holes
in the groaning ground.

That's the final destination,
boys and girls,
for all our smiles and laughter ...
but is there an existence after?
From those shady bourns
no traveller returns:
there are no
whispers, no helpful hints.

Interesting, wouldn't you say,
if only for effect,
if everyone got, after death,
exactly what they expect?

An puisín ban

Fifteen
is the number
that comes back, a dozen times
plus three.
Fifteen times
she ran away
then came back home to me.
I begged her, please consider,
reconsider, please be clever:
would she ever?
Nope. Not once.
Now it's sixteen
and I know that I shall never
see her again ...
macushla, macushla, mo chroí
mo léan géar, an caoine!
But now and then,
it's not so bad.
I feel strangely glad.
For the first time
I feel free.

---------------------
An puisín ban - the little white kitten

Jack in Iraq

The thing about war
is that
you have to be in one
before you
can talk about it
and then
you don't really want
to talk about it
except to the guys
who were there,
the guys who share
the same memories,
because there is this
like, wall,
between you and the people
back home, the ones
who didn't go,
unless, of course,
your particular
brand of horror
took place upon home ground
as it does, I guess,
for most people,
apart from Americans
(they don't call it
the VFW for nothing).

If you've ever
done drugs, not just pot,
but stuff like benzedrine,
and can remember
that jumpy, edgy high,
and can imagine
living in a constant buzz
for months and months
on end ....
well, then, there you have
the general background,
and in the midst of this sh-t,
the buzz and the constant high,
very very bad stuff
happens, and keeps
happening
day after day after day,
so you forget
you really just forget
what your life
was like before,
you honestly can't
remember.

For that reason
some people
(and I know this is true)
turn down Home Leave
because, much as
they want to see
their families,
their parents, their kids,
they are afraid
of the sudden transition
to "normality",
to the questions
they cannot answer
when they know
at the back of their minds
they will have to return
to the madness
and they are afraid
they will lose the edge,
lose the animal knowledge,
and get killed.

When your tour is up
you get home, that's when
the real trouble
sets in: you try
and you try and you try and you try
but you just can't
settle in. God knows
you WANT to
but it just won't happen.
One guy I knew,
totally sane and coherent,
used to sit
with a 30-odd-six
in the upstairs bedroom window
of his parents' house
(he didn't want to move out,
he needed company, regular mealtimes)
and from this window
he'd draw careful beads
on passing civilians:
so far, he said, I make sure
the magazine is empty.

War, I'm sorry, is not glorious.
War is not normal.
War is a licence to kill.
War is murder.
War is murder on such a scale
that individual lives
have NO meaning.
Civilians?
F--k civilians!
Anyone gets in the way
you just spray them,
blap - blap ... whoops!
Then you make jokes about it.
That's just the way it is.
The "enemy" is the local
people, period: "Dinks"
or "Gooks" or "Hajjis",
whatever: they all go down
if they ain't us.
Killing is so easy.
Killing is so easy
and nobody cares, nobody
gives a sh*t. It's accepted,
until you come back home
and try to be normal,
try to readjust, but you start
having these memories, start
having nightmares, flashbacks,
about the people you killed,
and it scares you, it freaks you,
and there is nobody
NOBODY
you can talk to.

I ran over a 6-year-old kid.
I shot a pregnant woman.
I shot an old guy because he couldn't speak English.

At the time, it was NORMAL,
(you know?) . Now ....
Oh, Jesus, now!!

Is there no-one to talk to?
Hello, government; hello, military?
Seems your lines are always engaged.
I need to hook up with some guys,
the ones who were there,
the guys who understand,
and more and more,
for the guys in this war,
we connect with the older guys,
the guys who went to Vietnam,
and it blows our minds
to listen to these guys
because it's like, it's like
a siren going off in our heads:
WHEEEEEeeeeeeeee.........!!
This is the same, same
f-cking, f-cking thing!

It was bad the first time, way back then.
So why the f-ck do we do it again?

Ilona Herzbrecht remonstrates with Staff Sgt. George E. Miller, Jr. (Germany, 1946)

Da warst Du bei uns
gestern Abend.
You came to us
yesterday evening.
Bloss hab' ich Dich
garnicht gemerkt.
but I never
never noticed.

Was hast Du denn
mit Mir gemacht?
What have
you done to me?
Ich versteh' nicht mehr
I no longer understand
was los ist!
what's happening.

Warum,
Warum ... wieso?
Why?
Geh' weg von Mir,
Hau ab, Du!
Get away from me,
Get lost, you!

Aber, lieber Herr Miller,
sollst doch bleiben!
But dear Mr. Miller,
you must stay!


Ich brauche (need) mehr Zigaretten.
Camel. Oder, besser, Lucky Strike.

The dreadful truth about teenagers

Just like us --

Our litle babies,
our treasured children,
confound us:
they grow and become
pre-pubescent papillae
in the foggy
forenoon of fornication.

They f--k you up, your mom and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you.*

I never chose you
as my goddam parents!
(so goes the youthful cry of blame)
You think WE had any choice, kid ?
So, too, it seems, we're stuck with you:
in the end, it's all the same.
--------------------------------

* Philip Larkin, British poet. Awkward, dangerously good.

An Doire

An Doire

The streeling wind
blows in from the west
with the smell of the smokestacks
and ingrained poverty:
the tears, unwelcome,
sting in my staring,
unblinking eyes.

O God, the memories ....

These streets, unchanged,
these rain-streaked and heartless
bricks and stones: a geography
of sorrow. From here, Number 21,
Auntie Molly kissed Uncle Pat good bye
and never saw him again;
drowned in the freezing seas
on the Murmansk run
back in the cold dark war
that was being fought
for freedom
for democracy
for the rights of the downtrodden;
a war, I am told, we won,
and which never changed
local conditions
one little
bit.

O there was laughter there
in the soft Derry air
(we laugh at our own funerals)
and me Daddy
met me Mammy
which was a good thing all round,
considering
somebody else
would be having to write
this otherwise.

Growing up
was music and girls,
girls and music,
with school and the parents
interfering. Until
we saw Martin Luther King
on our black and white TVs
and thought,
if he can, why can't we?

That's how it started.

Thirty-five years later
you wonder
was it worth it?
All the dead pals, the funerals,
all the bad things
we did ourselves.
I don't know.

When I look at Iraq
I can't help
but remember our own little war
(bad enough at the time):
it's when you start to rationalize
murder, so-called military action,
there is, for want of better words,
an abstention of guilt: people
call it patriotism, the national will,
but this is mental novocaine,
and nothing but lies and evasion.
This much I can tell you,
the memories will always come back,
O God, do they ever come back!
They will never lie easy.

What I don't understand
is why they blow up their own people;
we never did that
(well, we did, accidentally).
What the logic requires,
relentlessly, cold-bloodedly,
is to hit the foreign soldiers,
hit the soldiers. Kill them.
(but you start to sympathize
with the bastards: they are,
after all, the same age as you).
Then, more wisely,
you focus on economic targets,
you blow up the City of London, the pipelines,
and after a few hard hits in the pocket,
the "suits", the enemy civilians,
initiate reluctant "talks".

You win if you can just hold out.
You win if you refuse to lose.
It is the "Terrorists"
who give birth to free nations,
just like the Minutemen
of Lexington and Concord.

Two political poems

Demos -- the people

The cloud-scraping
towers of our civilisation
rest triumphantly
if uncertainly
on forgotten foundations:
demokratis -- the people speak
not only to pass on
theoretical inherent 'powers'
to vote-grabbing politicians
BUT
to take part in all public issues
AND
to take part in all public trials
so that citizen referenda
supercede not only
Congress, but also the Judiciary,
and direct the Executive.

Well, now,
that can't be allowed.
Trust the people as a whole
non-professionals, to reach
the power decisions we need?
Hahahaha -- government
by -- hahaha -- opinion poll?
(let me wipe away my tears of laughter)
Well, yes, actually,
that's what
demokratis
means.
So that (for example)
all registered voters
can decide on the war in Iraq
not to mention
the fate of Michael Jackson.

Can be done. Is done, to some extent,
in smaller nations, such as
Switzerland and Norway,
Ireland, Denmark and Holland:
the government is led by the people
and not the other way round.

Think about that, Shrub,
and Shotgun Cheney,
as you "liberate" the Middle East
(no hotbed of democracy)
and then, piously, deplore
the dreadful outcome
of their first free and open elections.
They didn't vote for the "right" guys.
Oh, get real.

Chickenhawk

Why is it, tell me,
that the most bloodthirsty people,
the most spine-chilling
architects of murder,
of "rendering" and "transition"
and good old-fashioned torture
remain safely Stateside,
surrounded by a bevy of bodyguards,
dark-suited, shaven-headed,
designer sunglassed,wired
to mikes (Charley Alpha Zulu)
in suburban shopping malls.

You have to laugh.
There is no other possible
(considered) reaction.

Marat got murdered in his bath,
so maybe Bush should get whacked
in his shower, after a workout
at the White House gym; or, better yet,
while (televised) clearing brush
on that joke he calls a ranch.
Another Texas chainsaw massacre.
Never happen.
Getting rid of these ikons
don't mean nothing; replacements
pop up, with clockwork regularity,
and the batons of badness pass on.
They just don't get it.
They don't know any better.

Colonel Tibbets remarked, he said
we trained very hard for this mission
and we knew what we had to do;
when we pulled away from that target
we were lifted up by a shock wave,
and I knew in that moment
that the mission was successful ...
When I looked down, what I saw
was an area of roiling tar
where before there was a city.
Do I have any feelings of guilt?
Well, I knew there were human beings down there
and I felt sorry for them,
but we were sent out to do a job
and we did it. That's the deal.
Anyway, if it hadn't been me
somebody else would have done it.

Somebody else would have done it.

improvised explosive devices

How was I to know
he was the goddam sherriff?
snarled Billy T, just after
we dumped his gun in the canal,
heaved him into the back of the car,
and sped away from the card game.

----------------------

She had such striking dignity
in spite of her bruises, her badly
broken nose: but that was until
she opened her mouth, and the smell
of the booze through her broken
blackened teeth near enough
knocked us over.

-----------------------

Fritz was a baker in Munich
until he became an Army specialist
at the crematorium in Auschwitz:
it's a simple matter, he said at his trial,
of maintaining even temperatures.

------------------------

Julie had two lovely kids
so nobody could quite understand
why they set fire to her
when Daddy was away.

--------------------------

It's such a sweet little job, said Teddy,
So let me know when you think you're ready;
We're in and we're out and nobody knows,
We hit 'em on the head and steal their clothes!

Hang on, says John, about the money?
Dread, says Ted, grabs at my heart
When you guys try to be funny.

Art is one thing, crime is another:
How could you kneel at the grave of your mother
If she thought your actions arose from greed?
Satisfaction can NEVER be the same as need!!

This action, boys, is not a hate event --
This action, boys, is a fashion statement!

--------------------------------------

She had three breasts --
there were two in the normal position
but one was on top of her head.
Logically, we had to convert to Islam
so she could wear a scarf in the daytime;
and everyone thought that was so cool,
so politically correct, very peachy keen,
including me, because after we got home,
I could say give us a bit o' head, girl --
with a whole new world of meaning!

---------------------------------------

Birdsong in the trees
Dappled sunlight filters through
One bird flies away

---------------------------------------

Portia M'Gee was a Dubbalin girl
And she lived down by the river;
Whenever she gave her knockers a twirl
The lads were all in a quiver.

C'mere, says she, for I need a priest,
I'll be needin to make my confession;
If the first come last, but the last are least,
I'll be havin to change me profession.

Yerra, Father Mac was a downy oul' bird
So he laughed at young Portia's confusion;
Ye can come to me girl, as a bird or a turd,
But when ye die it's atomic diffusion.

----------------------------------------

Filthy Fred worked down at the bookies,
And was taking the bets on the races;
When we started in we was all young rookies,
Lads in short pants and our teeth in braces.

Put a shillin on EXBO to win or place,
We'd cry in our shrill and breaking voices;
Get away to ****, get outta me face,
Ye're childer still, don't know the choices!

Ah, Freddy, Fred, MISTER Freddy, please,
Will ye put me shillin on the horse's nose?
I'm beggin ye now, I'll go down on me knees,
There's a hot tip behind it, and nobody knows!

------------------------------------

Look at me straight, says Mister Hate.
Think about money, says Mister Funny.
Think about God, says Mister Odd.
Think about booze, says Mister Choose.
Think about death. Just think about it,
Says the Smiling Angel.

Requiescat in Pace

Overcast skies, a threat of rain,
then the long limousines arrive;
umbrellas cover the blackclad figures,
not many, as they lay poor Michael
in the ground.

Holy Father, intones the priest,
(the mourners shuffle to the edge of the grave)
take this Thy fair but blemished son,
Thy will be done, and grant him a share
in life everlasting.

Afterwards, a cluster of guests
assemble in the home of the bereaved;
polite mumbles, a search for strong drink,
then a second drink, having laid poor Michael
in the ground.

The wife:

I would like to thank
all of you for coming today;
I am at a loss,
I don't really know what to say --
Michael would have been so pleased
to see ... to see

The family friend:

There, there, Cindy, that will do,
Teddy will give you a nice long drink;
I have no idea what happened with Michael,
I don't know what to think --
a sad loss, such a sad loss.

Michael was my very dear friend
and we were in business together;
you can be sure I will miss him --
but I can't help wonder whether
he knew, he knew this would happen ....

The mother:

Michael was such a darling little boy,
and I used to hug and play with him,
the bouncing blue-eyed light of my life;
lately, I never knew what to say to him,
and he would never drop by or call,
never, not once at all ....

The sister:

Michael was ten years older
and he had ... he had control over me;
I used to cry hot bitter tears
when he'd press down hard and roll over me,
all sticky down below, but I was young,
and I don't remember ... won't remember.

The brother:

I'm sorry, but I never liked Michael,
he was always a bully and a cruel bastard,
totally, and insanely selfish;
bad enough sober, he was worse when plastered,
well, I'm sorry to see him dead,
but not much ... not much.

The schoolmaster:

Michael had a head for figures,
and he was most extraordinarily adept
with columns of numbers;
alone and secretive, he often wept,
but there was a cruel little streak
in the boy ... that boy.

The police inspector:

I hope you will pardon my intrusion
on this private family occasion,
please accept my apologies;
but to speak bluntly, and without evasion,
this man was a crook,
and he was shot down ... shot dead

BY ONE OF YOU!!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
cry out the assembled guests:

- the wife
- the family friend
- the mother
- the sister
- the brother
- the schoolmaster

furtive, darting glances
take in the windows, the walls and the roof;
(be calm, be cool
don't act the fool)
this cop may have his suspicions,
what he doesn't have is proof!

Domestic

Fifteen years of marriage,
two kids, one of them
playing in the
basketball finals
tomorrow evening
(and you know
damn well we
have to be there!)
while the other
is finishing up
her Science Project
due tomorrow,
which, I freely admit,
I basically wrote for her,
and suddenly,
tonight, without
warning,
you tell me
you want a divorce?

What?
Where are you
coming from?
Why now, why tonight?
Couldn't you wait
at least, until
after the game,
after the Project?
Couldn't you wait
at least, until
my heart slows down?

Another guy?
O sweet weeping Jesus,
I cannot believe
I am listening
to this conversation:
you are in love
with another guy?
What about your
kids, you idiot hoor,
what about,
what about me?

What?
So that's all
you have to say?
You are in love
with this guy
from Mecca Carpet Designs
who drives
a rented Porsche
and dresses
like a Hollywood pimp?
Omigod, you
are - in love - with
this ... this idiot?

I don't know
what to say.

Hey, look at me,
no, I'm serious,
look at me, baby:
I have a gun
in my hands
and you know what?
I'm going
to shoot you
for the sake
of the kids, really,
and you know
what else? it's also
for your own good,
you filthy hoor,
because
I mean to say
Mecca Carpet Designs?
Un-fakkin-believable!!
I mean to say,
you leave me
you little hoor
you leave ME
I expect, I demand
you move up
you don't move down.

Mecca Carpet Designs?
No, that wasn't
nice.