Here in the funhouse

Here in the funhouse, boys and girls avoid the malignant trapdoors, obey anticipatory warnings; be aware of hidden, spiky mines, floating on lines, under the deep and dark blue sea. I loved you, and you liked that, but the gap between like and love is a river without a bridge: nothing, nothing at all can get you across. You knew, yet now this blank silence, consciously intended, is killing me. Well, it's a hard and cruel way to reject a lover, never mind if you actually dislike him; it's such a passive and easy way out -- so very cold. Women have hurt and bruised me so many times: well, never mind, I have done the same, I expect, along with a failure to show respect: I am so sorry, sometimes. It's only now I begin to understand. I have lived with not a few and made love with many more, but, surely, that is not the point. They used to be looking at me and I used to be looking at them as well and the electricity was crack-crack-crack. But that's all gone. Women's eyes pass over me now. They couldn't be bothered. But here is me still looking. I like most women -- and my attention, my intention is admiring, relaxed and cool. I have never been a fool. Compliments, smiles, a dance, the beginnings of a new romance, are infinitely more important than Wars and Governments and Kings: real life consists of simple things.

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.

The Summer of 1914

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

There were 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 openly confess 
that the world was already in a mess 
for quite some time before ... 
ready and willing to go to war! 

The apogee of pride and prosperity 
reached a peak in about 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 readily foreseen, 
this will allow all 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 shoneens attack only a wounded lion, bedad!!) 
the Irish set out to leave the UK, 
and it's fair to say 
this was not the first nor last temptation 
to do so by this ancient nation. 
(Let's leave it at that: today, at least, 
we are five-sixths OK. Up the Republic!!) 

But in Britain at the time, what was going on? 
Even today, it's not easy to say: 
"I am convinced" was being replaced by "I think, I feel". 
The bedrock the Empire was born upon 
was slowly being whittled away: 
taken for granted, it was not quite real. 
Extending the benefits of English civilization 
was a minor not major consideration; 
extracting profits was no longer the aim, 
so what 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. 


Don't you bloody dare rebel!! 
We'll send you 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 (1867) and Zululand (1879) 
and ever and always 
on the wild and woolly Afghan frontier. 

So when the Boers came along, 
that would be South Africa 1899, 
they thought there'd be nothing to it. 
Well, they lived to rue it. 
The Boers -- Dutch white settlers -- 
initially kicked them in the ass 
and the world stood up and said ... Yesss!!! 
At last it has come to pass. 
Arrogance has met its match. 

Of course, they went on to win in the end, 
but only after many a humiliating defeat, 
dealt out, to malicious glee, by "European" opponents 
for a change; but when you think of 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, 
a new twentieth-century reality. 

But 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, mind you, of the farflung British Empire. 
The eccentric awkward island remains 
free and independent to this day. 
After a certain delay 
most of the red and the pink bits on the map 
have faded and gone away. 
But who can say 
that this is a bad thing? 

Is there a lesson for our American cousins? 
Damn right, there is. It's very late at night, 
but what do you think I'm writing for? 
Regard this poem as a metaphor. 
I know you don't like us to call you "Yanks"; 
No, thanks! And I don't want to seem to attack 
Amerkuh (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 at home. 

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

You have your 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 the citizens remain vigilant. 
Avoid it like poison. Keep the soldiers home. 
Do not become another Rome.

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.

When the Big Mister D Comes Calling

We were told to stay off the booze and to run five miles across the feckin fields when we had, as it were, the time. Everyone snorted and fell over laughing, and then Dinny ups and says, Are we to wear our Wellington boots, sorr? to the snippy runt (it rhymes) come down from Belfast. He looked pinched and peeved, having to deal with us rustics, but he'd brought us guns. Nice guns, too. Armalites, greased-up, new. We were better tooled-up than the sad sallow boys in the fearful British Army (you can take that both ways). They were just walking targets, doing useless patrols. We'd do a ping most days, shoot one, let them drag the body home and think and brood about it. They took it out on the locals which was exactly what we wanted them to do: safe houses, money, food, they all came pouring in. That's when we thought we were winning the war. We were doing grand in East Tyrone, but the cities were a different story. They started picking us off one by one: dawn raids, roadblocks, security checks; all the technology brought to bear. We were driven into the hills and woods like the clansmen five hundred years before. We lost the M-60 that way. Some young lads, recent recruits, seething with frustration, raced through the town with the gun set up on a flatbed truck and shot the hell out of the local police station. The SAS were waiting and shot the lot of them dead, even shot them after they were dead (to make sure, like) there in the parking lot in front of the church. Cartridges like peanut shells everywhere you walked. That's when I went to America, after the cops beat up my little brother, hassled my mother in the street, and swore I would never be captured alive. We had lost, as they say, the initiative. That's why the "Peace Process" was grudgingly welcomed. We were losing. It's that simple. Nobody will admit it to this day: "IRA - the Undefeated Army" --- (that was supposed to be us) was barely functional, nearly licked, and mostly on the run. I was scared of my life in New York -- Jayzus, you think Norn Iron is dangerous? Try Brooklyn. I was bartending, what else do Irish illegals do (construction)? when the word came through it was safe to come home. It is never safe to come home, not if your home is my home: it's been on the frontline for about four hundred years, and I don't want my own kids (if and when I have them) to go through the same thing. Everyone does their little bit, gallantly unmeasured, for Mother Ireland. Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann* but the time slides around when you have to think about doing a little something for the nerve-wracked jangling creature that dear old Mother Ireland has made of you. ----------------------------------------- * For the Glory of God and the honour of Ireland NB - this poem is NOT autobiographical. I get into a lot of trouble for my weirdly accurate imagination. I would rather not be strip-searched (again) on any future visit to Fortress America. As if I even want to go there ....

terrorists on a coffee break

We were told to stay off the booze and to run five miles across the feckin fields when we had, as it were, the time. Everyone snorted and fell over laughing, and then Dinny ups and says, Are we to wear our Wellington boots, sorr? to the snippy runt (it rhymes) come down from Belfast. He looked pinched and peeved, having to deal with us rustics, but he'd brought us guns. Nice guns, too. Armalites, greased-up, new. We were better tooled-up than the sad sallow boys in the fearful British Army (you can take that both ways). They were just walking targets, doing useless patrols. We'd do a ping most days, shoot one, let them drag the body home and think and brood about it. They took it out on the locals which was exactly what we wanted them to do: safe houses, money, food, they all came pouring in. That's when we thought we were winning the war. We were doing grand in East Tyrone, but the cities were a different story. They started picking us off one by one: dawn raids, roadblocks, security checks; all the technology brought to bear. We were driven into the hills and woods like the clansmen five hundred years before. We lost the M-60 that way. Some young lads, recent recruits, seething with frustration, raced through the town with the gun set up on a flatbed truck and shot the hell out of the local police station. The SAS were waiting and shot the lot of them dead, even shot them after they were dead (to make sure, like) there in the parking lot in front of the church. Cartridges like peanut shells everywhere you walked. That's when I went to America, after the cops beat up my little brother, hassled my mother in the street, and swore I would never be captured alive. We had lost, as they say, the initiative. That's why the "Peace Process" was grudgingly welcomed. We were losing. It's that simple. Nobody will admit it to this day: "IRA - the Undefeated Army" --- (that was supposed to be us) was barely functional, nearly licked, and mostly on the run. I was scared of my life in New York -- Jayzus, you think Norn Iron is dangerous? Try Brooklyn. I was bartending, what else do Irish illegals do (construction)? when the word came through it was safe to come home. It is never safe to come home, not if your home is my home: it's been on the frontline for about four hundred years, and I don't want my own kids (if and when I have them) to go through the same thing. Everyone does their little bit, gallantly unmeasured, for Mother Ireland. Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann* but the time slides around when you have to think about doing a little something for the nerve-wracked jangling creature that dear old Mother Ireland has made of you. ----------------------------------------- * For the Glory of God and the honour of Ireland NB - this poem is NOT autobiographical. I get into a lot of trouble for my weirdly accurate imagination. I would rather not be strip-searched (again) on any future visit to Fortress America. As if I even want to go there ....

terrorism

Right down through me and you was like brothers, no others never came near to us, they had a fear of us. And I have to say that came in useful. The ranchers knew we were few and first warned us, then suborned us. And I have to say I was surprised. The shootings began, we stayed, others ran. But the idea grew that we could fight too. And I have to say I was ready. It was so damn easy, the house, the yard, only one guard. We kicked in the door, shot him down on the floor. And I have to say it felt good. It felt so good we did it again and again and again and again with all the others. Get off our land until the Rangers came down with reward posters: Five Hundred Dollars for me, Two Hundred Fifty for Billy John Bob: and I believe he never forgave me for that. We never give a damn for the Rangers, it was the local farmers we was afraid of and with good reason. They'd turn in their parents for five dollars, a shot, and a bag of seeds. In the City of Chicago as the evening shadows fall I recall those days. We lost everything. The poor always lose in America, as everywhere else. It's just a fact. But I was glad I fought back in my young youth and shot a couple dozen rich bastards. That's something you can look back on in your old age with a sense of quiet pride: it was them that died and never grew old. Stealing land, grabbing food from the mouths of children; treating better men as slaves. A Remington in the hands of a steady man can soon change things around. I go to the grave of Billy John Bob. He worked on the streetcars, got drunk towards the end. I lay down wildflowers. He was my friend. I'll die in my time. I will never feel sorry.