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.

Uncivil War

A Matthew Brady portrait of Union officers, ca.1862

Fredericksburg.
Chancellorsville.

Massa Robert was on a roll.
His army was invincible
and, yes, by God they knew it!
Time to cross the Potomac.

Lee's Union opponent, Hooker,
was badly confused,
at odds with the War Department
at odds with Honest Abe.

Time to cross the river.

Maryland, Pennsylvania,
untouched peaceful farms,
milk, butter, eggs and beef:
live off their land for a change

(but all paid for in Southern script).

Meanwhile
down in Richmond
capital of the CSA
sits wild and beloved Johnny Mitchel.

Who is this man?

Mitchel was England's
worst nightmare, a revolutionary
in control of a Dublin newspaper,
calling for the end of English rule.

Get your fat British behinds
out of Ireland, today and
not tomorrow: this was
the tone and import of the "United Irishman"

The English, as is their wont,
passed a brand new law
ex post facto, a frequent occurrence,
to nail this firebrand nuisance.

................................................................. John Mitchel (1815-1875

So, for his sins, poor John
and Francy Meagher, his friend,
were sentenced to death for treason
but transported to Australia instead.

Out of sight, out of mind.

From Australia they both escaped
(conspiracy theories abound)
and both, separately, made their way
to the USA, safe among Irish friends.

John sailed back to France
(Ireland was unsafe, but France was free)
while Meagher took over the Irish in New York.
Then along came the Civil War.

Francy took command of the Fighting 69th
the best and the worst of the New York Irish
committed to the Union cause.
But Mitchel came out for the South.

Returned to Richmond (running the blockade)
his sons joined Confederate regiments
while Mitchel himself wrote intemperate articles
for the local newspapers.

.................................TF Meagher (seated, centre) with officers of the Fighting 69th


Now Lee crosses the Potomac.

Among the troops under his command
are the veteran First Virginians
with their standard bearer, young Willie,
17-year-old son of John Mitchel.



Hooker gets the push and in comes Meade
(Union generals never lasted long).
The armies march under the summer sun
and make contact in rural Pennsylvania.

Gettysburg.

Two days of deadly skirmishing:
marches, countermarches,
concentrated cannonades,
savage assaults, grim defences,
until both armies, Union and Confederate,
like bareknuckle boxers
bloodied and exhausted,
stagger, punch drunk, to the mark
and face the third and final day:

July 3, 1863.

Not only the battle
but the outcome of the War
hangs in the balance.

------------------------------------------
Intense fighting erupted on Culp's Hill at 4 AM on July 3 and by 11 AM Union troops had secured the hill, firmly anchoring the point of the Union 'fishhook' line. With the loss of his advantage at Culp's Hill, Lee decided to alter his strategy. Lee decided to strike what he thought to be a weakened Union center on Cemetery Ridge where he observed few troops and only a handful of artillery batteries. If this section of Meade's line collapsed, it would threaten the Union rear. Lee issued orders for a massive bombardment followed by an assault of 18,000 men, commanded by General James Longstreet. Longstreet's Assault, better known today as "Pickett's Charge" would be Lee's last gamble at Gettysburg.
http:// www.nps.gov/gett/gettour/day3.htm *
-------------------------------------------

Waiting for orders --
then abruptly hauled into the line
along with so many others
come the First Virginians:
and among them Willie Mitchel.

Wait for it ...
Wait for it ...
Then the air splits with the sound
of high-pitched bugles:
now, boys, now,
now, now, now!
The screaming 'caoine' of the Rebel Yell:
Charge!!

The bullets come sizzling by
whizzing like demented hornets
zzzzzzzzz... then a dull flat 'pok'
when they hit with a puff of dust
and down goes the sergeant
down goes Billy Joe Parker
down goes the Preacher
then red-haired Randy Simmonds
Archie Drummond, poor little
Jimmy Preston, then that bald
old bastard what's-his-name,
then Johnny Belham, Andrew Holland,
"Daddy" Goulder, Snakepit Jones,
Paddy Miles, Dandy Kelleher,
'Arsey' Versey, Jimbo, Davy, Mack,
Pauly O'Brien ... Pascal ... all of them?
"Get your ass up here, Mitchel,
and take this goddam flag!!"
He stumbles, drop his rifle,
hears a sizzling past his ear
and grabs the blood-smeared
wooden pole, the flag little more
than a rag shot through
with holes and he runs
and he runs and he runs
and he ....

Down past Coliso Farm
in the grey morning dawn
come O'Rourke and Timothy Fallon
gaunt-visaged figures in Union blue
with Privates O'Donnell and McCarthy
and with the two corporals
Delaroche and McInteer
to recover the body
of John Mitchel's son.
They carry him away from the field
in a final act of honour
and respect for his patriot father;
the blood-sodden war, for the moment
forgotten, and the next war,
the long hard struggle for Ireland
very much in mind.
-------------------------------------------------
* -- for some obscure reason the National Park Service will not always accept a linked post and will flash a Security Violation message: if this happens to you simply copy/paste the URL into a new browser window: http:// www.nps.gov/gett/gettour/day3.htm
-------------------------------------------------
First off, this piece says more about Ireland than the American Civil War. Sorry. But people fight in wars (even your own) for different reasons ....

John Mitchel was imprisoned after the Civil War for his unapologetic support of the Confederacy but he managed to make his way back to Ireland where he was elected to the British Parliament in 1874. He refused to take his seat (as elected Sinn Fein candidates in British-controlled Northern Ireland continue to do today) because he would not take an oath of loyalty to the British Crown. The British annulled the election on the grounds that Mitchel was a convicted felon but he won re-election with an even larger majority. Do not mess with the Irish. He died before the Brits could decide what to do next. In the aftermath of the Civil War many ex-soldiers (Confederate and Union alike) took part in the Fenian Rising of 1867 which was brutally suppressed by the British. Jail sentences for the survivors were savage. Out of these hellish prisons came Tom Clarke who helped to set up the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Dublin in the decades before the First World War. On the principle that England's misfortune was Ireland's opportunity the rebels struck during Easter Week of 1916. The rebellion was suppressed and the leaders (including Clarke) summarily executed. But after the Crucifixion came the Resurrection and the modern Irish republic was born out of the anger and disgust with Britain that became a national movement for independence after the events of 1916. Thank You and God Bless You, Michael Collins. I mean that. Without you I'd still be waltzing around the world with a British passport.

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

In-house Links:

history The Runup to Easter 1916

poem After the Rising

tongue-in-cheek history primer for beginners From the Normans to Michael Collins (1170-1922)

poem Across the Water

history (anger, regret) Armistice Day

Birthday Poem

I don't even want
to think
about
all the things
that
have happened;
nor think
about
all the things
that
mercifully
didn't.

I deal
most of the time
with the
surrounding world
in English
except
when I don't:
that's when
two other
languages
come into play
and spatterings
of six or seven
others.

This
creates an
uncalibrated
form
of cultural calculus
in which
the fixed
point
(from which perspective
either reveals
itself, or becomes
imposed)
doesn't stand still.

When you
feel 'at home'
in another language
you are
residing
in a different house
far away
from home.
You are
but you are not
the same person.

One language
is
functional, it is
all we
think
we need.
It is not.
It is a restriction
a self-willed
refusal
a primary gap
of understanding
between
the world we understand
and the ones
we don't.

This War ... and The Next

Broken glass,
shots in the night,
voices, shouts and screams:
impossible to believe
that this
is really happening.

Cradling
the unfortunate child
in my arms
I listen to their people
opening up
with machine guns.

They are right,
we are wrong.
We are right,
they are wrong.

Meanwhile

I look at this child
with a bullet
hole in her tiny chest
and I think
none of this makes sense.

the sharp lemon-scented surprise of language

"The road was a ribbon of moonlight
across the purple moor " --
a cherished poem of childhood
(galloping hooves on a moonlit comparison)
brings language to the fore.

Even the harsh jumpy clatter
of endless daily talk
finds grace in comparisons, analogies,
(the ancient roots of everyday speech):
we can run, yet cannot walk.

Transport systems of the mind
rely on habit, things gone before;
so in Athens the public transport
(which carries us from place to place)
is called the Metaphor.

Down by the Seaside/ Holding Hands

The sea is a fine and pleasant sight beyond the beach and esplanades;
first green then blue in the changing light
where children play until daylight fades.

A holiday by the sea was a childhood treat:
O let's bury Daddy in the sand!
He'd growl and roar, he'd wiggle his feet,
and life was innocent, life was grand.





Now Daddy is dead and Mommy's on pills
and my brother's in jail for extortion;
my son can't believe that heroin kills
and my daughter's just had an abortion.

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

No, this is not autobiographical -- you'd be amazed how many times people assume that everything you write is personal. Well, sometimes it is. Here is another poem, also not autobiographical, representing every parent's worst nightmare ....

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

holding hands

here I sit, drawing
elephants for another man's child,
recalling, with pain, the death
of my daughter, when was it,
eleven years ago?

she would have been seventeen

seventeen, sweet and lovely,
convinced she was ugly,
worried about pimples,
horrified, yet very attracted to boys,
glued to her mobile phone;

it's not so hard to imagine

that day, crystal clear
in memory, I will never forget;
it was all so casual, my wife
simply wanted to get her hair done,
asked me to care for the child;

if only days could be lived over, taken back

the sun shining, I thought,
sweetheart, let's go for a walk,
would you like that, alanna?
and she, all smiles and trust,
put on her coat and took my hand;

why, oh why didn't we stay at home?

down on the street, as usual,
the traffic went whizzing by;
I held her hand, tightly,
and we talked about important things,
her school, her friends, her questions;

fathers can love children they do not physically bear

a friend, John O'Farrell,
hove into view: well, is it yourself,
John, I asked, loosing my grip,
a handshake, the child darted away,
and that's when it happened;

no blame to you, John, but stay out of my sight

the police, sympathetic,
say the death was instantaneous:
when she stepped off the kerb
the driver, a Pakistani immigrant,
had no chance to stop;

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

eleven long years, not one
day goes by when I don't relive
each moment: my wife, tight-lipped,
never blamed me; the divorce
came through six months later.

Two Families

I.

electricity
for about four hours,
no water, my brother
missing, Aunt Salah
dead, the same bomb
killing all three children.

Mark joined the Marines
in June, just after
high school graduation;
he got sent to Iraq
last March, got killed
in Fallujah.

my uncle,
after the funeral,
moved in with us, no longer
noisy and cheerful,
prone to bursts of sobbing,
said he'd join the new police.

Mark played tight end
on the football team;
he took Courtney Phillips,
the most popular girl in school,
to the senior Prom, gave her his ring,
she thought he was so cool.

II.

my father
wouldn't let us go to school,
my sister and I, the kidnappings:
he pretended it was all a joke,
said he couldn't afford the ransom
for a pair of princesses.

Courtney says Mark
told her about joining up,
said he was afraid to tell
his folks, his mom would
just worry, and his dad,
he said, would kill him.

a car bomb
(we could hear the blast at home)
killed the police recruits
lined up on the sidewalk,
and at first we thought
my uncle was among them.

Mark's dad, Mr Kenneally,
had served in the 7th Cav
in Vietnam, he ran
a real-estate company in town;
his wife worked at Wal-Mart, they both
broke down when he told them.

III.

for several days
we asked everywhere for news
and there was no news;
finally, three weeks later
a scribbled message arrived,
my uncle was with the resistance.

Mark did well at Basic,
got his sharpshooter's badge
and came home on furlough;
we went out to the Stagecoach,
got drunk, he said his parents
were OK, but Courtney was cold.

my poor father
puts on a necktie every morning,
kisses my mother, says good bye
to us girls, takes up his briefcase
and goes out to a job
we all know no longer exists.

Mark used to send e-mails
after he first got to Iraq;
at first the letters were full
of funny stories, after a while
they got harder to read,
a lot of strange religious stuff.

IV.

my friend Farah
is dead, killed with her father
by machine-gun fire;
they were driving behind
an American convoy, a bomb went off,
the soldiers shot them dead.

after the election
there's going to be a big attack
on a town called Fallujah;
we're gearing up, wrote Mark,
and if I don't make it, tell Courtney
I love her: she won't answer my e-mails.

we are frantic,
my father has been missing
for two days: my mother
has asked everybody, nobody
can tell us anything; also,
my uncle was killed in Fallujah.

a car came to the door,
two Marines in dress blues:
Mark's mom refused to see them,
his dad, in tears, let them in.
Mark is gone: now Courtney Phillips
says she always loved him.

Midshipman McCarthy

I sit outside your door
Barry MacCarthy
half drunk and half sober
cradling my father's pistol
waiting, waiting for the dawn
and for you to walk out
so I can shoot you dead.

In boyhood days
Barry MacCarthy
there were no better friends
than you and me against the world
"contra mundum" -- do you
remember? Then your parson daddy
sent you off to the Navy.

On deck, there, Mr Midshipman
Barry MacCarthy
look lively, hoist the topgallant sails
clap on the blocks, bear away
and leave them ratlines alone.
And it was Eileen M'Gee who loved me
and not you.

O we took a brilliant prize
says Barry MacCarthy
and my pockets are full of golden guineas
taken from Papist Spaniards.
I am rich beyond belief in my father's parish
and it is you, young Eileen M'Gee
I wish to take to wife.

My Eileen, in tears,
last night she came to me,
beaten by her drunken father, a bad farmer,
but he with a glimmer
of debts forgiven. It is the gold
that opens all their eyes,
the sudden wealth.

Dear Jemmy, 'tis you I love
not Barry MacCarthy,
'Tis you young Eileen I love in return
and I will furnish an answer.
Ah, Barry MacCarthy, dear Barry,
cradling my father's pistol
I wait for the dawn.

After the Rising

We picked our way through the rubble
on Friday evening, myself and my sister,
stepping over the broken tramlines
on O'Connell Steet, shaking our heads
at the shell-damaged buildings,
two females, silenced and appalled.

It seemed as though
nothing was left: the city
we had loved and lived in
was gone. It was destroyed.

"God's curse on these people
for the trouble they have caused",
said my sister, Dervla, petulantly,
she was trembling, walking by my side.
"God's curse on the bloody English"
said a voice which was my own.

Dervla sprang away from me
as well she might
shocked and scandalised
her mouth hanging open
(never before had she heard such language)
my genteel and proper sister.

Next day I went to work for the rebels
who had no other name,
not in those days, and a young fellow
breezed in from an English
prison, that would be 1917,
and ran me off my feet.

"Miss O'Grady", he said,
"you will take a memo, please,
and I want copies of the previous letter
with suitable amendments
typed and legible for my signature
by 5 o'clock this evening".

"Yes, Mr. Collins", I said,
"and would you mind very much
if I was just a little bit late
returning this afternoon?
It's just that the sales are on
at Brown Thomas in Grafton Street".

"Miss O'Grady, you astonish me.
Do you propose to gambol and play,
to disport yourself, to sling
about your hard earned shillings
(God knows how little I pay you)
in mercantile British corridors?"

Well, there was no answer to that.
I glared at him, furiously,
as he unleashed his wide and sunny grin.

Fair City

On the condom machine
in the pub toilet,
"For refund insert baby"
while around the bar,
the skangers
getting langers
are holding up the walls
along with the knackers and the chavs
and the local head-the-balls.

O dear sweet Bally Aha Clee
funny, edgy, chancy, iffy,
ye've always been the place for me
astride the green and filthy Liffey

"Send them f**kin Spaniards
straight back home to Italy"
(graffiti on the 77A to Tallaght)
"Use your brian, vote Sinn Fein"
while Jacinta, all alone,
screeches down her mobile phone,
and the bus explodes in laughter,
"Anto's a bleedin' luvly roide,
and didn't he pull up me knickers after!"

There's an oul' wan at the stop
who goes and asks the driver,
"How long will the next bus be?"
so he looks at her and he says
"Ah, missus, about 15 or twenty feet,
same as this, but who can tell",
and she asks, not missing a beat,
"And will there be another monkey
driving that as well?"

O dear sweet Bally Aha Clee
funny, edgy, chancy, iffy,
ye've always been the place for me
astride the green and filthy Liffey

"Excuse me, sir", says the tourist,
"do you know what side of the Liffey this is?"
"Eh?" says the Dub, with a puzzled look,
"I do, of course", and goes back to his book;
so when the mother was belting the arse off her brat
and the tourists behind expressed their views,
"In Chermany we do not beat our children!"
the mammy replied like a ball off a bat
"Well, in Ireland we don't gas our Jews".

timeslip

tracing
the tendrils
of lazily
curling steam
rising
from this cup of tea
reminds me
of Proust's
madeleine


and the
formidable
unlikelihood
of employing
mere memory
to salvage
anything
akin to truth

Aotearoa

I walk
down the path
flanked
by strange
companions
silent
serious men
mother naked
feather-bedecked
over the rough
trail I walk
and they smile
from time to time
with stained
and sharpened
teeth.

I smile
and caper
but
when I whinny
as I feel
I ought
with subservient
courteous
laughter
I fear I find
their frowns
and disapproval
decidedly
disconcerting
not at all
the thing!

The captain
god rot
him, has
stayed behind
and forced poor me
a surgeon's mate
to accompany
these
sullen savages
along
imperceptible
jungle trails
in search
of sweet water
and greens
for the scurvy.

On trees
hang fruits
I have never seen
and also
there be flowers
whose fragrance
overpowers
my senses
but my trousers
rub hard
against my thighs
and the
Norfolk broadcloth
of my
uniform coat
hangs heavy.

Suddenly
we stand on the brow
of a ridge
and my knees
become unsteady
but ahead
and below lies
a sheltering bay
with the sweep
of the sun-bedazzled
and bedazzling sea
while the sun
itself
sinks down
like a fat red
orange.

crosscultural communications

Look here, my good man,
I have no idea
What you think you
Are doing, but you can't
Just walk into the Lord's House
Half-naked; and furthermore,
Be so good as to explain
The meaning of that weapon
and that rope in your hands.
Have you no proper sense
Of what is fitting and seemly?
There are times, give me patience,
When I truly despair of you people,
Of your willful ignorance
And your dark savage ways.
What? Speak up, boy, what?
Your uncle says I must turn
Around, I must close my eyes?
Preposterous! What's that?
Your uncle has a surprise for me?
Young man, I can tell you
Most assuredly, after all I have seen
This day, there is absolutely nothing
Your wretched uncle can propose
That could possibly surprise me.

________________________________________
"The Reverend Carl S. Volkener came to New Zealand in the 1850s, but fell out of favour with the Opitiki Maoris by urging them to desist from bloodshed when war broke out with a rival clan in 1865. One of the Opitiki chiefs hanged him, shot him, decapitated him in his own church, drank his blood and swallowed both his eyes."
-- Niall Ferguson, "Empire": Penguin Books, 2003. Page 121

Broadway/103rd Street

West Side Highway
sparkling water
Jersey Palisades
34th Street
whish
42nd Street
whish
57th Street
USS Intrepid
96th Street
whish
125th Street exit

Malibu Hotel
Broadway, between
102nd and 103rd
eccentric
convenient
a bit of a dump
who cares?
just a place
to shower and sleep




Gristede's
Petland Discounts
El Taller Latino Americano
Rite Aid
West 104th Street
Ben and Jerry's
Hot & Crusty
Juanito Unisex
Super Discount
Eden Cafe Bar
a couple more
turn right
West 105th Street
Silver Moon Bakery
Metisse
The Abbey Pub

tell Sharon that old joke
downstairs in the Abbey
how can you tell
if an Irish guy is queer?
he prefers women
to drink: she barks
with laughter, stops,
stares grimly into space:
her last two lovers
were Brian O'Callaghan
and Aidan McCullough;
oops, put my foot
in it again ...




Jeff from Drogheda
takes me to
a "real" Irish pub
near Mama Mexico
full of black people
like Louis and Troy
and Ali
from Ethiopia
who spent eight
and a half years
in jail
and never wants
to see his country
again.
I tell him
helpfully
how the Irish
are the blacks of Europe
inured to
centuries
of oppression
persecution
colonialism
and repeatedly
and intentionally
and joyously
and continuously
disloyal
to foreign masters --
a pox upon them!

Ali views me
speculatively
blinking
over his spectacles
as if
I had
materialised
from under
some unexpected
trapdoor
hidden beneath
his neatly shod
trusting
feet

Say it long and say it loud
Oi'm black and Oi'm proud!

Faith and begorra,
blacker than the H of shpades




the pints unbidden
line up on the bar
laughter
bewilderment
and a series of toasts
to Martin Mac Luther O'King;
young smoky-eyed
Alison, behind the bar
is half-Scottish
and doesn't think
she's really
all that black
but slides me a free pint
for the thought
that's in it




Streeling home
under unseen stars
under a slightly
orange sky, attended
by the whoops
of police and ambulance
sirens, the constant
rush and roar
of never-ending traffic.

New York, New York
is a wunnerful town
the Bronx is up
and the Battery's down

my batteries
were low and slow
in the morning
as we hurtled
beneath
the belly of the beast
to 86th Street,
a stroll through the park
and the discovery
that the Metropolitan
is closed on Mondays:
joy in the morning,
Happy Mondays
(where are they now?
shattered & shivering
in Manchester)




take your Metrocard
and stick
it in: the buses
and the subways
love it, can't get
enough

St Patrick's Cathedral
built by the pennies
of the Famine Irish, a soaring
neo-Gothic testament
to tribal values and bad taste;
embarrassingly huge,
bombastic, imitative,
empty; just as
MoMA down the road
wanted twenty dollars
to view their paintings
so I laughed
and walked away
having stood in line
for twenty minutes:
in such small incidents
a lifetime of conviction
finds instant expression




Penn Station
(Joe Louis Plaza)
neither snow
nor rain
nor heat
nor gloom of night
stay these couriers
from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds

the perfect meal
is one click away
zagat-dot-com

Tir na nOg
(Land of the Ever Young)
Irish Bar and Grill
Donal and Pronsias
from Donegal: Tony Jackson
the Leitrim Dandy
still working the door;
my fifth, or is it
sixth or seventh
visit since
the innocent, pre 9-11
summer of 2001?




Ground Zero:
a gaping hole
in the heart of the city
an ominous absence
like a missing tooth
like an amputated leg
a constant sad reminder
of all the things
that have gone wrong
and continue
to go wrong
since that lazy
indolent summer
of the missing intern
and shark attacks




later, on 42nd Street
(we get around)
the yellow cabs
avoid collisions
with insolent
arrogant ease
accelerating around
the very empty
US Army Recruiting Center
and the signs
that say
Don't
Even
THINK
Of
Parking
Here.



On the house,
says lumbering David,
known as Buffo
(Big Ugly Fecker From Offaly)
in the Blarney Stone
near Nassau and Fulton;
we're a few steps uptown
from the SWAT teams
and assault weapons
on Wall Street
where the business
of America
is business




crash, rattle
and bang
on the C train
to 34th Street
then transfer
to the Uptown No. 1
"Boy, oh, boy"
say the headlines
Michael Jackson
beats the rap

Don't
Even
THINK
Of
Living
Here

(Just click on the photos to expand them. Click on the Back Button to return to the text.)

Four Haiku

Spring

at the festival
starlight shines upon your hair
only I can see

Summer

my eyes are in love
you pretend you cannot see
sound of cicadas

Autumn

leaving the office
a whole day of black and white
bursts into colour

Winter

snow on the platform
thinking of her dancing eyes
here comes the train

An Clar

I like the craggy, weather-beaten
old men with nicotine stains
on their chapped knuckly fingers
and few remaining teeth. I like
the way they stare at you
with their faraway cynical blue eyes
and take you in, visibly unimpressed
with the ridiculous person you are.
I stand among them, occasionally
forgetting not to smile, nodding
my head sagely, losing the beat,
in my off-the-peg suit, my despicable tie.
They allow me the honour of infrequent speech,
spitting (very politely) to the side,
reserve all spoken judgement for the sake of my family,
then mutter, grimly, about the price of sheep.

Three Poems

Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
-- W.S

Greenwich Mean Time

that day south of the river
he walked, or was it I who walked,
over the damp grass, past naked trees,
over the line and measure
of fleetfoot time;

another day it was drink
and awaking in the white room
with footprints, inexplicable,
distinct, stepping around
bloodstains on the ceiling;

this day, as on all days,
other footprints skirt the edge
of an unforgiving canyon, an abyss;
and if you stare long enough
it will stare back.

Afghanistan

In the end, perhaps, we all end up
with the politics we deserve:
but there was something very strange
about these people, as if
for all their stalwart pride
and flashing eyes, hawklike eyes,
(often enhanced with charcoal)
there was something missing,
some essential human element
absent, just not there: they were
clever, charming and witty,
quick to anger and quick to sing,
emotional, happy and friendly,
but cold, cruel and treacherous.
Dangerous and attractive, no wonder
they have their history; how I miss
that fearful country, those people.

deliquescence

one of my childhood friends
walked into the sea, another
walked out of his mind, his
family prays for a safe return.

another went away to war
and when it was time to leave
the war came home with him,
it lives with him now in the night.

all the "ills this flesh is heir to",
diseases, conflicts, accidents:
I watch them make steady
inroads, erasing names I knew.

yet this life can be no different,
(reason and religion teach us)
alike in all but detail, we share
in its grim but glorious mystery.

(but from the loss of a child
there is no recovery.)

yesterday, today, tomorrow,
beady-eyed, coldly glistening,
a dark uncoiling presence
lives, unwelcome, in my heart.

Berlin

They sealed the train past Helmstedt,
nobody on, nobody off,
and when the Vopos came on board
just outside Berlin
(Volkspolizei; people's police)
these arrogant surly bastards
came storming into the compartment
like the drug squad, like the old SS:
ahh, these unlovely Germans,
preserved, in aspic, only in the East,
long after the ruin of Hitler.

"Papiere, Ausweis, Passport" bellowed
these louts, weighed down with pistols,
passport stamps, and barely contained hostility;
we were supposed to rise from our seats,
cringing and submissive, thinking
this way we could prevent them
from tearing apart our luggage, but they
do that anyway. Gobshites. Pardon the Irish.
A very tense, anger-filled fifteen
minutes later, you roll into West Berlin,
to the enclave of "freedom": Zoo Station.

In Cold War days this city was seriously weird,
slashed in half by the excrescence of the Wall.
The Wall: Die Mauer: flowers and graffiti,
flowers for the the ones who didn't make it
and graffiti for the cunts who shot them.
I was 17 on my first visit, made the mistake
of leaving the subway on an empty platform;
well, not quite empty, there were two of us,
me and the guy with the machine gun,
hammer and sickle on his helmet, the wait
for the next train took two hundred years.

On the Ku'Damm and at Ka-De-We
the consumer West was at its best,
lights and music, jittery signals of possible pleasure;
at times the whores in leather minis, of all sexes
and then some, hard to tell apart,
would rasp at you in the hard city argot
"Na, Liebchen ... sag' mal, was moecht's Du?"
"Garnichts, gute Nacht!", a cheese-eating grin,
then pounding the bright stony pavements,
past the Imbiss stalls, the smells of Curry-Wurst:
Zoo Station? This whole place is a zoo.

One should never lightly contemplate
a visit to the East, and I will tell you why:
it involves a visit to the bank, or casual contact
with one of the shady unshaven characters
flashing rolls of bills on street corners.
You get a five, maybe six-to-one exchange
on Ostmark for your (real) Westmark money,
which you stuff into your socks, or up
your ... whatever makes you feel secure,
then you step off the train at Friedrichstrasse
and march up to Checkpoint Charlie.




The GIs wave you through (no skin off their ass)
and, not feeling so great, you approach the real border
between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Here we go. Once you enter that door
("You are now leaving the American Sector")
they have you by the balls, you pass
into Their World. What's going to happen here?
First, you wait. Then you show your passport,
and the blond young jerk inspects it for five whole minutes,
I kid you not, flicking his gooseberry eyes
from the photo to your face, from your face to the photo.

Then they move you along to another room
where they tear your luggage apart, empty
your bags completely, inspect the seams,
leave you then to gather up the mess;
today, thank God, they are not interested in socks,
a good thing, because, although we all know
money is shit, we don't really want
to admit the real-life stink of corruption.
Finished? No way, Jose. Another careful
passport check: photo, face; photo face,
then the barrier clicks, you're through!

Through, perhaps, but through to what?
God, it's all so grey and empty.
They force you to change 25 DM (one-to-one)
so with the money in my socks, I am now
a cruising unit, a man with money to burn.
My steps lead me to the nearest restaurant
(brain and belly in perfect synchronisation)
and, after a quick visit to the bathroom
to liberate all those crumpled rolls of banknotes,
have the best meal in two months of hardass travelling.
Say what you like, I don't care.

Replete, burping politely, ever so slightly,
I walk down to Unter den Linden
and view the Brandenburg Gate
for the second time, but now from the other side.
You can see the West through the arches,
the golden Siegessauele, the Tierpark, my God!
It seems a million miles away.
And it is. Sharp right to the Museuminsel;
so how did these people end up with the heart of the city?
Well, they did, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon,
Nefertiti's bust, reside under their control.

Alexanderplatz. Das altes Rathaus.
Time for a beer ( I have to, have to
spend this money! There is nothing, nothing to buy!)
So I walk down the steps and get directed to a table
with four other guys; they do this all the time,
there is no such thing as choosing your own space,
there is no such thing as choice, period.
These guys are all strangers to each other
but they go silent, anyway, at my approach;
a few cautious greetings, veiled assessment,
then I toss the pack of Marlboro on the table.

Holy shit!! Their eyes bug out on stalks:
Western cigarettes!! This guy has Western cigarettes!
Therefore (you can hear, almost see the gears clunking in) ...
this guy is from the West!!!! A pregnant pause.
Eyes start flicking from one to another,
is it OK to talk to this guy? can I trust you,
are you an informer, will you turn me in?
I keep politely silent, waiting to see
what, if anything, will come of this.
The silence lasts a full two minutes.
One guy clears his throat, decides to jump in.

That was one of the best nights of my life
(didn't hurt I had all that funny money to burn)
and we all got deliriously happily smashed
with only one bad moment, when a new arrival
looked set to be joining our disorderly table:
immediate shutdown; immediate tension.
The guy moved on and the relief was palpable.
I want to go to Paris, they whispered,
I want to go to London or to Rome --
I am sick and bloody tired of holidays
in Poland or Rumania. Bugger the Russians.

The last thing to report, dear patient reader,
is the insidious Cinderella Rule, whereby
day visitors from the West, capitalist running
dogs, the Unenlightened, whatever they
may choose (have chosen) to call us,
must cross the border before midnight
or face execution, fines or imprisonment.
Picture this, because it happened, a platoon
of beaming beery East Germans, bellowing out
Irish songs (without any need for words),
making sure yours truly got safely across.
------------------------------------
Yes, this really happened, back in 1989 -- not when I was 17 which was my first visit a long time before that. I've been to Berlin about 5-6 times and it is a seriously weird place, even now that the Wall is gone. David Bowie can tell you more about it than I can. Zoo Station and environs is still not for Mom and Pop from Minnesota. As for the lads, I don't know what happened, but I have every reason to believe that those visits to Paris, London and Rome did, in the end, work out. They were all promising to have a pint in Dublin, as well. Sure, why not!

Ballyalla

I can hardly imagine
that the tour groups will come through,
but if they do
these few things remember:

My grave is a flat little stone
under the shadow of my grandfather
who did nothing
in life, and in death was equally blameless.

The French female guides
wear sunglasses, even in our dim
threatening weather;
the Germans, very serious, carry books.

Adam was a man
and all men are mortal:
I too was a man
but the dope was cheap and the women
were easy: so much for logic.

Here I am dead,
been dead for the last six years
(get used to anything),
still missing the girls and the craic.

I wrote one super good song;
now all these strangers come like pilgrims
to gawp at the soil
five yards from where I'm planted.

Disappointment is general,
here's me with a teeny-weeny stone
stuck in the gravel,
below Gran'far with his concrete Angel.

"But HE'S not famous at all!"
say the elderly indignant Americans,
red-faced, irritated,
not having reckoned on the cattle stile.

Come here to me, says
Timmy O'Flynn, 'tis a question of blood,
(he's a local man with a criminal record)
and if you understand that,
(he stops, has a think) yerra Jayzus, man,
I never even knew the bastard.

patriot act

one
of the
reasons
we
decided
to lock
you
up
is because
you
like
going out
too
much
and
we just
don't
have
the time
to
follow you

Aengus of the Birds

The medieval world is alive and well
in large pockets, vast geographical
containments of human souls;
I once fell in love with a Muslim girl,
a meeting of minds and sensibilities,
(the other must wait for marriage)
and within moments of her family's knowledge
had my visa revoked, found myself
frog-marched to the waiting plane.

This war of civilisations is ineptly named,
it is a war of time zones, in which different
centuries find themselves in puzzled conflict,
none understanding the other. As an Arab
I would most definitely be angry and humiliated
by the arrogance and depradations of the West;
as a freewheeling travelling Celt, one of
the last of the amiable cheerful chancers,
I find my friends and homes everywhere.

Tradition is part of our belief, and so is pride,
but we look to recent not ancient accomplishment;
we cherish spontaneity, initiative, and above all,
the calculated weight of personal freedom.
It comes as a shock to realize, here and there,
that freedom is the exception rather than the rule,
the whole world over: it is disappearing
in rapid gulps in the experimental New World of the USA,
and in other places has never existed.

The Ballad of Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly walks
Bill O'Reilly talks
Bill O'Reilly walks and talks.

Bill O'Reilly walks to work
Bill O'Reilly talks at work
Billy is a total jerk.

(Something you'd pick off your shoe
If you'd nothing else to do)


(How much indeed?) 

Billy's claim
To an Irish name ...

Has nothing to do
(I swear it's true)
With the plain dacent people of Ireland!

O, Billy, tall and wiry,
Tongue both forked and fiery --
Blue-eyed panderer,
Serial slanderer,


("Why don't you just shut up?") 


You think the money
Takes away that funny
Smell?

Lying as a way of life,
Sucking up to power,
Paid by the hour,

What the hell:

'We report, You decide'
Not true.
'Fair and balanced'
Not true.
'Some people say'
Not true.

Rupert runs you like the Mob
Kiss his ass, and keep your job.


(What you see ...) 

Maybe once there was a choice:
But who remembers William Joyce?
Media deceiver,
True believer ...

Arrested, tried, and hanged.

My God,
two peas in a pod ...

You're a very nasty piece of work:
As I said, a total jerk.

"It's a Long Way to Tipperary"

the camera was still
a novelty in 1914
so that's why everyone
mugs and grins
in jerky motion pictures
but sits upright, stiff,
and a little glassy-eyed
in formal studio portraits
against peculiar, no doubt
conventional settings;

we look at their faces
today, and we think,
my god, these people
look so innocent:
upright solemn young men
in rough, uncomfortable
factory-made uniforms,
unaware of their historical
fate, sacrificial lambs
before the slaughter.

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

Armistice Day marks the end of the First World War at 11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. The Brits, Canadians, Australians - even the Irish - have a deeper emotional connection with this war than our American cousins. I would like to make a quiet appeal for memory on behalf of all those young guys who were marched off to a dreadful and unimaginably horrible situation in the late summer of 1914, all in the name of patriotism, and who died in their hundreds of thousands. This was never an important war in US history but it has left an indelible scar on Europe. The First World War was the cause of the Second World War -- in fact, it was the same damn war with a 20-year half-time break while the Germans got geared up to go again.

One is not encouraged to write commentaries like this, particularly when they are longer than the poem.

So I will shut up. But for those who are interested, I have re-tooled an article I wrote about a visit to the battlefields of the Somme in the summer of 2000.

Are we still upset about this war and what it did to Europe? Believe it. Without this idiotic mass slaughter the whole history of the world could have been very different: no Soviet Union, no Hitler, no Second World War, no Cold War ... and probably no Dubya Bush

sex and the single officer

Aunt Jane
sipping tea in the garden
lifted her voluminous skirts
hoops and all, to avoid
a licentious beetle.

That moment
for the very first time
the sheer joy of sex
hoops and all, entered
my innocent mind.

Herodotus
demanded my attention.
Under dry and careful masters
clocks ticked, I prepared
to enter Balliol.


My scholar's gown
was a source of delight,
my rooms in a village of stone.
War came, I enlisted,
went to France.

The trenches,
a sharp and ghastly smell
of blood and shit and corruption,
unnerved me. I decided
to become a hero.

Leftenant --
Sah! I sprang to attention.
You will take a little walk this evening:
Yellow-fanged, my drunken
commanding officer.

The Huns
will never expect you dear boy
if you follow this line on the map:
sheer suicide, the idiot
was drunk and rambling.

Right lads
I said to the sullen soldiery
fix bayonets and follow the tapes
piece of cake, simply
do what you're told.

Steel helmet
useless revolver at my side
an unexpected stiffness in my groin
Aunt Jane, the hoops,
God will I die a virgin

Two Haiku

The Black Ships (Admiral Perry arrives in Japan, 1853)

winds blow from the west
strange ships lie in our harbour
the gods say nothing.

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

Mandarin

one bold step forward,
five private steps to the rear:
secret of long life.

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

On the Road to Kandahar

Four hours by the side
of the road, falling snow,
grieving people, no sign
of the idiot driver. A jeep
came by with soldiers; they
piled in the foreigners
and the badly injured
and me with a teenage
boy in my arms.
Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah
(his gaze had locked
on my strange foreign eyes)
and I held him tight,
and begged
him to hold on, begged
him from my infidel heart.

In Afghanistan
the landscape is unforgiving
very sparse and rough, very browny-grey
and you discover that time doesn't move
quickly, unlike in the movies
where events happen one after another.
It took a long three hours
to get back to Herat.
Three hours
with a dead boy cradled in my arms.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough

One bomb in London
is worth ten in Belfast:
during our little local war,
the "Troubles", as we called it,
our guys, the IRA,
were taking a crash-course
in media manipulation.

The ancient enemy, the so-called
'peacekeepers', shipped in
from Across the Water, the very
reason and cause for resentment,
assured the international press
that the Irish were incorrigible
liars, a crowd of sectarian hooligans.

Especially (don'cha know) the Catholics,
a suppressed, priest-ridden people,
moaning, always moaning.
And the press believed it, didn't even blink.
One has a pained admiration
for smooth, practiced liars,
but this one takes the cake.

Well, I thought it was stupid,
when our crowd decided
to rattle these people in Britain,
to set off bombs in their capital city,
give them a taste of their own war,
let their own people suffer and feel it
just as we did at home.

The Irish often complain
that the English don't understand them,
(our genial hardness, our velvety aggression)
but it is clearly, unequivocally true
that we don't understand them, either:
geography may play its little games
but our mental worlds will never meet.

With a bit of effort on both sides,
in recent times, in spite of
the open running sore of the North,
(the 1998 Agreement doesn't work)
we overcome all the ancient differences,
learn, tentatively, to live together,
through football, music, the pub culture.

It can be chancy, uneasy, tense,
(local accents can be a social minefield),
but in thousands and thousands
of random personal connections
you can feel that it works, the English
are just as impatient as we are
to dump the past, lay history to rest.

Eight centuries of occupation, the near
destruction of a cherished ancient culture
takes a bit of getting over; now, at least,
we are a free and risen people,
with a freedom we had to fight and pay for,
(the only freedom worth having)
but our young neither know nor care.

Maybe, that is not such a bad thing ....

How many Americans think of 1776
on a daily basis? Just about none.
How many Americans think of their country
as a beacon of freedom? Just about all.
It's a very good thing to love your country
(after all, it's where you live); but it's a very
serious thing to surrender an ounce of freedom.

Now we turn to our American cousins,
with so many of our own people among them,
hoping to see them raise (again) the standards of truth,
what we have come to expect of this shining nation,
let it act as a champion for the poor and downtrodden,
let it mean what it says about freedom,
let it stop this military Empire in its tracks.

The bombs in London:
ahh, the bombs in London --
I say the same as I said
twenty-five years ago:
No, No, and No again!!!
It doesn't work with the English.
They don't get scared. They fight back.
And that makes me think
Cui Bono?
Who wants them to fight back?

----------------------------------
PS - The title is from Betjeman, who disliked intensely the functional and industrial architecture of Slough (southwest of London, near Heathrow Airport) and was more or less begging the Germans to bomb this area if they had to drop bombs on England. The city (quite ugly) survives and Betjeman is not popular.

a suspicious death in amsterdam

My love, my life
is dead:
we shall no longer walk
in crimson glory.

My wife, chosen
perhaps
by elderly parents,
but beloved

by me, bore my
children
tried to warn me
and departed.

My rivals, sly,
industrious,
smile when they speak,
say little.

Casualties

I feel like trailer trash
in spite of my Ph.D.
and 28 years
of honorable service
because
when asked to resign
or be fired
by a jumped up jerk
like you, with your little
smirk upon your face
reminiscent
of the Supreme Leader

I am reminded
of poor Rommel
the professional soldier
who provided
his Supreme Leader
with astounding
victories
and, consequently
had to choose
between suicide
and the utter destruction
of his family.

Your power,
your abuse of power
fails to impress me, does not
intimidate.
I may be thrown away
like a used Kleenex: so be it.
But I have my
memories
of older and better beliefs:
I have more in common
with the abandoned poor
of New Orleans
than ever I had with you.

You think
a career is all that matters?
In your enclosed world
of power and money
and sycophancy
and servility
you recreate the worst
features
of the cruel heartless
world of privilege
that has aroused
every single
human revolution.

We are not
inconsequential people;
and we are not so easily
set aside.
You may possess
the temporal reins of power
for now
but your lies and your mistakes
and, above all
your ignorance
will bring you down in the end.
Fireworks. Jubilation.
Dancing in the streets.

The world will take no lasting pleasure
in the downfall of the USA.

Well, you don’t believe in listening

You are behaving
like fools, like arrogant fools.
No free nation
born out of sacrifice
established in law
indivisible
clutching at certain
self-evident truths
(a sturdy but unsteady
beacon to the world)
can long survive
with ‘hubris’, the power-driven
will to Empire.

teenage blue

cobain shot himself,
thought it was all over,
his music getting darker, his wife
something out of a magazine

have you noticed
how many of your friends,
maybe you yourself, come
from broken families?

the baby boomers
were in love with love;
sex, drugs and rock'n'roll,
no place for little kids

now the little kids
are not little any more,
nor are they happy little campers
but angry, totally pissed off

so where is daddy
since the last telephone
call, and the twenty-dollar bill
stuck in a belated birthday card?

daddy has moved out of town
daddy has a new daughter
called stephanie, he's thinking
of marrying what's-her-name

mom says she is serious
about bill or jim
or whatever the f--- he
calls himself, the smiling nerd

when i get married
i will stay married, i will
take care of my kids, i will
love them forever

_______________________________________

This poem is the result (not nearly strong enough) of an eye-opening article I came across today by a lady named Mary Eberstadt called "Eminem is Right".

USMC (ret'd)

The ducks come over
from Russia, my dear,
without fail
at this time of year.

I walk down
to the lake
to watch them;
and I sometimes take

my thoughts and memories
with me
although I know
I should not do so.

God, I have such
a bitter recollection
of the past, and the things we did --
I thought the military
was an honourable profession.
I know better now.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait ....

Ahhhhh!

See how the ducks land.
Isn't that the finest thing?

Lady Charlemont (1914)

Look here!
I am sick and tired
of you people
prancing about
in the streets
waving flags
cheering
hollooing
and being
generally
bloody noisy.

It simply won't do.

Yes, yes
yes, of course
I know there
is a war on
but I didn't start
this war
so I will thank you
all of you
to please
kindly
recollect your positions
reconsider
and go home.

What? What did you say?

Win?
Of course we shall
win, we never
lose: how
peculiar
ha ha ha ha ha
how astonishing
you silly little man
to entertain
such a novel
proposition.

white nights

In the glass-walled
conservatory
within
the garden
where we
used to meet
when our young
and oh so innocent hearts
were pounding
in anticipation
and our fingers
trembled
as they touched
the white curtains
and the linen
within
are slowly
yellowing with age
just as our hearts
and our memories
yellow and fade
within
with the passing
of the many, too many
parted years.

a visit to my aunt

Yallabay yallabay yallabay
puff puff
tiktik
hoo ... hoo ... hoo

ping-pong

- Boody boody boo!
- Em, boody bally boo!

- Chicatack?
- ah, bungum, bungum

- Plor vallton tras "tea"?
- ah, bungum
- torp lamper sha?
- bungum
- op lamper fram?
- ah, 2 fram
- plick!

Terror

The Raja Restaurant (Bali)

My eyes see a girl
The rucksack clings to my spine
Three seconds to live

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

TV Correspondent

When bullets crack above your head
get down, or you'll be dead
the thing
(ppshangg .... ppshingg)
to remember, the thought
to bear in mind
(bbshangg)
is that people are unkind
from a sense of virtue.
(ppshooong)
They will kill you
(takatakatakatakatakataka)
but have no wish to hurt you.

Up North

The air, ahh,
the air was clear and sweet
in Hakodate
and in the morning market
among crawling
red live crabs and enormous
half-dead fish
business arrangements
were consummated
in a flash of fingers
and I went, quietly,
well hidden from obstruction
for a welcome pint.

The teenage girls
were everywhere, uniformed,
scandalously short-skirted,
blissfully stupid;
they live in a strange world
of suspended hopes
and dreams, soft and fluffy,
soon to be shattered, soon held
to ridicule, not by their parents,
not by their friends, not by
useless teachers : no, no, but
by heartless stiff-
pricked boyfriends.

My God
just look at the bouncing beauty of nature;
you'd want to take it home with you
or at least take some photos,
you know what I mean?
This stuff is real, man,
this is fifteen shades of green
and I have tears,
no, come on, I have
real tears in my eyes
as I focus the sights
on my M-16
camera.

Oh, golly.

In other news
another drunken teacher
was fished out of the harbour
last night; he was half dead
but will never remember
that we met by the harbour wall
after the morning market
closed down, slowly,
not until 3 in the afternoon,
and that we went for several beers
and talked and talked
and he thought he knew it all
but didn't.

So when he passed out
all drunk and collapsed and trusting
I heaved him over the harbour wall
as my final answer to
his droning platitudes. Through no
fault of mine, I regret to report,
he survived; doubtless he will
continue to write his influential papers
and send me a card at Christmas.
I will send him a cordial response
mingled with the sharp feral
stink of regret.

The sea.
I love the sea.
The sea is a sight from my window.
I would never never never
(are you crazy?) get in a boat, though,
because waves get high.
I have seen this stuff before
when the waves swamp your boat
and you sink, and then you fall
into the water and then you DROWN.
This is not for me.
This is not my scene.

On the other hand
there are many other ways
to make a living, more interesting ways.
Here and there and over beyond
every fool can think of something,
every fool can wear gloves.
But when you slyly speak
from the side of your mouth
unaware of that concave mirror
at the back of the room
cold realization sinks in.