Poetry
When You Left
After you left the drain in the backyard blocked
and the water rose in the garden as I laundered the clothes
or the dishwasher ran a strange pool mixed
I structured a bridge of planks balanced loosely on bricks
and thought about casting rice on the way to the shed
And the outdoor lamp popped with firecracker sparks followed
by a plume of smoke I bought summer garden lanterns half-price
with twenty euros worth of petrol and when the guy in the petrol station offered
to fill the windshield wiper’s water as I filled the tires with air – I declined
saying I preferred not to see where I was going
I refused to put the bins out on the road for a month until I saw or imagined
the scuttering hind of a rat in the garden while unnatural potions conspired and grew
in complexity and whole cities began to collapse one by one in a pop
When you came back
the garden sighed with relief, the collar dove cooed, and even the dishwasher smiled
Published in The Stinging Fly 2010
Appraisal
I tested what to do or not from strange lives passing swiftly
before me on a thirty-six inch screen or me before them
on a train travelling before curtains are drawn and after the lights flick on
to renovated kitchens viewed from the back, bird-tables, trampolines all gathering nets
I tested my body – giving up food, and days I could sleep in multitudes
pressing the pliable walls of my mind and scaffolds of thought to a fault-line
I walked across the country with my eyes closed
like a kid trying on sizes pretending to be blind because you haven’t figured out
how to gauge the distance of your life against others
Or like testing an ornament unbearably fragile you’ve been told not to touch
but you can’t stand the tension of not knowing
the exact measure of pressure it would take
to crush it
entirely
Published in The Stinging Fly 2010
An American Road Trip in Ireland
Dust balls are billowing down these deadbeat streets in cowboy Ireland I dreamed
that you and Charles Bukowski were taking notes in revenge for that one I wrote
about you in the woods…so hell, here’s another one –
I’m wearing high heels and flipping poker chips
as though I lived in Paris, Texas while I sing and dance your cowboy tunes in a jalopy
of ourselves and a car stitched and bolted back together and we were so far and running
even faster with a line of trees coming up behind us firing history while we passed
flat rabbits and killer hogs on roads drawn out as though mazes on a paper map
until we reached the other side of the country Trapped on an island just three hours wide
with cow filled fields overlooking the ocean I ate sandwiches filled with tomatoes so fresh
off the vine and getting fatter by the minute as though they knew no restraint while you
kicking dirt and clanging away at a pole by the side of the road on the shores of Dunmore
were still packing baggage three counties wide and fixing to erupt having decided
to keep those murky secrets to yourself rather stunning as you would say
how you visibly annul all those smoke-filled rooms in midland towns
with long crossed legs on tipped back to the ceiling chairs where our conversations rose
like clouds of moths as we planned our escape on a road trip out of Ireland never
having figured in an ocean or your luggage and the birds were watching
from the wires while it all played out and the foxes nearly weeping
for where it might have gone
with a bit more road
Published in The Stinging Fly 2012
The Search
Are the Dublin Mountains subsiding or are the buildings rising?
I can no longer see your dark mountainous withdrawal
where you hideout with Nietzsche in his final descent
believing the key lies in madness
and I’m digging up clams and nudging them open
looking for pearls of info on a strand on the other side of the city
as Dublin Bay swells open and the mountains scuttle to a distance,
the waters are rising more rapidly than my gill-sprouting lungs
can handle and I’m reeling along a tumble of currents in a blur of dark waters
with a bucket of clams left unopened
and wondering
should we have hedged our bets and who’s coming up
with what? And I have no idea
if I’m rising or falling
Published in Poetry Ireland Review Issue 101
The Agreement
I turn the ignition, foot to the peddle and shift into gear in a remote
country lane and they say suicides are happening all over the place
and I wonder why they don’t happen more often
I ease the car round the bend when I see this guy heavy built a double chin
not fit for youth and carrying an old man way of walking
as if he stepped into his father’s shoes too soon He has a shotgun cocked open and set
for pheasant hunting having landed all out of context with the times and the clouds
are churning low on the earth Looming on the radio is another mass shooting
today it’s Norway What stops him locking that barrel in place and taking me out
I slow as I near and he nods before I hit the highway with its oncoming cars whirling past
and only a thin line painted between us a few unstable feet
and all it would take is a twist of the wheel to burn a hole in existence
you stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine our grip on life so tight
white knuckled on the wheel
Published in The Stinging Fly 2012
The Room
I can trace your movements in this vacant room by the paper cups
propped about, your quiet surveillance of the street below
your shiftings through growing paper mounds and later
or perhaps sooner you were at your desk where confusion and method
compete with equal energy while whole conversations gathered and scaffold
the air and you reminded me of Steppenwolf though I read it
so long ago that I’m not sure why
I met my friend’s older brother when he just finished college and was moving
up to politics in Belfast So long ago He smiled like you and gave me
Herman Hesse, the I Ching, Gurdjieff, and one I’ve never found again
about such longing and all that hinders it
may also foster it and they say you know a man by his interests
These long days I think a lot
I try to figure out why systems stay in place with no underlying
logic and how the answer’s always ‘well it’s always been that way’
and the way people rarely move beyond what suits them at the time
and how principles are pliable and external and it’s hard to make any sense
and all these senseless, aimless commentaries chatter through our minds
neither following a single line of inquiry to its conclusion, nor imagining new ones
and I Ching’s, Gurdjieff’s and God can’t help us
But the cold glass panels of your window press like a balm against my face
in your empty room high above the streets as if life needed a cooling
and could afford me quiet against the temperature
of so many thoughts at once because these days clarity only transpires
takes shape, becomes visible in the air of our conversations
and I know myself through them as if I could only know myself
through
others
Published in The Stinging Fly 2010