Shacked Up

Shacked Up

Designs on it

From the beginning

The quick fix.

Take care of planning

The suits,

Shoes off at the door.

Not too much interest.

The bare look

About the place,

The gifts

Considerations,

Like the angle of repose

The maintenance.

A promise of

You scratch my back

And I'll scratch yours.

The joints everywhere

The soft pile,

Main bedroom upstairs

A big rip-off!

Went septic in the end.

The house

That Jerry built. Photograph Top: The River Delvin where it enters the sea at Gormanston.

Forecast

Forecast

I swear another age
Of this reason
Will see the end of us.

The soothsayers
Will be there
On the last night
Clutching a copy
Of Dead Certainty
The proofs outweighing
The process
They condemned.

While the arbiters
Of right and wrong
Tie
Their purse strings
Around our neck
On the promise of
A new order
Witch hunting.

And all you can
Hope for
Is that they'll burn
Themselves out
And you don't
Get caught on
The wrong side.

Photograph: A winter scene
Kilmessan
Co. Meath.

Tally Ho!

"That which makes us common to

rather than that which separates

us from the worst of nature"

Hunting.

Tally Ho!

A motley bunch

Of out of sorts

With horse and hound

To pass for sport.

Made entertainment

Of an ill

Called it the least cruel

Way to kill.

And didn't realise

The choice

Was just another

Kind of vice.

Is that an argument

That's sound!

The morals here

Have gone to ground.

Photograph: Bridge over the river

Blackwater/Lough Ramor

Virginia Co. Cavan. 2007

A Humour of Sorts.

A humour of sorts probably best describes the next few poems. A little bit of satire, that maybe contains a grain of truth, or perhaps even more than that. Anyway please enjoy.

A Swindlers' List

Shopping Malls

And motorways

Their midriffs almost bare

You can see these celtic tigers

Leaving skid marks everywhere.

The party's over

Ebbing away.

Flood reports on the radio

Only traffic jam today.

Bush fires breaking out

A profit warning call.

Bears loose in the marketplace

Start up disks

To stop it all.

Nice work if you can get it

And you're welfare's guaranteed

The other side of midnight's

Cattle class in A/E.

And it doesn't really matter

Coz they're waiting to enlist

Out there in the cutbacks

The names on swindlers' list.

Photograph: A fairy bush?

The Hill Of Tara

Co. Meath. 2007.

Red Lights

Red Lights

Cat calls

From doorways

Under neon

Like winter sun

Sirens

In the night.

Stealing

The moment

A cold sign

Catching the eye.

Nothing for nothing.

Photograph: Old Church and Graveyard

Hill of Skryne, 2007.

Perfect Tens

Perfect Tens

Dog days

On summer steppes

October red

The certainties.

Should have rolled

Them up.

And tea in samovars

Gone begging chance

At station houses

Flagged

The arguements

Half won.

Another hour

And done with

Them.

Photograph: A fisherman at

Newtown Bridge

River Boyne. 2007

Boyne Berries (2)

Boyne Berries

The second issue of "Boyne Berries" was launched at the Castle Arch hotel in Trim on Thursday the 27th of September by the novellist Noelle Harrison.

It includes a number of local writers as well as others from as far away as Canada, India, Greece, the USA, and of course Italy. The contributions are a mixture of poetry and prose and reflect on a variety of topics.

What makes this magazine interesting is not just the quality of the content, but that it provides an outlet for local writers that would not otherwise exist and Michael Farry and other members of the Boyne writers group are to be congratulated on this.

Readers are sure to find something interesting here, though with the modern poem it is often necessary to return to it a few times before you can find something to hang your hat on. Unlike its rhyming cousin the effect is not so immediate.

Sad or humorous the prose includes an extract from the novel "Madonna of The Fall" , while Louis Moran remembers and Paul Egan goes looking for inspiration.

Antonias Book Shop in Trim. €5 Euro.

Photo: Cover of Magazine

Designed by Greg Hastings.

Rich Pickings

Rich Pickings

Not much change

an overcoat or two,

tumbling about

the place.

Bones.

Picking at small talk

Laissez-faire.

Different tunes,

words,

out with the Mollies,

the Ribbonmen.

Clipped it to Boston

or the Union had ye.

Scraping at drills,

digging with your fingers.

There but for the grace

you say.

Reading the inscriptions.

Ploughing them into

the ground now.

Eaten bread.

Photograph: Newtown Trim

From across

the Boyne/2007

The Hell I Will's Fine

The Hell I Will's Fine

The pictures on Sunday

The posters and signs

When the land of the free

Was just states of the mind.

Where the legends and stories

American dreams

Played it out on the streets

Of the cinema screen.

An admission paid in

As the credits begin

Will Kane walking down Hadleyville

And the train coming in.

When the law west of Dodge

Some indefinite place

Was a Colt 45

Could beat aces and eights.

The heroes and outlaws

The duel in the sun

With Jesse and Cole

And "Pa, Shane's got his gun".

From a seat on the Boardwalk

The back of the hall

Saw Wyatt and Doc

At the OK corral.

And what made it all great

Well it's hard to define

But just mosey on out

Or the hell I will's fine.

And the old picture house

Now the ghost of a town

I watched them all pulling

America down.

Picture: Pathway through

The Sloping Trenche

Tara Co. Meath 2007.

The Class of Fifty Seven

The Class of Fifty Seven

Back for summertime vacations

Paid for Confirmations made

Last year's Debs

Or school reunions

With the shovel and the spade.

The whole schoolyard assembled

With the writing on the wall

The class of fifty seven

And the boat train called.

Danced round tunes

Played on a sunday

Whiskey talk of going home

On the streets off

Kilburn High Road

Cricklewood

Or Camden Town.

The mission fields of Asia

The States, the sessions

And the craic,

The ones who made it famous

The ones who never made it back.

Photograph: Euston Station London.

The arrival point for

many of the emigrants

who left Ireland.

Ballads and Balladeers

Ballads and Balladeers

The modern literary ballad has its origin in the narrative. Part of an oral tradition whose style

according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica "crystallized in the Europe of the late middle ages".

A musical form. Often derided for its simplicity it is difficult to imagine how western culture would have evolved without its influence.

The travelling minstrel or balladeer was not just an entertainer, but a bearer of tidings. A wordsmith, he could fashion his own truth. Every half decent war or social movement left its songs. As a public record, however skewed, they have left a more lasting impression than anything the historians would have us believe. Songs of a lost love or a grievance are as popular now as they ever were.

The literary ballad though is not favoured today. Nor is traditional verse. Poetry needed to go somewhere to reflect the contemporary. It managed it. The modern prose poem manages to throw reflections at what it once played upon. The air of conversation maybe, but nobody's listening.

Photograph: A view/Carbane East

Loughcrew Co. Meath.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

More games

The mad rush

Capture an age

The spirit of the thing

A new pyramid scheme

The cutting edge

Put something up front

A Bull maybe?

The brass neck

An eye for the

Main chance.

And Bob's your

Uncle.

Photograph: Statue of

Oliver Goldsmith

Pallas Co. Longford.

June 2007.

Recipe

Recipe

Canned laughter

Went down fine

The bit of soap

Light dressing

Swallowed the lot

Sauce for the goose

And the the crosswords

The after dinner mint

Charades

The party line

Usual tip.

Head around the

Smokescreen

And the hot air rising

The smell of content

And the feathers

In your cap.

Photograph: The Fair Green

Navan Co. Meath

Summer 2007.

Tin Pots

Tin Pots

Signs everywhere

Up ahead

"New School of Thought"

Get in the right lane now

Due deference

And the hours put in

Spinning.

Shaving the percent

Or two

Here or there

The bottom line

Probity.

And the moral compass

Gone south

With the Bag-Man

Trumpeting,

Until the walls fall down.

The same mistakes

Until they're perfect.

Photograph: Bective Abbey

Co.Meath Jan/2007.

Rooms

Rooms

In all those big bright rooms you see

Alone at night and all at sea

Perhaps inside there's someone there

Locked up beneath the attic stairs.

And I wonder just how can it be

While Mugs and Co. are having tea

Spread out in other rooms although

With curtains when you learn too slow

That two and two add up no more

And algebra unlocks the door

That leads you down past Friday night

Through blackboard jungles ruled in fright

On walls that trap the candlelight.

Where shadows steal away like ghosts

The cheques they sent you in the post

As Charm lays on in lots of jokes

The planning application strokes

Then files away through public bars

With deputies and senators

Who standing orders all agreed

With chairs and tables who decreed

For sound pure economic sense

That tax on virtue recompense

The once removed from minding hens

Their shiny new Mercedes Benz.

While trial runs that never end

With silk and briefs reward their friends

Who'd charge an arm and leg to plead

The law according to their needs.

A mean result you may depend

When you've broken down around the bend

Where doctor who what where and when

He'll diagnose you with his pen

And casting bones discern what ills

Will supplement his purse until

The patients waiting patient here

Pass on in corridors of fear

These rooms go on for years and years.

That's right....just rest!

These gentlemen know best

Your eyes....and watch the clock

Time flies.

Photograph: The river Boyne

at Dalgan Park/2007

Dead Lines

Dead Lines

Dead Lines

Reduced to clear

In easy pieces.

Everything must go.

Fine things on top

Of the food chain.

Old familiars,

Heads bent

In soap opera

Certainty.

Stepping around

The Big Issues

Waiting for

The penny to

drop.

Photograph: Trim Castle

Started in 1173.

Taken from across

the Boyne. 2007.

Party Lines

Party Lines

You know how it is.

That knock on the door.

The face you haven't

seen for years.

The spiel.

The handout.

The promise that

this time it'll be

different.

Everything fleesed!

The cut of him.

And the long spoon

in the drawer.

The long knife

as well.

Photograph: A bridge over

the river Skane.

Dalgan Park/May 2007.

The Graveyard Shift

The Graveyard Shift

The remains

Moulding away.

Like a passing fancy

Gone...Stretched

On some convenience.

Hadn't a prayer

And poor enough service

In the end.

Attendants drifting

In and out

Dying for a smoke

Getting their fix

From some box in a corner

Plastered with exhortations

To eat more fruit,

Cake while you're waiting

Hollow eyed

Behind frosted glass

Filling in details

Have you had an accident?

Is your visit really necessary?

Killing time!

To degrees of indifference

Next!

Photograph: Sheep's Gate.

Last remaing gate

town wall Trim.

All Washed Up

All Washed Up

Getting closer now

That rumble in the distance

Winds picking up

Delinquent signs.

Peeling

Off street corners

Easy deals

Drunk in the sun.

Crimping down

Notices to quit.

Shooting up

Back lanes

Window boxed

High rise, lifts out

Abandoned cars.

Flights of fancy

Flapping on the

Clothes line.

Liberation movements

Threatening rain.

Photograph: The River Boyne at

Bective Bridge

Jan 2007.

Satire and Poems

Satire and Poems

"The Market Dictate" and a number of the poems that follow, fall somewhere between the social comment and political satire, or at least the attempt at such. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica or a take on it, satire is an artistic form in which human or individual vice is held to account by some means, sometimes with an intent on improvement. Some people might remember from their schooldays the satires of Aonghus O Dálaigh or Jonathan Swift. The idea that poetry makes nothing happen was lost on the bards.

Poetry does not need anything to say, or anything of substance, but when language becomes more important than what is said, then it had better say something. The minute particulars can be particularly boring. Anyway one does not disqualify the other. Technical competence is an admirable quality but to elevate it above the material is to lend it something it may not have. On its own it is no measure of poetry or anything else. Nor is originality of thought. They are constructs.

Poetry is a medium. A means of bringing to consciousness in every sense. Of changing it. And the patterns within language have the most effect. FM

Photograph: Restored well at Tara.

January 2007.

The Market Dictate

The Market Dictate


They tell you it's great
Down in sub section four
On the set aside farms
Where they lock up the poor
Who'd forgotten to file in
Before it's too late
Now they're serving the needs
Of the Market Dictate.
As the credit runs out
On your permit to walk
Outside on the pavement
Nobody talks.
The Neon Reminder
Reads out from the wall
That the Bicycle Licence
Collector will call.
And if you've done nothing
There's nothing to hide
So trade in your name
For the numbers inside.
Yeah! Trade in your name
For the numbers inside.
Put an x on the spot
Where democracy died.

Photograph: A view of Trim Castle
February 2007.

Clocks

Clocks

Life is like a

candlelight

procession.

Winding away

from the light.

Shifting shape

and form.

Beating in time

ever more slowly

and branching out

until we cannot

see the wood

from the trees.

The greens

turning to gold.

Buried Shrouded

in darkness.

Like a red shift.

Clocks should

measure.

Photograph: Loughcrew/ A view

from Carbane East.

Boyne Berries

Boyne Berries

"Boyne Berries" is a literary magazine
published by the Boyne Writers' Group
in Trim Co. Meath. It was successfully
launched in the Castle Arch Hotel by
Minister Noel Dempsey and includes
contributions from poets as far afield
as Canada, Africa, India, Europe, England
and of course much closer to home.
Anyone familiar with the poetry scene in
Ireland will recognise many of the names
included here and there are stories too.
"Jimmy" says it all and "A Night in Provence"
reminds me of an American who on arriving
in a small French provincial town late one
night discovered the streets were rolled up.
It was 10 pm. But that's another story.
The poems have a descriptive or appeal
to the personal quality often contrasted
by a quirky or even dark humour.
Interesting and easily worth €5 Euro.

Image: Front cover of Magazine.

In the quiet of the noise

In the quiet of the noise

In the quiet of the noise

The moments die

Side by side

Places where you

Can't wake up

The stations flashing by

Like warning signs

Don't walk

The past and future's tied

Just watch the light

Kaleidoscope

Across the centuries

The sanctuaries of night

For just a while these hours

And race against the tide

Conquistadores

Playing games

Till nowhere left to hide

But the reflections

When the day was yours

In the quiet of the noise.

Photograph: The sea at

Spanish Point

Co. Clare 1996.

In Some Divide

In Some Divide

In some divide

the answer lies.

Between the laws

of time and place.

A captive form,

a chord refined.

The very heart

and soul of it.

The fragments blind.

A catalyst to act

of word or deed.

That single thought

could rescue all.

The prize.

That truth untangled

in its web of noise.

Would fuse the

moments touched

and tame the night.

In some divide.

Photograph: The River Boyne at

Bective Co. Meath

January 2007.

The Fall

The Fall

Perhaps some

Alchemist

could weave

this spell.

The meaning

of it all.

That measure

of the Earth

would tell.

What law of

harmony

was lost

when Eden

fell.

Photograph: Rainbow

over the New Campus

Maynooth University.

January 2007.

Engagements

Engagements

Exchanging

Endearments

The promising all

When rules of engagement

A mercenary call

To arms made in whispers

Where secrets begin

When living itself

Is a tribute in sin

An offering made

To an angel that falls

A cross over zero

To nothing at all.

Photograph: A view from

The Hill Of Tara.

Looking West.

The Best Of Times

The Best Of Times

The clink of glass
Cigarette smoke
Someone laughed
Straws of reason
drifting past.
The seconds
stretching out
their arms
to grab you by
the sleeve.
Stolen glances
whisper leave.
These shadows of
convenience, weave
the same mistakes.
Embrace.
Cartwheels tumble
through the
Marketplace.

Photograph: Cloisters at
Bective Abbey
Co. Meath. 2007

Promised

Promised

The garden paths

Could lead you anywhere

The man said

Eagle eyed

The twists and turns

Old hat now

A matter of fact

And the soul stuff

Out the back routine

A breeze

The location was

Everything

And the leaves

Scurrying at your heels

A key

Nowhere to be seen.

A poem set in a pub

in Cambridge.

Photograph: taken from

the old graveyard at Moylagh

Co. Meath. 2006

In the beginning

In the beginning.

Best practice now

Had fair exchange

Exalted virtues

Order of the day

And bag your

Twopence worth

The balance only

Kept for sport

What odds?

We're at the

Crossroads now

Call either side

The fittest and

Select divide

Make Ready! watch

The lines engage

Then split the difference

They behave the same.

A bit of truth in the above?

Photograph: The river Shannon

at Athlone. 1996.

Wild Things

Wild Things.

In the half light

Between night and day

Some fractured part

To celebrate diversity

They play

Ghost dancing

In an Indian Summer

The ones we couldn't

Tame.

Before the whole

Damn thing is over

And everone's

The same.

Photograph: The old graveyard at Moylagh

Oldcastle Co.Meath. Summer 2006.

Beyond this point

Beyond this point

With not the wit to

comprehend

His role in Nature's Play

Quite separate from

the scheme of things

He mastered all

he could survey.

And thinking it

A place that's strange

Of almost infinite resource

Imposed on what he can't

admire, some monument

that's set in stone

To ignorance

And sometimes worse

To those, a plague a curse

Who'd measure what

The profit yeild

To burn the cattle

In the field

And think there nothing

much amiss

What kind of progress this?

Or use to ask

What we have done

When fields and trees

and rivers gone

And those who keep

The Common Good

have left a legacy that read

Caution you must be afraid

Beyond this point

There's Poison Laid.

The Photograpg is a view looking

west from Tara.

Enough said!

The poem is from the time of the foot

and mouth crisis.