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.