SANDERSON BECK

I cycled along the coast from Sutton to Dublin. It was dark, around 1am and very windy, but I heard a tune out to sea, though it was so softly sounding and the wind so raw, that I could not sense where it was coming from. Maybe it was coming from Howth, 1500 or so meteres to my left over the sea. Maybe the wind was blowing it over from there from a session on the hillside. After a short while I began to suspect it was not originating from an outside reality, but from the otherworld - sirens out at sea communing, or the first glimpse of a blueprint delineating what score beyond human consciousness my soul is tuned by as it plays in this world.

I was hearing a tune - no doubt about it - and whilst the first two notes where always the same, after they sounded the tune played a few more - very swift notes - and then trailed off beyond the edge of hearing, but kept returning, never playing the same snatch of tune twice.

Once I passed Bull Island I sensed the force disappear and it only came again once more, twenty minutes later as I was moving out of a wind swept Dublin bay and into urban shelter - after I thought the episode had ceased - and I took it as the sigil for me to engage in the act of writing poetry from the source who sung to me in Sutton when wind and dark where one.

~

This is a found poem. I got the text from Sanderson Beck, who is a 59 year old peace activist advocating non-violence and love as humanity's only way. He has been in prison many times for campaigning against war and murder, most recently in 2003 after speaking out on Bush's war. In March 2003 Sanderson was arrested whilst advocating love and peace outside Vandenberg AFB, where they were using computers and the space command system to direct the shock-and-awe attacks on Iraq.

His writings cover the full span of human history and his knowledge is vast. The perfect library in which to learn accurate information focussed and aware of how it all fits together. A real life saint amongst us now, whose life has been nought but promoting goodness and learning of the wider human relevence and spiritual love .

FOUND POEM - SANDERSON BECK


Zenophan said Pythagoras stopped
the whipping of a puppy because he

recognised the soul of a friend in
metempsychosis

is not a self-proclaimed wise man
but one who pursued wisdom

through friendship. A philosopher
with knowledge of

Egyptian - Chaldean - Magi
and their spiritual secrets.

My constitution in
the Italian city of Sybaris taught

immortal mystery - understood in
souls returning til harmonious peace

is all they construct. That art won
number is the universe's law and

unity the law of God.

~

Plato's three component psyche of
appetite, emotion and mind

trace to Pythagoras's wisdom
through friendship

(philia means freindship - sophia
wisdom)

and a spectator seeking truth
has the best role in life's game

~

Diogenes Laertius when put up for
sale as a slave - cried for someone

wanting to purchase a master for
themselves and Socrates addressing
Pythagoras
said

"Don't stir the fire with a knife
the passions and swelling pride of the

great or step over the beam of a balance."

~

Philo heard

"If the soul is diverted from its course
it enslaves itself and makes whose soul

it is a slave to a host of masters."

~

Did Diogenes love of goodness
transcend his fear of death or think

Euclides colic - Plato a bore, Dionysian
performance a peep show for fools and

that the bad - even if prosperous - still
live badly?

~

Zeno - godfather stoic - taught while
pacing back and forth in a collanade

stoa is porch and

"A friend is another I" he said.

~

Senneca was a Quaestor in the reign
of Tiberius and Caligula - jealous of

his oratory - tried to kill him, but
Claudius banned him instead until he

was recalled from Corsica by Empress
Agrippina - tutored Nero, appointed

Paetor - got rich and counselled

"No matter how many you slay, you can't
kill your successor."

Senneca commited suicide at 65 -
believed love and fear do not mix

"live for the other person if we wish to
live for ourselves and no-one can strike

terror into others and still enjoy peace
of mind."

~

Climb the hill of understandinbg
walk easy with learning - study forward

and back - for friendship between the gods
and the good exist and the primal source

of all mind is spirit.

"Vanquish ignorance with good sense,
gain freedom from slavery and the gift of
ruling well."

Diogenes said


~

Dio Chrysostum the sophist was loved by
Emperor Trajan

"..as himself though I do not understand
what he says."

~

All sound a tune unique to them
and a whistle plays within
the gift of hearing how to play it.

SANDERSON BECK

TRACKMARKS

Trackmarks
Linear stigmata of addiction
Tomorrow's scar tissue constellations
disfiguring the body of work
Phonetic glyphs
of abstract correspondence
Their outlines traced in blood
Shrinking from the spike
or splattering across the page
A ring a ring o' rosies
Moments when the final things are said
Exposed in a brutal waterslap of clarity
In the coupling of the sinful
and the divine
There's a fine line to be crossed
Sequences of discrete
but regular consummation
inter-penetrating the punctured bodies
with the syrup poison
of transgressive desire
Wasping decorations
Fading in time from some
Long lost personal campaign
Along cablestitch flesh
Lesions where the world
has entered us
These tender spots
Rubbed by unconscious gesture
Til they stand chafed and pert
Prized in their shame
Less they scab over
With our ability to be touched
Behind the scenes of the crazy ward
in all cried out lucidity
Doubting Doctor Thomas
Pressing our wounds
in the chemical light of analysis
The marking on our skins
The words we choose to speak
The nettle of awareness we nurse
Haphazard paths through the wilderness
Creasing the undergrowth with bruised stalks
Discernible only by the spoor
of some animal long passed
Tiny clues to unknowable awareness
Patterned sigils in the drying clay
Trackmarks

MARK MADDEN

TRACKMARKS

Tim Costelloe & Mark Madden.

Dubliner Tim Costelloe and Belfast man Mark Madden are both writers whose live poetry humanly connects with those hearing them speak their work to life as air and in the ear. They are two  committed artists in whose lives an ongoing lifelong search for the centre of ourselves is conducted through the act and language of poetry.

~

Untitled

Nowhere to sit to ponder days
no silent loss which time betrays
the flutter and flame inside your
breast is not the same.

Nor can you once more emerge
to greet this eye
beautiful and dumb as any flower
untame
a lie
a hidden power

sulking like distance under lilac skies
between deliberation and an urge
between the living and what dies
in this the crucible of our expiation.

Your prayer the fist which silences me
so that I can't pray or even see a fresh
sun licking rivers in the East

Tim Costelloe


~

Make up your Mind

The lapwing calls across the gorse
The air is sweet as wine
Spring grass is rich and cool
But you’ve made up your mind

Before the senses sweeps a world
Both graceful and sublime
Full of all that was ever real
But you’ve made up your mind

Made it all up from what you were told
God and Country, Space and Time
And the glittering screen of the vacuum tube
Where They make up your mind

And you’ve made up your mind what’s important
And you’ve made up your mind who you are
And you’ve made something of yourself
While your true soul floats in a jar

It’s not the world your reason sees
Dissected and defined
Pressed and flat on blank white sheets
Because you’ve made up your mind

Mark Madden


~

Clover in the Dusk’s Light

There’s skulls and muscles sewn into this cool
earth they cut scant harvest from: shall, like
the sea they scatter, rise tall, slender, golden

and a greater sun than that which lit their grain,
went down from heaven fires, will rain on
blackened blocks which splodge
the sky’s already ugly grey to ash.

Already in a distance
in a distant light their ghosts are waiting
and with spectral hands they gather this world
its sighs.

Fergal waits for the clouds to start parting
fade to a blue haze.

He awaits the stars torching the sky’s wide
plains of silver.

It’s spring now. Already scents of her brilliant
summer scatters through the breeze. At night

you can rest – discuss with oneself the janglings
of the day.

Fergal muses on how the awkward curvature
made what her body found proportion shine. 
How the red of flame rose like a real fire

from the black locks of her hair. How meeting
her too was a judgement
and when all beauty must be secret, you can’t

afford the luxury of sighs. Ghostly fizz fills
with the colour of his apprehension – specters
kiss the air around him with their smile.

Tim Costelloe


~

Canto I - The Twins

Heavy wuth lunch the adults drowse
In the conservatory's verdant warmth
Lull themselves with tory cluckings
Belched aphorisms and loose diatribes

Languid you stifle a vaugue ennui
In the folds of your collapsable chair
When from the garden the twins appear
Darting eyes bright, and sure of their prey

Lucy pleading
And Stacey leading
They pull you up and bear you away.

Mark Madden


~

Betrayal.

More the plural of same
though fissure-points ungrasped
through scan in rubble

Cronos
his splash will peel - reveal
and smudge as much these ruins
toa blur - so seek not black spots

on a pink dress as they flutter in
some foreign breeze - nor the
cocktailed eye's florescent paint
brushing antique lights to a modern
splendour.

Justify no lie roller-balled over
diarying night - have mercy, for one
day I too shall pardon, Lord, these
indiscretions of a savaging time

while raindrops sparkle hair
in mirror, while fork caresses
sausages on plate and hands move
pages

innocent at least if not sublime.

Tim Costelloe

~

Canto IV - The Twins

Finally tiring of their prize
They lead you dazedly back to the house
To where the adults loll around
Flushed from a recent game of croquet
All Pimms, white canvas, bestial grunts
Toothless and puce as long-caged wolves
Awaiting the expected dinner bell
To which of course your asked to stay
BVut Lucy Fretful
And Stacey regretful
Point out that your trousers are on the wrong way
And just disappear.

Mark Madden

PATRICK kAVANGH CELEBRATION - 2006

There is an old saying here, along the lines that "it's through the shelter of each other we survive..."

...the we

~

heard above on Fodhla, Banbhu and Eiru's shore. Look them up. They're real dealers in a genuine craic factory cum casino. Making it happen on demand in their home where live poetry is living. They come from all nations and have the combined passions of a big apple, Birmingham, Alabama, Clint Frank - saw by KFK "...score four touchdowns in less than two quarters, against a pretty good Princeton team." Playing ball in Boston College. An alumnae of Cardiff dockers at punch up in a pub with Leeds miners

and Manchester's Arsenal
supporters. Hear Celtic 'n Rangers -
Giants 'n Redsox, Yankee stadium 'n

LA Hells Angels singing in the
Sydney opera house Newcastle,
Belfast or Liverpool Empire with U

two. United to roll our sound of
sheer reality. An all-inclusive one.

~

Dublin. Friday 1 September.

Patrick Kavanagh Celebration 2006 - Fleet Street - above the Palace Bar.

Second year. A lot of hype. Photographer in attendance. 5' 5" tanned and toned 'n with a fella. A fellow photographer, upstairs in the Palace by accident. Lulled in off the street by our night's energy. Arty beyond belief. In Dublin myth happens. This home of dream. Joyce 'n Beckett - Wilde 'n Shaw. Freud said the Irish were un-analysable because life to them was just story, tale and talk. These four Dublin writers nailed spoken word to page with a true ring. Snapped "the passionate and transitory" reality from which we draw for poetry and fictions on the page. Shut the books up and speak our print to live in ear and off the page.

~

Druid Paddy. Dominic Taylor. The White House. Limerick pub hosting weekly poetry Wednesday night. Broadcast in CD quality, online several days later. The world's very first one. Stunned us to silence with only two of his works. One, a love poem to his wife. Humble and honest and a true spirit of Munster. SW Ireland. Rugby. Limerick. Thomond Park - 31 October 1978 - Munster 12 - All Blacks 0. Incineration ground. An event for the plot of John Breen's global smash hit play - Alone it Stands. Humanity as one unbeaten at home in the European cup for well over a decade. Utter fanatics.

Dublin. May 2006 - Lansdowne Road. Munster V Leinster semi-final of the 2006 European Cup. A unique game of Rugby. Immediately fabled into an all time classic. Munster fans sung Low lie the fields of Athenry through electric megaphones. No Shit.

A proud steward and Leinster fan tried to fix a withery stare upon the main Munster man singing into his megaphone, leading a gaggle of war-painted bodran players. 20 in the heart of the hardest of hardcore support. Upper stand V. North end of the East stand. Munster fan's are 110% unaware or caring of the Leinster stewards desire for less enthusiasm at sporting events. Munster's passion seized me and we hollered at full cry. A joy to watch. Munster. Michael Collins. Keano. Play to win.

~

Higgins - O hUgin is a premier name in Bardic literature, particularly in the West. Sligo, Clare, Galway. Kevin Higgins is a class act. Leader of the pack. Total poetry, direct and without apology. Life’s knowing wink of intimacy in immediate connection. One main force for good in Connacht. The wild west of Ireland. Atlantic crashing home after its three thousand mile run. Mayo beating Dublin for the first time in 100 years, at this years All Ireland Football semi final at Croker. 80,000. Sheer mesmeric nature. He does not wilt beneath the flame. The real thing and man for a crisis, with an unflappable poetic sensibility Remember the Artic Monkeys? Beatles? All the cool bands you dreamt of being into at the start?

Nor Ulster man Mark Madden, who has made it happen as a poetry organiser in both Copenhagen and Vancouver. Total commitment to live poetry. Owner of the Arcadia Coffee House Belfast. Have you experienced Gearoid MacLochlainn on fire yet? Mark's red hotness gushes from the same source. Weekly live performance and desire, to horrify straights with sheer talent and total commitment. Forget the idea of poetry being a lonely wandering, on a cloud above an unconnecting audience. Saying how wonderful the entertainmnet was when all were bored shitless. Bluffers beware.

Have a Gander

~

Making it happen. Aint seen nowt like it. His life is write and recite. Now. As we blather. At the Patrick Kavanagh Celebration 2006 on Friday night. Mark swinging from a stair platform at the Palace Bar in Fleet Street Dublin. His posession beneath the glow on our warm inclusive stage, plugged us all in as one mad zapped bunch of pure class poetry lovers. Mark Madden was completely electric, as were many others lashing out art and living poetry to life from 7.00 - 10.30pm.

~

Glenn Gannon. Son of a sixth generation Dublin flower seller climbing Kilamanjaro for charity. Yeah, that’s right. Venturing up a mountain. One man and a dream so insane and positive it was just meant to be. Reading from his award winning autobiographical short story My own Isolde. Just one of the stars who shone there.

Andrew Clark, a flute player working on the front line with bandaged fingers and who sung one of his own ballads, which welded all there in a oneness rarely experienced at most gigs of poesy. No shit.

~

The ballad's central protaganist was Balor - a one-eyed god of myth his eye a laser gun eye, killed by Lugh, who is the sun deity of the Tuatha de Dannan, who came and did the talking here around 1500'ish BC. Vanquished by the Sons of Mil. Milesians. The final wave of mythical invaders to appear and reality as we prove it begun.


~

Terry Cosgrave said he was there as a poet, only in the sense of a Latin American country boasting the most ratio of poets to population on earth, 100%. It's the law that all citizens of the state are poets, until proved otherwise. Like here.

~

Razoring up a throng to enthrallment with his magic, was Mark Granier. Tales and gags in adundance. Sinking bullseye ‘n urban reality with a feline one liner slinkiness and smootherity, all there tittered in as one.

This was raw and amazingly live poetry. We grains containing galaxies of void and light thermaled there last Friday. Spells were cast and launched at the centre darling in lar, so say coz we're all feeling it now my toys. We all whirled away in mythic contemplation of how life's blueprint letters in the roll. Rock me not to torpor, for I am at home in a space station orbiting earth. Now. At this mo - so stop, in the name of love. What more in the nameless surrender of we folk and tiddlers, toddlers and teasers weakening a bond with the local community watch tower concentrating energies and monitoring what moves.

~

We gave a serious account of ourselves. I was at the door ushering in gob-smacked normal people, unable almost to believe reality beckoning from our stage.

The crammed venue physically forced a spotlight of corner to occur. A speakers corner of full inclusion. This is why the night was a success. Because all were treated equally. Everyone got their moment in a spotlight, however humble they be. PJ Brady made sure of that. PJ played Kavanagh for twenty years in a one man show. Played him on his hundreth birthday in the church at Innnerskeen, Monaghan. Cavan man Patrick Brady from a few miles down the road - playing Patrick Kavanagh on his centenary day, just yards from the grave.

The Heart Laid Bare was the play. The monologue culled from Kavanagah's own poetry and prose. A reconstruction. As close to the horses mouth as can be. Kavanagh came onstage that night, and on Friday. PJ

"Are there any here who have not spoken and wish to do so? Please come, share from the stage. This is what the event is all about. To show reality. Give a platform to the dis-possessed. Folk who feel and love. All of us."

~

Poetry happened.

~

The butterfly and hawk eye of logic wrestled accident. WB dropping muffin forks, tea cosies and a goldfish bowl upon the floor of Lissadel in summer. Window open and a giraffe shaped tree draping its branches either side of the two doors. Like a tucked swan-wing.

Patrick Finnegan, like Kevin and Rita Higgins, a superb Galway poet, but unlike them, not in the first flush of manhood - with a fair few knocks along his way, but still a legend for those lucky enough to hear his work. He sounded a mesmerising poem and gifted his huge live talent to give all there a fair jolt. Literally in gasp at Paddy.

~

I have been going mad alone here in front of my screen Gloria Jenkinson from flat seven 306 Fleet street London, circa Scottssboro maiden.

Come fly with me. Bring an apple flower scented with a Du Luc full bottle region, where we spent a winter wrapped in one another's arms. The whirlwind approaching did not ruffle us. Curled coiled critical of only the cold and uninviting tenderness of a seven day holiday and work-break in Bayside.

~

We had harpist Brenda Molloy and mandolin legend Sean Og dipping in and out of the mix with the perfect timing of one whose life is nought but sound. Music, poetry and song in the Palace, whisked to life and literature by poesy's vibe and Kavanagah's spirit alone


~

Under the tunnel sheltering from a whirlwind.
No doubt it will happen one day if you come again my sweetest of Scottsboro roses, scenting Alabama in white cotten. It may well be much cooler when you touch down this time. Fleece are needed. A warm jacket, hat and gloves to fully prepare for what happens in the day.

~

Now are the last days of summer.

UTwo

You too

love in print. Desire. Speak. Affirm reality and myth, hear
"One" in the music of what happens. Thermal reality.

Earth and the Unforgettable Fire. All nought but a good sun,
warm, dry, wet and never cold. Nirvana.

You too.

~

All because of you who move in mysterious ways. Gloria.
Even better than the real thing, believing life returns

when we breathe no more and pass to shade. You be loving
first fan

companion letter. Me and you two'ish proof that in print life
is nought but confusion, sh! Listen, knowing-ones rattle and hum
sound.....

~

ing.


"All along the watchtower.....All I want is you." Too
logical a signature from an artist of sound

believing music is a gift bestowed by a good -
Sun-Faced-Bono-Ogma.

Ogma?

~

I am he. God of sound - music in Irish myth.... Group?
Tuatha De Dannan - pronounced two-a-haw-day-donon.

On the land?.... 300 years, circa 1500'ish BC.
Knowing-ones. Know about sound. Spells. Do magic

in language. Change physical shape with words
alone.
The Sons of Mil? Orphan's. Invaders from the sea who
came and seized power -

circa 1000-500'sh BC...Vanquished then banished TDD under-
ground. My clan - now faery or wee folk. Sons of Mil? Fifth
and final

"wave of of invaders." I taught them to write in Ireland from 5C on. First
recorders of her civil law, written as myth "happened." Fresh from

memory onto pages time forgot. Fact.

~

I, me, we, Ogma - call me what you will - plays a simple 3 string
instrument of magic. Each sound has the same effect on all listeners.

Sound from String one. Listener feels joy and only love. Boogie.

Travolta happens; action, natures force, dancing to Jacko. Off the
Wall. Thriller. Springsteen at Superdome; Lansdowne or Croker,
deadly.


String two. Utter sorrow; terminal misery, zero jiggy - torpor
of all time; the sound for suicide. Ballymun flats 100 feet up,
jump.

Pluck three? Lull all to slumber with this note, strain - string
call them what you will. I sound reality.

~


My trained-noise-workers had a thousand years in print.
Before that we were druids. Made magic with voice only. No ink.

Filidh. Plural of ,fili or "poets", who scribbled an unbroken path for
centuries, until the 17'th
collapsed society abruptly and we stopped for a hiatus or caesura

~

We paused. Scorched earth forced us to flee and surrender beneath my

~

wave when a take-over bid with lots of teething troubles kicked in
and we lost generations, as Penal law replaced the code. 100%. We

became outlaws at home when a stroke of the quill on a bill made it
illegal to speak in gaeilge. Our native tongue. A simple contract

written in plain English for subjects, unable to speak it. What about
Status Quo?
Only on paper; making a show with no native fans in attendance, happen.

Anglo had to import his own. Plants. We were driven mental by a support
act's demand for top billing on our stage. Anglo, ceaselessly plucking my
string of woe.

"Subjects" begging monarchy to stop. Calling for "play-fair" and the
return of ourbono life. Ogma to stop the misery

chord. Noise joy; in the uninterrupted status quo of a good
reality conjured from myth Anglo made illegal. No shit.

~
All Because of You

Monday - Mount Temple School notice board, Larry puts it up.
Saturday - September '75. Seven kids in Mullen's kitchen. There
about the ad.

-1985 - four onstage at Wembley. Live Aid. "I have climbed the highest
mountain, I have run through the field.."..from the dressing room,
through the wings

only to be with you. Up the scaffold. Silent; hugging a world
who came that day. Larry wasn't happy. He thought of walking off

stage. He wanted to play; for me to sing. Let the planet hear Gloria
"in the name of love.."... Party Girl. I Will Follow. Us. U2; who
happen

at Landsdowne Road, Ballsbridge, Yankee Stadium, Redrock - latest hit
from the catalogue. Mid-eighties. Miami. Crocket and Tubbs undercover

in a speedboat. Don in white linen. Wham at the height of their power
Bowie and Jagger "dancing in the street" - Phil Collins to Boston by
concorde.

~

Peter and Ivan only lasted two weeks after first rehearsal;
or was it a month?
Dick's brother - Dave - who happens from the platform - Edge

happened in the core that July weekend. He too is part
practice; life, creation; call it what you will, Larry.

Love deposit here; immediately, please. "It's a beautiful
day.."

~

drop beneath my wave, stay addicted to faith
sound the magic. We’re all - word for word - as

good when spoken simple, direct and kind.

Sincerely Yours

~

Julie Andrews and U
2 on top of Howth hill.

Over and out for now; lover, letter-in-law. Go beneath

~

break feet and walk with St Paul and I. Mind that bag
of mint imperials; or are they the oil-rig toffee Jackie

Stewart "doodle doo"d about; in the pit-stop on
Saturday Grandstand, or was it Tiswas?

~

Mirror-mirror on Arthur Scargill's wall, make Art fairest
of them all.

Answer in song; if Arthur was "...in a
hotel room in New York City, round about the time a

friend of ours, er - Little Steven - was putting together a
record of Artists Against Apartheid..."

~

..or at the miners conference in Scarborough at a Wheels
of Steel disco? Rod Stewart on the karaoke? "Wake up Maggie

I think I 've got something to say to you...". Hollering for
fights
benefit night at the train station, Doncaster branch;

or was it Maddison Square Garden, Art sung "..about a
man in a shantytown outside of Johannesburg, who is

sick of looking down the barrel of white South Africa.
A man who is at the point where he is ready to take up

arms against his oppressor. A man who has lost faith in
the peacemakers of the West, who argue and fail to

~

support a man like Bishop Tutu and his request for
economic sanctions against South Africa."

Arthur was heard - at his bungalow in Scunthorpe, for tea
and a Sarnie. Chicken in a basket later that night, when

he starred on the picket line with Billy Bragg,
demanding a bitta wedge. It was only a quid.

"Am I buggin' you? I don't mean to bug ya..."

or was it a tenner?


~

28 JUNE - 05 - UNFORGETTABLE

Dublin dusk; getting together, darkness imminent
at the canal.

"OK edge.. (David Evans)..play the blues."

~

The Edge's sound; music, what "happens," call it what
you will Larry and Adam

is "a preacher stealing hearts at a travelling
show;" hinting of an apocolypse..now, in the air

at Phibsboro. Croke Park. Croker. 80,000. Monday
outside the ground.
A full house. Pride. "This song is not a rebel song,

this song is...the news today; I can't close my eyes
and make it... New Years Day. Not one a dud. Totally

amazing; or was it, flat? Not happening? No, no it was
the night love came to town, leapt around the stage in

crepe-lifts and transported them through a prism of love
to Van Diemens land - where the streets have no name

and raised a silver lidded keyboard, in the snooker hall
on Camden Street; where dolls hang out, sniffing my talent.

~

I forget her face; pale, refracting daylight through the
candle we lit to commemorate the B52's, Vietnam, Ned

Kelly and Wham, or was it Wigan with Culture Club supporting?
He does not keep loaves and fishes in a fridge near Killiney

Boy George does not go the Forty-Foot, New York, Red Rock.
In Benidorm He is incognito, in shades and baseball cap

under the blood red sky of Alicante; at a water park, Bono
John Lennon - Helter-Skelter - telling Bono go back to

the top of the slide Then you stop and you turn and you go for
a ride Then you get to the bottom, then you.. see me again.

~

See?
The Beatles

Bono and you too want me to love again. Hear September daylight, cool
breeze at Sandycove. A dream to be the free man "who come in the name
of.." Bono

Love. Touch the ground where JFK, his brother Bobby and Gaybo spoke
"Mrs Byrne got diamond eyes.....what more in the name of.."

..JFK, mobbed from New Ross to Phoenix Park in '62. The Late Late
live. Gaybo; in the ruck, squeezing to get near. Have you read

Gaybo's autobiography Marilyn Monroe? Read behind the lines or
tossed off some to Clarke Gable, Ralph, Larry Lamb, Olivier
Elton or

~

Lord John. In the Hyannis Port compound? Sixties. Bee Gees,
Massachusetts, Miles Davis and John Coltrane at the Mixer. Down

to the marina in shorts and a kagool. Picnics, on the beach. Swim.
Ball games; sandwiches, find unrehearsable, love

"All I want is you,"

and two cans of gargle?

~

Or was it ten, that night at Croker by the canal Gloria. Beautiful
Day. One. The one that goes on and on. The White Album

Abbey Road. Regents Park. Zoo TV. Tourists take pictures of the zebra
crossing. It's pissing down; Shaune Ryder's no smack.

Sir Bob - "One" is on the radio, sing

"I don't like Mondays"

~

Bono.

gives and is as all should be. Ogma the good god is the one you
want to be

Peace upon you too; balance of grain containing galaxies of
void and light, guide me to the music of what happens, please
be good.

Happy Monday's, here to happen.
Bono

~

Sir

~

my servant
awaiting a cipher to number for a modest sum, "did you

come here for forgiveness; did you come to raise the dead,
did you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head"

and plagiarise? Poesy's Page - arise Larry; Bono, Adam, the Edge
and please.

You too?

~

or is it U2?

I know

~

Edge is not the Bono and Bono not the Edge. Adam is not Larry or he
Adam Ant.
Larry made it happen. He put the note up; I accept Mullen is

nothing without me, or me him. Only voice, gifted lyrics, Ogma's
word

~

Sound.

Enconium for John by Mahon and Cronin

Dear Reader

The piece below is from a few weeks back. A blip in technicals means my current stuff's moved href="http://www.trampdiary.blogspot.com">here

Monday - Church - 7pm

God of speech Anthony Cronin joined with literate deity Derek Mahon in a prime piece of church property (built in two years at a cost of £5000 and opened for worship on Sunday 14 June 1863).

To make John Betjeman speak on Monday evening? I hear you say?

Off course
those dividing iambics which tick bombs of opinion to explode on-screen in various free-of-all-verse forums throughout cyberworld,

were given an hour long airing;
fifteen minutes after I arrived on foot and realised my destination was a compact walk-up prayer-hall on the SW corner of Stephen’s Green, and outside whose doors a trail of suits assembling in obvious number, witnessed a man unseen for some months in such ratio.

~

When Cronin comes to work it's a full house of gossip lovers who relish the real thing,

and Deggsy’s global reputation mixed with Tony’s gags meant many came early to guarantee a spot at the lock-in.

~

Both A list repositories of their nation's poetic lore;

one of whom staggered ducked and dived round Dublin,
London and Paris with literary legends in the first swill

of his manhood, 20 years before many senior
warblers were anonymous newbies learning to rope
poet's at the Palace Bar.

~

A frisson of potential exclusion briefly fused through the thickening queue of punters on the pavement below the large gothic stone portal with doors designed to withstand a battering-ram,

due to abruptly shut when evening prayer began,
so I thanked creation for guiding me to exit my flop hutch of composition 10 minutes quicker than when non-gods appear in more quotidian and emptier space.

~

A liminal flux was palpable during the 30 seconds in the go-slow bottle-neck I mistook for a dash to basement seats

and breathing a sigh of relief as I left the patient and orderly autograph mad punters entering their names in a visitors book

peeled off from the queue to a stage
where Ogma's word moved through two who connect

with the last rites of Greg's beatification at the gobs of Chris and Mick in the Surgeons,

as so many so desperate to attend a reading
I'd not witnessed since then

John Betejeman
- massively popular poet and hack's ghost
emanating an odour of iambic ectoplasm I whiffed when a plural god kicked off behind a pillar blocking my view.

The perfect position to leave with no fuss, should boredem call or a need for the jacks.

~

Cronin is an icon whose fantastically long poetical pedigree and orbits are unique, varied and have accessed all ear and tongue from Taoiseach to tramp. On a generational scale Seamus is to Anthony as Cronin to Betjeman.

But whereas John B’s gift -of/mak/ing/verse-cause/un/ease- is underrated by those who do not work in this form and can not write in regular iambic for toffee, Tone C's prose equivalent ability is conjuring up cut-glass barbs of
ice
windy intellectuals blow in fear of

a talented cypher cutting their quill.


~

Cronin and Mahon are not legends in the first flush of youth like Aisle 16 or the thick crop of bruisers on net-boards new talent writes on, so vive voce was never a backable odd in a religious space built for a few hundred.

On an international stage Dek's poems are read and Tone by comparison is unknown; but his influence here is instantly audible for all who witness this remarkably real-life conduit offering poetical insight for all; whoever they are and however they write

and although he got lost in a line or three, his sound of sheer sincerity and acceptance when collapsing mid-stumble served to convey only extra layers of vocal poignancy on a day whose celebratory depth of meaning filtered through loud-speakers to even the most cynical of butt-parkers crammed on the pews avid and rapt listening for myth being lured to life from seven pm.


This hot bed of tolerance was a congregation of all ages, from geriatrics down; there for a service from two maestros speaking John’s word at a temple,
whose art I heard Ogma invoke in an hour long enconium.

~

Just hearing them both blowing breath was instruction enough; and with Tone in arch-poet mode to a faster younger understudy doing it straight

John Betjeman spoke to me through Mahon and Cronin, the octogenarian colleague whose speech god gifts a laboriously acquired form few write in

but plenty who do not, or will not

dismiss and
misunderstand
as they cannot

find faith or write verse
in the hard won line drawn
from John's page lots don't write
of or on.

~

So
tell me what ratio
of silence to sound

will burst a poem
and lash out your sense
in my world

"I betcha da moan
and not laugh with a metrical system
second to none and unknown to"

John
the middle man of English verse who seems
so tame

when he does not bluff but
presents a logical system of
ratio.

_______________________

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notify me to post off
and syphon your mind
in his signature style,
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profile attached to a
public 'n iambic view of
life on a train from
Tufnell Park station
moving through Highgate and
Haringey

to woodland, heather and a
hearthland on heath near
an ocean our two
feet dip in and
out of at will.