Thursday, September 21, 2006

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
  • Wednesday, September 20, 2006

    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

    Monday, September 18, 2006

    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

    Tuesday, September 12, 2006

    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.

    Sunday, September 10, 2006

    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.

    Sunday, September 03, 2006

    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.

    _______________________

    Disable this BBCode

    notify me to post off
    and syphon your mind
    in his signature style,
    smile and

    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.