Sunday, March 25, 2007


Philip Larkin was a miserible effing sod, useful as a bag of arses, porcine offspring roaming in the lab on a farm of pigs who are rotters. Did Phil ever use rozzers? If not he would have I suspect, the grumpy aul git, a thinking man's Alf Garnet shooting straight from the lip, life's shit, get over it, move on, die and fleet in an elemental abyss with the negative greats who refused to go to bed at boarding school.

He was reared in the emotional slums at an intensley depressing time in the history of middle class angst, questioning and railing against a bourgeois blandness they knew was their inevitable fate, their only hope of comedic relief, the onside bore would be happy to state as "earthy" gallows humour, but one which could offend the critical sensibilities of a post-modern third wave femminist or radical intellectual theorist.

His staus as a very important minor poet in the contemporary English lanaguage canon, is secure in spite of this librarian pre-disposed to moaning and whose public kudos and glamour ascended once he went to the ghost-world he strove to be party to and parly with. Acheived the complete detached utterance in a few poems of his that, if not enobling, are certainly heard by the reader's ear as attempts to rise above and reach higher peaks of poetical thought, where the eye is incredibly accurate in apprasing the weight of poetic reality, due to much study, effort and strength of whatever intellect turns within the hearth of experience one publically professes as marker or sign of a poetic wisdom we hold or express.

The image of Larkin as a square librarian has much solid primary truth for the poetic pallete to paint him as Coventry's premier bardic bore, of a primarily northern importance. His grammer school mind in tortuous mimesis in Hull, inversely cast as Ovid in banishment. But whereas Ovid was a social wit writing how-to-pull love poetry on which his fame rested and offended Emporer Agustus enough to cast him out in 8AD, far from the urbane imperial centre he once thrived at, Larkin's is the self imposed emotional exile of a bored bachelor, unwillingly cast as spokesman of middle class misery, far from where he bleakly yearns to be, his deep unhappiness compounded by knowing his life could be not else than that of a detached poet with a blandly original "I."

He is a huge hit with the more depressingly minded, whose sensibilities and primary critical force spinode with Philip's gloomy lyrical mind where "the sun-comprehending" sound is the light boredom of his inner moan for freedom droning on and on in a career of almost supreme self-pointlessness.

A tortured "I" who shuffled books and attended dreary drinks parties he will bitch about in a poetry overcome with what it sees as the anti-civilising agent of the masses, written by a man born into their very centre. The bullseye, trapped in furthest point of escape, unhappily unmarried and acceding to his fete as one destined to annal the decline in global influence of his country in relentless morbid verse. Duplicating in poetry a literary equivilent of the monotonous estates springing up in the working-class hinterland of East Riding, turning that part of what used to be Yorkshire, into one of Europes premier spots of social misrey.

Here is where an early concrete experiment in high-rise planning lunacy was being enacted by the messiahs of 60's Britons, practicing their art of architecture, professing it a catch-all answer to poverty, but which built laboratories of extremely detached thinking into which poured the Smash, HP Sauce and oilskin tablecloths of endless and drably coloured square design one can imagine Phil resting his elbows on, his librarian jacket hung in the functional coatroom by the door, hating Betjemen for being the lighter hearted of the two, yet secretly finding succour in his role as poet pissed off enough to start uttering the eff word in print.

His chosen emphisis is one of contemporary disgust with modernism, technology and the sociatal changes he bore witness to. A sensitive chap whose intellectual paradise was a fictional world in which one suspects a teddy bear and midnight campers in a tent on a beach solving the answer of life over a glass of sherry will appear, the dim yellow light and lapping whirr of the van's fridge a gentle pulse of background electronica, Phil in shorts wiping his glasses, staring at the moon and refusing to speak of a baggy and ever craggier looking Auden, who Larkin measures his progress by. Auden the common anchor of agreement in the wider poetic community.

All schools of contemporary thought converge on Auden and Larkin, the sensible man whose self-loathing arose at the centre of his materialistic existence of documenting the relationship between physical objects and the middle classes, hates him with the disturbing and still fury only a real librarian knows. He who spent his life in libraries, his creative mind outpouring at the calm pool of work in an academic factory's heart of literarture, where the full mind of all knowledge lay stacked, coded and readable.

The uniquely English aspect in his register of grim acceptance and resignation, is the tenor constrained, a full note of human tradgedy does not voice in poetic thermals which convey the full horror of ineffable sorrow. Whereas the history of some cultures accumulate to a dark national poetic psyche, such as Poland Russia and Hungary, Larkin's cause of sorrow is less continentally epic in scope, more regional in focus and outlook. His is the product and aural mirror of an insular mind deeply tucked in at the middle of it's scoiety.

If a plank contained the full spectrum of human psychology, at one end would be saints and scholars and the other would be the intellectually neutered and selfish who like to frighten, leave one in no doubt about what they think, by abandoning the decorum of a previously unwritten poetical law and start effing off. At the safety of his centre, acknowledging his insignificance and asking how poetry, in the generation after Auschwitz, can exist if humanity and techology harness and hate is societally coded into custom over a short period and allowed to run it's horrific course.

To profess poetry as an enobling, detached force of civilising inner wisdom connected to truth and beauty but veiled to the layman, is - to one who does not practice seeking the hidden higher force of language - often considered the occupation of active wierdos, best to be avoided and one wonders how many of today's crop of versemisths Larkin would have round for sherry and a moan about the then current devil.

The short spell of Architet gods orbiting as primary bores within the art world ended in the 1979 winter of discontent, when refuse piled up and rats swarmed. Philip's professional unhappiness at peak register. The knowing eye in " I told you so," tuned to a rarely reached height over a career of deeply begrudged non-affirmational poetry, the man who made effing respectable. His defining line translated into Hibernoenglish is

They feck you up your ma and da

A crazy bald head straight on the cutting edge of displeaseure, in well constructed verse, one mans relentless struggle with himself, a dull bored beauty rising in spite of the subject material, the "shit" he hates but will never escape, terminally trapped as he is to monotonous tedium and vapid self disgust of he who's linguistic fin flashed innner knowledge, his eye behind the "I" winking in tragi-comic glory only one's inner librarian would know. Thus an almost annonymous man from the midlands spent his career thinking up word combinations of eminently individual hue and design.

Larkin's "The sun-comprehending glass" is as individual a linguistic picture as a moon knowing lavatory brush, both arresting in their own way, one more clearly comic. Two combinations whose originality carry a similar poetic weight to an eye experienced in the science of specific linguistic arrangement and trained to access a spiriti mundi once within the poetic-trance, composing.

Phil's professed critical viewpoint is one primarily in a shabby travelling salesman and soggy breakfast flop house, a kip where words come and the thought comprehending sun beyond the veiled glass in high windows go past and beyond it. The deep blue nowhere of an endless grace note sounding and showing nothing but air, simple to recognise when the eye in Larkin deploys his most hacking of phrase, pale blue nothing, hinting of the dead ghost our tradition communes with.

I am in agreement, that the rarest of thought is found driving an epithet lofty in the life-pan filled with sung event and sing fully effable, balanced on its back by sorrow, ineluctable mimesis, a poetical process of time, trial hope and unaired draughts of Sophia from the hearth of mystery and mythical wisdom we deal in as mentalist or magus, act in a language class few know how to join, the entrance is free and wisdom Sophia who flits in the spiritual mundi and cosmic well as ones mind-reflection.

Phil's deep blue air of incredible nothingness where the answers to human phiosophy are answered by inaminate objects only, the hazier, less penitrible and more miserble, so much the better, for Phil followed the Edwardian's and he and Houseman are lumped together as a double act by Michael Schmidt in one of his open letters to Neil Astley.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Right one roll the perfect spring for cycling and aurally imbibe on continual play, U2. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

A few days before Patrick's day the summer seemed not so far away, but now it looks no longer believable. Spring is upon us. Wednesday was warm, but a cold front sprung in and yesterday, for the first time, I saw slush in Dublin. There are frequent hail storms, a bitter North Easterly and the folk below me are engaged in the thrall of a visceral domestic disagreement, silent sulks, hurled insults, slowly their relationship of continual degeneration bubbles and begins a faint background orbit in one's domestic aural space.

For the past few day the noise quota has increased and they are clearly having a tough time, as most at some point experience. I wish them well and hope reality lives happily ever after with them. Worst case scenario I have a Daily Mail to defend me. I'm sure some of the columnists dishing up the answers on everything from how a stetson affects wider society to where Paddy the plasterer stood in a passage tomb at Newgrange last winter solstice, will drive over from D4 to my rescue. Bundle me in the SUV and whisk off to Raglan Road or Ranelagh. Let me live within the heart of their family on a small stipend perhaps, a manuscript as collateral for larger sums, should the need to leave my daily routine of seeking wisdom through friendship with Trevor the tramp at the canal, where we do a lot of good work for the universal psyche.

Send out the positive thought of two men who have turned their minds to many pictures over many years of working on the bench tackling current events together, finding wisdom through friendship with a tramp of ephemera and conundrum whose diverse interests range from eels to divinity and some say he knows the spirit awaiting Saimhan eve is within us, that pets share not their owners intelliegence, the human mind is an animal man.

Thus spake Carol today in the paper, hack-writer imparting her wisdom for a mortgage, kids and career with a platform
squares have cornered, all rowed up like a block wall of opinion and blather in print. Carol is a true messiah with a solution for everything. Never does she sign off before having mauled in ink whoever got lashed into and strung up, hung out in her column. Be it the wife of very talented soccer player David, Victoria Beckham who Carol was imploring through the office of her page to put on weight, or Brittney Spears - who is probably unaware Carol exists - who she regularly chides, offers the content of the day in her urbanic mind and wasting anybody's time who reads her for any purpose other than indulging in a brief skin of pointlessness, which is a regular occurence in Carol's column, who is continually urging Mrs Beckham to impliment numerous and far reaching changes in her private life, affecting to instigate an unwanted relationship with Posh, who Carol sometimes loses her rag with - only as a concerned potential friend of a celebrity who clearly isn't interested in taking her advice and may only read her column to laugh at she who seeks to give an incredibly wealthy stranger who actively takes no interest in her, free advice, and the increasingly bizzare behaviour of Carol has caused me some concern, which is why I have decided to go public with my true feelings about Carol, as a construct.


Having no contact with Carol, our relationship is purely fictional on my part, but that's OK, I don't mind. I have a public duty to Carol to maintain a level of concern for her as a fellow artist and, someone who takes it upon themself to assume a duty of public concern, like Carol who displays all the traits of a woman obsessed with another women, who happens to be younger and thinner, which has no bearing on Carol's professional relationship with Victoria. Carols just a concerned hack whose got deadlines and has to turn in her masterpieces several times a week. Burnout rate in columnists is very high, as it's essentially a job of bitching, cut throat, lots of negative reiki and miserable old queens.

There can be only one supreme goddess in the hack world and the chance of becoming one as a regular gob spouting in the blah blah la pond of journalism can make for a toadying time of intrique, subterfuge, boredom and an artistic lean spell if the hack has aspirations of finding inner tranquility via the route of language to the eye of it's mystery and heart of understanding, stick the boot sap love comrade

The newspaper has comprehensive sports coverage, but acts primarily as an open letter to various public figures, in which advice is offered via any number of professional journalists featuring in their numerous columns, many of whom are women with a modern world-view, holding down a career in the arts and juggling the demands of public life with family,a very important part of all our lives, and the columns plead with whoever it is, to take their advice about diet, domestic set up, getting divorced and generally moaning a lot, using the celebs as a hanger for ones bitchy cloak, the common literary register responsible for
the much sought after ticket to a magical event in the mind of a man from Co Meath who is a full time fantasist, peace and tranquility advocate and the pre-requisite for a poet hoping to confidently skate and figure the trace of his travels through slamming doors, sudden weighty thuds and other ephemera in the domestic ambience of acoustic topography, where some conduct the campaign at a front line of their literature.

Utopian-paint bore eloquent, bono poetic ear, some say his inner belief equals Sir Paul's and Saint Bob's perfect song, One Love, where a working class hero is the fun thing to be and a compassionate sound from our children who seek guidance from His goodness say, Speke; but one name of the all powerfull Dagda or, humanity.

Canada, New York, Malden
Masschusetts, Calgary
Alberta, Rock Springs Wyoming
Kansas - Eudora, Palm Desert
California, London Lambeth
Ontario - Dryden, Helena
Montana, Reno Nevada
Kentucky - Printer, United
Kingdom, States and China.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Chloe Poems. The Maybes?

Right and left last week I read in four different venues, a performance milestone and interesting run of intense activity. The largest hosting was the final one - Saturday last - a huge gathering of singers, versesmiths and entertainers par excellance. A real celebration of sorts, it was the final in a set of sociologically themed events spread over a few days, which I had been unaware happened, until shortly before the denouement was due to occur, an open mic finale. Numerous Ulster poets where there to demonstrate and celebrate the potential for good to happen in society at a grass root level.

The power of "you too, fair play, good on yer, lash it out, wha'," in a loose taggle of artists seeking victorious utterance on the plain of speech and through that sense of ascending attainment the campaigns engender in the gods of persuassion, teased to form in a rag bag lot of all sorts, assorting, assimilating in the space.

For some not resident in Dublin whose arrangements to attend poetical events in this strange, yet exceptionally rewarding place nessitate an overnight stay, the event was pencilled in, a verbal exchange documented possibly in an advance invite or acceptance, the printed record, a possession of electronic form of what passed between you and the person hosting perhaps?

For the more organised person some may feel uncomfortable around, not - I hasten to add - due to any socioligical defect in the wholly imaginary, yet slightly offputting person, our grey, modest character hinted at. The ghost we do not know but sense has weightless gravitas, the power of his fright invisible, yet relevant for they calling an anorak to fix the location as an islands premier cinema and central repository for much spiritual and physical evidence of her cinematic history and filmic lore.

Many ran to a timetable, but some whose domestic locale is closer and whose orbit of poesy is controlled by a higher power, the personae of tweed in a fishermans grey eye and white of Olwengin river, the jagged green grass at the base of Maumturk and sky in pale blue above Na Beanna Beola, did not.


I hovered at the fringe and assumed the role of poet, important as a bag of arses, wating by the door on twelve pins, frequently slipping out and spending a sizable chunk of the do elsewhere. This being a sudden occurence my plans had been tossed into dissaray and by 11pm I was keen to seal the final abandonment of hope for their retreval, nip to an off licence before it closed; which I accomplished and returned to a sizable cultural space at the Irish Film Institute to herald a cyber-collective's poetic success.

The networking capacity of the world wide web had been marshalled to stunning effect as an organisational tool to keep in touch and draw others into on the quest of seeking poetic affirmation, each in a unique frequency seeking our datum, universe, imaginary rule or, original blueprint to create with, and - as we practice the oral craft - adhere to, in search of clues for ways of making ingenious and extremely pointless verbal fictions considered most ludicrous by all but a few, bring true faith in outward practice of the belief that a key to good humanity unlocks the gate of inner freedom and ritual, to secure and maintain correct spiritual rank in the verbally inverted community, utilise a net and let it support our messianic dream.

Penniless prophets in suburbia whose masses of potential long since dissipated, seeking artistic succour with a harmless cyber career and pretend/project crafted fantasy into an electronic continuum, publishing for hobby, business, pleasure or boredom and met like minded pals who share stuff such as collecting rare violins, manuscripts, stamps, tea bags, jingles or, when looking on less common leisure paths which lead intricate linguists who don't get out much to poets, those who prefer their domestic ritual a singular fictional laneway of love, the mess of self in an adult relationship, paint on pallette, fodder a rise in sound to slip, set, descend an arc of decline and only return in the upswing of an inner lullaby leading back to boy who moved into my neighbourhood, won't do nothing right, just sit down effin a lot.

He don't wanna go to Youghal and learn to read and write, just sits around the house and plays that rock and roll music all nite, utter shite, have you heard, boom boom boom of a backroom where Lilly Marlene met O'Neill, before he met the golden Farrah, Marlene a force in Hollywood fading by the light of Ryan's tawny locks?

London, Derry, Galway and Cork came, Dublin based spoken worders too and addressed fellow fans, toiling comrades, the hip and the lame in linguistic turmoil at a hullaballoo language feast of poem and song, joining the demo, front line veterans celebrating love.

A sizable portion of the collective make planetary displays of themselves in the shop window of my space, where a large number of poets connect, network and find their signpost to wisdom and inner enlightenment point right, the planet of wannabes succour via art with a remarkabley different kind of visceral and physiologically exciting poetic form of engagement in the spoken work, for both reading and audience professional alike.

Much performance there is an opposite of the regimented, sombre and somehwat boring tradition of a silent poetic reverance the occasional verse centric poet historically fell prey to concocting as the primary enthrallment or soporific live aid over the duration of a career in the public speaking of defunct mumbo jumbo, important as pigshit, quantum torpor.

Unconscious audience members are notably absent in this pro-active new wave, where the liminal state between psychological and physiological support, vocal advocacy and howling encouragement is but the oral warp of an acoustic weft, strands for the poet to snarl or harness, mesh of experience in chance and timing as they practice in reality a sound of the string within. Test an aural object, go verbal, career as a witness of measure and thus live teeth with supportive participation in the genuinely different yet populist strain of affirmational poetry are cut, nascent, spring-like and the indicator of an active health in the form of oral gymnastics bestowing what - some say - constitutes a contemporary edge, incisive and ever more sharply dilineating the shift in balance, away from print/reader and into live/audience, engaged in the grass root process that twenty years ago was a limbo land of crazy bald head straights, hip loonies forging underground careers, John Hall and - ten years later - Chloe Poems.

Faith accrued on stage won out at the UK Arts Council. The polarity of it's funding ethos entirely reversed over the course of a decade, the seismic shift this year, as the majority of poet funding now being doled is to artists of dual focus who publish, plus perform, thus signalling the strategy of mothballing a pre-web wine and cheese career train the mainstream crop who lit big in the 70's - 90's were once reared on and radical marxists at.

The emphasis no longer is on the wholly printed logo of a remote and aurally enobling mind, but one's word as performative text. The ethos being that by encouraging language experts to master the physiological side of opening the gob and going for broke, so their capacity to entertain will increase, in more clear lyrically immediate and measurable manner than pre-net.

The notion of detached utterance - a legacy WB Yeats left the poetic community as it's most influential English language poet of the 20C - is no longer the sole prepotent force affecting movers and shakers grooming careers and picking chosen ones, but one slipping in eminence and influence, as rap copping where the action gets decided snaps a clap-o-meter of syntax, a briefcase, some papers and spectacles.

The arts officer is ex-habit, busted for finding God in O'Neill, who begins the meeting with a bendy yoga move, adding gravitas and weight to the theory delivered straight that all avenues of escape open or shut matter not to the gods, their world a web of singledom, inability to upgrade, guess reality to be some dream a gifted laureate is and not just docked effing off at the page where leak sound and motion, career along a lonely path aural but also orally trod, the artistic spirit a masterpiece where the headcount of an audience in transit is his. Tot up the time of engagement and spread good art, funding with a purpose of corporeal participation for a lingo nuts audience.

It is logical that poets at the nexus of their performance ability draw bums on seats, enthrall instantly in the flesh more than the previous - and ever dwindling - mainstream book maestro administering to consumers who dropped shopping for poetry fare on the High Street where increasingly pointless squares whose dwindling corner at market talking up the torpor, sales falling, annointing the wholly chosen one's, the next best bet on the possibly real thing, the modern poet in a formulae that guarantees anything goes, any mad theory given a brush at the old guard bog struggling to paint with the authorative eye poetic proclomations from the stratosphere of lyrical intelligence, a polygon of poesy must cube out at least in order to acheive career bouyancy in the overpopoulated circus of primarily free verse with supple muscular rhythm and rhyme, with all sorts of think-ups in the mix.


The name of the game is pyrotechnical wordplay, a lot of blaze and little dependable heat or goliaths on the horizon fresh from Parnassus, an offspring of Appollo dropped by a crane into the hustle and bustling lingo discipline, in which a lot of potty people train, for as many reasons as there are nutters in search of lettered enlightenment, a publisher to take one's work on and publish primarily for oneself - like John Hall of Citizen 32 fame and myself.

A legend proving it over the course of living his unique career of long slog, which paid off for John, as he now has the most exciting whirlwind to rip through UK poetry since Philly Hobsaum jiggied a Group, sharing his professional orbit.

John is the connection to and took a polar opposite career course from a cute huer, Pam Ayres . You should see Socrates in the 70's, yeah you should hear Socratic Pam, she's the kind of the girl who made News of the World and kind of cultural reality and de facto dictator to boot, of remote poetry that drew millions in. She was as watched as the biggest mid seventies prime time gods. Men like mimic Mike Yarwood and his most senior variety genius Bruce Forsyth, still acting the entertaining maggot in his eighth decade. A primetime legend. Pam's feat of holding the TV gaze of a nation whilst acknowledging the sum of her wisdom is an awareness of her ignorance, psyche and place in the rating's rank at the entendre of bottom ender charts none but Pammy, Betcheman and a few other quare feckers have entered.

For those who do not bet, John Hall is a rational cosmologist's punt, his live cultural currency commanding an ascending rate of coolness in curent exchange for his experiential worth as a poet. Pam too has incredible kudos and this ex RAF - now special agent of light comedic verse - is undercover or due a surge to even greater heights, should the spheres command her re-entry into an orbit of fame not for the faint hearted anytime soon.


Chloe Poems, was once eyed, shared a bill with at Stamps Wine Bar in Crosby, around the time a friend of mine from inner city Liverpool - where Chloe hails from - introduced me to a rock 'n roll band from his hood called The Maybes? Who eyed also in the nemeton of Civic Hall three years ago when Ormskirk roared.

A remote force not of this world motions Chloe Poem's career orbit and his inner ascent her higher power, the authority controlling Chloe's chromatically trans-neutered accent is north inner city Liverpool. Not a location condusive to inspiring unnatural faith of eventual poetic attainment for a sensitive man who dresses as a woman, expressing philosophy he preaches through Chloe Poems, unless the force be with you, Chloe on the Dolby speakers drifting out of hearing range only true gods command, she whose persona is flawlessly executed and far removed from the physically neutral looking and shy, but clearly focussed man behind her creation who I also shared a waiting area with, a cramped set of stairs - the toilets were his changing room - leading from the bar to the upstairs function room where a randomly drinking audience in a light state of intoxication were fully entertained by the incomporable Chloe, who is unforgettable in utterance, unlike no other craic-whore queen cooking nazi sock and fecking at a Toxteth crack-shack beyond a scale of one to ten, who has ever effed off his head before, because she invented his accent and her rage between register passes for both prol and aristo alike, simultaneously. So all who flock to witness this master and mistress of linguistic control, eff off, she is untouchable in the performance of his work.

A veteran verbalist voicing truth to the nation but constrained by fairness and diviersity legislation, injects a common dose of sensible utterance at packed places wherever she stars to an audience of fellow artists who practice being human, cold juice the shell Chloe out could claim mid afternoon sofa rights, an alternative Pam Ayres for noughties effing Briton. Bruiser from a bowery dell booming on the cobbles, of a slapper's stolen heart, her pimp a wicked old tranny, the non recollectable hag old fag and annonymous author of the voice in useless force, her alter ego his male mirror out reaching to effable she who is all feckin this and fockin that.


He posesses a similar spirit as the Maybes?

What struck me about this gang of scouse rockers - whose EP cover is the image above - was how far they outshone the support bands and nearest musical rivals, on the night. All round; in singing, playing and harmony, they exposed a raw and powerful truth to a competition who, wilting in jealousy at four gods sounding in cultural thunder beyond the attainment of all but chosen ones, tried as best they could with the dream more dwindling charade, and continued. A tight four piece drawing all within earshot to tap along, true rock 'n roll band and joy to hear, who rock with raw vocal power, as I re-discovered on Myspace. On the up, 54,000 hits, songs played 30,000 times by eager listeners.

Have a listen. You will not be dissapointed by the lead singer and visceral verbalist blooming like the mesmeric rocker he is. His voice is at peak strength and I am willing to bet will outroar most others circuiting a similar lyrical track.


The Maybes?

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Monday, March 05, 2007

New Site

I've set up a My Space site, as I can post recordings there that are streamed. Have a listen to the brilliant Addy and Raven who attend the Monster Truck. Addy is a singer, Raven is one - if not the - best live poet reciting on the weekly open mic in Dublin.

Dublin Poets

Monster Truck is on tonight, 73 Francis Street, at the very bottom, South end, opposite Fallons pub and next to the Brown Envelope antique shop, so come on down 8-11pm.

5 Euro in Free booze.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Donkey Business

A true story. Only in the wacky West and picked up from Galway First

"A man who was found dressed in latex and handcuffs brought a donkey to his room in a Galway city centre hotel, because he was advised “to get out and meet people,” the local court heard last week.

Thomas Aloysius McCarney with an address in south Galway was charged with cruelty to animals, lewd and obscene behaviour, and with being a danger to himself when he appeared before the court on Friday. He was also charged with damage to a mini-bar in the room, but this charge was later dropped when the defendant said that it was the donkey who caused that damage.

Solicitor for the accused Ms Sharon Fitzhenry said that her client had been through a difficult time lately and that his wife had left him and that his life had become increasingly lonely.

“Mr McCarney has been attending counselling at which he was told that he would be advised to get out and meet people and do interesting things. It was this advice that saw him book into the city centre hotel with a donkey.”

She added that Mr McCarney also suffered from a fixation with the Shrek movies and could constantly be heard at work talking to himself saying things like “Isn’t that right, Donkey?”

Supt John McBrearty told the court that Mr McCarney who had signed in as “ Mr Shrek” had told hotel staff that the donkey was a family pet and that this was believed by the hotel receptionist who the supt said was “young and hadn’t great English.”

Receptionist Irina Legova said that Mr McCarney had told her that the donkey was a breed of “super rabbit” which he was bringing to a pet fair in the city. The court was told that the donkey went berserk in the middle of the night and ran amok in the hotel corridor, forcing hotel staff to call the gardai.

McCarney was found in the room wearing a latex suit and handcuffs, the key to which the donkey is believed to have swallowed.

He was removed to Mill St station after which it is said he was the subject of much mirth among the lads next door in The Galway Arms.
He was fined €2,000 for bringing the donkey to the room under the Unlawful Accommodation of Donkeys Act 1837."

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Monster Truck Spring Reading

Come, laugh, relax, blather, gas, learn your craft at the ultimate temple and trade speech, watch, hear sonic-beauty whirr your inner gyre and buzz with Dublin poets - 5 Euro in - free booze - Mondays.

All welcome.

Monster Truck Art Gallery - Francis Street, city centre, South of the Liffey.

The perfect spot to gather, recite, listen and develop acoustic skill, with smirting area and hard-drive capturing the magic for those wanting computer quality cuts of their textual selves at the orgy of live oral utterance, on the front line of love in an art gallery at the heart of Dublin's urbane art and soul district.

Monday night's formatt is continual poem or song, one per person going round in a loop, to reduce waiting time and keep an even karma in the temple where all those predisposed to wordic fantasy and exageration can verbal, 8 - 11 pm, bouyed on a professional bono free ambience and off licence priced tipples. The real thing. No rip off.

Let loud roar, come super gobs and gab on a near gratis night, in the fittest environment for linguistic practice mon online compadres. Foster onto a public stage for the mutual benifit of all mankind your hocus pocus there, sojourn to this sophisticated place of many layers and find the verse you fought dawn's smooth rising for when the thorn leaf opened in the sun, dew-wet life was salmon and Seigas and the sound of reality ringing abroad was speech and song, at a world where poetic wordplay is the order of business.

under a mathmatically democratic entertainment policy, talk of the sky and eagle above who washes its wings by the wind of the sidhe on all souls night, breeze through to hear and dissolve in the ambience before leaving for home, hale in good cheer and with the memory of a hopefully poetic experience from a night of controlled instinct and sense of speech the aural mesmerist lead you to - Monster Truck art gallery near St Patrick's cathedral

the Liberties - bottom of Francis Street (S End) next to the Brown Envelope antique shop and opposite Fallons pub.

Monday 5, 12, 26 March and 16 April

8 till 11pm


~

The Poetry Director of the Monster Truck art gallery in Dublin needs poets for a summer reading series, so get in touch before the April funding deadline at Poetry Ireland, for May/June readings and recieve a fee for your recital. This deadline is every two months. Those wanting featured readings for July/August should get in touch before June.

e mail - desmondswords@hotmail.com -

Friday, March 02, 2007

Not a soft touch on the second-hand
bicycle front, he lashed out

got a proper form of two wheeled transport
that set him right back.

Unable to pay rent he was, once again
living in the shed on a building site


at the quarry near Clondalkin,
where he wandered lonely in a cloud


of clinical depression, oozing a downer
on all whose path he crossed. The fold up


cycle that rides like a joke, a visual pollutant
sore thumb of the high street, scenic vandal


drew jeers and derision from pedestrians
on to his person undertaking the act


of looking a prat on two wheels a ten
year old wouldn't be seen dead owning.


~


Oracular mop top


“yeah yeah yeah.”


Gods of body and soul understand,
hear they say a Mersey beat lit the fuse


of revolution. Imagined a planetary
magical mystery cult and let it be


in the heart of Speke and Woolton.
John, Paul, Aunty Mimi, mothers Mary


and Julia, circuiting until peace
throughout the universe is all across


the watchtower, protected by her silver
spoon. Imagine Freddie his dad


doing Al Jolson impressions at Newcastle
Road, in the bedsit with Julia playing a banjo


not the John who got mobbed
all round Earth, smoking pot with Lucy


in the sky, purple hearts, Mind Games
diamonds with Yoko lying in bed, Rock


and Roll, two anti-war protestors, Walls
and Bridges. Three albums from the lost


weekend John spent with Harry Nillson
David, Sir Elton, Ringo and John


after the white period with his personal
assistant and lover May Fung, the sweet


bird of paradox. Didn’t anybody tell her
didn’t anybody see


Yoko’s on the phone to Linda
and Linda’s on the phone in the Bag


O’Nails, '68 and called again when Sir
Paul needed sorting out with a bag


of weed for the start of the tour in Tokyo
1980. It was a cold and wet January


day, Sir Paul was saying the stuff's
not his, giving it some of that rock


and roll music, any old time the King
never knew his twin nor John


that his little sister Ingrid existed.


~


What chance had Jim Morrison
of watching Star Wars after Burbank ’67


when he sung the original lyrics of Light
My Fire and was never invited back on


by Ed Sullivan ever again.


~


Elvis went mad
at the decline of rock ‘n roll decorum


guess he couldn’t get much higher
than the standard that sent Jim to Paris


in March ’71, ostensibly to recuperate.
But Jim lost weight, shaved off his beard


and died three months later, in July
an overdose, some say - heroin


others natural causes. 27, the same
as Bolan in his prime when children


of the revolution rode white swans
wore hot pants and drove a Capri


to Walthamstow dogs listening to Elvis
on the radio in the final stage


of weight gain, as Meat Loaf
roared into Top of the Pops on a chopper


like a bat out of hell. Maybe he can talk
all night, the cat who sang two


out of three aint bad, but in a game
of the world where the champions


are the biggest dandies rocking round
Wavertree clock tower, John went that


one step beyond at an out
of the way occasion and will dispose


the new wave of chart invaders
the annual surge of return.


Mods coming back, Madnes ruling
top spot all summer miming baggy


trousers in the middle of the street
our house.