The Cuchulainary Music of Gamblers' Bodies

Learned a poem that will carry its own weight
through the use of its quatrains and stanzas,

on its own feet speak and stand in spoken song;
upon a stave of the Creator's making stage

a strophe of inventively voiced syllables that speak
the contract from lip to ear, in a mouth binding

oaths that pledge this demi-realm of spirit,
slate green sea, by the music of what happens

in its own paradise & mind-blue mystery,
to the oneness that and this, that and this, that

& this, that literate on the pages of our memory is.

An absent anarchic body of light, blind presence,
attentive ear, the eye of tradition and lore

one must listen to and learn the fundamental
tenets of before claiming in canto, section

and rann, movements from cosmic to singular
and back again 'be the branches of genealogy

off-spring are born from, extending to summon
the living', in the same line of spoken psalm

carry weight by sound alone; and be not bold,

slapdash, timorous, or touchy, brought not
to ruin by low drunken tricks; but the law-abiding

hand-of-mind form, imbhas forosnai, spontaneous
manifestation of knowledge in a poem carrying

its own weight; created slant, spun & set airborne
by the power of prayerful wings; alone within

and without us - 'taken from the mysteries
of the elemental abyss.'

Desmond Swords


...

The inspirational source text for this was Miriam Gamble's poem, Bodies, that I saw on the Guardian Poem of the Week Series where I was centred in spontaneous writing during years six to twelve of one's practice founded on the poetic of 'speculative discourse'.

A critically self-reflective poetic picked up during my first three years of writing and studies (2001-4), doing what before the name-change was an Edge Hill joint Writing Studies BA, founded and created by Robert Sheppard at Edge Hill's Linguistically Innovative Poetry School in one's home town of Ormskirk, SW Lancashire, England.  

Cuchulainary is an adjective coined by All Ireland Slam Champion 2013/4, Dublin Coolock poet, John Cummins.