MY GARDEN


I thought it a summer twilight,
this green pool of light,


flowers brightly swimming
and all alight, a snail kiss


the skin caught dipping,
some day-curved tripper


worn muddy, who made nudists
frolic in a frog-dipped oasis


bees dizzy in a hum spinning
a broken twig for a drum


noised drone in trusty tune
and perfumed herbs


from potted moons.


No charge for bird-bath covered
gatecrashing parties of sparrows


mid-flight, and fighting mynahs
incredible cackle


an incredible waffle.

       ~~

It may not have been Goa
nor the garden gate


where birdling caterers


- with tasty insect crates
here in the arabian oasis,


where a shy hedgehog hides
as sly as i spy and pry -


       wait
         ~

A Certain Garden Spoke


"Strange it is how a fountain
of images, like the rush of a comet.


rocket from the bottom of our
imagination, as if never it lay


burrowed; but were having us on
       as a lark."


       ~~


And then like children
into a garden, we ran


forgotten in its lost
golden sand and search


for toy, book, or friend
where once we missed


the straggly end
of a tired meadow below:


this show suddenly still.
pretty and hoping


for darkness to shroud
its talons around us


like a curtain of mist
and graciously surrender


that which we shoulder
in tearaway affection.


       ~~


Blissful our garden
as you follow its echo


"Come in, come in",


     our garden says


"Back to your honeyed
days and all raisin-ed


       for a party.."


..where already, our
hands wait to catch


the rusted knob once
more: will remember how


to bow light-sorrow, dust
from the hollow of a vast

sea of many books looking
safe as yummy tea and


pluck a sad flower-stalk
rooting beneath the bower


       oak.

     ~

Susan Abraham

HON. N. JOAKS

                               O Amergin swirl:
                               Tír na nÓg: all
                knowing power: otherworldly force:
Segias: grind hazel nuts to knowledge: swill       
pour in the cauldron straight sound: verse Noaks: switch
    wit: light up the cast of love as night falls -
Joy
  Albard, Dawn and John – they who all
              comedy tossers yearning to score
          bulls-eye every arrow throw straight for. Light
of craic, twinkle; glitter in the well: find
what joke will laugh Blue Peter real, arrive
              unannounced
                 weave art
                    work
                     and cut this daft dream
          in a cloth of one liner: stitch the breeze
quip; nail John’s breath on paper to breathe
consciously at titter, jape or guffaw
gushing with free flow in the debacle.

Froth an episode, brim over and fall
the way wind blows when a turtle dove
cooing flies from the mind of a bard,
shifts shape to a circus clown tamer and bawls

"Hey you
     funny farm gob slops
                     light-heart bores
              free druid-pawns and playthings of love: wish
           only for permanent triples on boards
        your sticks hit giggling bulls and thud in
      double top all day long to tickle love
from the stream of gags flowing between you".

Come lah
bull minstrel clown, mimic speech through
scrumping fruit beyond the comedic eye
where flow master of ceremonies - Noaks

fellow and one time action man show
babbles:

"When it was Blue Peter,
not like it is now
with kids
who don’t know what they're doing".

Circus slop swishing spray tame sea
motion smooth a stir of whirling liquid
through splatter massed splodges of telly:

tilt the lingo; flutter dovely music
flap, ruffle, spread your wings and limbs
crawl, soar free and jangle from his dome

              "...with real papier mache; not like it
is now, the microwave stuff you scramble to life through
    radiation".

  Whack out licks
    that lived then
      and live now:

     "...I was jumping out of a plane one week
    sticking empty bog rolls together the next
  dashing round the studio after elephant waste
and mucking in. Star of the whole hoo ha..."

John
before kids replaced you
and juiced up the models

"..you can’t put a price on..."

from buckaroo centres where tiddley-winks
still hold, reckoning their toggable taggle
and balancing laughter you and your colleagues
had when at giggle

peck this needle from the shiny gutter
commune with our entourage of party fawns
living le joi de vie.

Dove
become a pigeon
suggest,
hint of a scuffle at heaven’s gate.

GABHAIL IV

The constant rolling dice that never fall
stack up the chips of our existence
and some days we’re so lucky

- the search seeming easy with reward
with blessings in abundance -

we forget the golden rule
that everything’s decided in between
the heartbeat of the moment.

That reality is one long gamble
with final odds fixed by divine order
of old gods;

and seizing for knowledge one will
never fully grasp, yields understanding

like those clocks ticking in the heavens
yield an understanding
of when the time is right to wake us
for a brief spell by their measured call

before dissolving as if by magic
in the blinking of an eye
the constant rolling dice that never fall

POV OTD XXI C - MMVIII Weather Rex

Sprung from Rome via France, we came
to Kernow first. The foot of Prydain

Fawr, a frozen island of twenty four
Pretani Brython speaking pre-literate

kingdoms there, before the great penal
Claudian army came with Atrebates'

King Verica who fled from Silchester
àfter Catuvellauni Epaticcus took

his tribal land Ver's father seized
when Julius Ceaser's mind fooled

itself in a wind Mark Anthony sped
under: slapped the cliff and shed

crocodile tears beneath when green
sea lapped; and facing an imploding

red roman tide of imperial death
to the East: papered on spring-wed

blows, a pot of hospitality all those
racing, writing and reciting, WaR-ring

sideboard-strategist know-alls knew

a tent

flapping the jealousy of Epaticcus
venting icy raging blasts - star struck

Hypoborean island mixtured sleet
and ice:

always it has been flappy: two, three
generations and all returns to same

the framing utterly unchanged, quo
irrevocable - grandchildren wedded

to inventions and inversed soul, green
non-existent foundation-fluxed lingo

springing lies to accumulate and thaw
in learning to ignore a throw of fictional

faith and tantrums Roman thinkers
looking westward for hearing their

there lore as truth arisen throw

as if the ghost (s/he speaking through
us with a honey-kissing tongue moving

our mouth-streams to the original
boundary of fictional beauty-recoquo)

who arose arias and still does:

spring the English American freedom
of being bezzie pals conquering

the world of all its ills and, the great
rat-egg double feckin luvin it Larhn

den hand-gum being cool, wiggly
on da rood of a god given verse god/s

give and we got: extemporisation
living lingo, freedom s/he controls in us,

each unique quotidian speech - all four
seasons in a single vista when farthest

West - unbelievable in the mind of a lamb
Alba ba ionic wind and invisible weather

shee women return: to all who travel
under ground and move through ether

as wind airing breath springing eternal,
blue-shirted daily mail good aul Ossie

mosleying mostly to Jordan's unfortunate
dream being born a pink pony princess,

sounding trill proselytizer/s who arose
in eenie meanie miney mo

Mister Authorial Dough Boob

rose under the dawning thing under

water

a can and branches barely
glowing floating bloody cultural chains

cherisher/s of nothing we neither hear
nor heed, but act and talk: horrifically

of what s/he wore criminally trivial
and/or reasonably mortal belief s/he is

answering prayer of flowers returned
in a well of time at the foot of Flower

Mouth-rock profusely woven silver
strands of Clonakilty dreamers, three

quarter Connacht's words spamming
at work in early unfair 20C springs:

spying a post no eye deleted before

- ice completely depleted, we air -

from forum to forum , over-spy eyed
in the sharp clip of clarity caught over

here

when shiva is there
Shiva is here;

everywhere far beneath jumping
into space apportioning Moirae

space reversed
space spare

spare space freeing forward weaving
back and weft : into returning air

earth

and everywhere a tick in equine locks
the wind whipped turf in creels of bog

s/he is and we have been: are hosting

boasting moderator/s posting carved
air etched good - ordered springing

in a current along one electric seer
logged in - seered and surfaced

the end-name talisman of this shade's

edifice

who lives in the other world beyond
consciousness or ken of many; and most

know not her brand of words leave
shimmering , bob fixed and turn psychic

air: extracting from space the sheer self
trick of ghostly desires lulled, floating

through an open thought-door straight
struck, spliced mainline in softly

- some say non-existent -

pictures plucked from Tír na nÓg

cormarant perched on the foundation
base of O'Connell Street bridge pulling

fish from green water as neon-struck
rust-cans float by:

come escape and stomp sodden belief
underfoot; web in frozen crushed fish

towering above trout, let gut-logic
mangle in a looking glass, then conjure

woman married four times who cured
gout-limp in Clare's bleak mid-winter.

. white witch herbalist living in Feakle
piston-sleek mind unhindered wrapped

weighted and who read an empty blue
bottle reflecting light: our minds will

steer absurdly straight this track
sense depicted, and you will

- twenty yards from the Q Bar
ten feet below the Liffey tide-mark -

reveal a world lit by Faha's Biddy Early.

. unopen the door again, is ajar Artless
maze imagined through which we your

dream - what are we here to host - flit
from form to ingenious form quick

& beautifully seizing a basket drained
full with petals held by a womb above

the day below instinct carelessly
scattered, faint honed mourning

thinning away, the thought before us.

The video below won the best political video in the youtube awards, and has had one and three quarter million views.

In this multi-media visual and textually poetic: Clash of the Civilisations, which illuminates by highlighting the similarities between humanity, the juxtopistion of images, combined with text, works very well, and demonstrates the power of the individual to effect change armed with only intelligence and compassion, which on this of all days, is one we could well ponder on believing as the creed and dogma of love and peace..

..draw a rational pattern, make sense of the mindless realties s/he assembles by media driven, sales and pitch, one liner hooks, no trick to low, to stuck up, posh, scum, scanger and nun, all of us in it together, from beginning to boundaries end, life leading us eventually to a cross-road across one more maxim from the mouth of a mersey ó bhéal, s/he detached in enobling airs and inward grace/s manifesting bloom of a goodness expressed in person and print.

grá agus síocháin.

O

Happy St Patricks day.

Suitcase Tina - Utica Sestina (write-through)

A long-boned boy gliding in rain

beneath the rise or fall, any weather
in the city he'd sometimes sight

rolling in at the river bend, clock
and lightly the years he faced alone,

locked passing tense into the tall
tethered tracks impaled by falling

rain. A loner running the hail green
face, present sense this tense ticked,

each busy hand passing an empty store
window of absence Dad glanced at;

groceries amassed and many white washed
facts faced by a dad who cannot change

his mind, running miles, varying in pace
and others behind others in his mind,

the clock ticked. He knew the miles
father, the way his knee used to slow

at the store counter, his pals who’d tab
with him, run up tabs with him;

they never fell beneath a broken sage
displayed the memory escaping bent

in failure, to mend the broken self
themselves, rent beneath a broken clock

time held still yet drew no light from.
Store a night of memory away in it

running neither towards nor in retreat
but with a river's rhythmical defiance,

time chosen cool clean and falling, air
the world we can not bend eternal, cool

hearted word the water tock cleaned
so a harmless trickster no-nice father

knew, neither stood nor fell, but
chose an exile place. Mere it is

this son who saw the years wend
in failure, yet never broke, dumb

one's defiant faith in the clock ticked,
elsewhere the trick that out did time,

runs father.

~

After spending the last two months working at the write-through form, the out come is i am getting quicker at doing it.

It is much harder than writing in meter, or rather, it is as challenging as writing the most difficult metrical pieces, as the "rules" of these two forms, though at opposite ends of the compositional spectrum, are perfectly complimentary as we are exercising at a similar psychic pitch when shuffling the original texts for a write-through, into something else. I am learning at a deep level, though am still to close to the process to articulate it intellectually. Going by experience, in a few months i will be laying out this phase in the oeuvre. But the one salient fact is, we can only plod on.

This is the original text, taken from a ten star ablemuse poster:

Here

You read strangely wound letters in the
noble

dead silence of a deep dumb worth we
wrote

in pulsations of faith and flash'd doubts
dwelling

where each of the letters had scriven well
those

leaves that kept an alphabet mess defiantly
a tree

of unbroken branches the hidden tongue
spoke

strange in words silently: the chroi - love
vapour

defying the cry and defining our changed
bark

the cow bard whirring in a thought snare
otherworldly

words keenly sought along the track to a
source

of suggestive force you made words with
enobling

letters wound in the line all seek as one

and you read strangely

~

The day one often remembers, when from sleep
we first awoke and found ourselves reposed
under a shade of flowers, wondering if here
a distant murmuring sound of water composed
our soul-touched star reflecting on a moonlit
sea: nothing hard or rough but sweet beneath
the tranquil sky; Manannán mac Lír, foaming
horse-water deity riding his plain,
the ancient mist of mythical man, four square
his white wave hoof shod wet in sodden feet
of sand and sea grain counting many
the snow flake lit upon a shore line during
winter storms our voyage sets out to overcome,
galloping free from that we doze out through,
to the star reflecting on a moonlit sea.
~
Wet deity in a drop of meadow dew in May

our inner spring of time the grass-stone
hail-blade tramples under horses' hoof:
Manannán mac Lír, son of the seas' reflection
in tranquil lunar moonlight, the reversing

words that roar clear, rowing to a stone
the Land of Women crying for love sight,
you wash in a hundred sounds of music sung
- Manannán - beneath a foaming sky water,
horse of four hooves wave-shod, trodden
white sea of grain count and sand flake,
lined in the hoof-light: Manannán mac Lír
stir the sea like it is your blood.
~
Bring a silver apple branch from Emhain's
far island, in an ocean to the west of us
Manannán horses circle, fair Son of Lír;
delight of a plain eye host of chariot racing
on the white silver steed South beyond
Imagination, blossoming bird in tree lore
of common delight: gently spell a shining
voice, colour the cloud-music sung in tir
na og and work where we got drunk and stayed
that way: the night waking soundless
at four
soundless
at three
two
soundless
at
one
and
aquamairne orb of lunar-lit will; be Manannán mac Lír
stir
time's curtain winding left round a land
of purple leaf-lit myth
edge connecting tree light lovers unloved and empty
in te grass of heaven
laid smooth below a green bank,
look

into the clear smooth lake that seems
soul-bent sky within a shape
passing among us
and them
sometimes
wanting to speak and not speak of sidhe dreams
vanished
into their nut-reality resting in our demense
now;
speak the unspeakable
impase.
~
No keening or treachery here, eternity
the familiar tilled land of music striking
all ear without death grief sickness: sorrow
or weakness, but faith that is a sign
of Emhain's uncommon wonder, in silver wet
rain drops caressing the turtle shell,

pure ocean cliff in a warm sunrise hosting
weather-sport racing over eternal eastern
plains where the game of death and ebbing
tide do not come coloured in an overcoming
wave to crush the stór and grá in our still
well, silver blood, sometimes lighting
an army of three times fifty far off islands
beyond imagination
we sometimes
it happens
impose impossible odds on
the siege-bound hung in a carving behind
the mask of relief returning goodness
raked from hell tower hall razed counter
when walking as the well sprite your water
lacquers gold, our daemon Boann decorated
sympathetically: head obverse and swollen

strain of Neith's tale and the heads Dementer
demand we deliver in an acorn brooch
measured in patterned wetness, sometimes
blossoming under our window,
wood and hidden hill of letters all decaying
spelling
as it happens, good friend,
sometimes
when it happens
you
the friend in a friendship passed and gone
in the day spent lost among them at a holy well.

. in the nemetons of cyberville, where various Mystery rites of the very many Mysteries celebrating life, are practiced by lovers of wisdom too numerous to fully list here, the sage Pythagoras of Samos, occupies a unique position.

His intellect was exercised throughout his life and is credited for bringing ancient practical solar knowledge to greece; not only from Egypt, where he studied for 22 years, initially gaining admittance to the nemeton at Diospolis after a forty day fast; but Persia, after the king of Persia, Cambyses II, invaded Egypt in 525BC and Pythagoras, relocated to Babylon and became his prisoner.

Our ancient sage, already schooled to Ard Ollamh level in the Egyptian Mysteries, from which the theorem commonly bearing his name was first committed to print, 12-1500 years before in 2000–1786 BC, outfaced reality by effortlessly adapting into taking full advantage of his new situation and spent his 12 years in Babylon becoming adept in the Chaldean Mysteries, initiated by Magi who taught this already very learned man to refine his practice of ancient solar knowledge and become first among principles in the ancient greek canon, on which our globally-european centric culture under-thrumbs its otherworldly flame, and the axiomatic elevation of Pythagoras to a primary serious spirit of the real multi-knowledge-template disciplining the full of his mind in purring prayer to self via mathmatical route, rote and root to the most ancient of mysteries i am unable to speak of due to contractual obligations with macmillan, ian macmillan, Don Patterson's Fiona Sampson and shadow-mask for Aristotle of course.

Ay oop, its ian, the po-mo tome maestro of long winded dot to dot address and cat sat on the mat of light settled in an argument between the Pythagoras that got turned away from the Egyptian Schools for presenting his credentials of a wise vessel of flesh and blood, as an unfasted geek with a gift for being clever in the head alone and the Pythagoras after his forty day fast entry exam who had learned the first principle of poetry Amergin articulates in the Cauldron of Poesy piece:

"Where is the root of poetry in a person; in the body or in the soul?"

Prior to his entry into the ancient wisdom grove where knowledge and religion were indivisibly bound, Pythagoras thought at 20, when he first set forth to Egypt after spending his earliest intellectual awakening and training years on Samos, studying under the philosopher Pherekydes and later, immmediately prior to his arrival in the earliest home of solar knowledge which built pyramids, two years studying math and astronomy in Miletus with Thales, and his pupil Anaximander, Pythagoras was not allowed in because all neophytes into the mystery rites had to undergo a 40 day fast, which our protagonist could not see the logic of, dismissing the basis of the druidic code with a contemptuous:

"I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline."

At that age, that talent, he was like Milton, a clever young man, but one who had not learned the most fundamental physical lesson philosophy offers the prospective bore: and which Amergin poses and answers in such a way as to suggest he too was the keeper of an ancient mathematically based musical code, of which Pythagoras is the most well known example of in the European tradition. And Amergin responds to the rhetorical question posed by an omnipotent narrator who does not intrude and remaining outside of the piece, our anonymous authorial voice speaking for the 7C caste of filidh which had displaced, after an executive cull, the swollen druidic bunch of the 5C, when Ionian culdean Columcille from Derry, expertly handled the, then very sensitive issue which affected the whole of Fodhla.

A surfeit of pre-literate pagan holy men practicing rites we know next to nothing of, but which were based on a practical solar knowledge which gaelic culture had from it's earliest dawn. We need only look at the Palace of the Boyne, home of Dagda and later his son Ogma, who won it in a quibble, a form of words cutely concocted which weight in favour of the magician doing the diddling out of; to apprehend Newgrange passage mound in it's thoroughly bewitching majestic stone self understated grace; this artifice of rock living as it did when first built 5000 year back, before the theorem of Pythagoras had first been written on the codex by the first pyramid builders, is a sight worthy of dream proven before one's eyes.

In a bend of the Boyne a native code and ancient template for initiate adepts to concot their poetic with, raise the roof still weather proof 5000 years later with this knowledge of migrating souls in the tetra dimensional stance of morality, four square and all the combinations squared, circled light in the whole question:

What is Poetry?

And so when we ask where the seat over the root of the ancient knowledge lies, Amergin's flawless poem cryptically addresses this, by logically surmising the options and returning what is in effect, silence, as it does not answer in an either or state, but one in which a sense of the multi-communicational, the wisdom of axiomatic principles, the inner knowing sense of what befits and the well of segais really, the home within we all have and, to the inheritors of the mystic mumbo jumbo mobs we spectacularly fail to drone on like, communicating adept via a logical mathematical rail and rule whose system is but the one motif spiraling shadows above and behind the mask Pythagoras spoke of in riddles for the initiated and so after his fast, spake thus:

"You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life.

Through Vibration comes Motion" -

Pythagoras

"They say it is in the soul, for the body does nothing without the soul." -

Amergin

"Through Motion comes Color" -

Pythagoras

Others say it is in the body where the arts are learned, passed through the bodies of our ancestors."


Through Color comes Tone" -


It is said by practicing artists, that the "seat of what remains over the root of poetry; and the good knowledge in every person's ancestry comes not into everyone, but comes into every other person."

This means only every other person will inherit the poetry gene, which is 50%. work it out..riddle me this:

is poetry work@home in verbal placements Pythagoras asked us to consider in the riddle:

"step not over a balance" - do not be greedy

A

"What then is the root of poetry and every other wisdom?"

P

PA - reversing the math, geometry axiom, the dimension we do not see now we are fully hypnotised and at mercy of the face on TV telling us what to believe, we confused asking, what is it, making form, this thing called verse - turning - in latin, referring to the turnings of a neatly ploughed field. poetry wrought in quantities of a sound poetic of four measures..Ogma, the celtic god of poetry, has its etymological root in ogmius, a farming deity whose name also lent itself to the turning of Gaulish fields, in that invisible empire, whose silence is at the heart of what Pyhthagoras tried to get across as being the one which only the studious application of one's mind to the existing templates of morality we engineer to assist in the cause of our enobling, seeking one's potential in the most directly mathmatical metrical route of measuring what it is we create with body, soul and intellect, a tripartite dimension and really, beware of going down to the woods in barnsley tonight, for your in for a big surprise, if you go dogging in s yorkshire tonight, you may encounter a bespectacled bard making crazee guy progs man, of ian dogging for the verb..

A O U E I

The original alphabet, which Graves concocts his ultimately highly flawed sprawling White Goddess tome with; is called Ogam.

It is named after the Tuatha De Dannan (people of the goddess Danu) god Ogma, son of Dagda, the chief deity of this mythological race, who were the sixth and penultimate race of supernatural beings to "take" the island as documented in the Lebor Gabála Érenn - The Book of the Takings of Ireland.

These were only in possession of the island for 300 years or so, before the final takers, the Milesians, who the founding bardic poet, Amergin, was the druid of, came and took it from them and banished the Tuatha De Dannan to beneath the hills and into the Sidhe mounds (phonetic 'shee'), where they became the sidhe or faeries of folklore.

This is an alphabet of originally 20 and later, post 8C twenty five letters, unique to Brythonic (now welsh) and Gaelic culture.

The alphabet was divided into four families or aicmes, of five letters, and each aicme took the name of it's first letter, and all the letters related to various trees. This is why it is called the tree alphabet. Ireland at the time of its invention was covered in trees. The sequence of this alphabet is:

B L F S N - H D T C Q - M G Ng Z R - A O U E I

You will notice that this is not in the roman order, and by analysing the arrangement we can discover the mathmatical formula the druids came up with to create ogam.
If we lay out the letters in their roman order we get 18 and the sounds V, pronounced as an F and Ng, were then tacked onto the end, so:

A B C D E G H I L M N O Q R S T U Z F Ng

What they did was separate out the vowels and group them into broad and slender, in the order:

A O U E I - this is the fourth and final sequence in the ogam alphabet and is called Aicme Ailme (original meaning of ailme unknown).

We then take out the early Irish names for the numerals one to five: H (huath) D (da) T (tri) C (cethair) Q (quic)

H D T C Q - this is the second family called: Aicme hÚatha (original meaning unknown)
This leaves us ten letters:

B G L M N R S Z F Ng

From this group we take every second letter, beginning with the B, giving us:

B L N S F - the first family: aicme beith/birch

The five letters left: G M R Z Ng, are then re-ordered, beginning with M, the letter in the middle at position 10 in the original group of twenty, and create the sequence working backwards.
This gives us the third family, aicme Muin (neck):

M G NG Z R

~

The three consonantal aicme/sets of letters, are then arranged in alphabetical order, the first letter in each group dictating where the aicme is placed, so aicme beith B goes first, then aicme hÚatha H, second, aicme muin M third and the vowels to end it. Thus giving the final order

B L N S F - H D T C Q - M G NG Z R - A O U E I

This cryptographic process seems perfectly in keeping with the Bardic love of mystery and concealment.

~

Each letter in the four aicme, has three kennings associated with them, preserved in three Bríatharogaim (word-ogam) lists, dating to the Old Irish period 5-7C, which can be viewed here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%ADatharogam

goD

Parisa is a blog buddy whose enthusiasm for the Mossbawn magus, seamus Heaney, i share as he is simply the best around, in person and print. At any time there is usually one about the place setting the tempo, and he who needs no introduction or naming - nameless sidhe of Kavanagh and yeats - one who lives it as, i think is fair to suggest, the one most likely to garner the appellation of contemporary Bard from across the board away from his Home here.

However on home turf, many will not concur with what others elsewhere accept unquestioningly; that this man alone is bog-touched by Ogma and Erc, Amergin and the unknown homeric work, the Eternal:

"unity of being"

an anonymous concept yeats dreamed up in the socio-psychic blueprint he wrote for himself as point and guider, universal coda invoking craic with noght but his Imagination. Like Hopkins did with the "inscape" system; much less well known, though just as relevant a Poetic, to him as in an audience the size of Yeats; heaney a class act who broke the mould, and in my opinion, set it straighter than ever it was before. For the first time we had an educated "native" irish voice in the collective bog-sense yeats could never share as heaney does, nor elucidate; because it is that of a class yeats went on about in his own personal mumbo-jumbo to self, the "peasant".

Heaney is the rarest and first of breeds, the real thing, poet teacher sourced in the one incontrovertible source of a pure strain in the native appearance. Heaney's face itself the contributing guarantee of his poetic pass to a singular celtic world yeats was never part of; being the fruit of planter stock who only had a few generations to invent himself with. Heaney, you can tell by the look of him, his people have been on this island far longer than the souls who contributed to silly willy's mob of aristocracy counterpointing the Dream ireland Heaney's immesne gift equals and, imho, surpasses, certainly in the critical prose i found/find practical help with, as colleague of he who needs no naming. Mr famous points out in his essay on Yeats, first "native" english writing bard who reconnected in the modern era and wrote, for the first time, an English language poetry which set out a stall so exotic and strange to, what until then had been the native English speaking palette; back then, in the crossover of centuries of era, time whose tableaux of spirits sing, included Ez Pound, who sought Bill out with a pathological fervor bordering on the tedius, perfectly poetic and True to ez in 1912 when he and Will fenced in Stone Cottage oxford, and ez was amanuensis after acknowledging WB the real Butler being not quite the God some think as know not Silly willy as well as maude gonne did, and who all the rest of the craking gang back then when everyone was at it, being mystic.

As one career sazzy carol rumens sagely informs us, our classical learning worlds of poetic outcome are a billion zillion light years distant from what the kids jangle on in pm and text today and attemot not to pass as the contemporary Poetic; particularly in the potential future star of all things Prophetic in words maybe, i dunno, but i do suppose what it is, is that he who shall remain nameless, is the first native poet who beat the Bloomsbury bores at their own game on his terms and proves himself right as he writes earning a rhyme tu-whitt tu-wooing in the woods searching for clues to who he is armed only with a pen and scholarly scrupulousness practiced since he began as the eldest of nine from Mossbawn farm, Castledawson, Anahorish and borders in tongues of order and governance so finely nuanced only the full erudition an innate poet transliterates in Form, style and all sorts of important self-made rules of engagement with this mystic Art some purport to practice, with varying degrees of success and I imagine at first when he who shall remain nameless in the Group kicked it all off with Longley, Mahon and co up the North, first shairng their Dream in an expert metricist mob of young academic Irishmen, aided by perhaps one of the finest technical critters, Philip Hobsbaum; whose prose proves he knows his feet i think; and his protege's prose, when i first read it, is unsurpassed by any other critical voice his peers have practiced writing in.

He is at number one in prose, poetry and person. There can be only one and it is him, on top with the full four cycles memorised i bet, washing through the troubles he found his way of speaking through in tounges of order governing his notion of selfhood as that younger man, the first "native" one whose Unity of Being yeats banged on about but failed to articulate in print in the way heaney so effortlessly achieves. Heaney's Dream has risen as far and lit as bright Yeats, and with much less shiny song and dance of "moi" than Yeats goes in for.

Yeats always wanted and got it all and heaney too perhaps, but in connection to a Dream they shared as the two poets - one born only months after the other left in bleakest winter on the cusp of war he predicted perhaps as the crawling beast of diabolical abode - with Kavanagh in the trinity just on his way into a Palace Bar and the few disastrously short sojourns, not only to his second home of Fleet Street in Dublin where the Palace Bar still dominates for all writers in Dublin practicing today who are serious about Poetry; but also as contender in one across the water in London, whose mystic spirit yeats will was bark and bole with AE; back in the day they were doing 24 hour a day visionary things; AE - Yeats's personal mystic, Kavanagh a long lean middle path, had to wait for the bay sweater, till the Bell recognition of his greatness came close to a posthumous conferral of a shadowy laurel appellation Kanavanagh at least crowned himself with, and many others i suspect - if not all or most at least perhaps, have in their mind's eye as the sheer live act of pure poetic class barrier one erects, be it bardic or not, sufi or less cerebral.

Heaney tells an interesting tale in his immediate post Nobel period, on a TV show in America; to an efficient male honoring yer man as the undisputed king of Poetry almost, certainly he was riding at the highest point and effectively got the Bay Crown, and in reply to a question asked of him, about when did he start thinking of himself as a poet; he said this event happened as he enrolled his son at primary school in wicklow, when he was knocking forty, and where he had gone to write verse that was having a go at doing its own bog-won thing away from his county omphalos, Derry forst and last, in a republic, as the woodkern thinking of what term to instruct a headmaster filling his sons details in register.

What appellation his own Self used in relation to his person as both thinker and flesh, and mr heaney was thinking along the lines of stating he was a writer or college professor, but the man recording the event put fili (which in English translates as "poet") without asking him what he did for a do; and from that moment on Heaney decided he'd been bestowed an appellation only colleagues have the power to collectively confer on one, and thus is a reason Heaney is the name most non pro's know and agree on as the constant one real thing; poet, because he is the real thing, Sweeney astray inhabiting a myth of his own mind first and last, proving it in the decades spent being himself as a reputation of number one; in at the top and good grew up around him as he worked in verse here and there, when insanity surrounded his peers of the Imagination, he held firm and spoke fair in a body and collection of verse which brought the Dream and unity of being closer to the silence and stay apart one killer barb from mandy motion delivers - not - in a green passport and non-toast to M's chimera of Queen fictional others used in their effort to co-opt him in to the status quo of Great british nomenclature back then, topic of chat in deepest seventies UK lore, as he toiled here feeling the ace none ask to see, as the truth just is, that he is ace itself, his person and Mind in physical event, life written by none but the eldest of nine children two ordinary country people from Derry birthed, who got by on learning as the first of a wave or generation who were afforded the prize of education.

I myself understand this need to be the first with a real chance, where others do not deny one's basic right to belong to an Irish state of mind and not some cod con neo stazi attempt of the non thinking britz who say we cannot be ourselves, You are the mirage alive in Britain, ireland mate..you wha? do as we the State alone instructs one to tell or one will not be included in our mob of headhunting magi looking for the real Irish poets and the gang. So what of it? Yes, certainly there are many excellent poets here who work well when left alone to: "transform into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome hag" as we are told by david the Phoenician expert who is a phonetic mist itself to be fair to another blog pal, misharialadwani, here on the rock of C theories and connections made, thank you very much..

Nollaig shona duit.

For next year. For this, happy St Stephen's Day.

I hope you had an enjoyable dinner on the big day, and i want to say, thank you very much to all here who contribute to making this mirror of literacy reflect successfully since August 1, Lughansa, end of summer.

And now, just passed the threshold of midwinter, darkening days lightening up and the first wave of fight and craic gone, recorded in epic battles between our verbal protagonists doing it for positions taken and took; played out in the arena of ID and ego with the intensity all committed campaigners find leads to eloquent voices, the early hard work is done and humanity has a chance of routing through here in 2008 to drive up parity between bloggers; now at an all time high; the elevated address of one way traffic hacking detached no longer, but slipping fast in a two way communication we alone have, each singular one of us within i, You it, us and them; one and Dr Strange love in the cleera wave coming home to us, cuchulainn's ice-kept Answerer culling the crud, copping on to sorrow in the acoustic proof between faltering syllables singing happy christmas, love and peace in the new year ahead of us, please be to God.

And if anyone's on a downer, talk here, say owt yer wunt, get it off your chest and reverse the vibe by writing out the sorrow for happiness to come.

I had a low key quiet day, waking in the attic to brilliant sunshine, feeling at peace. Yesterday I got a puncture at 4pm, just i was on the way to the supermarket to buy food, which scuppered my plans for cycling to my sisters the following day; but luckily, with help from a friend, i managed to secure a repair kit and managed to be on the road by 2.30pm.

By this time it had clouded over, an undecided squall coming in, the threaten and retreat of a light nasty wind taunting beneath a pearl grey sky of low cloud dispensing random spits and pulses of rain; proof of which was left in at least two of the distinct geometrical rain symbols i witnessed as i slogged, unfit under the chaos, en route yo my sisters house for dinner, seven miles distant via a curving path along the shoreline of Dublin Bay.

As i rounded the immediate corner from the seven bedroom townhouse whose attic is mine, i was struck by an almost perfectly formed four by eight patch of rain water, as though someone had taken great care to create it. Of course it was but a chance fall from heaven, and as i cycled into the city, i noticed another rectangle, its wing-brushed perimeter of sheer random art Creation left in almost impossible odds; eerie in a spiritually comforting way.

And at Christchurch, a wet patch in the perfect shape of Jesus's face..ha ha, naah, but another distinct rectangular deposit of water, the surrounding pavement, wind-dry, a fluke displaying the order of rhyme and reason for here being here.

And all the way on out from the city up to Sutton along the coastal cycle path, a sustained downpour hovered on the brink, and burst into a 40 minute storm the minute i went indoors.

I took my place at the table and began stuffing my gob wondering at the coincidence of these two symbols and one event, gifting faith in poetry if nothing else, and when i left a few hours later, the stars were out again, me in my imagination a fili doing psychic battle with the elemental material concern above, which the gods could tip anytime on my noggin.

Then, i weft off and met the friend whose compassion saved my Christmas with a rubber and glue innertube fix yesterday, and who came round for a few hours this evening for food and boring company, and after seeing them safely home and saying au revoir, am now ready to snooze...

But in the meantime, what have you been up to this day? Any tears and tantrums, superb prezzies, crap gifts, rubbish jokes, granda arrested for telling the kids the truth about father christmas, what's on telly, inside your mind, God or no god, deal it here..

grá agus síocháin.

BAD LADS

I met her three weeks ago in Delaney's in town. It was Friday night. She was with her sister. I'd just pulled a nice little number with Grebo. We'd had it away with five large off some old dear we'd done a bit of tarmacing for. It was a close thing though. We had to take her down the bank and loiter around outside. She was as good as gold mind, came up with the dough no problem. The son in law collared us just as she'd handed it over, but he knew there was no chance of getting it back. I'll give him his due. He did try, a bit anyway, just enough so he'd be able to tell the daughter he did his best. He said he was going to go to the cops, but I just laughed at him.

"What for dickhead? Tarmacing against the law now is it?"

"You know what for," he says, "ripping pensioners off is."

I told him to fuck off before he got a smack, but he obviously felt he had to put up a show for the mother in law. He tried to get his hand in my pocket. I swear to god. Absolutely no respect at all. I had every right to deck him there and then, but I don't really like confrontation so I left it.

"Proud of yourself are you? Two grown men preying on the elderly."

Well, that did it. I'm a tolerant man. I don't go round hitting people unprovoked, so I gave him a tap. Just a light slap really, nothing serious.

"Look, fuck off, before you get hurt. I could have you for slander. We did a bit of work and got paid, so go home and stop giving it the John Wayne."

I felt sorry for the old dear though, having to watch the fella embarrass himself like that, but he knew the score.

"Come on dear," she said, "lets go home."

To tell you the truth, I don't think she was all there. Probably going a bit senile. She wasn't bothered about the dough. At least she didn't say anything if she was, and that's what's important isn't it. It's not like he was shelling out. He was only thinking of himself anyway. At least we did a bit of graft for it. He was probably after tapping her for a few grand himself. Conning himself that he'd pay her back and then just hang on till she snuffs it. Selfish git.

We had a right laugh about it on the drive home, him going to the missus with a thick lip.

"They won't be going down the bingo tonight," I said.

Grebo went a bit quiet then, as if he was thinking that we might have been a bit harsh on them. He's only a kid really, still listening to his Mam. She goes the church a lot. Very religious Grebo's old dear. Likes to think that her hearts in the right place. That's alright, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking her for it, but she shouldn't try and tell her lad what he can and can't do. To be honest I don't think she knows too much about what he gets up to. She must know a bit, but I imagine she probably just ignores it, blocks it out and says a few prayers for him. But as I say, he's only a kid and still a bit soft with his emotions. I told him:

"Grebo lad, you've got two and a half grand in your arse pocket. What's more important, that or some old dear whose only going to leave it to the grandkids. She can't have long left anyway lad. It's not like we robbed her."

She knew what she was doing, which she did. We didn't point a gun to her head. Grebo's a sensible lad though and he could see the logic in what I was saying.

Anyway, we go out into town to celebrate. Get a bit of beak, a few pills and go splashing around for some beaver. We started off in Yates's on the Aussie whites. A few lines in the bog and then we're ready to move on about 11.30pm. As we're leaving I bump into Toby and tell him about the job next week.

Grebo's lined up another widow in some posh little village in Cheshire. A nice little touch by the looks of it. She's tucked away in a secluded bungalow. The husband's only been dead a couple of months and her heads in bits. Perfect. Say what you want about Grebo, but he's got a fantastic nose on him for sniffing out the cash. He's got youth on his side see. That's why he's so useful. The old dears take one look at his mug and get all misty eyed, like they're remembering their sons or dead husbands.

We've got a polished little double act going. Good cop bad cop routine. Grebo softens them up, gets them to spill the beans about the savings and what not and then I come in as the heavy hitter after they've signed up. Grebo tells them he's just the guy who does the work, hooks them as it were. He keeps the price a bit vague, but we never lie to them. Never tell them that they're getting it cheap. He gets them to sign a piece of paper. Standard issue document we knocked up off the computer.

It doesn't mean anything. It's not a contract or anything like that, just something that they sign. It gets them in a right flap though. For some reason people think that if they put their name on a bit of paper then it's serious, like they've sold their soul to the devil. As soon as we've done the work I go along suited and booted. They see me pull up in the Merc. A big bloke, shaven head, a bit mean looking and then just hand over the moolah no problem.

You get the odd one who tries to get away without paying, but if the worst comes to the worst I just get on the blower to Toby. Not many people say no to him. He's a nice bloke, don't get me wrong. Do anything for anyone, but he does have an air about him. I suppose it's the bent nose that does it, but as I say, he'd give you the shirt off his back. Ruthless in business, but then, you've got to be in our line of work otherwise you'd have every two bit wide boy trying it on.

Anyway, I told Toby about the job and we gets down Delaney's for the back bar disco. We move in on Janice and her sister, buy them both a drink, give them a few lines and bingo, we're on for going back to the sisters for afters. Some birds love the bad lads. I don't know what it is, but a lot of women, and all ages mind you, they want someone who's a bit naughty and when they see me coming they know what to expect. I don't arse about, giving them all the bullshit that your straight goers go for. I'm just myself with them. I never lie to them and never say I'm going to do something and not do it. I'm no saint, by any stretch of the imagination, but then again I'm no wimp either and girls like Janice, well, that's what they go for.

The sister wasn't my type though. Stuck up. Thinks her shit doesn't stink. Perfect for Grebo mind. A good-looking lad like him gets the pick of the women. We toyed with the idea of getting them all ladled up on the sniff and trying for some group action going, but Grebo didn't want to blow it with the sister. Anyway, it was getting late and we couldn't have been sure of finding any spares, not at that time of night. All the half decent ones have been pulled late on and it's only the boots left. I've got quit high standards, even if I say so myself, and Janice looked as it she'd do a good turn, so we decided to play safe and keep it decent.

Janice told me she had a couple of kids once we were in the taxi. I don't usually go for the single mums, but at that time of night after a few beers and Persians it's not really too much of a sticking point. Not that I minded. I love kids. I've got a few of my own, so I know the score on that front, but ideally you don't want to be having too much to do with other fella's sprogs and anyway, to tell the truth, I only thought it would be a one night job. Grebo was chewing the face of the sister all the way back, having a right old time. Janice was doing a bit of talking, telling me what a wanker the ex was. Usual sort of stuff really.

Feels like i'm fighting tyson, yeah he heeh, wo ho whay.

Only in the sink of doings that is doorty dub can one such as i remain unmolested by the armies of sickos and psycho scum, scuzzed out of the firing line like a drop deed D4 doc of possession, oudle dye diddle doh wo whah so say what mister mammon will you be gluttonous in the fray of feast and...argh, can you tell love of bells and whistles when the jolliy dublin mob of begrudgers and die-hard transvestites toggling along without toga or wrap; yo lo ray me so far laah, wharra yers onaboot in the moment of whispering; doubt it was, was it deceitful, fruitful barren and without incident listless lover laden with mischief we'll ne'er be a mountain of laughing ladies if this state remained, elsewhere, elusive elucidate and remain stalwart overboard manly it is, sink nea never no more...?

Dewars

Follow me down to a rock far away, far rock
away, golden bard singing in strings loaded
with karma, naming the street an ocean of lovers
and night-choir whispering a turnpike turning
black coffee to fine gasoline rain. Clothing two
moon-watchers touching the road-finger,
counting the roadkill, uncertainly tipped to follow
us down to a rock far away; who star in the air
above a changing bay, in acid filled lullabyes
painting a rainbow on every guitar
in the neighbourhood's brownstone.

Fair is the saturnalian rock far away,
turning each hand to write our graffiti
like secret barstool rats,
understanding our home place is under
the subway track, where we walk
with each other carrying vowels
following you down to sidhe streets
far away from the consecrated rock.

Gun-city waiting for a train of love songs
and good will mixing, vote what is left
of the the dew, seek to kiss it today
in Far Rockaway, Far Rockaway.

~

I've run out of research. The last three years since leaving university, I have been an independant scholar, not through choice you understand. My initial post-grad wish was to get on the Poetry MA at the Seamus Heaney poetry school in Queens University Belfast.

It cost £10,000 or something equally out of my budget, with a very small chance of a scholarship, and i applied just before i left the grove for, what i hoped, but half knew would not be, only the summer of 2004. My other choice was to do the writing MA in Galway University, but that, alas, was also a dream too far.

My exit velocity from college had enough momentum to bowl me, along with a bicycle and two panniers containing all my worldly goods, onto the now defunct Liverpool-Dublin fast ferry, having decided that i would get to research the history of poetry in Ireland and try my hand at writing it in on the island, by hook or by crook. My rival bores waffle on about the homeward tug of the poetic instinct, and i had it bad. To return to the land of my mother and father and all the ghosts who made me from the time of Cúchulainn and the Connachta, was the only sensible option for a man with a three-year writing habit approaching middle age.

I alighted at the North wall and cycled along the coastal path to my sister’s house in Baldoyle: a beachhead from where to launch my assault upon the literary citadel of Dublin, to sparkle or burn in urban Ireland’s poetry flame HQ, and after a few days fixed myself up in the main homeless hostel in the city centre, run by the Iveagh Trust, and very well run i might add.

I immediately threw myself into writing and reciting, and instinctively felt i had slipped into the place i should be in, as everything seemed to go right for me here, and more by accident than design. I have always been a high grade spacer, away with the clouds and here, this thinking is not out of place or abnormal as it was in England, i understand now because of the huge cultural differences which aren't so obvious or apparent to the occassional visitor because of the veneer of a shared language, which can give the impression we are closer culturally than is the case.

The foundation stuff on which society is based, the abstract principles and political doctrines, are as similar as Canterbury in New Zealand and Canterbury in the UK. Effectively a world apart, and the hows and whys of this take a few years to suss out, but basically boil down to the fact that in Ireland, people are far less interested in the visual appearance of their fellow citizens, than their mental state, and there is a refreshing and total absence of "class" as it operates in Britain.

So there is very much a sense of not knowing who is who when you first arrive, but in a positive way which means you cannot immediately tick people off into cozy cultural stereotypes, which makes one question the assumptions held in England, of how to judge, behave and treat others.

~

By the time i heard i had not got into the Heaney centre, i had settled into Dublin and so did not take it as a rejection as such, as i would not have been able to afford the course anyway. By this time i had cottoned on that Dublin was probably the best place in the world for a chancer trying to be serious about poetry and i already had a couple of killer anecdotes about meeting prestigious figures in the poetry world who had only existed to me before in books and my imagination. The stars of the firmament in which i wished to shine, seen and spoken to in the flesh, on a "home" ground; or rather the first ground where i felt a sense of being at home poetically.

There is a magic about the place which i had only experienced previously in the depths of my creative inner mind, the dream world which was only an inner thing in England, becoming an exterior manifest reality in Dublin, in a totally effortless, natural way. My instinctive self which had never had much luck in England, here, did far better than i could have dreamt, and based on things occurring here in, what in England, would be the craziest and most un-happenable of situations.

The world my senses apprehended, began to mirror the secret inner fanatsy i held, which related to being a poet; as the bombardment of choice, the hurley game of living here, and the most passing whim, could be acted upon in a totally unique way one can only grasp by being here.

Dublin is the only place i have experienced where the residents understand that others elsewhere, we cannot explain the intricacies of how society here operates in a way the absent "others" who have no experience of breathing here, could fully cognise. The events of quotidian life, the Freudian observation that people from this culture are the only ones he knew who are impervious to his psycho analysis theory, as there really is a genuine psychic attachment, unbroken and still very live, which stretches back to pre-oral times and the closest one can call it is Poetry, or "the music of what happens."

Life is poetry here. It is so, all existence and people from a flea to the five million currently living here, their existence individually and singular, can be contextualised as poetry, if one has the secret books, the knowing to do this task. And so, my research reached a terminus and the six year slog to Anruth is over now I have written out the million words it took to contextualise my findings into a 500 word poetic philosophy none can top, based on the best. Amergin's forgotten text and holy grail poetic of any wordic schema. The equivalent of Horace's Ars Poetica in the bardic philosophy, which - along with the basic skeleton of the four cycles of irish myth - allows one to take a breather; and so I have been concentrating on composing in the "write-through" form, where one takes a text and rejigs the words to a different one.

I have been at this on and off for the last three years, starting with Sylvia Plath's The Colossus, and gradually ending up using the constituent letter parts of small blog deposits, as demonstrated below.

This one is only a rejig of words, the Robert Minhinnick translation of, Far Rockaway, by the Welsh-language poet Iwan Llwyd, the full of which is here.

Write through of "Rule Britannia"

ANN AT BRIL ERIU

Why picture loutish
eton craic
a fab lush brogue
patriotic anoraks,
and pride deserting
gentlemen at war
in eccentric sighs?

I slip bowless to
a sir free land
no snoot cockers
great knobs to hail,
cut the tie today
for a happiness few
feel,
aim high
hack
ask fate Howayiz
wah wah
is yiz
wib
us
hdhdwhb

~

This draft poem is an example of the "write-through" form, which is where the writer takes an existing piece, technically called in poetic circles, a - "found text" - and re-configures it to another one, using the same words and/or letters.

This is the original text, titled "Rule Britannia":

Out of the bus window I spy a white-haired gentleman on a bicycle wearing a pair of brown brogues, with white socks, khaki desert shorts, an anorak and a black bowler hat. He is a picture of English eccentricity as he whizzes past County Hall and I feel a surge of patriotic pride at the sight of him.

~

The woman who composed it is an ex-teacher, now pole dancer, from Kent, who keeps two blogs and writes under the nom de guerre of Glamour Puss. The found piece is from a blog called Clairvoyance, which she started in August of this year, 15 months after beginning her main blog The Pole Affair. The Pole Affair deals with her day to day work and personal life, whilst Clairvoyance (19c French, literally 'clear seeing'), is her ruminating a tad deeper about existence, what she writes as:

"Elucidating Everyday Wonder Made Manifest"

~

I first came across her several months back in the comment section of Kate Evans Bush, who blogs as Ms Baroque in Hackney. Glammy has an honesty and eloquence to her writing i suspect few pole dancers have. After 15 months of blogging about her work and private life, Puss, as she calls herself, posted a piece on Friday which effortlessly articulates, for even the most amateur armchair shrink to discern, the human reasons behind her decision to bin off teaching and twirl round a pole in next to nowt for a nine to five. She switched careers in the immediate aftermath of a disastrous relationship with an unsuitable man who treated her shabbily.

~

The write through form is at the opposite end of the compositional spectrum from strict metrical writing, but at least, if not more intellectually challenging, as it is like sieving ones mind through a tea strainer; knocking down an edifice of letters, and rebuilding an entirely different text with them.

No one told me of this form, as my first time creating in it was three years ago when i was in the third and final year of writing school, working on a poem, when my eye came to fall on Ted Hughes book, Lupercal, resting on top of Sylvia Plath's collection, The Colossus.

The poem i was working on i had just written and it struck me to re-write it, using the same words, and the creative flow was such that i ended up writing through Sylvia Plaths title poem from The Colossus, about the relationship with her father. At this point i only used the same words and broke down a few conjoining ones into their constituent letters, but in the few short years that have followed, have found that short pieces such as this, are ideal to take this exercise to the next stage.

It is a great exercise for homing ones intellectual fluidity, as i don't have to think of anything apart from the letters i have to play with, and i will post the Plath poem and write through tomorrow, and will probably be on this form for the next while, as i have run out of stuff to research, as the stuff i wanted to finds out about when i left university three years ago, i have done so, and am wondering..what next, as Plato said to Yeats when the coat hanger rapped in his noggin..

Lonliness Of The Moon

They live in the lamplight of dusk
riven shade, releasing souls
from the stone of dolmen beds
Diarmuid and Gráinne stretched
out on when fleeing from Fionn.

We live as water, their lair’s
underground and we listen
to sea shells for sounds of their life
crowding in on us.

Now their memory is lost, dream
stealing and tossed by love,
bent by Manannán’s whim,
we steer the world, a spinning top
of life, the merry go round
they draw still, and watch
collecting in the ether, the air
of humanity’s ghost,
its shadow dissolving their light,
and our rough thought, swept
gentle in the grain of speech
a hue of Áine and Aengus Óg.

Stay upon our rock and set love
free, be gentle and kind
whilst remembering life
is precious, breathing invisibly
still, hear?

Angelic Deer Cry

Strong is the power of ones light.
The spiritual armour of goodness
Resisting rulers' wicked wiles
And the cult of men in darkness.
Within us our beastial faith lies,
Learning of truth in the fearless
Charm composed to invoke divine
Defence against all manner of evil
And inscribed upon Saint Patricks
Breastplate. A loricae. The snippet
Below, in druidic protection meter.

"I arise today
Through the strength of heaven
Light of sun
Radiance of moon
Splendour of fire
Speed of lightening
Swiftness of wind
Depth of the sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me."

Peace we shod in the feet of faith
Standing in light with a shield
Of truth. Damnation we quench
By prayer. No devil fire awaits
Above; all wickedness is here
On earth. Salvation - in the end
Is down to us, flesh and sword,
The word our blood, and spirit
Gods writing it hear our belief.

Cherish Mon Amis.

I recently read a book on Yeats. The Yeats We Knew, which are the texts of five Thomas Davis Lectures, first broadcast on RTE in 1965, as part of the centenary celebrations of his birth. These short memoirs in this 100 page slim book, give the reader a glimpse of the man behind the mask. And the impression we are left with is, he was a lonely man. He made it his business to strike the poetical pose, and really i am just riffing now as my energies are gone somewhat.

After a brief flood and flash,
lead the evening dance to a goal
he has

the verse king of Kilmainham, free
to sing, made reality a webbed light
of October mist withering in pale grey
cloud that dimmed to a soft cool
breeze, chilled as night drew in.

And the ghost of William Yeats said:

"Then what?"

Did the words he write solve any wrongs
or slights his loved ones suffered
as they fled? And what cold bed
of mourning found the arch beneath
which i awoke, dawned on heather,
left in rann, a rambling man waffling on,
head sieved to a million bits
as instructors came, speaking
of this and that to him?

Of how silence persecutes
a void of knowing calm
in setting sun, as a brief flash of solitary
life leaves us, all and one, all alone,
the ghosts who sit on Yeats's throne
and count the hours before morning
in moon lit mists that wax on wrongs
we suffer when the cold grey gun
- pulled to shoot a dream that blew
a brothers head wide open -
makes a splash for cameramen
who catch the brain seeping
as critics tell you of us, jangling on
and on, calling for the glow to spot,
shine upon one mind alone?

An audience anonymity dressed,
freedom dead so we can sing
of our concealed sex, saying,
what of it?

Tell the mob to name
what isn't in the hat and then, after
that, to rhyme the hours we have took
and speak, without a cursing call
or backward look, goodbye, adios,
the world released us mon amis,
to a vacuum of knowing, and the slow
sharp pull of bestowing one cloak
we made as humanity leaped in crawing
song. And men and women hiding
there, who believed in freedom once,
will ask, is it here to sing again?

Of course said A to B to C
we only wanted to be free
in our anonymity. What's our name,
tell us quick, let them keep invisible
irrelevance in heavy hints, our wish
in clever words revealed a sinning
truth kinking time, in wrought
thinning sloped grace of a moon
facing West.

They jangle on faery friends and sing
of what lies eloquence make behind
the grey eyes of a grey ghost
and the hooded caul of a thousand
broken lives left blowing in the laughter
of songs sung anonymously that sing
and strike the blow; tell us
of yourself, oh invisible host, again.

And really, it was a good read.