Franz, the blind jackdaw, has breakfast.

St. Sebastian

A poem inspired by the sculpture of St Sebastian by Claire Curneen (pictured right).


Transcending pain?
Whatever!
The hands open and stupid,
Small features are blankly insolent - mid-shrug.
Where there's no sense there's no feeling.

The martyr,
A thick white lump.
The extremities crystalized.
Hands and feet achieved some potential
He could act or run.

But the rest,
The calves, legs, torso and flabby waist with tiny genitalia
Are but cellulite on a baby.
He is a goat's-cheese of a man.

What would make such a man special?
And Sebastian needed to be important.
So important something greater than can be deceived (to paraphrase the ontological)
noticed him.
Saw his capacity for turning mulish self-aggrandisement into a virtue.
Something admired Sebastian's gullible faith without base.
His conviction.

And taking pity on him
Paradoxically, given his lack of existence,
With ineffable wisdom
He set Roman legions against him
And at the moment
The wounds poured forth,
Wouldn't it have been good
If he'd turned Sebastain's blood to gold?

Wicked Thoughts!

Glimpsed its face,
Didn't mind its own business
As an innocent would
With eyes turned skywards, or
Down, inspecting fingernails.
No, it met my flash of recognition
With malicious glee.
Wet, bulging orbs stared back at me.

Shame, like an egg cracked on my head,
Slithered down to my shoulders.
A cold shawl warped my flesh.

“Everyone has bad days,” they said.
“Nothing's as bad as you imagine.”

Do they know how its breath stinks, and
Now, I must lift it and suckle that bite.
Clutch it close,
Like the secret.

Only you helped me, when you told me
“We all have vile babies, you know.
We spend parenthood justifying their need for oxygen..”

How I laughed.

In an Empty House


The thin tin cooker
Like a tower block
In the eastern block
Brown window
Greasy fog
Obscures pinched features
Peering out.

Grime with mouse-droppings
Fetch the 'oover.
Steaming hot buckets
And brushes.

Let's clean this out
Out. Out. Out. Out. Out.
Let's replace it with an
Aga.

Ahhhh.

A Rip In the Space-Time Continuum.

She looks as though she's seen a ghost.

Blonde curls poke through her
Straw sun-hat, torn at the brim.
Stitching together hat, wearer and big red dahlia,
To present an unearthly vortex
Of animal and vegetable.

Round eyes jiggle within smudged black lines,
Eyelash half unstuck, trembles when
She blinks.
She leans forward confidentially.
Red lips, furred by myriad rivulets above
Powdery chin,
Mouth,

“I saw something that was there.”

On the Island of Paros

Too long in the sun,
My admiration of Parian marble,
Disgorged onto the road,
Like chunky snowdrifts,
Flagged.

Thirst had turned my calves to pure alabaster..

Sun flailed my fair skin
Till I imagined it hung in ribbons
From scorched shoulders.

Ahead, a black crow
Fluttered above the track,
Next to a low whitewashed dwelling.

Shading my eyes with a hand, I peered.
The crow stretched out an arm and beckoned.

Not a crow but a woman.
An ancient Greek widow, in black gowns
Greeted me by clasping my hands between hers
As if enfolding them in prayer,
Before ushering me
Into her dirt-floored hovel.

At a plastic table, sat a beige-clad couple.
I joined them, and the old lady
Placed a glass of cloudy water before me.

The German pair,
(They had the caramel leather boots and bags
All German tourists wear.)
Seemed to sympathise,
With eyes fixed
On their own glasses, un-sipped.

An amoebic swarm
Flashed within the liquid;
Primordial soup.
I wanted to wait for evolution.

The old lady smiled
And nodded encouragement.
Her eyes lit by the strong sun
Striking through the tiny window
Into this stifling interior,
Were blue and cloudy.

I picked up the glass
And while the German couple
Looked on,
I drank.

I drank down my host's
Kind, hospitable eyes.

The Luxury of Work-aholicism

Short-legged heavers,
Kick the ground behind them.
Shoulders and sternum snap into straps,
Stretch inertial glue till
Tiny rock rolls to relief,
And the truck climbs the track.

In the black of the pit
Five lights bob on the brows
Of the heavers.
They slide and strain,
In a square dance of pain,
A squealing wheel
Marks time.

Muscles search for stores.
A breakfast of bread and fat
Barely meets the need
But thick and wide
Thews collide and kick
The ground again.

What do they think
As they spend their strength?
Do they feel manly pride
In their collective power?
Or are their minds blank
Like any beast
Set to toil hour after hour.

On a Calcutta street,
A mountain of jute
Totters on a matchwood cart.
Before it,
Little red donkey,
Splayed and dead
Too thin and tiny for his heart.

Miners and donkey
Had no choice
Forced to labour
Beyond their limit
Neither took any pride in it.

Life's work-horse
May crash with colic
But a working man
Is not a workaholic.