Ride On

Those desperadoes, whooping and a-hollering,

riding bareback down the mean streets of Crumlin.

Tying up their horses outside the Village Inn saloon

as they mosey on over to Borza’s corral.

And after chasing the Drimnagh posse back over the badlands

they rest their horses on the communal green

and let them graze as they dream

of being the last gunslinger in town,

facing down the bandit pistoleros from Dolphins Barn:

this is their patch, their Law to lay down.

These boys becoming men;

start out on the outlaw trail

end up as drug mules, dead,

or banged up in jail.

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Quay Note

Currachs, like upturned whales beached

as musical notation on the quay.

Those sleek, mussel shelled torpedoes

ready to cleave though

wavewalls, green  and white-tipped,

chasing schools of quick-silver with

hand-strung nets tuned to their scales.

Rhythmic fingers conduct these vessels

in ancient songs that harmonise

with an underwater chorus,

carrying the music booming deep through the years,

where the call and response of the tides

meets the Blasket sound of memory.

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Blank

A Magpie Tales post

Blank

The milky-white page stares at me blankly,

a cataract clouding my sight of the words.

I must strike the right key to find the

rhythm where lines once disturbed,

can find order and see alignment

in the snow blindness of the page.

But my guideless fingers strike tuneless,

discordant notes in their rage.

The same fingers, veins filled with ink

once could write a life in the space of a line,

see connections in dissonant images

that my mind’s eye could mine.

But now, the blind page unsees my work

and random letters fall and scatter

from ink-filled fingers, and, missing the page

fall unsighted to the ground and shatter.

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Stonewrapped in Marble

Stonewrapped in Marble

You were one of the original hoodies,

peripheral, isolated on the edge,

cowled and stigmatised as they said

you were for the birds.

Yet you kept chirping away,

scattering crumbs of comfort as they pecked

at your stone-wall countenance

and made you blind.

But there was no poverty of sound,

the rustling of the winds habit as it

brushed past the trees was echoed

by the rattle of the corn

broadcasting their message.

But who listens to nature now,

when the only tweets come from a mocking bird?

We sow the seeds of our decline with every concrete footing

that falls on an abandoned nest.

In our desire to travel from here to there

we forget the journey.

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Framed

A Magpie Tales post.

Submitted to Thursday Poets Rally.

Charlie Chaplin doffs his hat as

Buster Keaton leans against the wall.

“We’re just flickering these days.”, says Charlie.

Buster smiles engimatically, keeps silent.

The white screen wall, blank in its

blinking light, absorbs their shadows,

soaks up their slapstick soliloquies.

In the stalls, Fatty Arbuckle finishes a bottle

thinks about youth arrested and smiles, wistfully,

at a career as cross-eyed as Ben Turpin.

Meanwhile, somewhere overhead,

Harold Lloyd is hanging around, out of time.

The frame shifts out of focus

and the reel ends.

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A Time to Reflect

A Magpie Tales post.

Also submitted to Writers Island.

And to Thursday Poets Rally.

A Time to Reflect

A quick glance, backwards,

and a life is reflected.

Where an eye for regret

is stored in the gilt-edge

surround. The glass echoing

hopes long past, sundered, eclipsed

by shadows of lives not lived.

Where love almost lingered

but passed, etching layers

of guilt and memories inlaid

in wrinkles. And as I look again

that past life settles, like wind-blown

sand, on a present countenance.

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Backdrop

A Magpie Tales post.

Also submitted for Writers Island.

Backdrop

The light flickers, dances, focuses on the screen,

The projectionist loads the reel.

We begin.

Images flash up, some jerky, some still.

Is that you, snot-green hair and raw knees,

eyes tearfill?

More frames, technicolor now. And this?

Giraffe limbs, cows-lick, as you reach for

a first kiss.

Widescreen, a panoramic future, except

No leading lady for your Bogart face.

Joy sidestepped.

We roll on. Colour fades, a close-up.

Chair-soiled, you shake to unheard music,

on the cusp.

Was that your life? Played out on a screen,

blankly, while you watched from the back. The

last reel. Fin

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Fall

A Magpie Tales post.

Fall

Whisper the winter wind

as you coldly blow

through cottonwool cheeks.

Your breath scorching

the unsettled leaves,

like guests at a party

not wanting to go.

Whistle that wind,

whirring through branches

Causing copses of trees

to don yellow sou’westers

as they shiver their way

into darkening days.

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Lamp

A Magpie Tales post.

First Light

The old oil lamp, pumped into light

by fingers gnarled and rooted in wood,

that he routed, shaped

and turned. From pharmacists

bench to mahogany table.

Where children sat, planted like saplings

and listened to tales as old as the earth,

of fish slipping the hook

and grouse flushed from gorse.

Last Light

The wick dimmed and the light

was breathed into darkness.

And knotted, wood-stained fingers

loosened their grip on the awl.

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