The Boardwalk

Sun leathered skin, tanned and flayed

lies draped over the bench’s wooden slats.

A long-forgotten art brought back to

lack-lustre life

along the boardwalk.

•

This wrinkled pre-aged skin,

pricked in not so neat lines

each track a stop on the journey

that brings their nodding half-lives

to the boardwalk.

•

The coke and ice-cream hit, not for their

uncared for, condemned kids

but to feed a sugar rush,

stave off that comedown

on the boardwalk.

•

The methodone, a sop

to replace the brown heroin

that once kissed their veins,

kicks in as they shadow walk

to the boardwalk

•

Calloused, cracked  skin spreads

factor 50, to protect the delicate

casing of their ravaged organs

as they lie, replete,

along the boardwalk.

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After Light

Through cigarette paper skin

such a thin, translucent sleeve;

the light of your life beams out.

•

Your eye: a spotlight on mum and dad

as they sing to the beat of

your pulsing heart-rhythm.

•

You illuminate this space

like no cut diamond could:

a light on this world.

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Solitude

That half-breath moment as I wake

light ebbing through closed lids

as will o’ the wisps steal away dreams.

Nothing, everything, is as it seems.

I could be.

In that moment,

in that light,

in that dream.

I am.

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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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Race

The cheering had stopped,

all sound sucked out of the bowl

that seemed to turn slowly on a potters wheel.

The tension inside matched by the suspense

of the moment as the world watched, motionless.

The shaping of a base medal into a symbol

began with the crack of the starter’s gun that

echoed down the track to a past where

crosses burned surrounded by white sheets

and slaves were bred for sport.

A mere nineteen seconds

but the victory wasn’t complete

until a gloved hand pierced Aztec air

and, with its power,

took away the breath of the world.

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Key Stroke

These words, some well-formed some ill

come from a lattice of lumpen black plastic

daubed with white symbols scattered

randomly. I try to shape and order

its chaotic structure and make sense

of an insentient polymer that can

transform words into images,

tabbing across the screen like a crab

skirting the foreshore.

This keyboard types feelings not words.

I press four times for love, more

for regret and sorrow. And happiness?

Well, often that is too much effort

and anguish seems easier to impart.

But sometimes, sometimes these keys

are like magnets for steel-tipped

fingers and a world appears,

black on blank.

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New Word Order

The words clitter clatter in a dissonant, discordant, clashing, bashing fashion

falling in disordered, dilapidated heaps in need of a broom to sweep

them into some familiar shape, to batter them into submission

or failing that to hide them in a dank, dark corner out of sight,

sound, hope. They can lie. One on the other – a frisson,

where a tremor within causes vibrations in the musty air

and sounds are formed that cause us to pause and, eventually, listen.

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Let The Man Speak

The Pod, Sunday night wasn’t so much a concert as an intimate conversation. Gil Scott Heron wandered on stage, picked up the mike and began telling jokes and stories and playing songs. He has a theory on the months of the year being in the wrong place – September, October, November and December should, linguistically speaking, occur two months before they actually do. And there is no way February should be Black History Month. Not because its a tokenistic sop from white America but because no fucker can pronounce it, no brother can spell it and, according to Heron’s theory, it’s last month of the year.

What followed was a virtuoso performance from a man, comfortable in his ability to lead a band – The Amnesia Express – and the audience on a journey through some of his most poetic and meaningful songs while not taking himself too seriously. ‘Winter in America’ followed a discourse on how the seasons were structured and what happened when one of them got too uppity. There were some beautiful medleys, ‘Peace go with you Brothers’ beautifully surrounded ‘The Bottle’. There was also a wonderfully poignant version of ‘Home is Where the Hatred is’. And if the Greens want an anthem to bring them into the next election they could do worse than ‘We Almost Lost Detroit’.

Above all else, a Heron gig is a performance. Words and music come together in a way that seems effortless and seamless but is all about craft, knowledge and experience. If you didn’t catch him and the band here be sure to see him at the Electric Picnic in September.

The one downside to the gig? The idiots at the bar who talked non-stop through the show. Why bother to go if you’re not going to listen? This is something the Pod management need to address – the least a performer needs is a bit of quiet to do his thing.

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