introduced to a tree

i think it a she tree
it has her attitude
not fuck you
but yes i'm here
and i should be
so what!
my waxed green
is showing
in the rain
and yes
you can look
if you like
my red is 

young but strong
needing feeding,
but stripable
discovering cream
and alabaster, 

at winter's 

tightening,
always newly me.

Addiction

Dreaming darkness enlivened
minds seek solace,
dipped relief of sorrow
spawns its shame,
unfulfilled promises
cast shadows back
in ghostly gray half memory.

Attention seeking outlet
mixing passions as
drunken vomit
cannot fail
to splash feet
that wept
to dance with grace.

Awake aware
certain deaths
close down all hope
of resurrection,
in a veiled world
shaded eyes glisten
and laugh at my sad song

Out of the woods

noble trees
stretched broken
born before boots
beat a new drum
in these woods
and bare feet
and deerskin walked
softer paths
fifteen thousand years
in the making
raped in fifty
what remains

Blindness with eyes
backpacks and boots
chains, saws, cables
steel ships to Asia
and the mills
golf courses
where perfect girls
and boys in dark
glasses and black
shirts ride green
Jimdeeres on tarmac
for those taking the
Air

Bosses in regional
development where
everyone chases
a buck, economies
profit or a salary to
meet a mortgage
or a banker or
medication costs
keep it up
as the final firs
Weep their last

i saw them today
because i could
and you took me
after fifty years
since as a boy
looking for silence
i found the home
of letters
where leaves rustled
and giant cedars
peeped in pictures
saying
come to me.

Women's Christmas

Twenty five years ago
beyond the wedge of winter
there was an early softening,

when the warmth

of a blackened ocean

kissed the rocks

of an ancient coast.

And on the morning

of Nollaig Na Mna
or just before it,

in the brown earth
at the foot of a wall

I was surprised
by a frail yellow thing

against a gush

of dark and calloused green.

That tender whispish first outbreath

of the soft wet ground carried

on its pale, low-sun, filled face
the whole of the spring

and summer flowering that followed.
Untamable thing, plucked,

won't last a hour.

Now: after all this time

the scent of rosemary

I took from your skin

on my hardened hands,

join the primrose,

signaling an end to winter;

frail promises of spring

my river

my river was slow and wide
we swam in it then
largely ignored by
a town of hucksters
that turned its back
chasing shillings
visited by dockers,
working-women and us
boys fishing for salmon
catching eels
bamboo canes from Boyd's
and gut from Nestor's
made us hunters
ever hopeful. seldom lucky
women
the dark subject of gossip
and work-less dockers
longing for ships
of shallow draft
that would clear the silt.
Twice a day she chased
the ocean pushing back
rising, falling
limestone skirts
rusty ladders
old mills watching,
now blasted and gone
over the years
she took our shit.
Dirtied.
'till only the very tired
go in.

doubting soul

I have no difficulty with

the senseless

stupidity of soul

there are many

simple things

not understood.

Take this stone
piece of  

the earth
in darkness

'til Caesar
slashed her 

to pipe shit

beneath a river.

Welling-up I remember

the damp dark night

I climbed in a hole

to save this stone

it has travelled with me
eight hours around the globe
to this land where
blacker stones were hid
i love it's silence and in it see
my grandfathers face,
his blind eyes
eyes he told me Black and Tans
dripped with candle grease
to help him speak of guns

limestone of

the Shannon

simple rock
of my childhood,

grey and hard and sharp

stuff of David's sling

stuff of railway-beds and
schools and churches,
garden-walls and
Georgian homes,
soldiers-barracks, police-stations
nut-houses, cow-sheds prisons
where patriots were shot
and markers for the dead
the grey and cold

to this grey matter
Add life

Mobility

Consciousness

Danger

Daring

and

Willing.

Something wyrd

is happening

before your eyes

Standards

Mid-April and meaning,

somewhere it means

sand on the wind

and a dry throat.

Elsewhere snow

beyond the reasonable

being tired of ice

and white, cold and

mittens, impatience 

for warmth without wool,

saying bring us light

and sun and green.

In the west of Ireland

in a small city

steeped in war and histories,

for a child in the sixties

it meant gatherings,

groups of boys roaming

collecting logs and old dressers

tires and inner tubes.

Midnight raids to steal

timber for Bealtaine

and the bonfire.

Crazed nights of music and flames

wishes and lost meanings.

But here and now

mid-April means more magic,

greens of chestnut leaves

over Cook Street

back lit yellowed hues.

Trees with skirts of pink 

turning to understated leafiness

after the flowering.

More blossoms opening:

magnolias, lilacs; 

purples and off-whites,

reds in rushes

of silk and velvet 

flashes,bursts 

of yellow furze invasion.

Planters quit pouring coffee and

swinging hammers, 

gather bags boots and shovels, 

move again to the mountains airs.

A butterfly the size of my thumb-nail

flickers blue and cream

over dark rocks on Dallas road

and the hiss of an ocean

delights in me

the ever fresh wonder

of watching

new nakedness emerge

neither tanned nor jaded.

Poisoning

It started after something
looking back it is difficult to see
how it went unseen, but
it wore a dull coloured coat
that helped it to blend into the everyday
and be unacknowledged for so long.

The cracks in the things
that were one began
as I said, after something,
obliterated by what followed;
the coming asunder of things
made sacred by promise.

It appeared simply;
walking down separate
aisles in the grocery store,
and the shopping cart 

arriving between us
at the checkout, as if it knew.

Lunch and supper-times,
once joint meanderings
became a

rushed relay,

the handover growing
always shorter.

Then like breakfast

that stopped altogether.
At the other end bedtimes began
to include silences and chores.
Small ones at first, a few dishes, 

or cushions that needed patting.

All I know is that it stopped
and by the time it did
I was unable to speak about it
we moved into that
bottomless place
between monogamy and leaving.

Now I name it no-nogamy;
commitment to something
that is no more.

only a crushing,

between desire and shame

until something else, happens.

Me mother, mad jimmy and Christmas lights

Them were different times. Blaguards in the streets called after mad Jimmy hoping for a folley. Me mammy caught me taunting him on sexton street when I should have been at school.
She was one of his regulars. People that he called to or knew when they met on account of the shilling or the penny that passed hand to unwashed hand in recognition of our obligation.
He deposited the coins in the pocket of the wool coat he wore winter and summer. His uniform along with blackthorn swagger stick and broken briar pipe perpetually smoking. And the badges people wore badges those days.
A bus-mans badge a policemans badge a trade Union badge, a fainne ore for Gaelic speakers each a sign of identity and importance along with the proper salutation for the fourth order or the Masons.
And to not be left out Mad Jimmy wore at least one of each badge on his large lapels and had a royal salute for each of his regulars.
My mother normally a woman of whom it was said would not say boo to a goose read me the riot act when she got me cornered in the kitchen. She went on to explain that too much brains was next to insanity and that I was the biggest disgrace to humanity on sexton street that day,
After about an hour when she had softened, she signalled her softening by asking you to bring in a bucket of coal or thread a needle or feed the dog or some other task that allowed you to demonstrate your humanity. Having completed the assigned job without complaint you could test the ground with a question.
Not like can I go to the pictures on saturday or the match on sunday, you would save that type of question till the air cleared.
An appropriate question was, Mammy why does Jimmy wear all those badges.
She answered, you know at Christmas we put a candle in the window at night,
yes I said .
Well that light is a signal to anyone going the road of a house open at the darkest coldest time of year, and that no one will be turned away. The more people forget that, the more lights they need at Christmas.
It was reported that when jimmy's body was found in a derelict building there was a large sum of money sewn into the lining of his coat.
He was well known it seems in the William street branch of the Munster and Leinster Bank where he exchanged his coins for notes of large denomination

stubborn ol bastard me and Leonard

a friend called me a stubborn ol bastard so i wrote a consideration

all my friends are gone and my hair is grey
im achin in the places that i used to play
and im prayin for love
but it's not coming on.(leonard Cohen)

There was a woman in the school.
skull na bra Haira crease tea is a very bad phonetic attempt at the Gaelic name of the Christian Brothers School, Sexton St. Limerick. I attended that school on and off between the ages of 7 and 16. In the earlier years it had a woman teacher. Ban de Bara or Mrs Barry as the queen would have called her if the queen were ever allowed to talk to a person.
She didn't have a class or anything like that but she taught elocution, moving from class to class with the freedom and breasts of a robin. She let us know that our English was contaminated. It was not for us to know that we were contaminated with the remnants of the ancient language that the other fuckers were trying to stuff down our confused throats the  rest of the week. It seemed that her main job was to teach us not to say dis, dat, dese or dose but there was other stuff too. She explained how polite people do, as in they don't talk to each other, they speak to each other and that we should start speaking to each other in the school yard and such or we would all end up as messenger boys for one of the butchers on Parnell St.
A good example of the differences in these tongues of the butcher-shop  and the butchers apron as we called the union-jack is shown in the joke about the little boy that came home from school on his second day at school,
his mother asked
Mikey
wha mamma
did you learn anything at school today
um yeah.... i learnt Johnny Connelly not to call me mammas boy

a polite person would say Leonard and I not me and Leonard
to me Me and Leonard sounds so much more, like we are buddies, like he knows me or at least we did this one thing together, you know, this is my small claim to something and me and Leonard says it, if Leonard was here he would back me up. He is my buddy in this. Hmmm maybe that's it, maybe polite people don't need buddies, or maybe it is not cool to need em.

Words and lyricists have always attracted me and Leonard Cohen's words go beyond words for or from me. he will probably be mentioned many times in my writing as he has carved many phrases that unlocked fragments of my soul. one of my friends said many years ago said that the record store in Limerick, I think it was Savin's , were offering free razor blades with every cohen LP purchased mid-week. The warring city has a wicked sense of humour.
From here on out if i quote or speak of a leonard it is leonard cohen i speak of. My familiarity is based on 40 years of listening and singing along, eating bagels with cream cheese in Montreal where men with ringlets, beards and black coats walk the sidewalks, two 3 and a half hour concerts here in Victoria and the fact that he wears a hat like mine.

I was 55 when a small fall on a ladder shattered my ankle. the medical people called it a pilon fracture and the discussion got round to the percentage of people that end up having a leg amputated. Now there's a thing that could get one to focus.
Recently just over a year later I was out walking with friend and as we walked I took my shoes off and walked in my bare feet.
Looking down rubbing his nose he asked "whatre you doin"
My ankle hurts at times and I find that taking off my shoes especially on uneven ground forces it to go through a wider range of movement.
It hurts some at first but then there is relief. Beyond that there are a whole lot of things that I haven't totally given up on yet that will be limited by how much movement I have in this ankle.
I want to play soccer with my son.
I am/was the father of three boys. Cian is the youngest of these and was born here in Canada.
The other boys are men by now I suppose. There are explanations and reasons and excuses for my actions in my life and all of those will emerge if I write long enough but the short story is that I deserted two sons in the course of my life up to now. The extent of the injuries I perpetrated and suffered in those actions is becoming clearer to me as i grow with Cian.
How does a man recoup the loss or pay the debt of having never kicked a ball with a boy?
Life is full of questions.
For the moment back to the ankle and if the opportunity arises i want to walk on a cliff and a beach with friends and then there is the fact that if i am middle aged now, and I have to live to 112 it is too early to start closing down the shop.
It feels a bit weird to me to be gardening and putting out laundry in public here especially as Mrs Google keeps telling me how many people are looking over the fence.
If someone wants to follow the thread or ask a question in the comments it would be like smiling, waving a hand or saying hi, and i would regard this as a kindness and be encouraged to continue, Mrs Google has placed convenient buttons for these actions on the page but I have yet to figure out how they work. I did see a little pencil thing that brought up a comment box. No it seems the pencil is just for me but if the title of the piece is in orange and you click it a different page will open with a comment box.
sleann lat which roughly translates as health with you....

Memoir. Birth

urbs antiqua fuit studisque asperima belli

It was an ancient city well versed in the arts of war. 

Limerick, Ireland 1958 is of interest to me, as that is when i was born and although i must have been present on the occasion i have  to rely on the account of others to affirm that the woman that i came to ordinarily know as mammy was there. It is said that every person knows his mother but who his father might be, is an act of faith. Although neither of these propositions is an absolute truth, I suppose there is a sliding scale  merit of claim to truth in both of these statements.
So also in this story there will emerge a  picture of a man that i came to know as daddy whether he was there not on the night in question was never related to me. We as in daddy and I never discussed that point.
Who else, if anyone, was there is a matter of speculation or a point of research, but since we cannot because of constraints of time and energy research everything, this point is not of enough interest to me unless i happen to stumble on further information or maybe this blog will prompt comment.
I didn't bother to check the latin in the title of this piece as it stands as a testimony of some truths that i hope willcome into the light later. I know enough to point to the origin of the phrase as a piece lifted from Virgil's Anaeid, although i have a feeling that is misspelt and have no inclination to check that either. Spelling was never my forte.
But into this well versed city the universe placed me and there were two significant others that became known to me as Mammy in an ordinary moment... Mam casually... Maaaaaam from the bathroom or in the dark...or Maamie if i fell down and hurt me knees before I was five or yet to save the life of one of my siblings from me or any other vicious animal thereafter.  and then there was Daddy if you were really stuck and had wrung the last penny or sop of patience out of the eternal well of generosity from which i had sprung.
If you are having issues with the punctuation or construction in this piece or anywhere else on this blog please feel free to comment, criticise or complain in the place thoughtfully supplied by Google for that purpose. It will arise later in the story and is here foreshadowed here, that my teachers spared no efforts over a period of more than ten of of the formative years of my life in their attempts to school my scattered consciousness into a shape were i would be able to present my thinking inside the lines and within the boxes sought and expected by a society committed to reason and logic.
All their powers mental physical emotional and social where applied liberally, without stint, thought of loss or consideration of cost to their own well-being physical emotional or spiritual,  but unfortunately with little success. I sympathize with you and advise that if it should be overly troubling i will not be offended if you avoid this place of butchery.
it may b of  consolation that we now have spell check and you are spared the pain of seeing words like opportunity appearing in all its possible variations in one paragraph, by, that little champion of the spelling bee guy housed in some remote cell in the dungeons of this laptop, in their defence his arrival could not be foreseen by the pedagogues and paedophiles charged with my schooling and education.

Badmeanings

A cold but bright day, the boy and his dad carrying groceries, push up the hill, past the doughnut tree in Nelson, British Columbia. They are headed for the last house on the left at the top of Cedar Street. A late-winter or early-spring hole in February's sock whitens the concrete pavement buckled by frost.
Father following, watching the curve of the boys padded coat, green and blue, listening to the out-breath that pushed each foot forward, downward lifting,
Buried in the small boys breath faint but clear as the smell of rats piss the boys thought, tongue sounds,---fuck.

"Cian"
                    "What"
"What did you just say"
                                "Fuck"

"Um"
"You might not want to use that kind of language"
"Um"
                                                                      "Why"
"The people at daycare may not like it."
                                                                                                    "Why"
"Well some people think that words like fuck are bad words. They might be surprised to hear them coming from a little boy at daycare"

"Dad"
"What"
"Djuo know what I think"
"No.....     what"


"There's no such thing as bad words"      

 "Only bad meanings"


"Fuck"