Far, far.

For breasts and Jane Austin

She eyed herself up that
pale freckled mug
in the mirror
backed up by the hard
dawn light forcing through.
Images from Jane Austin
played in her head,
whale bone restraint
pert breasts and sweet lips
that skip through
daisy fields yet drip
elegant observation.
She fingered the faded threads
of the Hendrix T-shirt void
of those coveted mounds of sex,
the loose jeans hung hiplessly,
androgyny of the early teen
screaming for progress.
To others she claimed
no desire to be woman
but inside all her flesh
craved to be Elizabeth.

Lear on the Estate, Belfast.

Trailing
All's cheerless, dark and deadly
on the estate
lashing

Nothing can come of nothing?
Oh but something has

Leering orbits of former headlights
giant charred carcass's littering the green
stand as testimony

The legacy of the innocent wooly hood
glaring down the barrel of a gun
from every gable end

Is man no more than this?
Some of them no

though most of us quietly sing
as birds i'th'cage:
we are more sinned against than sinning.

can't sleep night.

Breezybreezy from slightly open window,
breezycool
shadows in the shadow.

Still, silent.

Solid objects slither and hide
shrinking in the moonshine
breathing cool night sighs.

Breezy trees I can't sleep.

Breezy trees on the wall, it's not easy at all
to separate my dreamy trees from real trees.

Sheets, clean sheets, smell of powder and outside,
hung in the breeze, clean among the trees, to dry

-try to sleep, but waves of consciousness
and unconsciousness
toss me and turn me in my eddying bed,-

my body feels lighter than my head.

Neon green numbers freeze time
my mind does what it bloody pleases; it's singing
snatches of song from a childhood rhyme&;#8230;

Sleep. Sleep. Little Bo Peep
I've counted your sheep
and me and breezy tree don't care.

This twilight vision is just me wishing
I could find peace in some facet or other.
But tonight breezy tree says 'don't bother.'

Meiotic Fate

Impatient and not seldom arrogant
he flashes from the spirals of my chromosomes
too quick to jump in ass first, breeder of the little beasts
leaping from my lips undisciplined by my Ideal Person trainer
who appears to be off sick today.
These itchy feet are weathered by a youth spent in the navy.
He cut them off to become a parent and
stitched them on to me, just below the knee.

When we argue I stab my own heart with sarcasm darts
aimed at them, it's futile, I know. Id, id, id I scream
only to be flattened by the Superduperego.

Then my double X peeps out from below her low self-esteem,
cowering under that charlatan confidence that
above all else, unites us three.
This brow may not be hers, but it is she that rubs it
like a little squirrel. I'm a little squirrel too, and
and off we go gathering nuts in tacky second-hand stores
my pouches full of gooseberries she craved while I was fetal.

I am the Oedipal freak, a genetic Jack-in-the-box,
a simple product of science frustrated by unfulfillable filial
love

until night-time. Then I'm all my own work, thank you.
Unless there's something they haven't told me.

Passing comments

He said it, naked scaly creature born of his curly lips,
and it trickled down my spine as
smiley moments floated away,-
I tried to catch them by thinking of the sun
on his buttons but everything was suddenly xeroxed
and not real
and I forgot who I was. Instead I thought of leaves
and the colour of the clouds behind him and
I was watching, not seeing, as the shadow rolled over
and prisms shattered draining soul from his presence
-or rather my ability to reach out to it.
My stomach turned from him, chatty ignorant
while I wept inside and fought to be rational.
But now there is crashing
and thoughts drift in shoals to other matters
far away from his little raft.

He sensed my absence and too proud slips into feigned
indifference
and there we are
two people blown apart in
two seconds
by a passing comment.

We: here, now.

We pace the grids of New York, mainly 5th avenue
(as all good tourists do)
eyes seeking a window to gaze out of.
With lifting sight my pipsqueak
problems don't seem so big, or close up.

Noises mute and the camera spins slowly around us
one of those shots where the background falls away
yellow zips time-lapsed for a fashion magazine
-the hazy sunlight, stain on my shirt,
hand I am gripping sharply in full focus-

as I turn an old man pierces my eye with his nail
threats on his cardboard placard
all conscience-bashers and guilt taunts
We are far from Europe now
each step a slap of bagels and Starbucks

Macy's coliseum, a plague of handbags,
shifty prophets informing me that I am here
Now. We: here, now. Skyline,
a Magritte in the Met, real but not quite,
not quite America, a little quiet

America, but determined. Each step we doggedly
take a combination of rebellion and awe,
let us in New York, we're at the door
and we can live off this stuff too,
we know how to have Sex in the City,
we have the right Friends and what's more

we're infected. Incurable. Incorrigible.

1967 Tribal trap

So the kids are havin' a ball out on the street
hurlin' curses and bottles, the odd stone,
while the wimmen stand in the respective kitchen
smokin' their brains out an' shakin' their head
and waitin' for the bread winner to come home
stinkin' of petrol and drink.

We might as well all have a wee drink
an' sure, get the wimmen out on the street
whose place is usually the babies and home,
but then our people are stuck in the stone
age and can't get "change" in to their thick head;
we'd be dead if we all hid in the kitchen.

Aye, it's cosy and safe in our wee kitchen,
till the peelers barge in reekin' of drink
and smack poor Fred over his fat head
and shuffle every last sinner onto the street
and ransack and wreck while we sit on the stone
kerb outside our vulnerable home.

But pray tell, where the hell exactly is home?
For four hundred years odds our ancestors kitchen
housed protestant wimmen while the men shaped the stone,
scrapin' enough money for food an' some drink&;#8230;
alright then, a few provos turfed onto the street
but "oppressors of Ireland?" that's all in their head.

Very well, I admit that we're a wee bit ahead
in the stakes of chasin' people out of their home,
but once 'pon a time this was a proddy street,-
now you daren't be seen alone in your own kitchen
fer fear those bastard's'll come lookin' a drink,
look you right in the eye, cold as stone.

But that's what we are, you know. People of stone
who can't let the past go and won't look ahead.
We all need a good slap, then we'd share a drink
have a bit of craic, a smoke and go on home
no more of this idlin' an' hidin' in the kitchen
while the boys throw halfers at the neighbours up the street.

But we hold on in this street with its walls of stone
all sat in this kitchen forever shakin' our head
at our bitter wee home; so let's have another drink.

For the wee hours

I rub my eyes with sandpaper
of two solid nights
procrastinating over what to do
about holes in the wall,
cracks in the roof
where loneliness drums
and salt water drips
smearing unfinished manuscripts.
The war rages outside and in
phantom silhouettes wherever my gaze
falls
is falling
like rain in March the drizzle
in September and sleet in
March. The curl of my pen
enveloping
the pen is my sword.
Will they find me in the ruins
among the sprouting crocus
and narcissus, smiling
like a sundial,
impaled upon my own sword?