Wednesday 1 August 2012

Sweets for my sweet


                   St. Columba’s:
                                    you remember
                        the wall of drunks familiar all
                                                        red and brightened
                                                      with the cider
                                               with everything outside

                           “What kind of life?” some woman said.
                
                                      alky forces
                                                 are drawing lines here

                                                      great bruised
                                                      bargain basement gods

                                   painting memos with sepia schmaltz
              
                               talking up their easy dissidence
                                                They’ve got those swollen rhetor lips.

                                           laughter slung out
                                                                        guttural

                                                      displaced since I can’t remember

                                        All of us are unoriginal.
     
                                 Any steady take is
                                                       all shook up
                                                    (somebody’s favourite song)
                                      The pictures they’ve still got
                                   are sliding
                    
                  This is a crew passing time, locally.

                     old woman
                                 her yellower hair
                                         loose skinned
                                   mouthful of most teeth missing

                                        She calls me over and offers me a sweet.
                                        the little boy hand dips in
 
                                               white papered mystery
                     
                                        touches the soft strings
                                        soft from something wrong
                                                                        gutted
                                                                a handful of cheap beef mince
                                                    gone green as I was
         
                           How those bastards laughed.

                                        I’m running up the street          
                                                  to catch the dry hand
                                     of where my dad is
               
                                     No tears come.
                                                  Just something like a question
                                               that must wait till whenever
                                                                   to be asked                         

                      

                                          


7 comments:

  1. I'm like a man on a fuzzy tree when I get all shook up, and the sepia schmaltz turns golden...

    It then comes time to go undercover.

    But in a larger than life way of course. With the big shades. Having left the six guns with the SS. Just waiting for the badge to make things official.

    (First read "unoriginal" as "aboriginal"... the secret oracles of the evacuated temporal lobe uttering their tilted home truths once again... ??)

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  2. I think your misreading's a notch above the reading as such, TC.

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  3. I mean to say that you see with your ears (too, i.e.)

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  4. It's a lovely thing when words find themselves wavering, and displacements find a place again. It needs the right ears and eyes to hear and read otherwise.

    Beware the text that stays put and won't bme had any buts one way.

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  5. ...won't be had any but one way.

    So now the fingers are at it...

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  6. Certainly. A great reading experience. the way everything sounds, looks together and also yr diction is very enriching.

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