On Small Wicklow
A chronicler feeds my ears
With centuries’ old secret of valour
Sewn into the spine of The Bog
On this rising Dublin staked out Viking raiders
And the Saxons that followed in their heels
Bog-knights shackling their warrior hooves
‘In summer the mountain drapes a purple shawl,
You’ll rarely recognize it’, Alison said
Of Wicklow’s carpet of heather stumps
A cold breeze crossed my arms across my chest
As mountain sheep grazed in tactical retreat
Down in the valley a river boundary
Between our hump and Big Wicklow
Smoke rose from houses on the flanks
Not of arson but of dinner and warmth
I felt the presence of God
Until I saw protective coats and coupled silhouettes
Stamped into Wicklow’s grassy crest
In the wind, groans of love and lust mingled
With casualties of ancient bog wars
I pondered about aphrodisiacs comparing altitudes
Remembering coats on Tory Hills and Tramore Beach
Close to home in Port Lairge.
Haiti
Ensconced between curious minds
On a spectacle-seeking tour bus
One rugged dusty country road
Led my wandering to a Sharman
In your rowdy market place
Your scraggly faces of squalor
Dashed my Caribbean fantasy
As you knocked the open sore
I nurse from my distant homeland
Pieces of your history from Papa Doc
To gangly Aristide stitched together from
Stories I culled from a cynical press
Re-run your spectacle like horror on celluloid
These were not the tales by moonlight I sought
I felt a tightening around my ticker
And the warmth of stray tears
Strolling down my cheek
Testimony to our tangled umbilical cords
In the end I shut my eyes
And let my MP3 take me to therapy
Far far away from you
From the dirge you began to play
It was Wyclef, one of your own
And one of mine too on a family tree
Rooted in centuries of history
Singing with cousin Akon
Of a Sweetest Girl in distress
Still sad, but a thousand times
Better than your offer on the day.
Return to NY
What a difference a season makes
What change is fashioned by time
Scales that blot out initial visions of you.
How sentiments and attitudes flow
With the tides of a passing age
For fresh beauty to adorn the scapes
Of new days, New York, New York.
My maiden anger at your winter rot
Has abated, subdued by endless dazzle
Drudgery once set deep in your eyes
Now polished to a shine in Brooklyn
Beyond the bridge intoxicates me
Like bridal wine, New York, New York
Sinatra’s eulogy of a sudden makes sense
In the sprightly folks on Manhattan’s streets
The lustful gaze of your crowned libertine
Explains the world’s appetite for your bosom
Central Park and Broadway step-ladders
On to another world except for packs
Of hooligans or those you forgot to rouse
And take along who won’t forgive your slip
New York, New York
Your freeways and escalators
Yellow cabs and giant burgers
Fabrics for fantasy for the virgin traveler
Your glitter and litter objects of strange desire
Tout le Monde!
In Queens it dawned on me
Your children know you even as you know them
They remain one of a kind snugging you
In a gale of enchantment that never ends
The rest of us outsiders scramble to catch a glimpse
Of your spectacle in package travel deals
We go to sleep imagining bits of you
In our bones and homes, even hopes
And even oftener in dreams we return to you,
For more, New York, New York.
Tempe, Arizona
Tearducts of a burdened river
sirens for a distressed eco-system
as the Colorado feeds sprinklers
for a carpet of green vanity
on the luscious lawns of Tempe
Visions of the Nature Brigade
behind diswatered mermaids
and other homeless amphibians
in a protest march down Apache Boulevard
past the Holiday Inn
I joined them at the corner
of Adam South’s run
after I tanked up on doritos,
no one should go to war
running on empty.
But the spring in the steps
of those who marched with me,
the excitable faces of the 4WD damsels
who flashed coconut boobs alongside us
in racing traffic on the Freeway
got me thinking about the schmuck hero
who labelled women lubricants of the revolution,
and how a nation in synchronised
orgasm defines the axis of evil
I was lost on the moment.
