The Art of Losing

Without a doubt
the art of losing is a mastered skill

all foundation
must be mixed appropriately


but even as the wind
blows through the shadows

leave behind
those things you have discovered

for once they are lost


they should never be recovered.

Locked Lips Can't Really Do Anything To Ships

we watched
the screen flash
number 43
and the terminal
tensed with waves
of zig-zagging people

no one seemed
to desire
to rediscover
lost territories
I cursed they
only jumped ship
for a fancy holiday
as you mockingly joked
the line of flight
is a deterritorialization


blop, blop, blop, blop, blop

You Got to Run, Run, Run, Run, Run

Photography of Jesusmaryandisabel

When Time Supersedes

History is Never Quiet, Even in Damp Dark Vaults

The ancient vaults
are crowded
with saints & nuns
converted felons
lovers & condemned sons

& rebels

without intestines

giants' missing limbs

& crusaders

with crossed shins

but here
it is not
vacant
there are spots
still to be filled
but all thats left
is a guide
preforming
& searchers &
listeners
so eager
to crawl down
damp stairs
with caskets
wide open
& the dead
men & women
who still have
stories to tell
chatter silently
in their boxes

Rotten Apples

" I don't know who God is but if I meet Him anytime soon I'm going to get Him in the corner until He tells me the truth.

  I'm going to slap Him stupid and push Him around until He can't run away. Until He's looking up at me and then I'll get Him to tell me why He done what He done to me and what He done to Corrie and why do all the good ones die and where is Jazzlyn now and why she ended up there and how He allowed me to do what I done to her.

  He's going to come along on His pretty white cloud with all His pretty little angels flapping their pretty white wings and I'm gonna out and say it formal: Why the fuck did you let me do it, God?

And He's gonna drop His eyes and look to the ground and answer me. And if He says Jazz aint in heaven, if He says she didn't make it through. He's gonna get himself an ass-kicking. That's what He's gonna get.

An ass-kicking like none He ever got before."



"When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve, Eve, I'm leaving you, honey, and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you're one lucky motherfucker. "



Let The Great World Spin, Colum McCann

When Good Americans Die They Go To Paris

When, like a running grave


When, like a running grave, time tracks you down,
Your calm and cuddled is a scathe of hairs,
Love in her gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,


Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who, timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed tape
Of the bone inch,


Deliver me, my masters, head and heart,
Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin,
When blood, spade-handed, and the logic time
Drive children up like bruises to the thumb,
From maid and head,

For, sunday faced, with dusters in my glove,
Chaste and the chaser, man with the cockshut eye,
I, that time's jacket or the coat of ice
May fail to fasten with a virgin o
In the straight grave,

Stride through Cadaver's country in my force,
My pickbrain masters morsing on the stone
Despair of blood faith in the maiden's slime,
Halt among eunuchs, and the nitric stain
On fork and face.

Time is a foolish fancy, time and fool.
No, no, you lover skull, descending hammer
Descends, my masters, on the entered honour.
You hero skull, Cadaver in the hangar
Tells the stick, 'fail.'

Joy is no knocking nation, sir and madam,
The cancer's fashion, or the summer feather
Lit on the cuddled tree, the cross of fever,
Not city tar and subway bored to foster
Man through macadam.

I dump the waxlights in your tower dome.
Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot
Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift,
Love's twilit nation and the skull of state,
Sir, is your doom.

Everything ends, the tower ending and,
(Have with the house of wind), the leaning scene,
Ball of the foot depending from the sun,
(Give, summer, over), the cemented skin,
The actions' end.

All, men my madmen, the unwholesome wind
With whistler's cough contages, time on track
Shapes in a cinder death; love for his trick,
Happy Cadaver's hunger as you take
The kissproof world.


Out of the Sighs


Out of the sighs a little comes,
But not of grief, for I have knocked down that
Before the agony; the spirit grows,
Forgets, and cries;
A little comes, is tasted and found good;
All could not disappoint;
There must, be praised, some certainty,
If not of loving well, then not,
And that is true after perpetual defeat.

After such fighting as the weakest know,
There's more than dying;
Lose the great pains or stuff the wound,
He'll ache too long
Through no regret of leaving woman waiting
For her soldier stained with spilt words
That spill such acrid blood.

Were that enough, enough to ease the pain,
Feeling regret when this is wasted
That made me happy in the sun,
How much was happy while it lasted,
Were vagueness enough and the sweet lies plenty,
The hollow words could bear all suffering
And cure me of ills.

Were that enough, bone, blood, and sinew,
The twisted brain, the fair-formed loin,
Groping for matter under the dog's plate,
Man should be cured of distemper.
For all there is to give I offer:
Crumbs, barn, and halter. 


Not from this anger

Not from this anger, anticlimax after
Refusal struck her loin and the lame flower
Bent like a beast to lap the singular floods
In a land strapped by hunger
Shall she receive a bellyful of weeds
And bear those tendril hands I touch across
The agonized, two seas.
Behind my head a square of sky sags over
The circular smile tossed from lover to lover
And the golden ball spins out of the skies;
Not from this anger after
Refusal struck like a bell under water
Shall her smile breed that mouth, behind the mirror,
That burns along my eyes.

Dylan Thomas

Yes, It's Dark In My Heart

  

Come Rede me Dame

Come rede me dame, come tell me dame,
My dame come tell me truly,
What length o' graith when weel ca'd hame
Will sair a woman duly?"
The carlin clew her wanton tail,
Her wanton tail sae ready,
"l learn'd a sang in Annandale,
Nine inch will please a lady."

"But for a koontrie cunt like mine,
In sooth we're not sae gentle;
We'll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine,
And that is a sonsy pintle.
Oh, Leeze me on, my Charlie lad,
I'll ne'er forget my Charlie,
Tway roaring handfuls and a daud
He nidged it in fu' rarely."

But wear fa' the laithron doup
And may it ne'er be thriving,
It's not the length that makes me loup
But it's the double drivin.
Come nidge me Tom, come nidge me Tom
Come nidge me, o'er the nyvel
Come lowse an lug your battering ram
And thrash him at my gyvel!


Robert Burns

Your Mind Is Really Beautiful

Nightmare

i.

His
body
outlined in
the dark hurled over
my sleepless body i
ran to the door
hit the light
woke up
lone


ii.

we were laughing
but your mouth
squeezed tight
and your lips
blurred into pale skin
looking at me wide eyed
we sat
staring at each other
and then one of
your eyes
popped out


iii.

you called
to tell me
if it doesn't
exist
then
it doesn't
exist
the rest
was static
but i heard
you mumble
the connection
is shit
in wooden boxes



iv.

he said to jump,
its only normal
to dream
of falling
so i took the leap,

currently
stuck in gravity


v.

the worst
is being chased
and not looking back
to see the chaser
cause it's difficult
to run and look back
without tripping
the worst is
being chased
and not knowing
if you are really
being chased
anything
unnatural
can be
pretty upsetting



vi.

its definitely
bigger than me,
definitely


vii.

a drink would
be nice right now,
but i am too busy
fake heaving



I haven't been writing a lot lately, which means it is time to exhaust some energy into another art form. Currently working on a painting but I think I need to rethink some technique. Desiring to film as always, but too lazy. Poetry above, was just for fun, clear the mind.

Icarus, LXI Issue 2, 2011

This Friday was the Icarus LXI Issue Two, 2011 launch night. There were tables of and tables of the edition and plenty bottles of wine. I had a truly great time

meeting the editor Joanne O'Leary. Above are the two poems that

were published, Dream Vision, Dublin and Untitled.

 I am pretty sure I nursed a bottle of wine

for the whole party, consequently

 no photos were taken.

The proof is in the stack

of fifteen magazines that

appeared in my purse when I got home.

It really is an honor

to be published in Icarus

and I want to thank the editors 

for this really cool opportunity. 

Comic Book Vs. History

Comic Book VS. History
(1949, 1969)


On the blackboard map your country
was erased, blank, waiting
to be filled with whatever shapes
we chose:

tense
needle turrets of steel
cities

heroes
lived there, we knew

they all wore capes, bullets
bounced off them;
from their fists came beautiful
orange collisions.

Our side was coloured in
with dots and letters
but it held only
real-sized explorers, confined
to animal skin coats;

they plodded, discovered
rivers whose names we always
forgot; in the winters
they died of scurvy.

When I reached that other
shore finally, statistics
and diseased labels multiplied
everywhere in my head

space contracted, the
red and silver
heroes had collapsed inside
their rubber suits/ the riddled
buildings were decaying
magic

I turned back, search
for the actual, collect lost
bones, burnt logs
of campfires, pieces of fur.

Margaret Atwood

No Man's Land

Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer


i
He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre,

with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally un-
enclosed
and shouted:

Let me out!


ii


He dug the soil in rows,
imposed himself with shovels
He asserted
into the furrows, I
am not random.

The ground replied with aphorisms:

a tree-sprout, a nameless
weed, words
he couldn't understand.

iii

The house pitched
the plot staked
in the middle of nowhere.

At night the mind
inside, in the middle
of nowhere.

The idea of an animal
patters across the roof.

In the darkness the fields
defend themselves with fences
in vain:

everything
is getting in

iv


By daylight he resisted.
He said, disgusted
with the swamp's clamourings and the outburts
of rocks.

This is not order
but the absence
of order.

He was wrong, the unanswering
forest implied:

It was an ordered absence

v


For many years
he fished for a great vision,
dangling the hooks of sown
roots under the surface
of the shallow earth.

It was like
enticing whales with a bent
pin. Besides he thought

in that country
only the worms were biting.

vi

If he had known unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-
boat with all the animals

even the wolves,

he might have floated.

But obstinate he
stated, The land is solid
and stamped,

watching his foot sink
down through stone
up to the knee.

vii


Things
refused to name themselves; refused
to let him name them.

The wolves hunted
outside.

On his beaches, his clearings,
by the surf of under-
growth breaking
at his feet, he foresaw
disintegration

and in the end

through eyes
made ragged by his
effort, the tension
between subject and object,

the green
vision, the unnamed
whale invaded.


Margaret Atwood

The Temptress, Kodak Tri-X Reversal Film

This post is just to re-live the glory of the Super 8, my baby. I had two rolls of Kodak Tri-X Reversal Film sent over to me in Dublin, and the first roll is kaputtz. Which basically means that the four films I want to make here are now down to two. Well what can you do when the world is obsessed with digital, and well I can't seem give in to the starving artist mentality (I really love brunching, I really do). Anyways, I have had a nice increase of viewership, which is incredible, and I am in the midst of revamping the blog into something that will be easier to read and locate older posts. So with that silly introduction, here are two films that I have been over-promoting.

Cemetery of a Boy's Childhood

Going Home to Mayo, Winter, 1949

Leaving behind us the alien, foreign city of Dublin
My father drove us through the night in an old Ford Anglia,
His five-year-old son in the seat beside him,
The rexine seat of red leatherette,
And a yellow moon peered in through the windscreen.
‘Daddy, Daddy,’ I cried, ‘Pass out the moon,’
But no matter how hard he drove he could not pass out the moon.
Each town we passed through was another milestone
And their names were magic passwords into eternity:
Kilcock, Kinnegad, Strokestown, Elphin,
Tarmonbarry, Tulsk, Ballaghedereen, Ballyvarry;
Now we were in Mayo and the next stop was Turlough,
The village of Turlough in the heartland of Mayo,
And my father’s mother’s house, all oil-lamps and women,
And my bedroom over the public bar below,
And in the morning cattle-cries and cock-crows:
Life’s seemingly seamless garment gorgeously rent
By their screeches and bellowings. And in the evenings
I walked with my father in the high grass down by the river
Talking with him – an unheard-of thing in the city.

But home was not home and the moon could be no more outflanked
Than the daylight nightmare of Dublin city:
Back down along the canal we chugged into the city
And each lock-gate tolled our mutual doom;
And railings and palings and asphalt and traffic lights,
And blocks after blocks of so-called ‘new’ tenements –
Thousands of crosses of loneliness planted
In the narrowing grave of the life of the father;
In the wide, wide cemetery of the boy’s childhood.

Paul Durcan

"Cut Ups" with a Twist of "Elegy"

A Pair of Embattled Hills in Korea were Named after Her

Jane Russell 1921-2011
March 2, 2011, When the Guardian Forgot Libya

Wherever she went

backtracked from her
belligerent beauty

dislodging the opposition

with that shot of her

reclining in the hay

all for some bullet wounds

waiting for the 
people to turn away.

We filmed her

over and over

dazzling numbers

the cameras continued to spread

and her legs

crossed flying circus

didn’t seem to want to leave 
undefended for the day.

The price of equality?

Well it’s the cheapest electricity,

More = Less

only when you hire

your killer

it's neither suicide
nor murder

democracy has always been 

bad at delayed gratification

she will only be remembered as

the queen of motionless pictures
not the born-again Christian bigot.

Because Everything Left is Already Said but Still Never Done, Paul Durcan

The White Window


Of my love's body I think
That it is a white window.
Her clothes are curtains:
By day drawn over
To conceal the light;
By night drawn back
To reveal the dark.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul

In the rush-hour traffic outside the centre-city church

I stood with my bicycle waiting for the lights to change—

A Raleigh bicycle with upright handlebars

That I had purchased for two pounds fifty pence in The Pearl—

When a priest in black soutane and white surplice

Materialized in the darkness of the porch.

He glided over to me:

‘I am about to begin a funeral Mass but I have no mourners.

Would you be prepared to act as a mourner for me?’

As we paced up the aisle, the priest enlightened me:

‘He was about the same age as yourself,

All you know about him is that his name was Paul.’

I knelt in the front pew,

The coffin on trestles alongside me,

Its flat abdomen next to my skull.

I felt as a mother must feel

All alone in the maternity ward

With her infant in the cot at the foot of the bed,

A feeling that everything is going to be all right

But that we are all aliens in the cupboard,

All coat hangers in the universe.

The priest—a seven-foot-tall, silver-haired peasant in his eighties—

Instructed me to put my bicycle in the hearse beside the coffin.

The two of us sat in front with the driver.

At a major traffic junction near the cemetery of Mount Prospect

We had to brake to avoid knocking down a small boy.

The car behind us bumped into our rear bumper,

Inducing the bicycle to bump against the coffin.

We saw a prominent politician in the back seat blessing herself.

At the graveside as the priest said prayers

I got the feeling that the coffin was empty;

That Paul, whoever he was.

Was somewhere else.

‘How do you know that his name was Paul?’

I asked the priest as we tiptoed away.

He handed me a creased sheet

Of blue vellum unlined notepaper—Belvedere Bond:

Dear Paul—Thank you for your marriage proposal

But I am engaged to be married in Rome in June.

Best wishes always, Mary

Queen of Loneliness.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Vision of Democracy in the County of Meath

When I got up this morning, I went out

To look at the rain. I had planned

To spend the morning with my gun,

Thinking about the story of my life.

But I saw that it was raining

And I decided to go out and have a look at the rain.

What struck me about the rain was how lit up,

Illuminated and fluorescent it was,

A bright rain of democracy.

The sky was grey as sheep

And tumbling over itself on low legs

But the rain was wearing lights under its tights

And strip lighting in the stitching of its jackets.

I saw in the park in front of the house

A Singer sewing machine freshly painted black.

Its treadle was pumping up and down

When the woman who was sitting at it saw me look at her

She looked up and shaking her head a little

She smiled and shook her head a little again and stated:

‘I am just an ordinary democrat’,

And when I looked as if

I was about to reach for a quiver of words

She repeated herself without emphasis:

‘I am just an ordinary democrat—

Take me as I am or not at all.’

I began to walk across the park towards her,

Ready to hand in my gun, ready to vote,

Ready to vanish, ready to disappear,

Wanting only to be her servant in all things great and small.

I will take you as you are or not at all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

La Terre des Hommes

Fancy meeting you out here in the desert:

Hallo Clockface.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aughawall Graveyard

Lonely lonely lonely lonely:

The story with a middle only.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Difficulty that is Marriage

We disagree to disagree, we divide, we differ;

Yet each night as I lie in bed beside you

And you are faraway curled up in sleep 

I array the moonlit ceiling with a mosaic of question marks;

How was it I was so lucky to have ever met you?

I am no brave pagan proud of my mortality

Yet gladly on this changeling earth I should live for ever

If it were with you, my sleeping friend.

I have my troubles and I shall always have them

But I should rather live with you forever

Than exchange my troubles for a changeless kingdom.

But I do not put you on a pedestal or throne;

You must have your faults but I do not see them.

If it were with you, I should live for ever.

Paul Durcan