Trying to clean a room. Trying to clean a life. Home.
On Turning an Age
What have I learned but Nothing Nothings Somethings about nothings like Heart is wild animal Wild animal is pilot. Life is absence much as presence, names, stones, the splitting of sticks missyous strewn across the holy scape like erratics. Cavern deep, rope narrow one day bow, next day arrow. Some verses will be supermarket queuing…
Notes from the blunderground
Haven’t been on Twitter since Russia invaded Ukraine. Hot takes, meme noise, and am-i-the-asshole all powerless when that nasty power-bloated shit decided to assert his vision as of course, guns and bombs, death, blood and soil. Today I’m trying to stay off Instagram. Just for twenty four hours, just for today, just to feel that…
Soilmates (Short Story)
Out in the rhododendron, an old wind lies coiled lengthways along thick roots. The acidic slopes they twist through drop steeply towards the curve of the fjord. Sounds of the Atlantic and its dwellers drift up on younger, more eager airs. This tired wind has lost most of its voice, taken to a bed of…
Fragments, #438
I will go to the cafe, pull up the chair at the table by the window, and become at once both swallowed by the world as if sucked into the gob of a passing fish, and a poster of this little stub of universe hung up to make newcomers feel at home. I am that…
Short Story (after Rumi): The Dragon Charmer
( — after hearing the Rumi story from Matin B. on the London Underground — ) A poor snake charmer, feeling that he was passing his prime, went to the mountain to pray for a better life. “God, I have served you well,” he prayed. “I have paid my dues and expected little in return.…
Short Story: Constables Three
Thump thump thump of stiff hull on salty mound. Gannet gull tern rising and falling in and out of sight. View pulled apart to its original full width, in the broad hiss and hum of ocean passage. Three constables crouch in the lee of the short concrete wall at the stubby pier, their leaking boat…
Song: Deep Blue Eyes
demo memo recorded in Baurisheen. Crows scratching the air in the back garden. Early September 2019. Look at where the time has gone, how is this possible? See the line, it’s far away but Getting closer all the time I turn my back, try to run, but Can’t escape what’s in my mind. Anyway, anywhere,…
Essay: What does irony taste like?
A shallow meandering attempt to understand irony Here’s a fun way to generate a headache. What’s the definition of irony? Is it when you write a song called ‘Ironic’ that lists examples of irony but which aren’t technically ironic? First, here’s how a movie can get a definition to lodge in your memory. Exhibit A:…
Crit Bike race, Highfield Park, Galway, June 2019
Mucky June weather and the bottom fallen out of the stretch in May but this, this Saturday evening in the little park hidden away in a west city estate, is aglow with generous light. It throws muddy shadows from bikes as they swing round the circuit, on the flush summer grass, on the country flags…
Dispatches: throw another question on the fire
There’s an elephant in the room. Isn’t there always?. Hiding quietly behind a narrow strip of curtain folds. It’s this morning and I answer the phone to my Aunt and a minute later we’re arguing. Somebody mentioned politics. I don’t think the ‘green wave’ of last week’s election exists really except as a talking point…
Dispatches: vote for slugs
[image: Corrib river bank near NUI Galway on Ektar 120 via Hasselblad at 80mm; I expect this area will be re-purposed as per the planning permisison notice on the path, to give way to more student housing and carpark, and a “Dedicated Biodiversity Enhancement Area”. You’ll be grand, Nature, relax; we just need to fire…
Song Attempt: Please Talk
Somebody is grafitting the walls down by the docks. The docks are deep, the docks are deep, the docks are deep to let the ships in and for… Somebody is writing “I’m not well Please talk” on the walls. See inside, inside and outside, is silence and noise. The noise and the silences of one…
Tiger Wake
The Celtic Tiger, stone dead. Isn’t it awful, awful? She wandered onto the M6 Somewhere near Kinnegad, Into the brute smack Of a Lidl truck going west. The heft of headlines, snap rage. Isn’t it a real disgrace? Someone left the gate unlocked, Installed cheap low fences, Designed flimsy cages, And fired the nightwatchman. Question…
Photos: Galway Bay Cycling Paul Giblin Championship Race 2018
Sunday September 16th, 2018. Last race in the season for the club. Summer gone south with the swallows. I saw one, maybe the last, swooping out beyond the water tower. Riders arrive in ones and twos. There’s hesitation: run it out and back like a normal league race? More riders arrive. Nope, stick with the…
Battleroad (song)
battleroad. song about dislocation and zerosum narratives. Or not. Lyrics On the battleroad, on the battleroad, Whatever you were told, out on the battleroad. You don’t fall, when you are dropped Don’t know you’re moving, until the moving stops. You’ve got your stories, your history, and your glue. But can you stick it together, whatever’s…
Bikes on film: GBCC Criterium, Highfield Park, June 2018
Galway Bay Cycling CLub (GBCC) Criterium racing, Highfield Park, Galway City, Saturday evening, June 9th, 2018. Dry warm June. Tight clockwise circuit buried in one of Galway’s west side housing estates. Five right handers, two left handers, 2 speed bumps, one drag up, one drag down. Assorted bales of hay. All images Donal Kelly 2018.…
Short Story: Birds of a Feather
Joe waited until he was home alone before opening the bag. He dropped it on the kitchen table over a touristy place mat and scattering of unopened envelopes. His sweaty fingers gripped the zipper and the canvas spilled apart into a loose yawn. Neatly wrapped bundles of cash clumped in a corner. Joe had never…
St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Oughterard 2018
Toto pulling at the leash to gobble slices of white pan tossed along Main Street by a Bread-Exit delivery. A rowdy division of suffragettes clashing with a soldier. Sean Clancy’s MC mic getting scrambled with music from a raucous Rapunzel parody. A Men’s Shed rocket scattering smoke in the biting raw breeze. Numb thumbs struggling…
To Hanbury Gardens We Will Go
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row. The car pulled up outside the entrance and three siblings stepped out into the hot sunshine. Sharp light glared off the glass door and bleached white the surrounding wall. There was a woman…