Tag: poem

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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 to buy
discounted cleaning spray
and words may not mean tomorrow what they mean today
but breeeeeeeeathe;
dig for voice when you strain from want to say,
though we know that the roll of the tune can matter
more than the words we sing
and power is busy and to its children will cling
and what really punctures us happens faraway
to the hearts of others.

And water can shimmer and glint and take our weight and
contain everything that we meant and
hold us in and hold us up if we only stroke stroke strooooke
past the depths where we sank and
the shores where we broke.

And from a distance many things sit pretty but
touch is the more true
and through parts of me folds the feel of
you.

And times we sow solitude and let it grow
teeth that chew loneliness into
this coat rack we call soul
whose shadows are never quite the whole
even if they towering sway and
you may not be tomorrow who you are today.

This is the way:
light will play on the surfaces and
we will dream forwards and backwards and
Love is wild animal
Wild animal is pilot.

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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 yet, our purity.
Isn’t it always the way?
Tigers belong in zoos,
Far from stony muck,
And farmers’ lambs,
And playgrounds on a Sunday.

Our latest brand, thinner beast.
Who in the name of God,
Would wrap in Pennys’ clothes,
Her medicine bones,
And swung by outraged friends,
Ebay them to Leitrim?

The Celtic Dream- an old ruin.
Isn’t it a shocking thing?
She turned up on site,
Hungry in cold bare feet,
Unable to tell postmortem muscle
From funeral meat.

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Poem: Us & Then (Exabyte)

Us & Then (Exabyte)

Billows of dust
Thickened and dry
Colour of rust
Blotting the sky

Comments flicker in the fallen night
(A trillion stars in a trillion galaxies)
Flickering, bickering, faraway old light of
1000000000000000000000000 stars

Go on, get a good kick in now, and
Feel the rush of a boot point scored
A fist in the face of – oh such a punchable face –
They that say, They own the way.

Better the dust,
Hunker below,
Bunkered in crust:
Devil you know.

Us and them assemble again online
(1 megabyte of terabytes of data)
Armed and barbed and certain as hell of our
1000000000000000000000000 bytes

Us and Them and then and then
Only an idiot would think like that
Or like that, or that, or that and
What else have you got?

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Solstice on Skye Road

To watch from a distance
the world settle in for its night
from a bank high up under the Skye Road
where I can make out
comforting lights in windows
cars in their driveways
and the beam of a lighthouse all
blink, blink, wait…
blink, blink, wait…

Somebody below is driving carefully along the low road.
below, below, billow, bellow
Wind rocks solstice grass,
on a bank high over solstice ocean
orange lights flicker over Ballyconneely,
drizzle drapes the blue tent
as colour slowly drains from the sky
in that long solstice goodbye.

Goodbye
    good buy
    good boy

The year’s a turning,
and two thousand seventeen,
is flying by, flying, flung:
I search for the lighthouse blips again
and ask for a calm
to seep into my gaps
Blink, blink, wait…
Dimmer now, hiding under mist.

Bofin, to Omey to Claddaghduff,
Cleggan, around the mess of edge to Clifden,
the flat bogs out to Erris Hill,
and down to Roundstone:
dreamy unreachable comfort
of lights coming on in faraway windows
like rainbow held at its distance

If I approach
it will break
as waves where they meet shore
so I will stay here and watch
from a bank high up under the Skye Road
as the dark settles.

Donal Kelly, June 2017

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Poem: Breaking News

people in dublin

This poem is called Breaking News

This is it guys
It’s happening
Clear the decks
This is breaking
I want pictures
Get the victim names
Find them on Facebook
Cross reference with LinkedIn:
We need names, faces, stories, now

Quick guys, quick
Stay ahead of the curve
This is the A&E
Not brain surgery
Find the hashtags
Twitter, Instagram
What’s trending?
What’s going on out there?

We have to be first with this
Video guys, we need video
Is there video?
Get on it
Draft up analysis
Open it for comments
See what it stirs up
We need his story
What’s his story?
Why did he do it?

Where are our headlines guys?
Massacre? Carnage? Bloodbath?
Get me a thesaurus
Is it enough?
Numbers people,numbers
This is happening
It’s big
It’s now
Get me some real numbers
What’s happening?

We don’t need all that stuff
It’s taking too long
Nobody cares
We can’t afford to wait
Go back to it next week
Get me tweets from world leaders
Get this on our Most Read

Be ready for the second wave
Are we getting hits?
Don’t forget the advertising slots
Review that linked content and suggested articles
How are the stats looking?
Are we up?

It’s too quiet
We have to seed the sharing
Or we will be lost
Can we get some comments going?
Get the ball rolling
Reaction guys, we need a reaction

Where are the damn headlines?
What’s going on?
We have to
Tell the people
What’s going on.

This is it guys
It’s happening
This is breaking
Clear the decks
Update the homepage
I want to see pictures
One with both politicians together?
Quick guys, quick
We have to
Stay ahead of the curve

Donal Kelly, Summer 2016

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Poem: Notifications (5)

The body it waits, all tensed up
For the next sudden ping,
[New message]
And from the top of the stomach,
When it hits,
Nerves spark and jitter.

The body is wired from the mind to the world,
[Permission required for 3 updates]
And tuned into so many sensory patterns
That warn, condemn, or condone,
[Rachel P commented on your status]
As traffic lights do our daily commute;
[Joe Below also commented on your status]
sentinels of safety.

[1 missed call at 20:19]

Our alarms are reverse engineered
[@fstopinfinifty started following you]
From the leafy world of ancestors,
Where survival depended upon
[@liveeverymoment liked your photo]
Knowing which notification meant run,
[You have 1 new friend request]
And which meant hide.

[open wifi detected]

The body is tired, and alone in bed,
But the phone it beeps;
[New message (2)]
One hundred miles away
[New message (3)]
She is tapping a screen-
Sending out alarms
[New message (4)]
To rustle a body’s wiring.

[Low battery: Please plug in your charger]

How we crave to commit our attention,
[4 people viewed your profile]
To relevant updates and bytes,
[reminder: meeting at 2pm]
Scrolling through days,
[Breaking News: Uber Shooter arrested]
From so far away,
[restart required]
Hanging on the next sincere reminder,
[Installing updates (2/3). Do not switch off]
That we remain plugged in,
[Configuring 99%]
Worthy of remark,
[99%]
And are only guilty of being
[99%]
Easily Hacked

[@walterberlin79 favorited your tweet]

How did we ever survive without them?
[No service. Emergency calls only]

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I am (Poem)

road connemara maam 35mm film

I am

The car jolts and rocks along the track, as though dragged by chains to a chased beast.

I am the beast.

The indistinct greyed-over bogs and swollen rivers coming down the hills whish by the windows

I am the window.

Father is a good driver, but sometimes an angry driver, and now he has eyes only for the road.

I am the road.

The bends are the same as always but the speed has changed them into whipthumping snarls

I am the snarl.

I know that when we return he will shout at them all but they will soak it up like the wind

I am the wind.

I will flow, bicker, bellow, snicker,

Through the eves of your dropping moods
To harass the loose tarp that hides the part that broods
And raise up windcatching seeds to blow
At soft ground where only hard things grow

I know that we will leave again after the shouting and drive more slowly and be swallowed up by the falling skies

I am the sky.
In its endless I fly.

December 2015

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Spring Fishing (poem)

A punt on the shore of Lough Corrib Baurisheen

Spring Fishing

Am I in a trap?
Did I build it myself?

The punt bobs on the waves between Broochen and the point of Fournaugh
This is no weather for fishing; no weather for anything bar the

Seat next to the Stanley and the kettle hissing for tea
And the steam of decades sunk in dust and debris

Am I in a dream?
Is it my dream?

The oars dip in and out of the cold rolling still-winter water
Tufted ducks scatter over the Sandy as workers over

Those bridges in London built thick for the traffic
By which you once waited past six while I darted

Are you still coming?
Where will you go?

The oars squeak against the gunnel where the hand-carved oar-pins are fixed
Worn as smooth as my numb hands are rough, like

The creases of sea seen from the steel Ferry stern
While the hull cut a furrow through all that I learned

Am I still open to the air?
Can I hear the quietness out there?

The rod bends suddenly with the pull of brikeen-hooked trout
Just as I cross the Sandy’s shallow at the point where

Currents of no return meet currents of no surrender
And I am spring fishing

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Máméan: Photos and Words

mamean in galway

Máméan, Pass of the Birds

According to legend, St. Patrick blessed Connemara from a well at the top of the pass, and slept there (“Leaba Padraic”=”Patrick’s bed”), though to my limited knowledge there was stuff going on there before that too. There is now a little chapel next to the well and mounds of stones marking the stations of the cross. It is a remote rocky outpost where winds seem to gather, and stone in so many forms fill up to the changeable sky.

Mamean Gate, Connemara, Galway, Ireland (black and white)

Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland
Mamean, Connemara, Galway, Ireland

On Máméan

On Mountains of Máméan stone
Mounds of stones
lead up to the chapel on the Pass of the Birds
Wearied by the winds that funnel through the reeks
by ‘leaba Padraic’

We follow the pilgrim path scratched up the slope,
A journey distilled, to resonate like a lone string,
With all the other journeys,
Tracing the same strewn line,
That never seems to change
Until it is suddenly gone forever.

Names of the dead are scratched on scraps of slate
Scattered on the alter dug into the rock
And left to mark the passings by those who pass
Tracing a path back to the pagans
To a well’s water as deep as the will to drink
In sacred places.

And most of us,
When we reach a summit
Add another stone to the stones
That mark the summit,
Of the mountains
And the Gods or the absence of Gods
That the mountains themselves
Are scratchings of.

On the Pass of the Birds
The grand scheme of things,
Is momentarily reduced
To one foot in front of the other
On a winding path of white shards
Where we lean into the Mámean wind.

Mamean relics, Connemara, Galway, Ireland (black and white)

Photos were taken on a Hasselblad 553 ELX, and a Canon AE-1 Program (first and last images) Ilford Delta 100 film, developed using Rodinol (1+25). There were, unfortunately some streaks on the film after developing. This is the way of film I suppose.

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A poem from a man to his bride on their wedding day

Daffodils rising, raising yellow heads to bob in March winds.
Driving from Aberdeen across a Scottish Motorway,
Over the Irish sea in the belly of a ferry
South from Belfast and west from Dublin
West to Galway City and beyond,
Until the road narrows to to an end by the lake
Where grass still grows slow down the middle.
Driving with you, at my side
The miles go by and by.

Our journeys now more than mingle,
Our path is a path for two,
From a car stacked high with candles and plans
To the lights of ceremony and family and friends
Stand here, sign this, now, you may, you may,
Standing with you, at my side
The days go by and by

Pipes carrying oil along the North Sea floor,
Patients looking for that steadying hand
Steadfast, amid the Spring winds, winter frosts,
Rare sunburned summer days, autumn fruit,
A house within earshot of the Corrib when it gales,
The rise and fall of each wave on the shore,
Of each season on the soil,

Daffodils, fallen leaves,
Echos of those who passed on,
Become the path beneath out feet,
Resonate in the roots we weave.
Growing, with you, at my side,

From Portacarron shore to where we roam
When you are at my side, I’m home.

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Poem: The Little Things

The smallest thing; flap of a finch’s wing
Dart of a blackbird’s eye
Rising of spring from buried roots with a cry

Strange to be here again
Late, behind schedule, delayed, out of time,
Yet back at the beginning, where we met
Busy but immobile
The beat of your long-absent feathers
Only memory’s furrows to plough again and again
To sow once more in wonder down
In the winterground

The lightest touch; dewbead dropping
Gossamerglint in that old dawn
Circles in the sky tilting round

Arranged to be here again,
Boxes to tick, lists of lists to fit in,
Install, edit, reboot, compile, deploy, finish, begin
Work and its workings flow
Keeping order, version five dot oh dot oh dot oh
Hollow-chested eye-driven seeker and kin
Chasing the homeroad- getting steeper and dim:
All them words to keep you company
And not a shred of sense between them

The littlest play of light; flicker in a pool
Dances in the ripples,
Lilting out in eager chasing waves

Is it a purpose worth promising
That keeps us from falling off
this slanting Earth?

Creative Writing class assignment: Week 7. A short poem about the rising of spring from the dead-looking winterground, flecks of green and bloodswipe peeking and poking from the earth. I wrote this just before the class and have tinkered with it since. I wanted to get whisks of some numb office life amid the flow of season, and the little little changes by tiny measures. Donal Kelly March 20142014

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Poem: An artist regrets having never committed

seagull over Atlantic ocean

An artist regrets having never committed

Streets outside the curtains
Draw me back
A bad sketch of a hollow tune
Hums above the others in the room
For her, my vacant ruin.

Waking in a strange old bed can be lonely
Is this where all those veining streets lead?
I might have said: my one, my only
But you know I put things off instead
For her, my poorly sculpted head

Scenes outside the windows
Trace me out
Paint sloshes where I grip to sleep and doubt
Did her hand brush off this or graze these?
For her, the heaviest ideas

Waking in a strange old bed can be hard.
Is this where all my streets began?
I must have lied and lay in a cold doorway
Nestled in etchings of spent nights, stale ends, floorsway
For her, the road’s oldest bends

Streets outside the curtains
Fill me in
People going past and going round again
My paints leak back down into the sheets
For her, my tuneless retreats.

What you were told about things like love
(Now that you’re old enough to learn firsthand)
Were merely scaffolds to get the building up
Until it was stable enough to stand

Creative Writing Class Week 5. The idea was to use the last line of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy called "Warming Her Pearls" which went like this "I feel their absence and I burn" and write something that touched on obsession. I drifted wide but their is an obsessive idea here somewhere, in the waking in a strange old bed and the dedication of things to Her and maybe at the end of streets, maybe at the beginning and so on; a few insecure threads. I had an idea of a unstable poem, an adult, after the facts, stuck in his bed or in his own head, maybe an artist, the world calling to him, sketching him out, the real world outside the window. I like the idea of scaffolds, the frames we erect to get a building off the ground and into the air. Hopefully I can revisit the space.

Donal Kelly, February 2014

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Poem: Solutions

Do not forget me when the door clicks shut
Let me linger and fidget as a breeze
I would prefer to persist
Like the smell of toast or coffee or Febreeze
And my foregone exit resist

The lake at its bloated winter zenith
Broad boatless surface burying slowly in its creep
The low jutting piers, the barks of scrawny trees
The green shore of summer now sunk grey deep

I would prefer to retreat
Like a high tide leaving things hidden
In the sand beneath our feet

The river blasting down its dug channel’s funnel
Mudbrown foaming rage hurtling against stubborn city concrete
The bridge’s pillars below my old borrowed Peugeot
Mudbrown roar muffled around the tinny engine drone

Do not desert me as I try to wade
From dream to dream, apologising in between
Clinging to the warmth of a snug burrowed bed
Hiding from decisions or what they mean
Wishing the weather would dictate my fate
Wash me into winter’s furrowed stream

January 2014

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Poem: Rainy Day in Renvyle

low clouds and rain in Maam valley Connemara

Rainy Day in Renvyle

Rain sweeps across the wide open,
Clouds rolling in from the west,
Tears from the sky set in motion
Blown by a wind that won’t rest.

Ceaseless the changes chase over,
The shelterless landscape at speed.
Soft underfoot grows the clover.
Soft as a heart full of need.

It’s hard to stand tall in this weather.
it’s hard to stand still in this land.
But deep as the bonds of a brother,
Run roots from the ground where we stand.

The flesh of a bog keeps things fresher,
But we can’t sink in history’s grip
Traditions give way to new efforts,
Old lessons will easily slip.

Rain sweeps across the Atlantic,
The tide rises high on the coast
The beauty of sloped Connemara,
Slips into your sight like a ghost.

A sense of a place that seems empty,
Or savage, desolate, bleak.
Is rich to the eye that knows plenty,
We find what we set out to seek.

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The Critic

When she pressed on her glasses and drew the words near
Their shape and their meaning began to ring clear
The humdrum around her then faded away
And her mind drifted back to an earlier day

Where raucous and ready with small expectations
She grew where her people had raised generations
Her youth and her playtime an innocent phase
So simple compared to the modern malaise

How blissful not knowing, she thought with a tear
From schoolhouse to boreen, from house to the pier
Where with waves washing in and with light fading out
They lay and they listened to sounds all about.

The rustlings and chirpings and roll of the lake
Young limbs in young skin where nothing feels fake.
So swift in its going soon lost in the past
But convinced at the time that forever would last.

Disturbed from her drifting she turns and she breathes,
The hall now seems small and her mind ill at ease.
Some children tear by with ambition for fun,
Ready and restless and waiting to run.

For them a more complex demanding surround,
Abstracted from nature and far from the ground.
In mazes of data and bands of distraction,
Time to themselves is just given a fraction.

So what do you think? asks a voice from her right.
She turns and replies with the speaker in sight.
It’s too sentimental, indulgant at best;
It’s clumsy and sloppy and I’m not impressed.

His face drops a little and taken aback,
He stutters Yes maybe, it really does lack.
But don’t be so worried the lady now grins;
It’s about taking part and not about who wins.

So wise from the world here’s a word to the wise-
Take care with the things that you choose to despise.
For people and moments are passing events,
And soon you will wonder where everything went.

Stumbling and fumbling the young man turns amazed,
And reaches to write down her words in a daze.
But when he looks up there is noone to see,
Only kids racing round him and roaring with glee.

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cast/go

Cast it back,
Cast it out,
Freckled innocence,
Blooming doubt…

*********************************
The present is the presence of past.
Wrap and preserve it since nothing will last?

********************************

If daily we have the same lessons,
And become as the message itself
Absorb and engage all the pith of the page,
And freely grow fat from our wealth.

Then surely there is a real balance,
And surely a place there to rest,
Where distant loud rumbles are voices that grumble,
Where unity comes from the test.

But what is this stress that still rises,
From the base to the edges of things?
And agitates toes and our eyelids that close,
With a drum beat that constantly rings.

Can we then go and hide in our habits,
And forget how the ardent hope stings?
Or mumble some mumblings to blunt it’s mute humming,
And fumble the freedom that sings?

I was once off away in the ether,
But now tied to a solid real post,
Where I can’t quite see how I might see her and be,
Left idly behind as a ghost.

And time is as usual skipping,
As fast as we try to be born,
Just lounging around where the air meets the ground,
And the dead of the night meets the morn.

And you know all too well of the fleeting,
The instants that counted in vain,
Are grasped and held tight for a short evening flight,
Where nothing is ever the same.

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Thus ends…

Thus ends the age of exploration
Now Rules of Grammar and stuffy constants constrain
Fixed and steady, RIGID and arbitrary
While whipped on a whippet of wind,
Deserted, rejected, injected and binned,
Age turns the skin inside out
And indoors retreated, energy sapped by drought,
Deflated, negated,
A simple progression fated comes about,
This mortal poison combines,
A mutual perversion politely arrives

But hey,

Was there ever another way?
Was there another road cut into the mountain?
We are mostly space
But quantum freedom is not our own to chase

Gullible gilled and designed for speed,
Gaffed distilled for the life we need…

Arched around the margins,
Angled in the main,
Moving through the darkness
Echoing the same.

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Turlough

winter water levels lough corrib

Turlough

Here comes the flood
The beat of rain in the dark,
Here comes the water,
Streams of pain make their mark.

A shoreline appears,
From the stone come angry waves,
A sinking in tears,
Of moments that nobody saves

The flotsam and leftovers,
Of the lost and the gone,
Are tearing at the souls
Of those that move on

The lake is returning,
Chewing on edges of fields,
They can be mourned,
Sadly in deepness that seals

The Turlough is born,
Again from the summer’s retreat,
The seasons will turn,
But seconds will hammer and beat

The friction and filing
Of the self by the slip
Is scraping the core,
Of the centre we grip

A surface so rough,
Broke up by currents and air,
The thought is enough
To flood the heart with despair

Our world can be dark,
Punctured by few days of sun,
The way can be stark,
These wet roads flow into one.

Sit there and watch
As it swallows the ground in a gale
Kneel now to catch
The sunken reminding detail

The flotsam and leftovers,
Of the lost and the gone,
Are tearing up the souls
Of those that move on

The friction and filing
Of the self by the slip
Is scraping the core,
Of the centre we grip