BEAUTIFUL TO WATCH

Since the accident I walk slower,
Go to physio once a month and get laid,
I wish, get laid out, bitch, I love her.
My wheelchair is a lightweight model,
Stows away in the car just in case
And sometimes I give in and use it,
Spin myself down to the corner mailbox.
Jamie is coming to stay with me
For a few days, he doesn't get much time
To relax and he likes it here, the sea
And the countryside restore him.
I first met him at a match, he bowled
six overs of uninhibited pace,
Took three wickets including mine
And scored a glorious and sudden nought.
We went out to eat and became friends;
He missed his dad I think and well,
My kids are a long way away,
Grown up and making babies so
I let him walk all over me.
He made it into a county side,
On a trial, no contract but
A good chance of making the team
If he could just bowl straight
Long enough to do consistent damage.
He ran too, cross country and marathon,
one of those athletes, so beautiful to watch.
When I fell off the cliff he came
To the hospital and laughed,
It was funny I suppose, I hate flying.
He said he was going to Europe,
The county hadn't offered him a contract
And he had taken a job selling cars.
That was four years ago, and now
He's different, no more sport
Ever, but he doesn't let it get to him,
He wrote and told me so, last week.
I can't wait to see him, he'll be here
Any minute now in his new van,
There he is, turning the corner,
And I wave him into a space;
The ramp comes down and Jamie,
His smart electric chair zooming
Nearly runs me down, 'You old bastard,'
Punches me with a crooked hand;
I can feel it, the disease that will kill him
But he can still hit me where it hurts.

LOW LIGHT

The old man went down slowly
On to his knees.
He was already dead, I think.
His dog kept walking,
Trailing lead.
He had on one of those plastic collars,
Stop him eating himself.
The old man rolled over to his left,
Head landing on the concrete.
I couldn't hear the sound it made,
From up on the rooftop.
In a moment passers-by began to realise
And they converged on the still form.
The dog reached the corner and turned round.
I heard sirens closing. I started shooting.
Soon a crowd surrounded the man.
The little dog scurried up,
But he couldn't get through the ring of people,
So he trotted over to the railings.
The ambulance arrived and took the man away.
A couple of people hung around,
But nobody seemed to notice the dog
Squatting forlorn under the streetlamp.

I took a couple of shots of him.

CAUSE OF DEATH

Thing with dead mothers, you never know when they'll come back and haunt you.
You bury them, and you think, that's it, you'll be doing your own laundry. 

Acute renal failure, they said, kidneys up the creek. Well I'm not so sure about it. My 

brother has an idea she gave up, left it to Jesus, what with the Old Man at it with that 

Latin woman, and both of us knocking up our girlfriends one after the other. And the 

laundry, sure. I don't know though, you don't spend all that time swelling up in pain, 

suffering, to get out of a little washing, not even if you're a Catholic. Catholic as fuck, 

the sisters; mum, the youngest, first one off to heaven. 

Aunty Lillian, The Ward Sister, had rung to say we should come. Middle Aunty Celia

meets us, she's in floods. They held mum's hands, her eyes fluttered and she was gone.

Big Aunty put a blue arm around Middle Aunty's shoulders. Me and him leave them 

grieving.

I think she just died, like people do. Unlucky, so young. At least she never knew
about us, the sex and drugs and all that, the divorces. Well, not the divorces anyway, or
Himself, at it again, and again, but no, I think she died of love, of a broken heart. My 

daughter Sophie, The Teacher, arrived. Same eyes. Same hair. Same name.

HERE THERE BE HUMANS


The last explosions
travelled along their own lightwaves
to a million possible futures.
Embers have cooled and a pall of dust
rising from the dark world
is split apart by new mountains.
Trickling breezes gather
swirling into potential storms.
The signal from the first bomb disintegrates
as it strikes the giant star
thousand mile long flames reaching out
each tip pulsing gold.

On the reawakening world rain forms lakes.
At the edges crawling slime.
More light penetrates the clouds.
The signals one after another
reach the distant star.
Millennia disappear into space. 

When the world has grown into lush green
with long grasses and swaying trees
the poles are disguised again by plastic ice.
Circling storms break the silence.
The first eggs begin to fall
cracking in flaming streams
slowing in the  atmosphere
tiny wings breaking free
scales reflecting the green earth
eyes the colours of starbursts.
The new world slowly turns
and the skies are filled with dragons.

PEACHES AND CREAM

My first fuck wasn't Geraldine Welby, no, and if I met her now I wouldn't if she asked; godbotherer. Still, she gave me a few pointers. Not that I knew what to do with a pointer once I had one. Our first close encounter wasn't really what you'd call an actual fuck, in the conventional sense, more a kind of sudden awareness that took me unawares, if you follow.

 
In the long vacation from school I would fly out to wherever my parents were based at the time and spend the whole summer playing with the servants, swimming in the warm sea, going to functions and stuff, like you do, or I'd go fishing off the end of one of the jetties and catch nothing but bloaters, bloaters and more bloaters. Annoying; everyone else caught everything else in the sea and I caught bloaters. When I took a skiff out, oh yes, then I caught pomfret and parrot fish and nearly a shark once. Well, the shark nearly caught me but I didn't know. Somebody shouted to me as I beached the boat and I looked back to see the fin flashing as it turned away, slicing through the water, not very fast, straight out of the inlet. I nearly had my first fainting fit but instead that evening I had my first fuck on the verandah of the P.A. Chairman's Residence. 

There were three boys out from school and we tended to stick together, playing cricket for the Commerce Club 2nd XI usually against teams from the Forces or a P&O side made up of spindly clerks with no idea what good coaching can do for boys with a cruel disregard for age or size. The P.A. Chairman's do was for families and there were girls there, Geraldine Welby for one, and she cornered me as usual. I think she took it in turns but it seemed that she was always nearly touching me, her skin kind of feinted by me and she smelled of Johnson's Baby Powder, and I suppose I did too which may have had a lot to do with it all. I think of it as the shark attack evening now. 

Parties were very organised affairs with acts, sailors in costumes usually, but that's another story and half way through the evening I felt quite ill. Scoffing too much of The English Cold Store peaches and cream probably but whatever it was, I was taking a stroll round the verandah to get some air and at the back of the house I met a girl completely different to Geraldine Welby, to anyone or anything ever. She held a glass and she raised it, tipped back her head and for a moment just stayed like that, then she ran her tongue over her lips and as she looked down again she saw me. She filled the glass from a clear bottle of Gordon's Gin, took a sip, put it down and looked at me. She reached under her dress and something ripped. The sounds from the party on the lawn drifted faintly as she slowly raised her dress and fixed it in a black patent belt. Her naked legs were not like the naked legs I'd seen at the pool. 

She carefully undid my grey flannels, button by button, pulled us both down to the boarded floor. I began to tremble and she helped me. She dug her nails into my buttocks and held on to me. The pain made me wince but I wouldn't have stopped for anything. I did, though, pretty soon, I couldn't quite keep up the momentum. No amount of coaching would have made a difference then, no. She rearranged her dress and sipped her gin. I stood up and turned away; only my mum and matron had seen me naked from the front like that. Well, not quite like that. 

"Good boy", she whispered as I limped away. I heard the rasp of a match and smelled cigarette smoke. 

ARRIVAL

The southwest wind came at high tide
Bringing smokey rain,
And wave upon wave breaking
Over rocky shore,
Twisting the sand, creamy
With bursting bubbles.
Hanging air was warm to touch.
Morning was at noon,
Day and sunset dissolved
Into evening's grey.
The sky sparked, birds,
Quick and low, flew homeward.
Insects mostly hid.
Snakes in the grass sipped
Electric air, laced
With the smells of fear.
Pariah dogs observed
From every sheltered corner,
And small boys
Running in the rain,
Their silver skins
Like fishes flashing,
Catching monsoon's moon.

KISSING COUSINS


Is it yourself? Says Murphy. How are yer?

It turns out the first coachload is early this year. A convention of nuns, a side
of beefy hurlers, a pair of peculiar fun lovers, thirteen born again ugly arseholes
and a long thin sciolist looking to sharpen up his act.

You visited the spot? Says I. It's been a long time.

Sure, me and Malone first at the wall, the others in a line, taking aim.

I'm reminded. Murphy, the Misses Hoolighan ... ?

Ah, the brave colleens, well, me and Malone, we trowed one innem each, before
and after, took turns on the road back, let them off by the gate at Raheenagh 
Church. Father Twomey heard their confessions, they said, tree Hail Marys. We
dropped the guns in the Deen, you know the score

Yeah, I know the score. Up the Republic and bless the dollar. My regards,
says I, to Malone.