Little girls doused in their mother’s perfume
Demented seaman with the soot-flecked moustache
Crooked-legged alco ladies lamenting
This street corner set for joy on a greying day

Rhinestone homeward angel long gone
Star-crossed Christy peels Christ from a post
Edwardian Alison in threadbare furs fairs ‘cross a black frost street
Black dead thoughts make the Wednesday meet

Welcome to reality
It’s how you dress up
You see it, now you don’t
Maybe one day you’ll see the point

Soldier on they say and smile
Sat there praying all the while
That sweating thus we’ll tip the still
With tinctures then they’ll print their pill

I can grate on you without
The shame the pain or any doubt
It’s something that you’re born to see
Now come and earn your black degree

Welcome to reality
It’s how we dress it up you see
First you see it, then you don’t
Maybe now you get the point?

———————————————————————————————–

Duke Ellington
Scribbled John
Coltrane’s name
Into his little brown book

You understand
Duke’s scribble
Would cause a
Calligrapher to expire

He wrote expressly
For his players,
Duke. Some allowance
Being made for a soloist

Some doubted Coltrane
As a man for ballads,
Sideways speaking, his
Escapade was confined most grandly.

—————————————————————————————–


You’d want not
To do your wrists in
With the incessant
Writing of poems

Tis, so it’s said
Better to serve the interlude,
A favour also
To one’s keening mind

Brains are funny things
And you’d not want it all dried up
Too liable then to be concussed
By the blow of some drunken codger

It’s hard to say
Where they come from, poems
All I’m saying is to mind your faculties
Lest this blessed magnet have no further use for you

——————————————————————————————————-


One can be corrupted, you know
As silly a thing as it sounds;
I’ve seen saints rage unholy tirades,
In a tame sort of tawdry manner, albeit

Yes there exists a sweet purity
In forgiving the follies of your neighbour
Before lashing him repeatedly with good vigour,
Forgiveness has its place alright

Even now there’s a fool troubles my mind
His proximity alone shames nuns into hiding,
Great remonstrators have held court, oh the drama;
We had to kill him in the end.

————————————————————————————————————

As an older person I am obliged
To proffer these tidbits. They may well
Prove erroneous, long after you’ve lost
Whoever it was promised first their value

All that I can venture, is that this may
Be in the very nature of giving advices
Not to mention the serendipitous manner
In which they are hoped to be received

Yes without taking too much of your time
Understand that it will come your turn
To glint the eye and tighten the urging grip
So that some other young scoundrel may scoff

——————————————————————–

They may have captured it better then
Before digital tricks and that cursed bug
Something like an old camera rigged
Up perhaps to your father’s gramophone?

Then again the wrinkled and greying
Are prone to shine their fading lamps
Haphazard somehow in a manner revealing,
Pertaining to equipment I can only splutter

If it were horses you’d want the knowing of
Jesus boy I could scour your very mind in a blink
That were if the notion were to stir in me
Which e’en had I allowed it, never was enough to break the peace

————————————————————————————————


Pass down that hat, boy!
I’ve a mind for adventure.

Roving along hi ho we go
Fill the canteen with good water please

I say, what goes yonder?
Stay close now there’s danger

Nantucket, we’ll cross that old gone bridge
Injuns. Must’ve come up from the Free state

We’re going to make a trade, m’boy;
Quilts and beads, for to please the women

————————————————————————————————


The difficulty being, are you listening?
Yes, it being, against the Cuban: it’s their rhythm
Syncopated in a fashion unfamiliar to us, I mean, the Irish
There are few at hand who would dance at them

Now of course I am drawing the musical comparison
As a beneficial equivalent when attempting to dissect
The problem in its entirety. It’s a rare one indeed
That possesses the inbuilt ability even to see themselves pass with a good Cuban

So what I’m trying to get at here
We pick out the likely candidate
And from an early age immerse them
So that they have every chance

If they can compete in those realms with the Cuban
So too can they with the elite in any culture
With all of their rhythmic and technical peculiarities.
There are musicians that come to know it…

Come, let’s rare the pale Irishman, and yes the fighting colleen
That can measure up to any aficionado’s fancy
And eme-, don’t you call me ridiculous yet, Flanagan,
And emerge one day perchance, as the finest fighter this world has seen.

—————————————————————————————-

He’s a passionate one that, Jesus, what’s his name?
If he’d only plant his feet in reality
It’s as simple as black to white, call me coarse
And maybe I am but I’m a realist, now have that

Yes, ideas a bit too far-fetched, God love him
And that’s before he’s the drink in him
There’ll not ever be an Irishman
To stand with the best of good Cubans, nor the black American for that matter

He did bring that whiskey to be fair to him
And in all honesty I’ve seen young lads at the guitar
Hear me out, I’ve seen them
They can get a handle on the outside stuff, I’ve seen it

We’d spend a generation getting up to speed
With the bloody Cubans, next of all
We’ve fallen out of form with the Russians
Facts are facts, boys. Make sure he pays up.

———————————————————————————————————-


Certain things have to be got down
Until they’re intuitive, you’ve to drill it.
Eventually you can get a feel for the finer thing
It would seem that culture has a great thing to do with it.

———————————————————————————————–

When the next curly-headed kid comes straight out
The womb playing them deep blues
We have the habit of saying:
They are possessed of ‘an old soul’

One bespectacled performer comes to mind as having reported
‘Feeling like a black man trapped inside a white man’s body.’
It goes beyond the breadth and depth of the thing vocally
Past still some rare raising of the choir from strings

It’s a connection to the motherland
The black land that bore us too, mind
And if you’re wired up right
Then you’re simply more prone to being electrified

So you can read the hundred books on it
Or debate with drunks in pubs
Chances are though, like the rest of us,
You’re only wired up to the moon

——————————————————————————————-


What makes a good Irishman?
Something that comes between
Watercress, poetry, boxing and whisky
With the diagrams as living organisms

Drink your whiskey
Take a beating
Write the poetry
Watercress for tea

There’s an aulde dishcloth
That yer da wears about the house
As a makeshift flatcap
Talking off the top of his head

He once rinsed
A quarter bottle
Of High Commissioner
All down his face and neck

And came home that night to find you
Wearing his good cloth cap about the house
With everybody in stitches.
He didn’t take it too well, bless him. But that’s another story.

————————————————————————————

Uncles are known to be possessed of a strange cunning
They say it relies upon their accepted foolhardiness.
It’s a quare boy indeed who can
Brave cognisance of his own shortcomings for a steely moment

It’s an unsuspected thing altogether
I’ve seen overweight men leap buildings
And though the cracks of their arses were showing
Sure didn’t they land back with your busted ball?

And all they’d to give was a grunt
After you’d managed your faint ‘thank you.’
Uncles aren’t to be ladled
With the everyday commonplace things

Rather they’d be off selling fruit
As you pass up their rust-jacket reels again.
We don’t take the trouble to understand them
Sure what would be the point?

And then of all things we envy their triumph
When some yellow man trickles out counterfeit tales
The puddle spelling something vague, yet essential.
Them boys aren’t to be understood at all.

——————————————————————————-


I say, it should be mandatory!
And not one of them let away from it
A nation of savages, battering each other
Until there is finally respect and due course given!

Yes, ye old ninny, we do see your point
All we ask is that you refrain from inciting
Mass violence, regardless the respect due those wounded and maimed
You’re perfectly entitled, sir, please just a little civility

The trouble now as I see it, ahem
Is that not every child is fit for athletics
In that they are incapable of even the slightest
And of course in the case of undiagnosed invalids

Yes! The man in the crowd! That lonely child.
How do we remedy his situation? Look at poor Bell there
More talent than the rest of us put together
But he was suffering beyond our very, oh Jesus

Well that’s a matter for the parents, and of…
It’s a matter for society, for the community, but…
Look I don’t think either or any of us can take responsibility for…
But yes I do wish we could’ve saved Bell.

There’s some very good would-be athletes out there
But we’d need a bloody psychiatrist.
I mean we can’t turn him pro at forty, can we?
We maybe could you know, let me have a look

Anxiety and all the rest of it, there’s a lot going on now
Specialist centres! That’s it, I’ve got it!
Specialist centres for the athletically bereft
For the uncared for and exempt. Yes.

They’d be an awful target you know.
Some sort of regulation would really be
Yes I mean we’ve only to look back
Shall we wash our hands then?

————————————————————————–


So yes, indeed, we were glad to announce
Young Bell is in for the Jr Paralympics
Young bell? The man’s forty years of age
You say nothing, he’s being tipped for gold…

17 year young Irish Bell, who I must say fights with a great maturity,
Is getting stuck in here to this talented Ukrainian
Bell unleashes a two fisted attack, a furious assault…
The poor Ukrainian is coming apart in there, he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on

You see Bell got gold there in the Paralympics?
Yeah he done well, that fella he fought
The final, he was tearing him limb from limb by the end
Aye that man’s been collecting bronze all his days

So here what’s Bell’s disability?
Aw, he’s got severe tinnitus
Jesus, that doesn’t sound too serious
It affects the balance. Here he comes-