Battery Point
Its warm in the Pub, mottled radiators
and old photos of Portishead, blown up
to blur the faces of the dead,
who were so alive then with their bicycles
lined up beside the lake.
Outside, two hooded lovers
kiss on a winter beach
Oak and Holly exposed on this limestone ridge
between us and the estuary's big tide.
"A View of Two Bridges" the notice says
with a picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel
though neither of them are his.
I can remember the ferry
and both feats of engineering
built, celebrated, crossed.
It mentions also stitchwort growing here.
No stitchwort today, cold Feb and both bridges
hidden in the mist. Lost horizons.
Denny Island and Wales screened out
the world condensed to these old trees
a Great tit squawking in the wood.
Elaine Eveleigh
Eimear’s Holiday
Flowery Fists and Embroidery Kicks
I
Eimear shivered under the feeble
Monument of the millennial needle,
That celebrated
The celebrated
Drug dealers of Dublin,
They’d over-run the place, God love them,
With crack-heads
And smack-heads,
Their feats were repaid:
Their syringe was displayed
Next to Charlie Stewart P.,
His steadfast frown aimed at the Liffey.
Eimear had taken too much of the town,
“This far, no further, shall it prick me around”
She cried, as Dublin’s sun went down.
“This bus will take me to a new life,
By way of a cheap and uncomfortable flight
With the No-Care Airline,
Who’d gladly rob their blind
Mothers to send them packing to Spain-
Send them to hell or to Spain.
But, to spare drivers’ blushes,
I’ll not start on the buses,
Life’s too short for buses.”
But the needle- for junkies, could someone instruct her,
Or just a glorified lightning conductor?
(This is the first verse of an extended piece, to be continued
in future issues)
Chris Murray
I lie between the shadows
Still as the sky
Feel the bounce
Of the tap drip
And the damp
Smudgy air
Crawl out the gap
Beneath the door.
I wait
While drifts
Of voices edge close
Click of new shined shoes
On give-away tiles
Snap my ears wide
Fingers itch
To swallow words.
Like gushing rapids,
Children don't talk
They whisper.
With the glint of a blade
They prick holes
Ooze tears from
A best friend's eyes.
While I lie between the shadows
And like a plug hole
Suck them dry
Of their gossip.
Georgia Gatti
The Dam
What is history?
The second story of the Godman,
Circling the earth and saving the damned -
this kind of myth is history.
And me
And my will
and you -
Things that need one another to kill
A.R.A mystery.
Small things that pass by
Keep the lonely heart swollen,
Drawn from girls glances
What won't be stolen,
Loot thats the strange fruit we didn't expect
(Praying for survival to a heart kept inept) -
A stolen swallowed dead
Black man that poisons the system
And cuts off the head.
Land falls and its not the light that's dusk but the mind that's
dank
And the real life and the reel life both say what it tells you,
The risen ship sank.
This is like the exchange from you, to me -
Bringing small death to the life in the days of,
Stalled by the nice forever in the ways of -
Being sucked from what seems but is not beautiful,
The lazy worker, forgetting whats dutiful
Mining and finding, while his monitors fining him, Praying if not
now, when?
Complicit with his saviour,
Dirty waverer,
Knowing if not now - again?
In front of the dam,
About to be swallowed up
God can't keep promises then.
Peter Reid
