Tag Archives: The Galway Review

Naming Things

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Naming Things

The Neander Valley
outside of Dusseldorf
is named after
Joachim Neander
a German poet
who liked to wander
lonely as a German poet
through this now eponymous valley
unaware that beneath his feet
lay the numb skull and bones
of a species whose name
would become synonymous
with brute stupidity:
Neanderthal,
named after the valley
which was named after
Joachim Neander.
That’s what we get to do,
name things
and judge their worth
we even got to name ourselves:
Homo Sapiens
Wise Man
and if that’s not hubris….

This poem first appeared in The Galway Review.

It also appeared a while back in Open Link weekend over at earthweal

Repartee

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Repartee
Slim gets off the no.3 bus
at the corner of Hastings and Main
-the corner of Desperate and Lost-
having travelled east on the 99 express,
his nose stuck in the feral stink
of some guy’s armpit,
wishing, not for the first time,
that he was six inches taller.
A country lyric twangs in his head
something about “the losing side of town”.
He surveys the wreckage all around him:
a guy with a raw scabrous face
scratches frantically;
a bundle of rags twitches in a doorway;
people are scurrying back and forth
like they’ve received a message
from an alien dispatcher
that the mother ship has landed,
and they can’t find a toothbrush;
further on in a laneway that smells of piss
a man and a woman, both dressed in black
with sweating raddled faces
sway back and forth shouting:
Fuck you! No! Fuck you!
in a profane loop.

Repartee, Slim says,
to no one in particular,
what an unexpected bonus.

This poem first appeared in The Galway Review

Taking part in OpenLink over at dverse

September and Everything After

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Summer has left the building
is already in the limo

snorting white powder
drinking champagne

dupes, fall guys
we wait for the encore

ignoring the bouncer
pointing to the door

the door marked winter

Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.

Also a note to my friends over at earthweal, I have two poems published in The Galway Review, if you have a chance take a look here, (Jim.)

Yosemite (the poem)

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IMG_0406

 

Yosemite

The sun is slowly leaving
the party that is the day,
things will not be the same.

When he finally tumbles into his room
at the Mariposa Lodge outside of Yosemite
which the Miwok Indians call Ahwahnee
meaning Large Mouth,
Myron turns on the television
to find Patrick Stewart
shouting into the camera in blank verse
and even though Kenneth Branagh is nowhere in sight
he quickly deduces that this is Shakespeare,
Macbeth, in fact, but a strange one,
there are soldiers in Soviet uniforms and a fridge
and of course bad things are happening, off stage.
Then the bottle of Salmon Creek Pinot Grigio
which he had at the Butterfly Café,
starts to take its toll
(‘butterfly’ is the English word for Mariposa),
and lulled by the convolutions of the language
Myron falls asleep and in his dream
Patrick Stewart is staring at him.

“ Brush thy teeth”, Patrick yells,
spittle spraying the inside of the screen.
“Brush thy teeth
lest thou rise
foul of breath
In the sulphurous morn.”

 

This poem appeared a little while back in The Galway Review 

(It’s open link night at dVerse, so thought I’d give this one a bit of exposure)

Two Poems (Machu Picchu, The Sun God) up at The Galway Review

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The nice people at The Galway Review have published two poems of mine (Machu Picchu, The Sun God) . You can check them out here 

(I’m not sure about the photo, one of my daughters tells me that I’m out of focus like “that guy in ‘Deconstructing Harry'” and I should get rid of that “serious poet face”).

 

Drive / The One and Only Quartet

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Drive

On a strange day

in a life that’s becoming stranger

Myron is driving north of Kona

on a road bisecting the black lava landscape

when Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

comes on the radio,

and in no time at all

he’s picturing himself

on a boat on a river

and marveling for the first time

at that rhyme between

marmalade skies and kaleidoscope eyes

not the skies and eyes

but the lade and leid

and just when his head

is filling with technicolor

the black cloud that’s sitting

on the mountains to the right

moves across the sun

that’s shining

on the blue ocean to the left,

and the black asphalt road

and the jumbled chunks

of frozen black lava

that cover the landscape

suck the remaining light

from the air

leaving everywhere

a dull monochrome.

 

This poem was published in The Galway Review some time back and also previously published here.

Daily Prompt : Quartet

Drive

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Drive

On a strange day
in a life that’s becoming stranger
Myron is driving north of Kona
on a road bisecting the black lava landscape
when Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
comes on the radio,
and in no time at all he’s picturing himself
on a boat on a river
and marvelling for the first time
at that rhyme between
marmalade skies and kaleidoscope eyes;
not the skies and eyes
but the lade and leid
and just when his head
is filling with technicolor,
the black cloud, that’s sitting
on the mountains to the right,
moves across the sun
that’s shining on the blue ocean to the left
and the jumbled chunks of frozen black lava
that cover the landscape,
and suddenly the remaining light is sucked from the air
leaving everywhere
a dull monochrome.

 

This poem was published in The Galway Review a little while back but I thought it was worth bringing out again because of the recent anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper. The photos above are of the Beatles’ single featuring  Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. My family got it’s first record player in the early sixties just when the Beatles and the rest of the British groups that formed the British Invasion were emerging. The first single we bought was “Needles and Pins” by The Searchers, a remake of a Jackie De Shannon song. My mom, older sister, older brother and myself would take turns every week to buy a record to build our collection. When I was back in Dublin a few years back for my dad’s funeral, I picked out the record shown above and a few others from our collection.  The sleeve has a picture on the front and on the back which was not typical at that time. Both songs were originally intended for the Sgt. Pepper album but were released early because they needed a single.

I can still remember hearing Strawberry Fields for the first time on the radio. The Beatles were busy spawning genres at the time but this was the strangest piece of music I had ever heard. It was and still is undefinable. Penny Lane wasn’t bad either.