Tag: poem

The Moths

As they sat in the garden
with sun on their shoulders,
they saw two moths mating:
Elephant Hawks, enormous,
olive winged and brightly tipped –
pink as a kiss,
their bodies tail-pinned
in a union older than them.
Both gawped and tutted
at the audacious clasp.
This is a family neighbourhood,
he said, smirking, and
they left the Fornicators to it.

*

What she didn’t tell him though
was that, later that same night
as she went out to lock the gate
she saw them again –
still stuck together,
one dead, the other not,
but flying low, unable
to breach the garden wall
or free itself from bondage
as, in frantic flutter,
it dragged its cold mate
through the blue light
of summer night.

Punisher

do you remember 
when we 
had to cancel
our very first date
because I had a 
last minute shift
at the bar, but you
came to see me 
anyway and
asked me about the 
movies I love and
drank gin and winked
when I walked 
back and forth past you
serving other people
but how
I’d always 
circle back 

and another time
you asked me
to get free drinks
for you and your mates,
got hammered
hogged the juke box
broke the top
button on your shirt
and called someone
a fucking rat
lost a tooth
threw a glass
and got
kicked out
and I had to quit
later that week
standing up
for you

I just remember 
that’s all
and wondered
if you might too

Night In, Light Out

An hour into Scarface
(for the fifteenth time)
the power cuts

and the sloping Bolivian hills
snap into darkness.

The silence thrills us;
it hits like a car crash.
We slowly clank into action.

You use your phone light to find the fuse box –
Who owns a torch these days?
I light a candle:
the one in the burnt yellow glass
and look out the window
at the street in pitch.

I imagine our neighbours in the dark
arms outstretched, like swimmers,
reaching for lighters and batteries –
whatever glimmers.

I wonder about kids crying,
dinners spoiled,
and hands
feeling in the dark.

After a while, still nothing:
no spark. We step outside.

The night is balmy –
the bricks hold the heat of the day
and it floods back into the house.

I fetch beers from the warm fridge.
The bulb is out so I feel for the tins:
I know where they are
and grab a few.

Outside you’re looking up
and I at you.

We Talk When It’s Late

whenever she’d get bad
my mammy would say baby

we come into this world alone
we go out of this world alone

how funny it was
that she chose the word we –

how inclusive!
all of us, suffering
together,
knowing the same

low down, gutter-licking,
earth-swallowing,
blackout blues

misery en masse

the tragedy not in feeling it
but in feeling it alone

and not realising how
we aren’t

Spell

Look up directly at the sky:
see how quickly it has turned
white as a blanched almond.

Notice how the yellow sunlight
has slipped into the ground
where we were just walking.

Now stop talking.

That way, you can really hear 
the bristling shush of dried ferns;
they sound so like the sea.

Sink into the sound of this.
Let your breathing bow to the wind
as its veil billows before us.

Now insects join the chorus.

They might be flecks of dust haloed
in gold, stung by the sun:
stitching a map across the day.

Trace their idle threads of flight
and sink into the upturned palm of earth.
Feel yourself breathe out, at last –

but hold still with me
until the moment’s passed.

Cache

sometimes it feels stuck to the back of my chest
as if it has caught one of its many blue threads
on the door handle of a room I’ve just left

sometimes it feels still, and lurks like a mad ghost
cursing its haunt in the long well of my throat
as I am trying to speak gently to it

sometimes it feels hard. It tightens with each thump
and one day I will not be able to wriggle even my
littlest finger inside it

a red knot
I can’t unpick