Memory Of My Father by Patrick Kavanagh

 Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father".

in Kathmandu

Memories come on wings of light

A shining bird, high pines in the sun

The fire in a floating leaf

The autumn heat in weathered wood

Soft lichen on a stone.

A light-filled imminence simmering and breaking,

Leaving me breathless and in pain.

This sickness of infinitude that leads to the madhouse,

This ‘self remembering’ of the present

Instead of wandering the ephemeral worlds

Of past and future.

I was a true believer in my magic carpet,

Ready to fly as far as it would take me.

The search begins with a restless feeling,

As if one is being watched.

One turns in all directions but sees nothing.

The path that leads here is not a path to a strange place

But the path home.

But you are home

Cries the Witch of the North

All you have to do is wake up.

IS ED SHEERAN AN ANDROID?

 isEverywhere you look these days he’s there
Ed Sheerin
Strumming his plastic guitar
Smiling his geeky smile
Singing in his whiny voice
Best Album, Best Solo Artist
Come on, get real!
Writing his colour blind lyrics
Peddling his simpering vanilla sound
Sounding like his tongue got stuck in a mouse-trap
Then there’s his inane grin
His funky waistcoats
And his sexless chin
There’s more sex appeal in a pillow case
And he’s not even gay!
I suspect he is an android
That makes soothing noises when you pluck a string on its back
And I bet that close up he smells of WD40

REVISED FALLING FROM GRACE

killer

The cigarette smoke hangs like tear gas
In the mean little honky-tonk
But nobody really gives a shit
Because Jerry is in town.
He arrives without fanfare
And seats himself down
Gimme my money and show me the piano
And don’t try and act the hound
This is rockabilly, baby
Forget about Elvis and Johnny
Jerry has just kicked the door down.

Jerry can conjure a thousand songs
And play each one seven different ways
He can make your high heel sneakers
Dance the legs off every other cat in the place
I aint no phoney
I ain’t no teddy bear
And I don’t talk baloney
As I say to my bass player
I ain’t no goody-goody
But I was born to be on the stage
It was all I ever dreamed of
From the very earliest age.

Jerry plays it slow and mournful or hard and fast
He once told Chuck Berry he could kiss his ass
And across the arc of bad-boy rockers
Who have come and gone
Jerry is the only one still rocking on
Sure, there were some bad times that caused his
Rocket ship to sputter
Like the year he crashed a dozen Cadillac’s
And was heard to utter
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, oh what a thrill
Goodness gracious great balls of fire

I AM WATERFORD
I am Waterford
I crossed seven seas on a scaffold board
I rode in the skies so blue up above
And wrote in the sky IT’S THE DEISE I LOVE

INSPIRATION

The midnight muse does not wait
For the lure of silver at someone’s gate
Nor the rattle of chains in rust-red splendour
As the moonlight beams on the night so tender.
The midnight muse has something strange to tell;
‘Silence is violence’
Say the damned in hell
To speak is to live not bound by chains
When an empty silence is all that remains

Love the irony!

lyrics

THAT IS OUR EDEN’S SPRING, ONCE PROMISED

What I to apeman
And what then he to me?
I an apeman one day soon will seem to be
To those who, after us, look back from Mars
And they, in turn, mere beasts will seem
To those who reach the stars;
So apemen all, in cave, in frail tract-house,
On Moon, Red Planet, or some other place;
Yet similar dream, same heart, same soul,
Same blood, same face,
Rare beastmen all who move to save and place their pyres
From cavern mouth to world to interstellar fires.
We are the all, the universe, the one,
As such our fragile destiny is only now begun.
Our dreams then, are they grand or mad, depraved?
Do we say yes to Kazantzakis whose wild soul said:
God cries out to be saved?
Well then, we go to save Him, that seems sure,
With flesh and bone not strong, and heart not pure,
All maze and paradox our blood,
More lost than found,
We go to marry stranger flesh on some far burial ground
Where yet we will survive and, laughing, look on back
To where we started on a blind and frightful track
But made it through, and for no reason
Save it must be made, to rest us under trees
On planets in such galaxies as toss and lean
A most peculiar shade,
And sleep awhile, for some few million years,
To rise again, fresh washed in vernal rain
That is our Eden’s spring once promised,
Now repromised, to bring Lazarus
And our abiding legions forth,
Stoke new lamps with ancient funeral loam
To light cold abyss hearths for astronauts to hie them home
On highways vast and long and broad,
Thus saving what? Who’ll say salvation’s sum?
Why, thee and me, and they and them, and us and we…

And God

Ray Bradbury