Authors: Barry MacSweeney
O just to vex me inside the bottle the wind stayed still,
and left correct my cheap Woolworth accoutrements.
Look at the sheep fleece from tumbler base, so finely
doused by rain from Garrigill, as I dance my demon tarantella
in the misty mire.
I stood on the hill with drenched face and soaking nerves,
ankle deep leaving the word sober at home, gobsmacked.
The upstream heather says more than I do, whispering
its purple blues.
I wanted it to blow tonight, to put it right,
to put my G-force twisted face back in place.
Brown leaves now on the beryl lawn
and the magpies are gone.
The golden rowan an ascending beam.
Arctic white roses from the Himalayas
white as the whites of my eyes used to be
before the demons held my lapels.
It is dawn and soon I will have a fit,
a seizure, a gagthroat convulsion,
a demon convention with furtongue
pressed hard against the roof of my mouth.
Mouth an estuary for the love of drink,
and I know I stink of it darling
and no amount of mints or garlic can hide it
from the houndsniff now that’s built into your mind.
There will be blood, dearest, and horrid venom,
and black demon matter we’ll never clean off.
I won’t go again onto the drip. Not to the hospital
or the lock-away ward with its tightly kept key.
I’m going solo with capsules and the strength of your love.
Yes, love, they come: shiny shoes oddly enough,
the very nature of poetry erased from their report books,
tight black leather gloves to grip the bottles. Those
ugly gloved hands which search your soul.
You must guzzle aloud and let them do it
for every demon has to have its day.
My silence endless except for the swallowing.
O look at the golden leaves retrieved from the pink-sleeved trees
by the very act of the earth and its seasons.
They are bronze and gold, how very precious and horizontal
they are this regal collapsed November.
Look how they fall from the trees, quite drunk
with an unknown dream of renewal.
No stopping them and no stopping me
parallel to the horizon: my licence laws very strict –
I go from glass to glass, bottle to offy and back.
There’s one thing you can say: I never slack
from TV cornflake zone until Big Ben’s a post epilogue memory.
Except I can’t remember it or anything
unless the mind-piranhas begin to swarm
and I know I am not Cromwell or Milton
but I am a Protestant heretic,
a Leveller lunatic, filled and felled by wine,
whose failed allotment is a museum of weeds,
whose rainy medallions are mare’s tail and crowsfoot trefoil.
I do remember a blue light turning, and turning
to you and trying to speak and couldn’t. Just
the bleeps on the machine trying to keep me alive.
And after X-ray escaping the wheelchair, vodka-legged,
felled face down by the drink in the street.
Nervous pedestrians leaning over
and a discerning passer-by: leave him he’s pissed.
Perhaps I will rise in the fronds of Bengal
crushed and tormented but determined to live
fantastically luxurious in the grandness of suffering
searching for the lingering lips of her loveliness:
today I hunted through the wide wild skies,
not one finger to touch, not one sunshine dalliance alliance.
Arm rodded cloudward, always wanting the lightning mine.
I wanted to be the driver on the Leningrad train, screeching
raptor of the whole northern air: sober groom with a bride.
Beasts steam and clop by the wire where my bottle is hidden,
secret menu for peace, rage and change.
Yes, alcoholic, get him out of my face.
Gin in his nose he’s a Christmas reindeer
every day he won’t keep in his diary.
Holy mother, free him from my terrorised tree.
Release him from the twines of the briar,
see him flash to the cork in fen and fern.
Collapse him in misery. Slap him away.
Give him 45 per cent voltage and watch him go.
I am Sweeney Furioso, fulled with hate.
Hate for you, for me, hate for the world.
I eat beasts nightly and chew on snakes.
The blood of an invented heaven spills from my shoes.
I rage with wrecked harp
for I am not the silence of Pearl
though she is inside me, like an argent moon.
I am a beast myself and return to see the mint die.
All that is left are drought-stricken stems.
There is no doctor cure.
There is no god and I believe it.
Every capsule in every brown bottle
is a pact of deceiving; the demons know.
Every prescription is a contract of lies.
I set my slurring lips against the stupid universe.
I squeeze my mouth as best I can around a bottleneck and mean it.
Daily I fix my redlight eyes against the raw law sunne
shaking my detox fists at the rams and lambs.
It will make me powerful if they flee from me.
Sorry is the last word in the long lost dictionary.
There was a man once, in a long thin box.
I see his washed out face in the fellside chapel.
We’ll put out flowers and drink to his memory.
We’ll scatter his ashes and drink some more.
The aim is victory over the sunne and to stand in a high place
holding a red flag
ready to lead unforgiven workers to righteous triumph.
You must execute kings and adulterous princes
and reserve the right to burn down Parliament.
Fight for your rights for the rest of your days.
At Sparty Lea, here is the breeze burn,
at the bend in the bridge here is the stile squeak.
Here at the west window is the speaking for Pearl.
Here in the clouds is her eloquent silence
before addiction overwhelmed me and
made me silent myself. Her night cloud silence
following the clouds. And the clouds following
her and the light in her heart. She sails in
galleons of light all the way to Dunbar.
We seized the sky and made it ours, spelling
out the vapour trails: our clouds exclusively
before poetry was written, long before harm
and its broods of violence. Before we knew
the moon was cold and before men – real
men – stood upon it for the very first time.
But love, that moon, that moon is ours,
always, cold as your distant tongue.
Smoked salmon and lemon juice for breakfast,
brilliantly chosen brewed teas!
The enticing slow lifting of garments, wearing
and unwearing of black silk,
and exchanging of black and blue silks, white
lingerie chemise taken off as the mist rises
to meet its handsome lover the sunne.
Underneath sheet lightning
with audible thunder,
lightning down the rod and sceptre,
kisses fuming in darkness,
electric discharge between clouds,
fecund trenches & moss cracks.
Zig-zag bones and branching lines fully displayed,
diffused brightness to cooling toes
before unwinding unwounded stretches of sleep.
Kissed slumber barely awake
under the vast viaduct:
sex combs, complete claspness,
hairs locked and unlocked,
special pet favours given and received
on both sides.
Defying gravity.
Our passion, darling, is pure 1917. We ride
the rods and rules and rails,
and skies for us will always be huge and authentic:
Northumberland Wyoming and Samarkand.
Fierce not the word to use for our kisses.
It is not fierce enough!
There are no wounds
and revenge and warfare will die in the mud
of an otherwise poor world.
Fireflies, conductors, heads limbs and hearts,
wires fixed to the great wide skies:
We diverted heaven’s light
into sea or earth’s true bounty
of our souls’ brilliant kisses and everlasting starres.
Tom you’re walking up & down the pill hill again.
Tom you’re taking your moustache
to the Ayatollah doctor with his severe case
of personality drought.
Tom I saw you in the Heart Foundation shop
buying a cardigan five sizes too big.
Tom you’re more bent over than when
we sat together in the locked ward.
Tom your coat is frayed like the edges of your mind.
Tom they let you out to the chippy but you’re not free.
Tom we’re falling in the wheat
our feet betrayed by sticks and stones.
Tom we’re in the laundry and it’s us spinning
as they try to dry out our wet lettuce heads.
Tom there’s a cloud on the broken horizon
and it’s a doctor with a puncture kit.
He’s got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a chain.
Tom, who put the rat in the hat box?
Who gave the snakes up the wall such scaly definition?
Who plastered the universe with shreds of attempting?
Who unleashed the foes to annex your head?
Who greased the wheels of the Assyrians’ chariots?
Tom the shadows of men are out on the river tonight
reeling and creeling.
Invaders from Mars have arrived at last
and they’re working in the lock-up wards.
They’re dodgy Tom, strictly non-kosher – just raise your hangdog
blitzed out brain and look in the defenestrated alleyways
which pass for their eyes.
I suspected something in the fingerprint room
& the sniggery way they dismissed our nightmares.
Tom the door is opened
and you lurch down the path
past the parterre and the bragging begonias
but listen Tom
on the cat’s whisker CB
listen Tom listen and look
you’re still a dog on a lead a fish on a hook
Tom you’re a page in the book of life
but you’re not a book
you’re not the Collected Works of Tom – yet
there’s no preface but the one they give you
there is no afterword because no one knows you
there’s a photo on the cover but it doesn’t bear looking at
there’s a hole where your family used to be
an everlasting gap in the visitors’ index
A SMILE FROM THE NURSES LIKE THE BLADE OF A KNIFE
Tom – what happened to your wife?
She used to visit – every Wednesday
when buses were running before the cuts
Now she’s a lonely bell in a distant village
sacked by the Government
Mr and Mrs Statistics
and their gluey-faced children
There’s only one job on offer
in the whole of Front Street
delivering pizzas to the hard-up hungry
and a spanking new sign on the unused chapel
Carpenter Wants Joiners
Jesus Tom it isn’t a joke
they crucified the miners
with Pharisees and cavalry
dressed up as friendly coppergrams
it wasn’t Dixon of Dock Green Tom
it was the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Londonderry
rolled into one
Dark today Tom and the city roofs argent with rain
dark as a twisted heart Tom
dark as a government without soul
or responsible regard for its citizens
trains’ rolling thunder north and south over the great redbrick viaduct
is the only sense of freedom I have today Tom
the high lonesome sound of the wheels on the track
like Hank Williams Tom we’ll travel too far and never come back
which is why they drug us to a stop Tom
pillfingers over our fipples and flute holes
we’re in a human zoo Tom and it’s a cruel place
Tom you’re away from a haunt but furled in a toil
Tom there’s a spoil heap in every village without a colliery
there’s a gorse bush on top you can hide in naked
but you can’t escape the molten golden rays of the sky
bleaching the leukemia lonnens of ICI Bone Marrow City
Tom out here on the A19 the long September shadows of England
stretch from Wingate all the way to Station Town
long and strong and dark as the heart of the Jesus Christ Almighty
or the lash of the snakeskin whip he holds over us all
Tom are you mad by north-north-west
or do you know a hawk from a handsaw?
Are your breezes southerly?
All the fresh air is quite invalid Tom and all the peeping spirits
have ascended to your brain
like region kites
and the gall of the world is mixed in a cup
Tom there’s a silent flywheel on every horizon sequestered by law & severed from use
O dear, Tom, our heels are kicking at the heavens
sulphured eyebrows as we strike into the hazard universe
of souls
where angels on our shoulders stand tall to make assay
for acid rain will fall and wash them white as snow
the weather has turned Turk Tom and we are almost ruined
all softly cooling bright Atlantic winds from Cork and Donegal
are cancelled now
and fever has us in its grippy flame
ill-fit saddles have galled our wincing jades
all that is left is the mousetrap of the devil
but only if you give up on humans
Tom invisible limers are fingering twigs in the groves
Tom the twin sears of my hammered heart are set to be tickled by leather-sleeved
index fingers itchy and raw
Tom there’s a man in black with a lone silver star
casting a shadow as long as his dreams
Are your eyelids wagging Tom, so far from the burning zone?
Have they fitted you out yet, did you have the bottle to object?
Tom I can see you being folded like a linen tablecloth
I can see the busy working hands working on you
We’ve been driven from the prairies Tom
to an isthmus of disappointment
whose pinched becks can never sustain us
Tom I frighted my friends
by getting this way
I sickled and scythed their garlands of wheat
tongue a runaway bogie with broken brakes
alone on the pavings written with rain I was a sacked village myself
palings downed and all fat fields returned to pitiful scrub
Station Town Quebec Shincliffe to No Place
a network of underground ghosts
bust at the seams
Tom will our dear decorated hangers be responsive to the hilts on the swords of our
days?
Will a tigerish revival leap upon us
from a leaf-locked lair?
Will we be allowed another trample through mud?
Tom I doubt it as the sunne doubts the starres.
But starrelight is our single fire Tom, single
and silver in the bed of the sky.
Brown-bottled venom and its work
a past prescription be
and all folded warriors
to gentle station grow.
The glow-worm dims and the sea’s pearled crashy phosphorescence
in matin mist.
There’s a lark aloft in the morning Tom
its breasty song our autograph
embracing fortune
in this out of focus world
high and mighty
and carried away on shields.