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Clearing

Poems 2023-2024

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I was the forest and I could feel it.

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—A. Savage, Hurtin' Or Healed

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I left ... several years ago but only now do I feel I have the necessary detachment ...

 

—Primo Levi, Other People's Trades, Ex-Chemist

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Contents

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Electric Power Cable

you will remember

In Snow

Saturday Morning

Portrush Town Hall

Warfarin

Oh Me Oh My

Rooms

The Last

thursday.

Fiadh's Apology

Tomás' Death

[?]1 I didn't want to

[?]2 I seen you

[?] sometimes I miss it

Thefollowingprocedurewillnotfixbrokenhyperlinks

[?]3 give, give

[?]5 maybe

[?]6 aquifer

[?]7 folding

The Night Before Catalonia I: The Night

The Night Before Catalonia II: Somniloquy

The Night Before Catalonia III: Hydrogen

After the 2019 Champions League Final

Clearing

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Electric Power Cable

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I sat outside a Co-op and wondered what a croissant would taste like. I stood up, bought one, fell back on the kerb. Two men were on a cherry picker across the road fixing the electric power cable. One laughing louder than the other. My phone was dead. The croissant tumbled about my dry mouth as I tried to figure out where I was. I'd clearly gone the wrong direction out of the clearing, thinking any place was better than no place. But I still ended up in no place. I thought about my new life outside the Co-op. I chose a direction; bought another croissant; started walking.

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you will remember

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I drink with you, pleasantly

In a hallway, on a sticky floor

You're formless, and reticent

A swarm, like October

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We swayed aside, the kitchenette

Amongst bottles, upon tiles

You whispered, in my ear

What else is, there

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In Snow

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My father knows every bird, he tells me. I almost collide with a sledge on my way up the run. I push my chest from the ground and turn onto my back; feel the cold air pass me. I see a pair of foxes, one smaller than the other, as I eat breakfast from the counter. Making footprints. My mother wards off a bull from our garden with a white chair. We watch with timidity from the passenger seat window. Like a woman battling God. We attach a bee habitat to a pole and plant it in the ground. It forms a pool of cold water. Birds flying east. Kestrels.

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Saturday Morning

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Walking along the waterworks

today we talked about swans

and your fear of drowning. You

said you'll never step foot in a

wave pool again. We watched

a goose chase a golden

retriever and a cat motionless

below an array of bird feeders.

A woman with a disability

asked us to help her stop a

stray dog from mounting her

yorkie. She said it had been

following her for ages and

she couldn't get it to go away.

She was very distressed and

said that everyone she asked

just laughed at her. I used our

shopping bags to block the

dog and you chased it out of

the park gate while the woman

slowly made her escape, trailing

her little dog and yelling thank

youuuu in the distance. Once she

was far enough away we let the

dog go free again. It doddled

through the park in her direction

and we made our way home.

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Portrush Town Hall

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while on tour

I lived in Portrush for ten days

in an upstairs apartment with my books,

the play was called beside the seaside

and that's where I was:

on the stage, sleeping on the sofa at the start of act

two, my wife in the audience with her husband.

 

I woke up from a long afternoon, raising my arms

above my head, the curtain came up, and the sea

was pearls, pearls.

afterwards, someone gave me a lift home as I

couldn't walk the whole way,

driving along the coastline and the southern edge,

but they only dropped me at the nearest hotel,

and I couldn't walk from there either.

 

despondent and waning,

I sat on my rucksack and put my headphones on

while people trudged past on the pavement.

I looked out across the auditorium

at the start of act three

and they all looked back in silence,

wondering who I was,

but I couldn't see anything for the lights,

my chin slumped into my palm;

a woman walking past insisted I take the tenner

she placed into my hand,

I said no, I wasn't homeless, but she insisted,

no matter what I said.

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Warfarin

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I was deep-rooted, like a dying rowan

you came in, absent, it was a turning point

I can't remember if it was—it should've been

bitter fruit blown over a flowering hillside

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but it meant nothing, you were a ghost to me

your weary resentment festering in our frail intimacy

I slept on the floor below you, pus running

I stared at the words on the ceiling:

"The morning is risen, it cannot be defended"

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Oh Me Oh My

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—For Lonnie Holley

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Laughing. I'm lying on the floor beside Chris in an upstairs room on Ormeau. We're talking about our friend's dog trying to walk across a trapeze, and about a man on the news who was arrested for drinking Buckfast.

 

Many consecutive Jägerbombs. I am kicked (lifted) out. Carl comes outside to argue my defense but gives up quickly. We book a taxi to Ashley Avenue and I get into the middle seat. Lights aglow. In slow motion I am stippled with fluid as vomit bursts from Ted's clasped hands. We throw ourselves out through the left-hand passenger door and I wake up in bed suddenly. Daylight.

 

Smoking a cigarette at exactly twenty minutes past four in the afternoon. The hand is there to catch me. We run through four traffic lights to reach the street corner in time. Ties removed to disguise school uniforms. I lift a brick from the paving.

 

I'm lying on the floor of Charlie's living room listening to Astral Weeks. Evening lamp light. My tongue gets tied every time I try to speak. I blow it and know the moment has passed—and I don't do a thing about it. By myself now. On the floor of a party. I have three Desperados. I offload them out of the left-hand passenger door on the way home.

 

We are kindly asked to leave. The headbutt victim is taken to A&E and Mark's dad isn't happy. We are guided by street lamps from one Tesco Superstore to another. After three hours I realise I don't have my house keys. I keep walking.

 

I'm lying on the floor of my room wrapped in a blanket while I'm supposed to be working. Still walking. By myself now. Eyes closed. Thinking about dancing. Laughing.

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Rooms

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Despite what happened, we never found our relationship difficult. We existed in many rooms. I invited you to my birthday in September and you were shocked. I said I was accustomed to change. You invited me to your birthday in July and I was shocked. You said you were different still. You had to have a million quiet chats that summer as you tried to roll out your new name. You said, the winter of my life is over, now it is the spring.

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The Last

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Ivy wanders through the door of my old house

The living room window put through

Shredded bricks and dust and wallpaper

A shattered bowl on the floor with the glass

 

If I climb the stairs of my old house

Will I collapse into what's left?

Is every step not a step on rotten wood,

Every foot not an inch of mud?

 

I slip my fingers around the frame of the skylight

Judge the weight, pull myself through

When did this place become my old house?

Can anything old become new?

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thursday.

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man came into wineflair

holding neck. took him

downstairs. tried to

apply substantial

plaster. pressing. blood

under nails. pressing.

ineffable opening. tried

to phone ambulance.

wouldn't let me. blood

on wall and sink. blood.

man left. panicked.

couldn't calm down.

asked to leave. went

home. next day. boss

told me mgmt

thought i acted

suspiciously. covered

for me. went to work

again.

friday.

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Fiadh's Apology

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I found you face down on the arm of a camelback sofa, your head sunk in a plastic bag of your own vomit. I thrust you upright and covered myself

as I

cleared

your airway

 

Your dad pinned you against the side of his white van and your limbs flailed about like meat. You slumped, like a dramatic puppet, over your abdomen. We

shouldn't have

had these trials

so soon,

Fiadh.

 

It wasn't fair on you.

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Tomás' Death

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I remember Tomás being short and his brother being short. I remember his mother being short and his father being short. I remember him standing in the hallway of the church youth club smiling. I remember him laughing at things that weren't funny. I remember thinking that was a good thing. I don't remember when I heard. I don't remember calling my friend about it. I don't remember that minister not mentioning how he'd died. I don't remember recognising no one there. I don't remember the stone steps. Or the cracks. I don't remember the orchard. I don't remember how he laughed, or how he was a boy. He was a boy.

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[?]1 I didn't want to

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be pulled apart

to feel my body at its seams

all my eccentricities

and my tendons like streamers

to long for return

to have radiation pulling back my skin

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[?]2 I seen you

 

And you would be drowned in infidelity — in the subtle pathos. Ye shall be as gods, lips and oranges. And I, I in the sward. I will not be disconnected. Not be brought into possession: as a mouth to fire. We were wrapped in each other's bodies. Hiding in your salience. Words were crooked and meaningless. I knew it was time for me to go.

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[?] sometimes I miss it

 

sometimes I miss it. sometimes I miss that brief moment before you fall asleep with your phone in your hand and your hair gazing down your back. the curtains are drawn and the amber light of our smart bulb drenches the room with its warmth. you slip away from me and I'm mindless with anger. always focused on the wrong things. and what? and now I must wait until tomorrow?

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Thefollowingprocedurewillnotfixbrokenhyperlinks

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I printed out the wikipedia page for time travel

on hyperlink-stained sheets

and brought it on holiday

 

we were told the club was full (it wasn't)

we went round the corner and we swapped coats

we were told the club was full (it wasn't)

 

—{}

 

we lined up outside the kafka museum

I drank some whiskey in the cafe

and got irritable

 

—%unreadable%

 

we lined up outside tresor for four hours

the stalky woman at the front said

 

—no

 

you were in kitkat, I rang to tell you

it was a sex club, you said

 

{—oh no!}

 

I was crushed by despondency

I was laconic and slight

 

I was sat before the tv tower, and I

 

unfolded the pages from my pocket

 

and I

I

I{%

I would've given anything just to

 

—

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[?]3 give, give

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The woman is warm and doesn't know how I feel. The radiator hums like a leech drawing from the host. Well, how do you feel? I don't know either. Proverbs 30:15. Sucking until ready to burst. I reply, I don't know. I look down at my shoes. Swelling. The clinic floor lingers: I am dreaming of moving past now.

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[?]5 maybe

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maybe thinking things late at night, maybe they don't go away, maybe being too serious, maybe being boring, maybe Domenico Losurdo was right about 1936, maybe Verso will never publish his works, maybe twist my leg one, two— four times, maybe the pain crests behind the knee, maybe the Chinese have solved the climate crisis, maybe they haven't, maybe stand on every alternate paving stone on the way to school, maybe afraid when I don't, maybe always be this way, maybe contorted and slow, maybe seize my jaw while walking, maybe blood flows from the vein, maybe it'll come back, maybe it won't go away, maybe I'll never be able to stop, maybe always stuck, maybe

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[?]6 aquifer

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In the first half of the 1966 Royal Albert Hall

I hear rattling in the night and peak through the curtains we wouldn't have chosen. I see a fast food cup traversing the street. I'm restless, so I lift the snib and go into the evening. I pick it up. I look down the road, and see another.

 

In the first half of the 1966 Royal Albert Hall

I'm always drifting along backstreets I've never seen before. My pockets full of an inordinate number of peppercorns. The banks of the B'hinch riverwalk are full now, the trees not overlain with bodies.

 

In the first half of the 1966 Royal Albert Hall

I'm working with my hands; between fingers and seams. An aquifer flowing with virgin polypropylene, a sea of straws and 80mm lids. Folding bed sheets reminds me of talking with my mother, expert folder, clothes shop owner's daughter—a candle burning—and me, not wanting to be anything.

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[?]7 folding

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I find thinking involuntary, I say as I fold my clothes, placing them carefully atop the dresser. Face-down. The blue shirt bares imperfect marks from past irons. I allocate time not to think between my movie at nine and my walk at two. Preoccupation. There's very little I can do, I say. The past inside the present. I tuck the sleeves so they meet in the centre. An alignment of unequal shapes. It sounds like you've already developed a coping mechanism, my free CBT professional says as I fold my clothes. I think about bed sheets, ripe nectarines, and the ghostly shades left by old posters. I bring the bottom hem to meet the collar. Yes, I say, I'm here

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The Night Before Catalonia I: The Night

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In my dream I dangled from a world tree

with one hand on a branch,

above an immense gulf, tyrannical vision,

and for once the height didn't scare me.

My lips parted, lightly,

without thought and with barely a motion:

and every dream was the same

and every dream was the same

and every dream was the same

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The Night Before Catalonia II: Somniloquy

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I was on a climbing wall

clinging onto one of those yellow crimps

with just my index and middle fingers.

I didn't want to labour the point.

When she smiled at me I felt I'd be happy

and when she handed me a note

saying she didn't,

it felt like I would keep falling.

The wash of that afterglow

lasted the rest of my life.

How many closes before it's closed?

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The Night Before Catalonia III: Hydrogen

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"Now we shall see," I said: I carefully lifted the cathode jar and, holding it with its open end down, lit a match and brought it close. There was an explosion, small but sharp and angry, the jar burst into splinters ...

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— Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, Hydrogen

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I was flying over where Orwell got

shot in the neck many years after

she text me in my upstairs

bedroom and I felt like melting my

Samsung E250 into a liquid mixture

of metal and polymer and starting

a new life in the garden. After that

life was over, I felt an aura just

holding The Periodic Table in my

hands, like bearing the weight of a

great arrow, and that it was my

absolute duty to follow that arrow,

to carry it forward, until it ran out of

steam, which it did—which I did,

Primo, I did.

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After the 2019 Champions League Final

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—For Eoin A.

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After the 2019 Champions League Final you pulled up in a taxi and the taxi driver said well, one of yous is gonna have to get in the boot. Exhaling, you said fine! I opened the rear door and gave a light wave and said hello to the two strangers crouched in the footwells. We tore down the carriageway and I wondered how you were doing in the boot. Once we got to the forest car park the taxi driver screamed GET YOUR HEADS DOWN when he saw what looked like a cop car nestled in the darkness. He turned off the engine and we sat in silence.

 

False alarm, 20 quid each.

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Clearing

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Ben retrieved us from the outskirts and guided us for twenty minutes across roots and rivulets. When we got to the forest rave we had lost all light but our bags were full and we had begun to move. I was rambling some barely broken Irish to Ben a number of hours later when I realised my phone battery was low. I put it on airplane mode. A few hours later again and I was sitting in a clearing. The sun was coming up at this stage and we were emerging from everything. I was video calling Derbhla and I found myself very puzzled when my screen suddenly went black.

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Written between May 2023 and April 2024.