PURPLE THOUGHTS.

Streams of comedy and tragedy

Churning in same channel; that’s life.
Nights I lie pondering, wondering
Whatever became of my ideal wife?
I met her once on a train in Kildare,
Gins and tonics in Naas,
By Maynooth the plan turned swiftly sour,
Ill feeling broke out twixt her and her face.

We’re all mere shadows in a material world,

All promise is in the shaft of an axe,
Honesty and truth are lonely pilgrims,
Conspiracy travels in packs.
If there’s nothing in your past; conceal it!
Look me in the face when you tell me a lie,
If you believe in Purgatory, pray for the dead,
The guilty will feel shame; by and by.

Hunger and hate, love and the need to know,

These are the constant drivers of life,
Did God write down the word of God?
Did the butcher invent the knife?
Are we shadows of our former shadows?
Where would shadows be without light?
Law, the purple shadow that blots out justice,
Only Reckitt’s Blue makes a whiter white.

While I eye-sweep the length of the mantelpiece

Silent lofty guardian of the fire,
Two-faced clock looks down her evening nose
At beech and bog, red pyre.
Where now all those abandoned dreams?
All those thoughts we remembered and forgot,
How can you be free if you shake the hand of fear?
A parliament of sand will surely be our lot.

LEAVIN'

“I’m leavin’ in the morning” she said,                                                                                         

I said “where might you be goin’?
She said “there’s no way of knowin’,
If I stay here I’ll shortly be dead”.

So she hopped on a bus and big silver plane

To fly her to shore far away,
My choice was to stay or to stay,
My loss or sanity’s gain.

She arrived, I heard, the weather was grand,
Escape; no gossip, no mist,
And I filled my gullet, got pissed,
And she filled her pockets with sand.

She passes her time behind tiny bar,
Lattice of bars is my lot,
I fingered the things she forgot
And saved her pearls in a jar.

She’s getting’ on well now, I’m told,
In that place of sardine and sun,
One cup and saucer, one penny bun,
Priceless; or lump of fool’s gold?

IN DREAMS

Wouldn’t you wonder where you wander

In that dreamlike state,
For sleep ; the perfect traveller,
No luggage, no boarding gate.

All that’s needed is a vacant space

In the carriage of the mind.
Reality, if that exists!
Jettisoned behind.

When the prevailing wind is from the East
You can steer it to the South
And hold your breath forever
And spit the foul one out.

If you don’t enjoy sham Christmas
And the Wise Men come too soon,
You can tell the trio to sling their hooks
And call again in June.

Your hair can be tossed in a nightmare
And set straight again in dreams,
Reality’s a long dead foe
And everything is what it seems.

CHILDREN

All children are experiments,
The more they offer, the more father takes,

And righteous mother lays down her own law
To try to use child to correct own mistakes.

The child has a right, by right
To dislike its own father or mother
Or uncle or aunt, parson or priest,
Cousin or granddad, or any other.

Parents presume to own their offspring,
To decree and dictate style and behaviour,
How to comb their hair, sit on a chair,
And tell them the name of their saviour.

A lonely child is the only child,
What chance to think or maybe grow?
Target of lasers, same parents once lovers,
Strangled of sight and the right to know.

If children can’t do what they like
Why should parents and adults and others?
The tragedy was and is the long curse
That children grow big to be fathers and mothers.

RING DONG FOREVER

Farrell's machine laid the peat out in rows
of brown and black mixed, no racism here.
We felt the fresh sod, squeezed it through fingers,
the texture of  butter; turf new year.
And we watched it for weeks, three or four,
then nodded agreement, its fit to foot,
the fussy ones started, the patient ones waited
for more days and rays and Leavy's, the hut.

I made it before,  time ago with my father
and neighbours and grey shaggy ass
and bottles of tay and fat bacon sandwich
when hay was hay and silage was grass.
And we earned ten shillings, half of a pound
to spend as we pleased in Maggie Murray's
for a week of six days and sunburnt neck
in a time of no nights, just eighteen hour days.

They said it was hardship then, back-breaking toil,
And now it was cushy, time to spend in the shade.
With tractors and trailors and steel transport boxes
and no-one can tell you the price of a spade
or a slane or a billhook or grim reaper scythe,
or a half pound a tay or a quarter of plug,
But fire's still fire and roast red and warming
one bog-hole behind, one three-quarter dug.