Omnibus

I suppose I wanted to see what it looked like...

Omnibus

Slack duffel coat and nicotine fingers

Jolted blustered convivially through the bus

Old Elvis hair, drawn, sucked-in, chin on nose

Grey grey grey, skin clothes life, only yellow

Paint on the artist hand, grasping chrome

Like a pint, keep from falling ‘till later on

When the wooden rest becomes the floor

Carpeted in fallout tapping and too much

Swimming, lazily with crisps and carrot

And memories of young Elvis chiselled eyes clear

Seeing a good night out, studied nonchalance

Of cigarettes, picking choosing, never quite the right one

-‘sides you wouldn’t get one like mam

Cooking ironing bed and breakfast and a bob

Sticking with mates, snooker darts dogs horses

Run with the pack run to the uniform

Of oblivion and hatred; take the fear of those different

Back to the refuge of haircut and shoes

Through the bus, hold the chrome, oily shirted hair cut

Cheap wine and cider fuel fear in bus-stops, at corners

Voices grating in the mating shout of hopeless procreation

Helplessly adding recruits floundering in life’s mutation

Of the sea of weed, sarcassoed sarcophagus in trauma

Slamming the door graffitied and battered shut

Rejecting reviling daring paring their views

Only one needs to stand, voice a word of dissent

Escape the trap - escape the norm

See the hope that roots, the river that courses

In each is the same but livens varied soil, not in a mob

Through violence and terror; instead peace, natural plan

Finding discovering in order of chaos of whom, or Son

Of man, woman, man or woman, to respect in tolerance

Help, be helped; forget and remember unwrap the past, steer

Clear: exploding colour (of the blue green orb) from an old maiden garret

Glance grasp bright, through muddled reality, so touch

Freedom, unchained bigot beget reveal someone more

Than (just) celluloid sex, animated clones mightily right, strong

To survive superior inferior ulterior exterior motives at home

Defend deter so cash the dividend, provide more buses. The old fellow

His greater choice (that’s his right) no state to impose

On his right to drink and smoke or pick squalor, no fuss

To move from the self-righteous seat, perfumed shield where the human smell lingers.

 

 

John Colclough

Tintern

I told you it was self indulgent, I wrote this 20 years ago, wandering around Tintern Abbey on my own late autumn, atmospheric, stunning eerily heart tugging in the rapidly fading light.

 

Tintern

A stony road grind-winds through languid greenery

Past new ages edging  old ages peace

Into a tranquil pool succouring reflected scenery

Time flows backwards to the childlike lease

Of unhurried, unworried unthreatened womb

 

Where from to a maelstrom of an everclosing room

Realife and tensions modernity stays

Grasps drowns prays, ends to a tomb

Arising around out of an upturned gaze

 

Which Tintern reflects.  Revealing danger

Of a fastpaced careless greedy existence

The face of a child has become a stranger

But return to the old-land matured resistance

Thoughts return slowly to feed from the manger.

 

The rain.

Its green because it rains, its lashing down now. Anyway read about Fanad in the 1800's, sounds like the wild west, a land beyond borders,  land of headmen, clan battles, murdered informants turning up in a bog years later. The only way in was to be along the loughs.
A land of family groups, a few acres, a field of potatoes - mixed with Holy Wells, Colm Cille's prophesies, Sweeney's, Vikings and dolmens.
The wind is blowing around Cnoc Albhiagh, it is firing the ball bearing droplets into our eyes, the Mountain Hare, through here earlier is sheltered up now. The yellow gilded Gorse twists and bends, flicks back up after the gusts. Across the water the horizontal smoke freed out from warm fires, sit a while, take a cup of tea, a bite to eat, it's not a day to be out and about.

This is a wonderful place...

But the internet is intermittent which is appropriate

To begin...

This will be pure self indulgence.

Fanaid

Look out over a wild blue,
Falling flailing golden Gorse,
Deep green-black mountains squat,
Ice cut valleys, ancient Yew's life force,
Barely tamed people the earth glue.