Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 18

Home is Where, a poem

Poetry doesn’t come easy to me. I can’t crack off a haiku as fast as I might a 50 word story. My poems aren’t mathematical and the only ‘metric’ I know is the beat and rhythm dictated by my thoughts and words. Yesterday was a hot day in Dublin. It was also the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, an important day for me. This poem woke me at dawn and by the time the day ended, so did the poem. Written, or scribbled, in a notebook, I waited until this morning to type it. I will post it once, for five days, then it’s gone. I ask my WordPress friends to help me out and comment. It’s called Home is Where.

Please note: the original poem has stanzas but WP, for reasons best know to itself and despite several edits and updates, excludes them. So, dear reader, please imagine there is a break and each verse begins with ‘Home is where’.

 

 

Home is Where

Home is where
your first and lost loves linger
the scent of Cusson’s Imperial Leather
and lavender, like a silken scarf
curls and twines around your head,
her marshmallow touch,
teasing your memory.


Home is where
fresh baked bread and apple pie,
 jams and jellies, all cooling
in the afternoon’s mellow light,
greet you coming there
when school is out
and saffron yellow butter melts
on a fresh cut welcome scone


Home is where
dreams are born
waking in the morning sun,
fresh and frisky,
brimming with light and hope,
unfettered by failure,
treachery or disappointment,
ripe and blooming with possibility.


Home is where
memories fragment,
like packing boxes,
broken, confused,
their contents lost
while you search for a thought,
a hook to hang a hat.



Home is where,
past follies, misdemeanours
and careless adventures
echo down the streets and lanes,
tip tap in your footsteps,
flit through the shadows,
in the corners, out of sight,
in your mind’s eye.



Home is where
brooding menace waits,
the bogeymen of childhood terror,
with menacing patience
until childhood play abates,
there, in the shadow under the bed
and behind the wardrobe door,
slightly ajar.



Home is where
the slap of tiny feet
on a kitchen floor,
telling you home is where you’re happy,
but there’s no notch on your compass
to point you there.

LOOP

 

She knew she was controlling, wanting to know what was going on, anytime, anywhere.  Now the job was done, her lakeside getaway beckoned. She tidied her desk and ran, with careless abandon. But instead of the car park, she’s back in her office. Damn, she thought, back in the loop.

‘A clear case of suicide.’

A police detective I once knew was asked to investigate a ‘suspicious death’ in a rural province in Ireland. The body lay, face down, in an abandoned building with a large knife driven so hard through his back, it was embedded in the floor. “It’s a clear case of suicide,” he joked.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

His nuclear research helped a judge determine that former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko had been assassinated – likely on Putin’s orders. Just months after the verdict, the scientist himself was found stabbed to death with two knives. Police deemed it a suicide, but US intelligence officials suspect it was murder.

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RELIEVED

 

He hit the ground, running. It was quite a jump from a fast moving train and landing at such pace could’ve been fatal but he was alive and free at the mouth of the mountain tunnel. He felt relieved. Prematurely, as it happened, he was hit by an oncoming train.

Choctaw Native Americans honoured in Cork for famine aid

A donation from the Choctaw Nation of Native Americansto alleviate the hardship of Irish people during the famine has been marked with the dedication of a commemorative sculpture in Cork.

A delegation from the Choctaw tribe, including their chief, were among those in Midleton for the ceremony this afternoon.

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Short Story

Phone rings.

I’m busy.

Such a nuisance. Two eggs mixed, coffee’s on, butter melting in the pan. The grill’s warming, two slices of bread, ready to go.

A crucial moment. Why does this happen?

Waking drowsy is painful. Torn between the desire to flake or rise, you figure , get up now, gain that time when no-one else’s awake or fluff and sink, blissfully, into a pillow of downy dawn.

But humming A Day in the Life, shower and then breakfast preparations, the minutiae fill the morning void, prepares the mind, ideas forming while butter melts.

Phone rings. Again. Insistent.

‘Hello,’ peevish, ‘yes?’

‘Oh, hello. You’re up? Good.’ Brisk.

Tetchy silence. Muffled sounds of eggs, sizzling on a hot pan, coffee bubbling through a machine.[image error]

‘Write me a story, make it short. Not one of your 50 word thingies, but short, with a twist.’

Click. Line dead. Ham’s in the pan. Toast is on. A sprinkle of cheese. Sip of Sumatra. Omelette ready. Toast ready for butter smear, cutlery, coffee, day’s begun. Slurp.

Video: Govt “puts ‘D-notice’ gag” on real #Grenfell death toll #nationalsecurity

Someone needs to tell the truth about the body count. May and Johnson are in the frame. There ought to be an INQUEST not a PUBLIC INQUIRY

The SKWAWKBOX

This morning, Grime artist Saskilla told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that he had been told personally by one of the firefighters at Grenfell Tower that around two hundred bodies had already been identified at the scene of the terrifying blaze. The presenter attempted to pour water on the figure, but the musician insisted it was what he was told in person by the firefighter.

Last night, music star Lily Allen was pulled from an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight after making similar comments and accusing the government of trying to ‘micromanage people’s grieving’:

Ms Allen was pilloried in the media. The confirmed death toll has increased incrementally since the fire and today rose to thirty.

At the same time, multiple sources told the SKWAWKBOX that the government has placed a ‘D-notice’ (now properly named a ‘DSMA-notice’ and sometimes called a ‘DA Notice’) on the real number of deaths…

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KCTMO – Playing with fire!

It had to come to this. Such horror despite the warnings.

Grenfell Action Group

It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the  KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. We believe that the KCTMO are an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia who have no business to be charged with the responsibility of  looking after the every day management of large scale social housing estates and that their sordid collusion with the RBKC Council is a recipe for a future major disaster.

Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group have reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation…

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VOLUME

 

Don Marquis said publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. But that creates a dilemma. When a Buddhist asks what is the sound of one hand clapping? no answer is expected just an understanding of the question.

Recherche du femme Perdue

This is an introduction to a story I’ve researched and pursued for two years. Thirty years ago, my father found a letter in an old piece of office furniture. Twenty eight years later I get the letter, an incredibly literate, graphic and dramatic description of the burning of Lahinch, a revengeful act carried out by the infamous Black and Tans in 1920, during the Irish war of Independence.

So, after conducting a heap of research about the event and the events surrounding the event, I decided the most compelling aspect of the story is the author of this intriguing letter. Most of that research was done in the National Library of Ireland, an austere but magnificent old Georgian building, or the Internet, through the archives of Clare County Library and the Clare County Archives.

ThEre, in the Local History Section, run by Peter Beirne, I deposited the original copy of the letter, probably the only eye witness account of that fateful night, September 20 1920.

But trawling through libraries and labyrinthine internet sites can never match the power of human contact. So I took off to Lahinch on Ireland’s Atlantic coast on a wing and a silent prayer. I got up that first morning and hitchhiked to Ennstymon, a neighbouring town also devastated by the Black and Tans that night in 1920, to check out the local library. I had a coffee in a local cafe but the library earth was a bust, there was nothing there.[image error]

So I hitchhiked back to Lahinch and caught a ride with Maria Vaughn and after I told her my story she said I needed to talk to her husband, Michael who introduced me to his 85 year old father, Eamon, who was a mine of information and pretty soon I have a whole list of people to talk to and a story begins to emerge.

One of those was Maire Falvey, the grand daughter of the letter’s author, who opened up a whole new perspective of the woman she was named for and has always admired.[image error]

Now I’m not going to tell you the story now but I guarantee, it’s sensational and at the centre of it is an astounding matriarchy of strong, well educated, independent Irish women in the early decades of the 20th century. And I’ll tell you this, too. Telling thIs story is the greatest honour of my life, so far. Almost 100 years since that fateful night and almost 100 years since her death, I want to elevate Maire O’Dwyer to the heroic level she deserves.