Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 2

Predators Pray

Love is blind,

the Romantics say

and justice too.

Faith is blind,

so predators pray

in the dark

Nature’s Scheme

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The cows were gathered

in a corner of the lower field.

dawn’s mist rose

as we crossed the meadow,

burly clouds jostled above us.

There’ll be rain,

my uncle said,

his few words spent,

like precious stones.

The dew in the long grass

soaked us,

as the animals gathered

for the long walk,

their udders full and swollen,

crying out for relief.

We drove them back

across the way,

as rain, cattle, grass and sky

and us, between,

became one,

to settle nature’s scheme.

Stray Dog

A stray dog,

curious but reticent,

sniffs a wall, a pole,

watching, detached,

wonders how that

dating thing’s working?

His own life’s reflected

disinterest, disregard

who cares,

who gives a fuck

Cupid never interrupted

nor paid heed.

A smile, a glance

of guile and gullibility,

the fear of giving,

lost in losing,

never receiving,

never living,

until alone

to wave goodbye

at his own

sorry reflection.

Grinning, the thought

sears painfully

through an album

of painful memories

a void of absence,

gaping, accusing,

never losing,

never winning, either.

The Last Hurrah of a Hungry Poet

Three times we met in the space of a single month. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. That’s not a coincidence.

Things don’t happen that commonly, I thought, without a reason, a purpose. Yet, even as I thought this, I began to doubt it. A man can be in two minds, as the saying goes, but there were times like these when I felt my mind was occupied by a mob of bickering courtiers all jammering to be heard.

Okay, it’s a small town with two supermarkets, a town hall and a court house but the municipal population’s over 20,000 and thus, for that very reason is an urban district, not a town, so the population extends to the people in the rural wilderness that surrounds the town and don’t care for a variety of reasons to be included in an urban district.

Y’see, there I go again trying to winkle some logic from a recalcitrant conundrum, on the one hand, it’s possible, on the other, there’s two chances and Slim’s out of town.

So, return to basics, start where it began, I tell myself.

I saw her first in the supermarket, not the extreme economy one, but the other, on the High St, where every fruit and vegetable was both organically produced and ethically sourced and there was a proper butcher from whom to buy your meat and fish.

Like that made a difference but it did. Where my conscience was assuaged as my purse got depleted and I could walk out feeling good about my self and for a short time, the world I lived in.

She was buying cheese and the salesperson doing her very best to promote a new goat’s cheese, a craft cheese, she extolled, made lovingly and with care from the milk of free range goats, herded humanely on the side of a mountain in Co Clare. I waited my turn to buy some parmigiana, cut from a wheel.

She was well presented, I thought, with care and style that wasn’t brash or showy. Her colour combination of violet and navy complimented her naturally tanned complexion and faintly auburn hair that rested comfortably on her shoulders.

Her lips, I noticed, had the countours of a perfect kiss on a love letter while her eyes were a deep, dark and smouldering green.

By now they were on her third goat’s cheese tasting while the salesperson stuck resolutely to the produce of the wild goats from Co Clare, making me wonder if she owned a leg of one of the goats that were now getting on my goat.

‘Sir,’ the fervent goatherd addressed me, ‘would you like to try a sliver of this goat’s cheese and give us your opinion?’

No, I would not, I thought. ‘I’m not particularly fond of goat’s cheese,’ I said.

‘Oh, please,’ the auburn-haired beauty asked, turning those eyes I could now see were a sparkling emerald on me, ‘try it. At least your opinion should be honest.’

It wasn’t just those eyes that enveloped me, I felt, it was her scent, an exotic odour of rose and patchouli, that swathed my senses like a gentle summer breeze.

‘Don’t be surprised if I throw up,’ I ventured, smooth to the last, taking the proffered portion from the spikes of the cheese knife and popping it in my mouth, an action I regretted immediately. Eating goat’s cheese, I’d often thought, was like chewing perfumed glue, not pleasant. It lingers in both taste and texture.

Auburn with the emerald eyes waited expectantly, those orbs wider in question while the enthusiastic goatherd looked as though she were riverdancing, unseen, below the counter.

I swallowed, realising too late, how difficult it is to smile, scoff and not regurgitate. The whole debacle was simultaneously nauseating, infuriating and embarrassing. I imagined I changed colour too as Auburn with the emerald eyes’ questioning look turned to alarm as she handed me a napkin and the goatherd did her best Munsch impression.

I retched, hacked and spat into the tiny paper square, turned on my heel and walked away, mortified, thinking, how could I ever face that woman again, how can I ever show my face in that shop again? The damned napkin, soaked in saliva and goat’s cheese, was stuck to my hand.

Too often in my life I’ve been confronted with my own social ineptitude in the face of someone with whom, for a tiny moment, I imagined myself conversing, exchanging ideas, even quiet moments of laughter and pleasure.

I left the shop with a sticky hand, a foul taste in my mouth and a searing heat behind my ears and along my entire neck. I felt like a traffic warning.

The second time we met was very brief, unexpected and almost as humiliating as the first. It was an uncommonly hot day so I treated myself to a pint of beer in the garden of one of the local pubs. It was a popular spot, particularly on those long summer evenings.

There was a cross section of the local community, either loud, brash and inflationary mobile or settled, senile and living off a pension fund depleted by recession. A Greek chorus of the local rugby club, beer-bellied and boisterous, howled at a television behind the bar while a young crew with impossible haircuts, toned bodies and gravity-defying buttocks, breasts and noses admired each other at the other end, and that was just the men.

I wore my Panama hat, a green linen shirt and a pair of cream linen pants and thought I cut quite a dash. Until I went into the toilet and the water faucet came away in my hand and, gushing, soaked my shirt and the entire crotch of my linen trousers.

My long journey back, through the bustling beer garden and the length of the crowded lounge, soundtracked by a chorus of titters, jeers and unabashed howls of laughter, proved bearable enough in a life littered with social gaffes until I encountered Auburn lady with the emerald eyes entering the lounge with a group of friends as I completed my ignominious exit.

Of course both of these incidents or encounters, however accidental, prompted another bout of deep and critical introspection. I concluded why would anyone like her, so elegant, sweet smelling and stylish, even think about someone like me unless as an amusing after dinner anecdote?

My hair began receding when I was a teenager and for at least two decades I lived off how it was not so much my hair receding as my gaining face until even that wore thinner than my shiny, sparsely thatched, pate.

My weight and waist line weathered the advancing years with dignity and restraint until, turning sixty and a bout of bad health, my belly broke loose from its moorings and, while it expanded, my savings diminished, almost in direct but opposite proportion.

There were landmarks I could map of my life’s most optimistic moments; my children and my grandchildren, in particular. But if I dwelled too long on those happy moments then my marriage interrupted, a wilderness of intellectual and emotional isolation.

A career as an insurance actuary had few highlights, almost by definition, while my secret life as a poet sparked some minor notice, two chap books but little acclaim. In a statement of account, it hardly amounted to much. In short, I concluded, while no risk, I was no catch, either.

The third encounter occurred in the National Library when I was the third poet in a presentation of five and attended by less than twenty. The poem I’d chosen had a line about being heard by a crowd of two men and a stray dog, such are life’s cruel ironies.

The young man from the Department of Arts and Culture introduced us with an enthusiasm that hardly matched the event but it raised my spirits as did the glass of whiskey I had later at the meet and greet while we chewed Cheddar on a stick and struggled to match the wide-eyed enthusiasm of young, undergraduate poets with the fervour of groupies who, I knew from bitter experience, would soon surpass and deride us at a hip, backstreet slam event.

So when she touched my shoulder and, enveloped again by that refreshing breath of rose and patchouli, I knew, before I turned, who I would see but worried, as I turned, if had whiskey breath or cheese in my teeth. It was her. She smiled and said how much she enjoyed my poem.

I know we spoke but I can’t recall what I said. I know we laughed but I can’t remember her jokes. They had to be hers as I have none. I couldn’t remember her name but I know what it is because she wrote it down with her phone number on the sheet where I’d printed my poem, the last hurrah of a hungry poet.

Read

Read, it said,

so I read,

bipolar,

they said,

who are they?

in my head.

Unworthy

 

Sad eyes of a calf,

motherless, bleating

fed well to fatten

worthy for eating,

undeserving.

Silver Mint

It was around noon of a sultry, overcast day. Martin Mint wasn’t sure what he’d do with the rest of it. Pausing, he wondered what he did with it so far.

He got up too early, he knew, but even with one thin sheet and his bedroom windows open, sleep was impossible.

It wasn’t always like that. Some nights, usually the third night, he slept for anything between eight and ten hours. The rest of the time he was lucky to get four hours without interruption.

Then he’d wake up with an ache in his kidneys could double him over with the pain of it. He sat while he peed in case his body decided to do anything else and while he did that he opened a newspaper app on his phone to catch the headlines.

He got up because going back to bed was like a lot of hard work, trying to sleep, sweating and feeling restless.

He made his breakfast of a poached egg and a sliver of ham on a slice of buttered brown bread and waited while his coffee machine gathered some heat. One cup was all he needed. The coffee was strong and between it and the food , the weight of night slipped from his body.

He put on an iTunes playlist of country tunes and listened to Alison Krauss sing of the death of a relationship. He hummed the melody distractedly while he fussed about preparing his shower and wondered should he shave.

Dressed, he turned off Bob Dylan introducing Marty Robbins, grabbed his bag and headed out the door. He knew where he was going, he had a purpose. Bread, milk and eggs were needed and the German supermarket on the High St opened early. He missed the morning rush hour, the people, the traffic, the shouting, the speeding bicycles if he got there early.

He was home before the lollipop man arrived to help the children cross the road. It was a relief to get home, put the shopping away, turn on the music again. Gene Autry was singing about Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. He cursed those music algorithms that couldn’t tell country from Christmas.

Another cup of coffee — two of a morning was his limit — he sits down at his desk, checks his emails and considers what he’s seen so far. There was puke in the lane beside the pub, three dog shits on the pavement and the package of milk outside the convenience store had been opened and rifled. A newspaper was taken, probably by the same milk thief, he thought.

There was sunshine in those early hours but there were clouds gathering like surly corner boys while the air felt heavy and sodden. As the first customer in the shop, his bread felt fresh and warm, the milk cold, the eggs freshly stacked.

He wrote it all down, how the homeless man he knew to see because he was always there, sitting on the window, first thing every morning, said hello to him and asked if he could spare a few coppers and thought how quaint when he really meant Euros or dollars or shekels.

He gave him a Euro, the only one he had in his pocket, wondering why everyone asks for everything sideways but knowing, at the same time, no-one gives a straight answer.

He remembered then, the new street graffiti, a massive mural of a cock in a hat, tatty woolen beanie and a fag in his mouth, half lidded squint, giving it loads.

But he forgot his phone, left it behind him in the toilet that morning. He was annoyed because he liked to record the street art, take photos of it.

They were loading barrels of beer into the basement of the pub on the corner while two homeless men just out of the local shelter, shared a can of cider in the shade of a tree across the street.

He met a neighbour carrying his bike down the stairs to go to work. He stepped aside to let him by, put down his shopping bag, waiting, murmured good morning, a grunt in reply. A hungry baby cried from the ground floor flat.

He marked the day and hour when he finished before reading it back and remembered then, the cock in the hat and his phone. It was in the toilet, just as he remembered. He put it in the pocket of his jacket, grabbed his hat and went out.

That was three hours ago. Now he stood, sweating, on a busy street. People were moving all around him, mothers pushing prams, hauling shopping, men with sheafs of paper, bustling, busily, someone serving coffee and buns to a couple at a cafe table, the incessant throb of a jackhammer, a teenager thumbing a phone.

Seeing a pub he knew, he went inside, relieved to be free of the noise and hustle. It was cool and dark inside, daylight intruding in a fleeting shaft as the saloon door opened and closed.

‘Howya, Silver, a bit early for you, is it not?’

He knew the voice and squinting in the pub’s dim light, recognised then the shape and voice of old Mr Donnelly, curate of the ‘Belle and wondered why he called him ‘Silver’, the nickname he had in his youth but hadn’t heard in a lifetime.

The pub was empty so he sat at the bar and exchanged small talk and pleasantries with Mr Donnelly, while he supped on a roaster, pulled with loving care and patience.

They talked of the weather, each nominating a couple of phrases to encapsulate the state of it before settling on ‘muggy.’ Then it was on to sport and Dublin’s chances in the Championship, the state of the economy and how the tax on drink would be the end of the pub trade before they paused and Donnelly retrieved a few crates from his stores and set to stocking his shelves.

Martin Mint took a long draught from his pint and considered the final gulp, a crucial and pivotal moment because it’s then a drinker considers another or going about his way, because to have another, he must order now so there’s a fresh pint ready when the first’s finished.

He paused, remembering then his morning. He took his phone from his inside pocket, turning it on to check his photos and there was the cock in the hat, a photo taken at 10 that morning. He stared, puzzled and confused, hoping the photo could tell him what happened between then and now.

Two hours, he thought. He closed his eyes, shook his head, drained his glass and whispering ‘good luck’ to Mr Donnelly, he left.

Outside, ignoring the bustle, he put his head down and shuffled home, wondering, as he went, why Mr Donnelly was in the pub and him dead 30 years?

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

Some Trump apologists are putting forward the notion his motives are entirely Machiavellian in his efforts to promote peace like the ‘peace’ achieved by being duped by Kim Jong Un of DPRK, Netanyahu of Israel, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and Assad of Syria.

Some, recalling the living, waking terror of nuclear holocaust lurking in the childhood of those who grew up through the Cold War, suggest Trump’s actions are cleverer than we think since the extension of the Cold War clearly benefited the Military-Industrial complex nowadays personified in the shape of the so-called ‘Deep State’ of Democratic bureaucrats in Washington.

But all of this precludes the living evidence of Russia’s commercial and industrial wealth developed since the break up of the Soviet states, an oligarchical sub-frame with vast resources and global impact controlled by an autocratic state mechanism and ruled by a despot.

Russia’s primary interest has always been Russia. Ask Napoleon. Ask Hitler. Ask Ukraine. They’ve just found even more effective weapons than the Russian winter.

Now whether that means aggressive annexation like Crimea, murdering their own former citizens on foreign soil or manipulating elections and sowing discord through cyber counter-espionage, the end clearly justifies the means as enemies fall and others squabble.

The Cuban missile crisis happened in my childhood and, as a six year old living in a rural backwater in the north west corner of an island on the periphery of Europe, I was almost willing to believe President John F Kennedy of the United States was prepared to risk a nuclear holocaust to save the democratic freedoms of Catholic Ireland because he was one of us and the Russians were a bunch of God denying, heathen, pagan Communists.

Almost. It couldn’t be that simple, I figured and within four years of that global crisis, I was conducting my own research into Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution in China in an effort to find out why more than half the world’s population thought there was some way to run the world that was better than the global military industrial complex that was conducting wars and supporting despots in the name of freedom and democracy.

That quest never ends but it’s certain that however ultimately corrupt and despotic the results, they were based, primarily, on a notion of equality, civil and social rights for all, just, we are told, the authors of the Magna Carta intended and subsequently, the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

Russia, history tells us, is motivated by the protection of Russia and will sacrifice anything to achieve that goal. Napoleon and Hitler both learned the Russian Bear hibernates in winter but lays waste all before it when it awakes. The massive numbers of Russian dead in World War II and the Western states’ apparent indifference to their sacrifice led them to create a Soviet buffer zone of middle European puppet states in the post war period.

It is easy to interpret the Marshall plan as a strategy to promote US free trade Capitalism in Europe and NATO, a military conspiracy poised to pounce on an unwary and weakened Russia, licking its wounds and crippled by global economic sanctions.

Equally, it will be conveniently ignored that while Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s detailed indictment of 12 officers of Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) contains a detailed breakdown of how they conducted and achieved their objectives, it suggests American intelligence agencies were hacking Russia, simultaneously.

States create these images to help promote their own motivations, motivations that are, in turn, dictated and manipulated by other self serving interests.

Anyone who would take the word of American intelligence networks or US media as anything remotely resembling the truth — Vietnam, Iraq, Chile etc — should be chided, with little license and a lot of generosity, as naive, in the least.

The only truth I’ve ever learned was through direct human contact with people from other countries, whether its been America, Chile, Mexico, Russia, Poland, China, Hungary or the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The only way I made those contacts was by seeking them out, corresponding, travelling and talking to them.

Notebook

Repository of my thoughts

a screen for my imagination

words assembled

watercolour dictionary

impressionist wash

Receptacle of whim and whimsy

If I thought I lost you,

life might end.

Hard Lesson

Half a million spectacles

Packed up in a warehouse

Bales of human hair

Carefully categorised

In length and colours

Brushes for hair, nails and shoes

mouthless gold teeth

The bald truth

Of state oppression

Organised

Co-ordinated

An inventory of repression

Change the place

Change the time

Uganda, Bosnia

Cambodia, Rwanda

Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Afghanistan

Somalia, Libya, Palestine

Iran, Iraq and Lebanon,

El Salvador, Nicaragua

The balance sheet,

The public image

Oil revenue, minerals

Political expediency

Diplomacy,

The language of convenience

Immigration was once known

As labour migration

War is for power

Power’s for control

what you eat

what you think

what you pray

how you vote

A record was made

that’s never been shown

of the horror of Holocaust

unless you sat

through the trials at Nuremberg

Don’t show it, they said

it’s not the right time

to change public opinion

to feel sorry for Jews

refugees from their homelands

no room at our Inns for them

Give them some time

until they come around

and learn to tyrannise

a hard lesson taught.