Claxton on Stokes

Salisbury steak with rue of allspice and comeuppance of stokes and barley, purloined from Monsieur Alcan’s side-pocket, the fob upon which and where he kept his timepiece and minatory, not a place for the faint of tart or ossuary, shit-makers Ives-on-eaves and that bastard James Von Logan, Jesuit braggart. Tisa ate nothing but greens and blues and the odd tripe-hoar, batched with prickly-pear and oil of so-far-alls-well-that-ends-swell. I much refer the potter’s pie, said Keeves, his tie roundabout the wren of his chin, a flagon of Tankard’s in his trouser’s lap; so much for gemstones and cuvee of spec on sight, Keeves intoned, to not a one in particular nor within glaring distance of Jiffy on Leeds, where that Claxton Moor-cum-Able drove Parnell to the postern in Bloom’s Mercury Landau, silly vanguards the lot of hem, O so I’ve been scold, ex pluribus Von Keeves and lager.

Into the Blue

Down by the Martello Tower,
I dived in,
A rump, rising in the raw water,
So icy it was,
With the gradh swirling up and around.

Old man fingers grasping,
Seaweed hat,
And a tiny shell for a nose.
I surfaced.
Winter aconite-skin,
I am white, invisible,
I whispered into the waves.

Dipping and up onto rocks,
Slippery and stone-salt crunch of sand.

I saw blue-underwater,
Lips of bladderwrack,
Racing black slate-faces.

I was so cold, so cold,
The tower just a chalky, Dalkey boot-fact above me,
My red lips like the seeds you spat into my grin.

Those days, you lifted me out of water,
Onto cool sand drifts,
And aloft the white promontory.

Mollycoddler and Hetman

For My Dearest Betty

Substantially plump Beck Madigan intoned, ‘Jesus to God almighty, move from the stairwell, my dear man, I abjure you, ex pluribus dais!’ Razor stropped and held aloft Madigan rinsed the washwater from the crone of his face and smiled, ‘Tis a day for mollycoddling and slight-of-footing, be cautious, dear men, to sidestep poor recently deceased Passy’s gravestone, in lieu of flowers, a nice tardy so long bastard son reeves of alcove and drudgery.’ McCurdy, eyes pilaster and crossed-over to either one side or the neither, tossed a sapper in-line over the tops of their heads, saying as he did, ‘Adman has a footing, now isn’t he the Arbuckle, not a tosspot to pee in, in conservator-diem’. Mrs. Bloomingdale, vilestone of putt and mercy, wren’svoice stoked and ready, warbled on the count of never, deafening devilfish and arbours alike, a picket of crisps in the wayside of her hoopskirt fob. A cheer and hoopla was overheard from yonder widowsill, Mrs. Passy in mourning frock sidestepping her poorly deceased husband’s freshly limed cesspit grave, arms akimbo at her sides, Beck Madigan, fleetoffoot, tossing nosegay into the snotgreenscrotumtighteningsea said, ‘ex pluribus sepulchred, leave the dear man in peace and rot’, leaving not a dry eyesore in alehouse or vicarage.