James Joyce

Lift this piece, there.

2011-05-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

Underneath this piece of skin, here is the part which (when identified) creates havoc. 'This is not an Auden poem.' No North, South....East or West or anything like that. Identify the cut-line. It is black spots on the soft skin - you know. The part that smells of vanilla. Vanilla Tic-Tacs possibly. When you put your nose right up to the back, it does remind you of that kind of vanilla. Cut deeply into the skin with the scalpel: 'Watery adenoids - oh dear.' They cannot be used for a transplant. These two parts are under the red hot flesh: 'You will never feel like this again.' Close up the skin with thread made of the whiskers of seals. This label states that, 'you should have done more research'. With a quick flick of the knife, you have found out that someone once, 'did you over in an alley-way 1985'. The wet pavement smelt of a)frogs b)the dog that sits in your grandmother's window c)the dressed crab at your uncle's wedding before the trifle.
Under your arm-pit, the slices reveal strange veins and poetry. Two pages of epidermis that tell you about the fact that, 'every day I have thought of this, for twenty years'. It is sadder than any song you have heard. Quickly, you push the arm down again like a lever. This part you flick off your finger at the dog, who laps and thinks it is all very tasty. He sits and pants. You have a lump in your throat that reminds you of an ice-cream you had when you were four. It has the screwball bubblegum on it and it is red and slightly softer than you remembered, although similar in that it stains the creamy white to red.
Nodules, green, peppery. You shall not be remembered in cuts or astounding meshes. Shortly afterwards, something leaks onto the floor. It seems to be bilious and with a mind of its own. It attempts to head out of the door that mother uses to swish and swash out old potato skins onto the compost heap. Once you put your hand into a rotten potato. It was like Auntie after she died. Her mouth.
All along the dotted line are scissor signs. Openings that are not re-sealable. 'When you see people smiling at parties, you will inwardly cry.' Those kid gloves that strangle everyone. 'You will give out cards to people in the street that have messages from the Bible on them' and 'Your dad is dying and you don't know yet'. He will tell you at dinner soon, when your hand will drop to your side as if to clutch all of your memories into your pocket. Deep in your thigh is a package of air, labelled 'disgust' and massaged a little. 'You will hear your panic drumming from now until 6pm of every day, when they reduce the salad leaves in Somerfield.'
Oh glory, the humdrum of your knee-caps. They make a popping sound as I wrench them open like that barbecue drum-stick we had in the summer. Yours is even more uninspiring. I throw parts of it at the magpie. All I know is that your toes were so damn cute. They eat like coconut peanuts. No more cutting remarks.

An Drochshaol

2010-12-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

He ate his ploughman’s lunch astride the O’Connell bridge, a rusted out bicycle fender gasping for air in the bottle-green Liffey, a chiliadal waif throwing crusts of black bread into the swales, a lone duck, the waves pushing it into the chalk-marked battlements, wings slapping like a shingle, treading the surge. ‘shove off!’ bellowed a tart, her heavy-weighed hips anchored to the Speyside balustrade. His fader came across on a famine boat, captain Gorta Mór standing the helm of the Clachans’ like a man incorruptible of mind and spirit. His da was the first settler to set up a hiding and tanning shop, working the hides into high-grade leathers fit for a Lords Lieutenant or a Waterford fop. Cunts like him always want a free-one, don’t want to wear galoshes neither, the cunt. Like boots make the man. Rather have his cock in my mouth than up my skirt. Never know if the packers got the crabs; crawl all over you like the British fucking army. Lords Lieutenant gave me a dose, squeezed it out like toothpaste, saying he’d never been with a lady before. Said his da came across on the Clachans’, took the helm when the captain went starker’s. Had to lock the mad cunt in his cabin, tried on his graveclothes to see if they still fit. Found a fiver in his pant’s pocket. Leftover from the last time he was ashore; probably got the whiplash from that fat tart on O’Casey, hear say she practically gives it away, waiting on the famine boats like an expectant mother. Got a mouth bigger than a man’s head; good for swallowing and spitting back up. Saw her with the gimp, practically sucked it off, poor bastard. Almost fell head over into the drink, held on with one thumb it was. Famine boats coming and going; some never making it past the breakwater, others crashing into the breakers by the funnels. See the little ones cutting their milk-teeth on runt potatoes, a cup of bilge water to wash it down. Sad sight for sad eyes.

Beige Forward (Stone Poetry)

2010-12-02T05:32:00.001-08:00

I knew it wouldn't last forever, it would get washed away.

Where I lost my Spleen

2010-10-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

‘La Belleza Convulsa: Where I lost my Spleen’ was written over the doorway to the Dog and Beggar Tavern. And on the opposite wall, covering over ricochets, near misses and bullet holes: Freedom for Los Desaparecidos! Suhcamelet, prelate to Norman and Varangian, his churlish egg-shaped jowl hanging below his chinstrap, stood admiring his reflection in the window, a stray Landseer with a maggoty eye sniffing his pant leg. ‘away bucetão! I have no time for strays and kettledrums’. On the back of his greatcoat, written in an unsteady Punjabi hand, was the following “(He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand.)” (James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses). Harping, Suhcamelet retied his shoe and sent his hat flying; the brim whirling like a railroaded top. ‘haven’t seen head nor tail of the crapper spleen, must’ve hightailed north to sky-scraping ground’. Harping, the strings of his heart soaring, he delivered a sermon to those assembled in front of the Waymart, ‘may the goalie host redeem your pitiful souls. So say’eth Robin Goodfellow of the Puck’. Fool, hasn’t a toadstool to piss upon. See his sort round and a bout, piddling in the flowerbox out back of the Dog and Beggar; piddle-puddle astride the grave. Ill-omened, his shirttails un-tucked, he hightails it northerly, his cudgel dangling betwixt his legs. Makes a man harp, lest it does.

Tiring of the befuddlement that cursed his being, the man in the hat sat under a mighty elm and counted the stars in the noontime sky: 2. He had no other recourse than to admit defeat; his life having become a peccadillo of disappointment. Were he but a farthing, a boy called Poldy who’s worse fear was his ma’s uneven temper, wading knee-high in the muck behind the woolshed spearing frogs with arrows his da’s da gave him, the sucking noise his boots made when he unstuck his foot from a grave of squashy mud, his arrow a spit of frogs, garlands of roe and green things, three frogs impaled with one pull of his bow, his piss yellower than the buttercups they held under their chins to see who liked butter and who didn’t.

“(He smites with his bicycle pump the {mudbug} in his left hand.)” (ibid). His da wore his shirt back to front, affecting a backwardness that followed him wherever he went. Woolshed frogs, his granddad smiling broadly from ear to ear. ‘never admit defeat my boy’ thinking what he really meant was deafness, but his upper-plate slipped and got in the way. Pumping he went about the day, his unstuck boot making a sucking noise. Un-tucked he strode into the day, his cudgel dangling betwixt his legs. Knuckling his bicycle sump he set off into the world, Obadiah at his side. ‘never overestimate the forces of nature’ said his da’s da jawing his upper-plate. Time and again he lost time of time; the hours and days fleeting by like scat through a goose. Up to his waist he went about the day never-minding that at noontime he had a meeting with Dejesus. He wondered: who likes butter and who doesn’t? Maybe Dejesus. Who knows? “(He smites with his bicycle pump the {crawdaddy} in his left hand.)” (ibid). Maybe not. His da taught him how to make a cudgel out of worthless metals, the blacksmith’s apron cutting into the partial bones in his hips. That night his grandmamma served whitefish, his da rescuing a crumb of bone caught in his throat with a thump on his back.

Scenery Boy

2010-10-23T12:19:00.001-07:00

He was a scenery boy with a Chinese Pantomime. My skin fits me like a Babybel, she said in the wings. He had that kind of stare, she thought. He pulled out a needle and wiped it against her thumb - there is a slice gone now. No fingerprint. It was the worst of nightmares, forgetting their lines. That was what scared the actors most. Sometimes you could feel them shaking as they waited beside you. The red skin peels away.

The happy scenery boy. He plumps himself up. He watches with pride, when really he wants to be centre stage. He flings himself at the feet of actresses and calls out, 'She's behind you.' (Oh no, he's behind you, I meant to say.) Poor scenery boy, he wears trousers that are too old. He said, 'Your face fits you like a tin, that's not quite right.' I think we got our lines wrong. Tilted inwards, he brushes against the velvet curtain, wishing he was out there, not here. Not like this. It's the worst place to be.

I am a boy in a Pantomime. My label is showing. Waiting in the wings, is the scenery boy. I have seen him there often. His face fits him. I will ask him later why he waits. His face fits him.....fits him like a.....like...I have often stared at the widow. Her rouged cheekbones, or should I say....his. Terrible nerves on the stage. With all this emotion, children calling out from behind mothers' skirts. The big, bad wolf. The little Buttons comes. Paper lanterns. Snakes made of thin cloth. Things that plug into furniture to make strange fizzing sounds when someone cries. Melodramatic facial expressions exaggerated by blue shadows. The lights worked well, didn't they?

He was a scenery boy in a Chinese Pantomime. That's where it all started. Sorrowful, he picked up small trees cut out of card. He had used two sample pots of paint to make it look like leaves. Two boxes that served to be a narrow-backed chair. Three lanterns, that looked red with the lights shining on them. However, in reality, they were grey. In the wings, they served well, lasted the whole season. Lots of slide-marks where items were dragged. The same lines, driving into the polish. Lines upon lines upon lines.

When he arrived home, he had stolen a piece of tape that held the two-box-backer together. Maybe tomorrow, the chair would fall and the lady would teeter. Her shaking hands and the dead scenery boy. The needle hidden. The horror as he looked in the mirror that failed to tell the truth. Mirror, mirror. He screamed. It was not supposed to lie.

A scenery boy in a Chinese Pantomime, found lying with a pin-prick thumb. A perfect slice. Two perfect lines of Kohl on the cheeks. Signifying arrows pointing to the horrors within. Remember your lines, perfected. You memorised them all and no-one ever noticed, only the velvet curtains held you warm. Two widows in the wings, two widows sighing. He was a good boy, we told him so. His face fit him like a tin.

Attended a Bloomsday Reading, Buenos Aires

2010-07-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

Jim Dandy

2010-07-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Unbeknown he slipped silently into the night, his face pressed into the slick yellow moon. He stopped briefly in Aravaca for a soda, which he enjoyed under the Jerks’ awning, moving on to Madrid where he partook of a bullfight and paid a visit to the Ladies’ Auxiliary, then stopping in Paitilla where he purchased a straw Panama with a chin-string and whistle. The coxswain pulled his cap over the flimsy cartilage of his ears, cinching it taut with a well-tied knot. One was best served if one paid attention to one’s dome, as kingfishers were known to seek shelter in the swales. Unbeknown he slipped into the mess in search of jig-rum and press dumplings, both of which he had a fancy for on cold dew-wet nights such as these. ‘…ahoy you there dumpling thief, put that jigger down…’. There would be lieutenants punishment to be had were one to step astride the watery grave. His da told him the coxswains’ tale on those nights when the lamplighter was off sick, not one bull-lamp flickering against the slick yellow moon. Malcolm came (ant wend) with the ebbing tyres, stopping just long enough to refill his gaol bag with jigs-rum and sweetbreads. The seafaring called him a-vestry, stoking the coal-oven, a jolly smirk on his face. His da knew Malcolm when as lads they both went faring to sea, his da aboard the Jim Dandy, Malcolm rigging Her Majesty’s skiff with brass tack and Queequeg. Faring seaworthy fairly they dropped anchor in Rokovoko, hoping to slake their thirst, but alas, they came up unslaked, finding the sea under their arses again, the slick yellow moon baying madly mad.

Happy Bloomsday!

2010-06-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine

2010-06-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

His father lived at the Grand Hotel Corneille, rue Corneille 5, 9 rue de l'Universite in a hotel, 5 rue de l'Assomption, 5 Boulevard Raspail, 71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, 9 rue de l'Universite, again in a hotel, 26 Avenue Charles Floquet, spent time in London and Bognor on holiday, then moved to Hotel de l'Univers, and from there to Victoria Palace Hotel, then 6 rue Blaise Desgoffe, 8 avenue Charles Floquet, 2 Square Robiac and 192 rue de Grenelle, relocated to London where he took up lodging at 28b Campden Grove, Kensington, then back to Paris and 2 avenue St Philibert and Passy, 42 rue Galilee, then a short stint in Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland, where he stayed at The Hotel Carlton Elite (now Carlton Restaurant & Bar, Apero Variante 2 near Bahnhofstrasse), Zurich, returning to Paris where he leased a walkup at 7 rue Edmond Valentin, a two room bedsit at 34 rue des Vignes, then a suite in Hotel Lutetia, where he stayed through until the Spring, moving to 43 Boulevard Raspail, (In Saint-Gerand-le-Puy and Vichy, both of which are communes in the Allier department in Auvergne in central France) in June to avoid the inclimate weather he abhorred so dearly, then in August to Hotel Powers, 52 rue Francois Premier, La Residence, 41 avenue Pierre Premier de Serbie and Hotel Belmont et de Bassano, 28-30 rue de Bassano, Champs-Elysees where he stayed until moving to Hotel Lord Byron, where he was treated for over-exhaustion, the treatment including sulphur baths, low altitude walking and Shiva massage, and finally to 5 rue Chateaubriand Paris 75008 (a three-star hotel located in Champs Elysees, close to the Arc de Triomphe) where he stayed until he moved to the quadrangle behind the aqueduct, where he remained until his death of violent whooping in 1957. His body transported by oxcart to the Grand Hotel Corneille, rue Corneille 5 where he was laid to rest in an unnamed plot behind the aviary.

Bitch 'n' Putt

2010-03-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

With all of its half moons, full stops and cuteness, nothing could disguise it for what it was.

Dear Lady,
I'd like to comment on the things you've made.
You've been past people I know.
You've made things I've never made.
Sir,
I am afraid, I know nothing of you.
Did I make something that you are interested in?
Lady,
Yes, that.

When she discussed it later with him, he had said to her that she had written down that she did not know who he even was. How strange that he had written to her in the first place - the writer. She had been a lover at a strange place and when dropped abroad, she had taken the opportunity to be published.

The book is out in July, under a pseudonym. I hope you enjoy it, she said.
What, really?
Yes.

After that, they both scrabbled around in boxes and drawers for ephemera, details, ledgers, bookmarks, hand-written scrawls, those kind of things you could sell for a fast buck.
Would this make a fiver?
Would this signed piece get anything at a car boot?
Could I steal this from Oxfam? You know the one I gave to them last week - damn, it was signed as well!

Dear Lady,
I like your work, even though it is mere Chick-Lit in the great scheme of things.
Sir,
Do I know you?

They shoved all papers down the back of the settee and raided the jar of coppers on the side to go and buy cigarettes.
Is the book really out in July?
Yes.

A Whitelined Deal Box

2009-08-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

His grandmother contracted syphilis, treponema pallidum, from a one-night stand. His greater aunt Alma-May came down with Cervicitis, for which she was prescribed Dooley’s unguent and a mild pyloric. His great aunt Alma was fit as a fiddle, never having to fend off Chlamydial trachomatis, gonorrhoeae or the ague. Having said this saying anything more would be frivolous. Oh so merciless oh so. Dear auntie hadn’t the faintest why the gonorrhoeae visited her on Wednesdays and Friday’s after fish, just the damndest thing. Now the Dooley’s have a real badger of a salve, made from mercury and crapped on doilies. A cure-all for Chlamydial trachomatis and those nasty pole marks. Auntie did the most marvelous things with catalogue stickers and unsafely pins. She could jerryrig a busted up radio or make hats from simple things she found sitting round the house. Me dear auntie could do most anything, make a cat look like a dog and a dog like a cat, those sort of uneven things. It wasn’t till the whooping got the best of her, knocking her ass over teakettle, an unsightly sight. "A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time." (J.J.) Them were the days, nosegays and wee crepe paper hats with windmill tops and eye-fetching baubles. Looking back onto it now, how strange indeed. So she said, she did, even if the words that came spiraling out of her mouth were covered in spittle and dead flies that hadn’t the wherewithal to see the screen door for the meadow. She could jerryrig a can of tinned beans, surefire, way out beyond where the naked eye can’t see a thing. A surefire cure-all for Chlamydia and rector’s bowel. All she ever wanted was one of those soft-seat stools, a Tavistock Venus Close Coupled Toilet with Soft Close Seat, sold exclusively by Plumbworld, the world’s leading maker of soft-seats. Never did quite get the fetch and gather, not that I’m suppose to get much of anything at all. The world’s leading manufacturer of soft-seat toilet seats, known world round. Some days, nighttime, too, I can’t help but think about her bottom trapped between the clip of the soft-seat and the front of the cistern, all that yammering and all get out, sad as cancer and frail children.

River-run, run, run, run.

2009-08-05T03:12:00.000-07:00

Climb up onto the bridge and look down into the sparkling water. See how it runs!
Climb down into the water and wash your feet in it and see your face reflected. In years to come, you will come here and watch the bubbles froth and distort your once-beauty. Still the waters and soft your face until it resembles nothing more than a crescent of shine. How beautiful!

Swirl it with your fingers and watch the spinning eyes. They falter that dip in here. Blue crystal, it is so chill to watch it disappear. The soft clinging of it around the tip. Still wedded to the depths.

Pebbles roll and render the banks to nothing. Silty, yet fresh as ever. Rubbing up against minnows, your noses darting. Banks and beds. It's more like the old you, the passion and the fire it brings after reading the depths. Keep up the dark heeds, needs.

Clack Clang

2009-08-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Caparica Setubal, Villmergen Aargau and Billancourt Ile-de-France. He’s a mad cock, that one, gilded edges, epaulettes and knags heads, must have a bilks’ full of ‘em in his closet. Always one for the hello fader blest be thy mane, fucking blasphemous cunt he is. Hour fader coo art in haven mallow be thy game. …cad bastard, no three words about it. Quick with the plate, clack clang, a pocketful of God’s shillings, all smarmy, the brides skirt shimmied up to her armpits, sad sight indeed, awfully. I’d have it at him, the back of the skull, baby soft all kicked in… …for the love of it, awfully fucking awful…

That morning the man in the hat cooked a skillet-fried breakfast, bread-heels braised in skillet fat, onions, boiled, two runny eggs and ¼ of a pigs’ shoulder, and a cup of brown pail water culled from the rain barrel on the stoop outside his lean-to flap, and a hunk of farmers’ cheese. Picking up the morning news the man in the hat reads an advertisement for Pappy’s Spirit Gum, $ 27.50 per 1-liter bottle, postage extra. His eyesore eyes bloodshot, he places the now folded paper on the table next to his chair and sighs ‘…smarmy bastards…’.

On the transom over the door to the Greek Deli is a sign that reads, Olive Oil is God’s Oil, and beneath that a drawing of two dogs barking at a man, his pant’s leg torn clear off his cuff. The man in the hat has his suspicions that the owner of the Greek Deli sells dog meat, butcher’s paper soaked through with urine and blood. Hour fader who’s in haven… looking upwards up, the sky darker than yesterday’s death, he looks round his lean-to for a matchstick, his mouth forming a perfect O… ‘…shimmied up to her armpits, awfully fucking awful…’.

Time, it was

2009-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

The bell started to chime distinctly. Ever so, ever so. Looming. Just ticking over after the news and events of the past two weeks. Molly, she looked sideways, ever wondering at how long it would take. The blisters or the arrest would surely finish her off. The trust, long gone. She destroyed it all on purpose, knowing that with the pain there was no need for more. Purposely creating more pain through all. If Boylan walked away, finally and turned, there would be no more of it. No more pain and dreams. Dreadful dreams. They tossed the night, smashing the carpets against the wet cement in the morning. She only knew that if she spoilt the dreams, they would not come to haunt her time, after time, after time. Boylan hated her, in his cocked hat and with his wry smile. Still, so lovely, after all this time.

She can almost smell the grass, the tiny shots of brandy on the hill. The seed cake once more. She knew if she broke the glass with her words, they could not be shards to sting. Dreadful, so awful. Terrible and dire. Dread and fear. The tiny girl brought home in the police car, her only one daughter. Fear and more fear and only fear. What has he done this time, this time, this time?

A moving away to set you free. An unkindness to be kind. A firewall. A fearful fight to say life is not kind.

Look into the light and keep all three safe. All, all, all. All is lost.

Daring and dipping. What this time? The police knocking on the door. Dripping and desperate. Life is surely not kind. All is.

They Say Beasts Shall Bring Beasts

2009-07-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

I refer back to the recent laid back words that foretold of this news. Several months there, I had already written of them coming, August the 2nd of one year past - re-read for knowledge....yes, she was certain to have predicted so and so....it was of no surprise and it did not tip over the flowers. It was a moment of coming...but what took so long? I thought it would have been months, months, months more since. A wound that needs to be fixed could easily be filled with these things. The way that it happened before. Bridging a gap, making it up, bringing dead flowers to a wedding...that kind of thing. Always good to make her smile. Woe is the virility, for it comes to flying up and away for good.

Fickle flies, it was a dirty trick to play on a lover. To fill the bountiful bucket full of it and then let them go. The seeds into the air, just as Howth. How the seeds go, go, go. They all leave you in the end (or in some cases, get given away).

She was the scrap metal opportunity that he never took.

Labels that your mother sewed into your pullover. The black felt-marks all faded now. She thought that you had never made her proud.
The old hooky father, he made you take off your braces and tie up your trousers (with string), just to make the neighbours scoff at you.
The mother-in-law, without the leg, envied the fact that your own mother had been able to get into the veins and rip them out, prawn-black strings filled with blue blood.

So, some time ago, I had written of it, these wriggling things. Long before the thought had even entered the heads of others. She had already prepared herself for the binding of her feet. She had already prepared for the gleeful tickle-hums of the news. She already knew...so long ago. Seen it in the girl's eyes last June. I shall soon be with it, full of it. A sticking plaster, with mucus bubbling, yellow.

And one day, with that thought, she tossed aside the thought...will he give mine away too? Ach, no, she thought, not mine, not mine, not mine. Too precious, my love.

Too precious.

Happy Bloomsday

2009-06-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Paddy’s Hole

2009-04-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

The corpse-dresser put half-pennies over Paddy’s eyes and wired his jawbone shut with copper brads and wire, resized his denture plate to fit in the coopery of his mouth and sealed him up in an oak box, a leftover from the groceries last delivery. Bloom, lemony scented soap pocketed, left the funeral precession and recrossed the Liffey from the other side, the one he’d crossed before purchasing his morning paper before mourning. Mrs P. Dogman dressed in foxhound wrapper and beaches boots, threw the first curd of dirt on poor Paddy’s hole and then recrossed the gravesite in small even strides, her hair a will-o’-the-wisp, arms akimbo, teeth a thither and at chatter. –Fucking sot—she intoned, --needlessly wasting a fair to middling day, thoughtless bastard sod’-- Bloom strode underfoot to the Sham-o-tam and hoisted a gin and phonic, his ears paraffin and none the banter, Blazes tosspot, cuckolder of Molly Ramsblood gibing from beneath bedsheetsstokinglardpattythighs bloomers cinched high and over.

Fader's Boot

2009-03-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

Breakfast: Quaker’s-cruet, seedcake and cobbler (caraway is good for the digestion-n-bowel) potassium sorbet helps with the backache (does away with cursed jimmy-leg) dill for the whooping and shingles; gobbler’s cockscomb for wont of neckwringing and catheter; me mom said I was a beastly boy, a knockabout with unruly manners, the kitchen floor trounced with me fader’s boot-scuff, yellow-linoleum scuffed to tacking.

Tuberculosis

2009-03-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

The racking chest is surely a symptom. A symptom of the dreadful pursuing illness. It means that we can rub sore backs with items such as oils and tinctures.

Molly came back to me and looked after the back. She wasted every moment she had looking at the tiny moles that had developed there too. She was so tender. So joyous in lying next to me. Her head, oh her tiny breath on my shoulder. Sometimes her hand just lay softly on my neck, just breathing quietly.

Once here, she is mine again. Just for a moment in the March air. She rolls and talks, in her sweet way. What a joy to have her here all to myself as the sun watches. We only greet in that hello way, the Ritz elevator way. Pass me a cherry with a stick and I'll make you a cocktail, she called to me across the morning room.

Talking, just being alone, wandering the friendly aisles of forgotten alleys. Where the ladies and dresses line the streets.

Breath.
Tuberculosis.
Thickening chest.
Possibly much worse.
Possibly the chest that will bring my end.

I wonder where her hands learn the ways of healing. She is here again. Turning. Softly, softly.

The sound of the breath now is crackly.
I know it is there, the disease.
The sound of the breath is lonely, looking for a way out.
The sound of death is rising, bubbling. Froth and filth.

Bed linen lines the moist trapped aureoles of air. Cleanliness in sin. The lungs, the terrible lungs. They do hurt me so much Molly. Come let me hold you once more, whilst you are still here. Still. Stillness, still.

Poor Bastard Welshman

2009-03-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Nora Barnacle no Blazes Boylan’s gobspit, Guinness-brown between her raw naked legs. Finnegan crowning, perhaps, birth-sculled head smarting from a Scorpion’s sting to the nethermostmouth, a pleasing encounter nonetheless, Nora my dear, dearest Nora Barnacle. Head-thruster, Aloysius, you smarting smart man. That, this was composed on a torn shred of newspaper culled from a wire-cage display in the lobby of a medical tower before my needle-in the eye follow-up. Doctor Macdonald has no farm to speak of. Johannesburg’s runaways have no interest in agrarian things. Waif wafer-thin, the ghostbody of Christ, sumptuousness best enjoyed on the sliver of one’s tongue. Christ wine, deep, arterial scorpions and licescales slaking a persistent thirst, thirsty for more of this sumptuousness, sweet, treacle sweetness, more. I await God’s smiting-hand, tremulous. Little devils dancing like Cossacks all. A bitterness best savored on the Buddenbrooks of one’s tongue-meat. Brings to mind, as it always does, poor besotted Dylan’s liver, fresh meat excised for the gourmand’s table de haut; salty, salt aftertaste besmirching the gorehole as it does. Poor bastard Welshman bastard. Better off, you’d be, with Finnegan’s head torn to shreds on the lemony-scented rocks of the Liffey. Snotgreensea dogsbodies, corpsegases, dancing like devilish Cossacks under a crazed jealous moon kicked to splinters.

--go maire tú an lá!—

2009-02-01T21:19:00.000-08:00

breithlá shona duit,
a chroí James! go mbeannaí
Dia thú! whore Dublin’s pátrún
son, gods speed dear James,
go maire tú an lá!

Love Letter to Nora

2009-01-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

My love for you allows me to pray to the
spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness
mirrored in your eyes or to fling you down
under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck
you up behind, like a hog riding a sow,
glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises
from your arse, glorying in the open shame
of your upturned dress and white girlish
drawers and in the confusion of your
flushed cheeks and tangled hair.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/1466098/Joyces-love-letter-to-Nora-for-sale.html

Droichead Séamus Seoighe

2009-01-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.iol.ie/~ndnsp/rivers/liffey1.htm

Künstlerroman Poïêtes

2009-01-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

Crisscrossing the Liffey at Droichead na Leathphingine recrossing at Sráid Uí Chonaill than at Droichead Leamhcán then again again at Droichead Farmleigh, where the waters roil and curse, to the leaside quay of Droichead Ruairí Óg Ó Mórdha crisscrossing at Droichead Séamus Seoighe and Droichead Sheán Uí Chathasaigh onwards on to Santiago Calatrava Valls’, yet to be spanned, then for a Ha'penny a nick across Droichead an Nascbhóthair Thoir, arriving at Droichead Uí Chonaill crossing crossing recrossing the Unnameable to the maw of the great Amharclann na Mainistreach, whereupon upon the Contae Shligigh stage yon gaze and ogle the moveable levers that caulk and muscle the Seán Ó Cathasaigh troop, where nearby Aloysius Augustine Aloysius speaks in ligulas’ Künstlerroman Poïêtes standing admired in the raw earthy mud.

Ulysses "Seen"

2009-01-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

1922 drawing of Joyce by Djuna Barnes

http://www.ulyssesseen.com/

Nollaig Shona

2008-12-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

Muleteer tidings, jimmy jig-jigging lowly washbowl sopped soapy with lemony scented things, lower the drownbridge, easy now, now easy now. 15 Ushers Island roiling past the Millstream from the river Camac to the channels discharge into the sop soppiness of the Liffey, the confluence thereafter known as Ushers Pill, thereafter skip-skipping under the Arland Ussher bridge at Bridgefoot Street, which branches Ushers Island/Quay across crossing Bridgefoot where the Dominican friars cook potstickers in the rector’s kitchen, St. Saviour's rectory pie said to cure whooping and jimmyleg, the Pim family, P.J. Fagan recorded as owner and M. Smith and Son as tenants of the Pim hostelry, tenet to Smith, holder of the papers and writ, in the year of our hoard 1890, the house home to James Joyce's great-aunts, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Callanan and her daughter Mary Ellen, whereupon members of the Joyce family, as they became old enough, went each Christmas to No. 15 where Joyce's father (John) carved the goose and made a speech in honor of Misses Morkin, who in turn made a speech in honor of Stephen Hero’s Christmastime Christmas party, held each year at 15 Usher's Island, also known as Misses Flynn's school. Rajasthan Lamba met Richie Goulding, Reggie Wylie, Gertie MacDowell and Mrs. Mastiansky at the Ormund Hotel on a snowy winter solstice day. Rajasthan Lamba claimed to know the whereabouts of the missing whore’s glove, and assembling those who shared an interest in whoring and gloves, Reggie Wylie being particularly fond of women’s haberdashery, was going to divulge its locality. Mrs. Mastiansky, known for her gruffness and evangelic face, said ‘…where is it, where’s the damn glove...?

The Ear of Joyce

2008-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Some ear he was. A right one. Telling all as it was. When a traffic car pulls you for speeding, you put up your ol' fist and say, arl get on wit ya. The copper, he says, well, I suppose you were speeding alright, knowing your history and all. He looked out over the hills of fine futures and forgot all about speeding and all about rusted wheel hubs. He just thought of that night back then, years ago.

All red she was from the cold.
And a fine head of hair.
Her hand a piston, a grip.
Her bead-eyes, a wanton shrewy.
She, her feet draped across a cinema seat of velvet.
Huge boots and a self-made bow made of iron.
Two hoots and a half, she laced her own bony spoon around his.
Three tight hugs and one up and over to take-away.

A yes, sir. She replied from the back seat. Ah, you see, sir, we were just finding our way back to the light sir.

Sometimes I see the darkness and I don't want to write this damn speeding ticket. I only want to feel her cold hands around me again. I want to take this pen and pad and throw it over the edge, with only me on the end of it. Wasting away the driving anguish of this squashed, heavy drain-head.

I'm sorry sir, it won't happen again. I was just giving birth to a disappointment. Very painful, sir.

Dog-eared, the speeding ticket tucked into his pocket. I saw that tiny speck of coffee there earlier. I thought about licking it, only for it to become a smear. A smear of never-ending progress. Caffeine keeps me going, he muttered under his breath. It gives a lurch to that old heart of mine. I'd like to reduce my carbon footprint by setting fire to my feet. Timeprint, goals, steady non-reversible progression towards the grave. I used to live my inexperience on the road, he thought. Now I take away all the left-side drivers' right to roam.

Very expensive car that. Are you the cause of road accidents? Treat others with respect. Make sure you do not give birth to disappointment on the road. Make sure that you trust your back-seat passenger. Don't overtake in unusual places. Don't think you are smart by buying a car on e-bay.

Sir, you don't want us to really turn back do you? Go back to that chase? You didn't even remember me.

Just looking into that sky, makes me remember her. Her little beam of a face. It sure made me smile. I remember looking up to her in a room in a seaside town and she, she was just like the sea. My steel rock. She was all rolled into one over that fossil. I miss the fossil. The green lakes and the dip of the dolphins. You could see from up there and then she left me.

Talking of which, sir, I thought you would understand. Being in the family. You sure could let us off sir. We're only young.

Yes, young, young. I drag myself to the age of draughty hell. I just wake up to eat slime. I walk towards elders. Towards blackberry down-and-out. It's all down on from here. Suit yourself.

The Auld Triangle

2008-09-06T18:54:00.001-07:00

The Joycean Nightscape

2008-09-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Ulysses can be read as transubstantiation from body to soul; and vice versa. Dog’sbody, Dignam’sbody (rotting in bog-peat) Molly’sbody in bed-sheets (mobbed in gobspit) and Stephen’s dearly departed mother’sbody pleuritic with coalman’s lung. Blake’s etchings best evoke the transubstantiality of the Joycean nightscape, the juxtaposition of lifelessness with the immanence of the living, the dead rising, corseting the black Irish Sea. There is a no separation between the dead and the living, but simply an inversion of language, a distance that never recedes into the background (foreground), an opposable unity of language, separation and line; transubstantiation of body and soul (life and death) sung in a tenebrous, lilting Irish brogue.

Transubstantiation for the Guinness Weary

2008-08-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

When I think of Joyce I think of spindle-elm, rectors’ benches and ash-switches, the thrash and wail of God’s will into the seats of little boy’s knee-pants. Joyce’s inimitable understanding of Aquinas is evident throughout A Portrait, Ulysses and the Wake, Stephen’s exegesis on substantive form, Jesuit dogma and surplice, a Hegelian kick at the merciless mercy of a higher Jesuit education. As I am rereading Aquinas, under the tutelage of an inimitable Thomistic scholar, I can see the connections that Joyce makes between religious messianic and dogs’bodies; James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Young Hegelian, slayer of transubstantiation and dogma, canon fodder for the intemperate and Guinness-weary.

Private Joyce

2008-08-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

1. From Molly at 1pm on a morning where she had simply become part of the bed linen. Wondering if she had the energy to get out of the bed, she lay there instead. Contemplating limpness, finally she enjoyed her own company in a valley of warm strawberry dreams.

2. Bloom wandered into the bar and ordered two eggs and bread. The eggs were like the the coughed up throat of an old man. Two greasy smears of lippy yolks on his lips. Two snot-rods of toast and a warm, brown beer.

3. A walk down to the beach and I picked up two stones. I brought them home and put them in a glass jar. They were trapped. I wondered what death would be like to a small pip of a shelled creature. Globed and happy, a head that can retreat, retreat, retreat.

4. Molly wondered how his words had gone all wrong since she had gone. They were not full of passion any more. She had gone away, away, away. How, when they had talked, his words had been much stronger, full of joy. Now they had lost all heart and the saddest part was that he knew it. Words that were like confetti at a divorce hearing.

5. Look into the sky. The clouds make words and they are only there for a moment. People are tangible, they go, go, go and then (of course) they return. Winter warmers and then freeze.

6. In 1975, two lovers met and they wrapped themselves together. They then covered themselves in cling-film and then gently cut off the cling film with surgical scissors. Two empty figures made of shiny plastic.

7. Now that she is with child and you are back on the mobile sending text messages to your new found friend, will it follow a similar passage? You sleep nose to tail and then you feel her belly - trying for a baby was not so hard and then she plumped up nicely like a piece of gammon. Not like the corned beef skin she used to have with that flaccid hair. Better care for her now, eh?

8. She put on her hat and looked for a pen that Bloom had left. He wrote down his life and then his memory was lost. He did care for her after all, old 'Poldy. How strange to think that after all...

James Joyce Summer School

2008-06-22T22:12:00.001-07:00

6-12 July 2008
programme overview
speakers & teachers
academic programme
social programme
fees & accommodation
application
scholarships & credit
practicalities
contact us
links
past programmes

The 2008 Summer School will run from Sunday 6 July to Saturday 12 July 2008. Founded in 1988 the James Joyce Summer School is one of the foremost gatherings in the Joycean calendar. Each year scholars and lovers of Joyce gather from all corners of the globe to celebrate and analyse the work of this great writer. A unique aspect of the school is the fact that it gives Joycean enthusiasts the opportunity to savour and re-experience his writing in the context of the city which inspired and shaped it. The Summer School meets in Newman House where Joyce attended university and in Boston College-Ireland, both on St Stephen's Green in the heart of Dublin. This unique setting provides the perfect backdrop against which to reflect on Joyce's works and to assess his continuing influence on contemporary fiction in Ireland and elsewhere. The Summer School has run under the Academic Directorship of Professor Anne Fogarty of UCD since 1997. Previous Academic Directors from UCD include Professor Augustine Martin, the founder of the School, and Professor T.P. Dolan.

The Dublin James Joyce Summer School and University College Dublin are pleased to present the 2008 programme in collaboration with Boston College-Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, and the James Joyce Centre, Dublin!

Joyce's face

2008-06-20T23:52:00.001-07:00

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j--O O--j
jaaJJaaa
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-j j j j-
ames
joyceja
mesjoycej
amesjoyceja

Martello Babel - Sandycove

2008-06-16T05:48:00.000-07:00

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD,

Brazilian - SOBRANCEIRO, fornido, Buck Mulligan vinha do alto da escada,...

Italian - Solennemente, gravemente, Buck Mulligan veniva dall'alto della scala...

English - STATELY, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a...

French -Majesteux et dodu, Buck Mulligan parut en haut des marches...

German - GRAVITÄTISCH kam der dicke Buck Mulligan vom Austritt am obern Endeder treppe...

Spanish - Solemne, el gordo Buck Mulligan avanzó desde la salida de la escalera...

Czech - Otylý, statný Tur Mulligan se vynoril ze schodu, nesl misku s mydlinami...

Danish - Buck Mulligan trådte op fra det øverste af trappen;...

Norwegian - Statelig trinn trådte Buck Mulligan frem øverst i trappen...

Swedish - Högtidligt trädde den satte Buck Mulligan fram fran detöverstatrappesteget...

Finnish - Komea, pulska Buck Mulligan tuli portaidenpäästä kädessäänvaahdokekuppi,...

Dutch - Statig kwam de dikke Buck Mulligan uit het trapgat...

Catalan - SOLEMNEMENT, el rodanxó Boc Mulligan aparegué al capdamunt de l'escala,...

Turkish - SARMAN, BABAC BUCK MULLIGAN, üzerine bir aynayla bir ustura haçvari...

Portuguese - POMPOSO, rolico, Buck Mulligan veio do alto da escada...

Slovenian - Dostojanstveno je sisao gojazni Buck Mulligan s vrha stopnišcaCroatianDostojanstevno je sisao gojazni Buck Mulligan s vrha stubista...

Polish - STATECZNY, PULCHNY, BUCK MULLIGAN WYNURZYL SIE Z WYLOTU SCHODOW,...

Lá Bhloom

2008-06-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Lá Bhloom you punters, the river runs between dogsbody and whorecopse, past lowing cows and sheep bleating, under Paddy’s Dudley box, Jesuits’ lashing the good Lord from the backsidepillory, warbride scalawags’ hock wages piebald to pike, moonfish shat, mums the ward, hawking seacords and ginrags in a sea of scurvy, Lá Bhloom you punters, heist a brownbottle swig to James, ponderoar of commode piddle and Liffey.

For Alan

2008-06-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

you could

walk on fencewire

in your bare feet, scrolled like

snakeskin after a hard summer rain

but you could not walk on water

or remember a time when life

was less complicated, or at

least less sad

Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake

2008-06-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.finneganswake.org/joycereading.shtml

No mother. Let me be and lest me live

2008-05-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

Ulysses is a book of free-floating association; it is characterized by a narrative style that suggests a ‘disinterested’ and solipsistic world in which each character is cloistered and detached from meaningful relationships with others, dispensing with all possibility of change and fulfillment. As in the failed relationship between Molly and Bloom and their inability to find a source of comfort and reconnection with each other after the death of their son Rudy, Joyce’s characters inhabit a lonely and disaffected world that was presaged by Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism. Joyce’s characterization of detachment and disconnection in Ulysses suggests that the Dublin he left with such haste and disfavor years earlier found its way into his fiction through the inner narratives of his main characters.

Joyce’s Ulysses can be read as a comedic tragedy in which its main characters experience the monotonous pains of ordinary living, and through these tragedies try to discover some form of redemption in light of their suffering. This striving towards disinterestedness is a constant theme in Schopenhauer. The main protagonist in Ulysses, Bloom, in his travels through Dublin finds himself caught up in an endless stream-of-consciousness thought that revolves around the failures of his past and the dissatisfaction of the present.

What then does this suffering and tragedy have to do with creativity? In Joyce the constant striving for satisfaction is a theme that repeats itself through Ulysses. Bloom is constantly at odds with feelings for Molly and his need for sexual and existential fulfillment. The need for a way out of this dissatisfaction impels each character to search for a way out of unhappiness and tragedy. In Joyce this satisfaction eludes its primary characters, they continue to exist in a world of unhappiness and tragedy. The grief and guilt that haunt Stephen after the death of his mother:

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an adour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, and a faint odour of wetted ashes. Her gazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat. Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! No mother. Let me be and lest me live. (Joyce, 1992, pp.10-11)

Stephen is less concerned with his mother’s death, than with his inability to free himself from the guilt and shame he feels for not being a good son. Joyce’s characters inhabit an ‘inner world’ of cold ‘disinterest’ where their thoughts are alone and uncommunicative to anyone except themselves. In the end Joyce’s characters remain trapped, captive to their own inner pessimism. This encourages disinterestedness from disinterest, twice removed from the disinterested. In this way Stephen is looking at himself looking at himself, twice-removed from the object of disinterest. Even a cold dispassionate disinterest would be too much to bear.

Ulysses Annotated - Hats Part the first.

2008-04-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

There are approximately five hundred drafts of my annotations of 'Ulysses' written in black and blue biro, written in 1994 and on subsequent readings. On the back page of the thumbed copy (Penguin 1992), there is also a list of all references to hats. There are many more hats mentioned in the book than just Boylan's.

There is also a doodled image of a small child, with, 'A going away that returns' scrawled beneath in silver pen. Something I must have drawn in a moment of awe of wonder, of which I had many.

-Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said, pointing.
John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.
(page 146)

Here, the hat is a symbol of male authority. Oh, look at how John responds - got a 'dinge' in the side of his hat. Caused by a carriage. Men phrase their words on the basis of authority and for Bloom to comment on the appearance of a hat is as subtle and crushing as the hat itself.

Martin Cunningham looks at the dinge and points it out as well. Whereupon John smooths the hat 'bulged out the dinge' and then 'claps' the hat back onto his head. For Bloom, this is a reminder of all those who wear hats - the hint of Molly's former lovers and Boylan. The physical bulge is also an obvious reminder of her infidelity. Bloom is literally pulled back, walking 'chapfallen' behind both Martin and John. If he were 'crestfallen' we could be reminded of the coxcomb, but the chapfallen even snatches away that masculinity from Bloom. Poor Poldy, he draws back from the men as Martin is, 'laying down the law' - perhaps a law from which Leopold will never escape.

The men are back in their rightful places with the, 'How grand we are this morning' a nasty chip on Leopold's shoulder.

A Haberdasher’s Spectacle

2008-04-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hats I neither own nor have doffed or thrown willy-nilly into the air.

Calico Cat hats and hats made from Ruggeri and ammonite, a haberdasher’s spectacle of hats, caps, bonnets and toques. A milliner’s hatter of hats: bonnets, caps, toques, boaters, bucket hats, fedoras, pointy, slouchy, sun bonnets, Trilbies, Balmoral Bonnet, Borsalino, zucchetto, turban, Boucle, capuchon, Taqiyah, Suma cap, Flat cap, garrison cap, wedge cap, rain hat, kepi, skullcap cap, Kufi cap, Nasaq toque, Salakot, newsboy cap and the nightcap cap.

da drew a bead
jowl to shoulder
then backed off as the calf’s
head fell, calving season
came late that year, too
late for prayers or
da’s temper

The clochard met the harridan who in turn met the man in the hat at the church bazaar, the second of the year. The harridan’s sister was busy arranging her knick-knacks, Pop-sickle stick figurines and dollies tatted from old rags and shoestring, an assortment of glass jars, some blue and red, others red and blue, and gunboats made from Paper-Mache, when the clochard appeared to the left of her, his eyes closed tighter than a pugilist’s fist. ‘Orange’ he said in a hissing staccato, ‘lime sherbet and kiwi’.

da
poached
flies with the
cob of his tongue
drawing blood
blacker than
quid

your eyes two greenstones
dulse blue lips that bespoke not a lie; I make paper kites

without tails: palmaria palmate, you said
you’re lips making a pocking sound

I will gather your hair into a skein
the taut of my fingers ferrying knots into bows

then I will lay you in the crib of my arms
a child’s smirk on the kip of my face

Cave woman meets James Joyce

2008-03-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

James: River-run. River-run. Come with me cave-woman! Dive in to the river-running.
Cave-woman: I'd like to go clubbing instead.
James: Clubbing?
Cave-woman: Yes, clubbing.
James: River-run. Snow-storm?
Cave-woman: I'm just another cave drawing to you.
James: I like your brown shift.
Cave-woman: All fecund in my brown-ness.
James: Oh yes. Let me put on my glasses and see you properly. Ba-ba!
Cave-woman: See my fern. See my cave. Come to my wooden axe. See my bone necklace.
James: You'll go away in the end. You all do.
Cave-woman: No, I'll never go away. Never go away from you.

James Joyce for today

2008-03-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

I wore a caterpillar's frock, in green, of course,
All merry with yellow spots and yet,
It was not until I reached the top of that tower that I,
Trembling,
Thought of Joyce,
Fretting in his footfall,
The tiny steps,
Where his waistcoat,
Encased below,
Slightly trembled in its window-box.

Terrible eyes staring and admiring the embroidery.

'My walking stick,
My walking stick,
How, how can I do,
Without you?'

I left that air-voice behind,
Still searching for his stick.

Up on the top,
Those old men,
Dipping down and up,
In the Irish Sea.

Strange how the muscles become,
More distinct with age.
The cold and grey,
The air at the back of the brain,
And the eyes.

'My poor old eyes,
What they did to you, I'll never know.'

Spectacles and scratches,
That's all it ever was.

Manuscripts and fingerprints,
Postcards of you,
With your eye-patch,
And your world of Molly Bloom.

Repeat Until Fatigue Sets In

2008-03-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

In the park on a bench sat a man with one eye and a trebled chin. He was eating a bologna sandwich slathered with Gibbs’ hard mustard, a wedge of onion and a Cantors’ pickle. He ate slowly, methodically with small even bites. He took a bite of the sandwich then a nibble of onion followed with a small bit of pickle. He repeated this series until he finished eating everything, sandwich, onion and pickle. He drank plum brandy from a hipflask he kept on a toggle-strap attached to his belt-loop. He did this everyday without fail never once changing the order or sequence. He felt more at ease when he could portend the next thing or action in the series without having to concern himself with extra variables or add-ons. He disliked unknown things, things he had no prior knowledge of or control over. He left nothing to chance, not even the beating of his heart. Everything had an orderliness that was integral to the whole, a part of the whole or parts of a whole.

In a park sitting on a bench in every city is a man eating a sandwich an onion and a Cantors’ pickle. (Bubo plague, some say, simple arithmetic). (Should this prove a failure, which it will regardless of one’s protestations to the contrary, proceed to fatigued, thereby putting the cough in the backwardness of one’s thoughts). Repeat until the process is fully processed; repast until the gut is full to brimming with corpse-gas, brimming full with Bubo. In every park on a bench in every city is a man whose stomach is full to brimming with corpse-gas. Corpse-gaseous; Bubo-gas gaseous stomach full to brimming with protestations and contraries; repeat until fatigue sets in, then some. An apple at bay equals nothing contrary, so say they whoever they may be. In every park on a bench on the sunny leeside of the park sits a man eating a bologna sandwich an onion and a Cantors’ pickle.

Apply a cold compressed to the raised area, repeat until the cows come home. (Kick a tin can with your left foot until the can reaches a raised level not in excess of 27 ½ meters or rods, the choice is yours). Eat a mouthful of dirt, a mouthful of sand for those with an allergy to loom, topsoil or greasy blacktop mud. (Repeat until fatigue sets in, or an apple at bay). The shamble leg man thought dirge-thoughts, thoughts so fucked and off-kilter that was he to think them ad nausea he would surely go mad, mad indeed. A Cantors’ pickle a day keeps the apple at bay. In every park a leeside cocker. I brag you’re pardon dear sir, braggart that I am. When in doubt apply a warm poultice to the raised area, cocks’-soup and onions make for a tasty noonday snack.

A salmon-poacher gray sky, a man eating a salmon sandwich on a seeded cassock bun, another day in another park in another city: germs. Please wash you’re hands threw and through until squeaky clean, repeat until fatigue sets in. Eat a mouthful of dirt, a Cantors’ pickle and an apple a day at bay. (Repeat until fatigue sets in). Poke a pipsqueak straw into a flaccid sac of juice, sip, sip. From a fair-view one can see the idiocy in half-cut straws and sweet-water. Too much sweet-water causes diarrhea. Draw a diorama with a circle and a square in the middle, repeat until fatigue sets in. The Cantors make horrible pickles. A leeside cocker sits sitting on a bench in a park in the city by the apple a day by the bay, a tasty noonday smack, indeed, indeed. (Pickled bunions never seem as they seem, salty brine and aspic). The shamble leg man felt a stitch in his side that never seemed to go away. After thinking such thoughts, thoughts without meter or rhyme he often felt a stitch in his side, his leeside side. Such is life (he thought) repeat until fatigue sets in.

Author’s aside: I haven’t a clue what I’m up to, where I’m going or where I’ve been, or for how long. My tenure on this whirling ball of mordant desire is tenuous at best, gathered round a mischief-maker’s false sense of entitlement. Allow me the displeasure of sweet-water and bendable straws, that at least I have some entitlement over, if anything at all. Goodly night, one and many, and may the sky not fall careening into the top of your head.

The almsman fell into oncoming traffic, his alms-cap clutched to his side. He slipped on a greasy stain on the sideways left behind by an incontinent dog or another almsman. In the nick of time he found centre again, never once loosing the clutch of his alms-cap. ‘Fiddlesticks and lye…and a lapdog with incurable mange’. The sideways was a scurry with dogs and people, too many and too few of each. ‘I recall smelling skunkweed whilst wiling away one rather pleasant midday noon lazing lazily on a bench in a park in a city the name of which escapes me, truly it does…I had a poultry sandwich with Beeves’ hard mustard and old Smolder’s cheese, slices, as was to my preference’. The alms man often recalled such thoughts, thoughts he’d once thought and promptly forgotten.

Dejesus wore a Sherman Oakes hat festooned with baubles and dice. Sherman Oakes hats were a rarity, so Dejesus wore his with peacock pride. He wore it the day the half-blind woman threatened to chop off her daughter’s head for acts of ungodliness’ and thievery. He wore it the day after he bought his first back-issue of Popular Mechanics, paying homage to tinkers and smithies. He wore his Sherman Oakes hat when he thought he might feel fearful and discombobulated, regardless of how things turned out in the end. The Sherman Oakes Hat Co. was housed in a coalman’s shack behind the Waymart across from the aqueduct. Dejesus’ father cleared the snow from the laneway of the Sherman Oakes Hat Co. with a coal-shovel and a whisk-broom. Old Smolder’s cheese is best serve at room temperature on a wheat-thin or a rye biscuit. If one prefers Old Smolder’s in slices a Melba or a Porkers’ Crisp might be better served.

A crones’ gray morning sky facing skyward and a nod to the left: simple thermodynamics; Benzodiazepines make for a delectable late-hour corrective. Cantors make extraordinary pickles, brine-heavy and whey-mucky. (Apply warm compote of Beeves’ mustard and Ives’ soda to the raised area and count to one-thousand leeside-wards) ‘These people think in circles, Beeves and Ives there, a rarity of grammar and compote I’d say’. ‘He who says this says nothing’ said the alms man madly. Dejesus’ farther swept snow from the steps of the Smolder’s Cheese Co. with a whisk-broom and a dustbin-tray. He liked a tart Whisky sour with a gimlet onion served over crushed ice and egg-whites. ‘Sweeping snow can get the best of you’ he said. ‘Nothing a tart Whisky sour won’t put the bends to’.

‘Piñata dormouse dray’ bellowed the harridan ‘Alabaster salamander quay’. She spoke in dissonant bellows when she felt off-balance or when the sky chirped arias in the cones and struts of her ears. ‘Surely a Whisky sour is in order’ said the alms man sourly. ‘Piñata del amore’ chimed the harridan sweetly. ‘These mutton gray days are unkindly…’ ‘And none too oft’ added the harridan softly sweetly.

He was at odds with anything even; vectors and line-drawings, even-sided triangles and bootstrapping. Most days began without him noticing, they simply fell one in front of the other, an unbroken line of same-such days. Those days of the month that fell on even numbers, the 22nd or 28th to name but two, he stayed abed, burying his head beneath the covers, one eye on the clock the other half-closed and weepy. When he was a boy his mother cinched the bed-linens up over the knob of his chin, then tucked them in round the swain of his hips, his arms pressed in tight to his sides, palms upturned and sweaty. His ma sang softly sweetly, her voice plucking at the strings of his malnourished heart. The dog made a bed at the foot of his bed, its ears sticking up like corkwood shims, pail-water dripping from the warp of its dog’s mouth.

Omar Killingbock swore up and down he never saw the legless man running in circles like a rabid dog. When asked whether he knew anyone who had, he replied angrily ‘dog is as dog do’ and ran willy-nilly away. That morning a jackdaw skipjacked across the sideways backwards. ‘Jackdaw is as jackdaw does’ said the skipjack snippily. Omar disliked his last name and would rather have been called Boons or Van Pelt. But as this was unlikely, especially for someone called Omar, he seldom used his last name unless tact and personal aplomb demanded that he do so. He kept a shim tucked up under the cup of his chin to prevent the snow and sleet from making entrance into the shallows of his brain, stem and all. A family secret passed from father to son.

The man in the hat knew of Omar Killingbock but had never met him in person, nor seen him up close or eating. He had seen Dejesus up close, once when he was eating a rather sloppily made sandwich, and another time when he, Dejesus, was hiking his trousers up round the piggery of his hips. He made it a rule to never see a person more than once, and in the event that he did, he would vanish the second seeing from his memory.

He hated anything in repetition, be it numbers, as in counting to a hundred, especially more than once, blue skies, people and lapdogs on long tethers. He disliked liking things he disliked, and would rather poke himself in the eye with a red hot skewer, the type used for spitting meat, than repeat anything more than once.

He, Dejesus, had a fondness for lazy-eyed women and those with one leg shorter than the other. He liked to watch a short leg skipping to catch up with a longer one, or lazy eyes crossing inwards, pupils dashing madly from side to side. He preferred slightly plump women and some not so plump but stout enough to catch his eye.

At Christmastime Dejesus hid behind the Waymart across from the aqueduct not wanting to add any further confusion and tomfoolery to an already confusing day. Christmas day he spent poaching the dustbins and side-alleys looking for castoffs and barely-eaten food. Anyone whose name was so close to Jesus’ had to take precautions, especially someone with a jaunty manner and a carpenter’s belt. The spirit of Christmas came in a green bottle with a crone’s head on the label. Dejesus had a fondness for Christmas pudding with tart lemony sauce, never once finding a castoff or barely-eaten curd of festive pudding in the dustbin behind the Cantor’s bakery or the trash beside the Seder’s grocery.

I am Sigmund Freud; I am not the cuckold Jung or the clubfooted Alfred A. I am in threes, a tripartite triple trinity. A pork-shoulder grey Christmas Eve day, neither either or, or, or either, just a simpering other, other.

‘I hate Christmas pudding’ said the alms man. ‘Lemony sauce, currants and desiccated fruit…and harder than vectors…’ ‘…and into’s’ added the harridan. ‘The trick is in the pudding…’ ‘…yes, in the pudding indeed’ ‘You obviously have a taste for pudding’ ‘I do at that I do’ replied the harridan hurriedly. ‘It looks like rain…’ ‘…indeed, so it does…rain in sheets, wouldn’t you say?’ ‘Harder than vectors and into’s’ ‘Much harder indeed, much so indeed’. A shoulder of grey sky pushed its way onto the horizon, a cupper’s vector, out of then into then minus a vector or two.

The man in the hat, now a year older and having accumulated more hats, remembered the Mormon au pair he dated when he was fresh out of middle-school. Her name was Eloise Van Pelt, her father Alberto Van Pelt and her mother Edwina C. Van Pelt, nee Coalman-Slough. She had stitched-braids and wore a Dutch-woman’s winged cap. Her father forbid the use of lipstick, blush, eyeliner or anything that came in a powder-box. She ate with her mouth closed never once allowing a morsel of food to find purchase outside the chewing-vault. Her father wore spats and gabardine trousers with cuffs. The Van Pelt family lived in a four room walkup with two hotplates and three small ice-chests. Alberto Van Pelt bought everything secondhand: food, beverages, sugary potables, socks, shoes, belts and belt-buckles, hams and thread for sewing worn-through secondhand clothes. Eloise hid her stitched-up dresses in a corkwood box she kept stowed underneath her bed. Her mother, Edwina Van Pelt (nee Coalman-Slough) wore whatever was in reach upon waking each and every morning; some days a crepe dress with bobbins and lace, other day’s sateen slacks with a smock or linen blouse.

The alms man found a half-eaten bagel in the dustbin behind the Waymart proper. The Van Pelt’s were bagel people, each member of the family having devised they’re own manner of preparing and eating a bagel. Eloise cut hers sideways at a slight angle, preferring her halves lopsided and off-centre. She fancied whole wheat bagels with seeds: caraway, pumpkin, dill, fennel, poppy and muesli. To the halved bagel she added a slice of Muenster cheese and wedge of pickle, sometimes finishing with a slice of tomato, on top of which she gingerly placed a dollop of sour cream. He father preferred his bagel with cream-cheese, extra-virgin olive oil and a gherkin. (Her father discovered a small out-of-the-way deli that carried sweet gherkins, and bought a jar each and every week without fail). Her mother abhorred bagels, plain or seeded, and refused to sit at the table when one was being eaten.

Morton Salt jumped father Van Pelt who in turn jumped over a picket-fence. The alms man watched as the two men, one dressed in too-tight pants and a Scottish tam, the other in loose slacks and a festive runaround hat, fought over an inch of space; the space between two trees, a maple and a southern ash. ‘What a strange spectacle, two men, one in too-tight pants and a Scottish tam, the other in loose slacks and a festive runaround hat, fighting over such a wee tiny space of land, a mere pittance of space, a wee-willy-wee between a maple and a southern ash, strange indeed’.

Morton Salt came by way of Cambridgeshire which came by way of Rollin’s Creek. He knew a man, a very stout angry man, named Paul Bearer who lived in a cabin without a floor. Morton and Paul saw one another on Thursdays, sharing a wax-paper sandwich and a jar of Wesley’s Blue Tick wine. Neither man liked the other but put up with the other as a favor to the other’s parents, who had abandoned them, one and the other, at birth. Morton Salt’s great-great grandfather was the inventor of the italic, having been the proprietor of a stamp and lexicon shop with two windows and a shim-by-two-shim roof. The great-great grandfather of Paul Bearer, a wire and brush man with a strict Episcopalian upbringing and a hair-lip (which he hid beneath a butterfly-wing moustache) died from the whooping, leaving his wire and brush territory to his great-great grandson, who upon hearing that he had been left a territory with little to no value, sold his territorial share to a tinker with a wife as fat as a lowing cow. His great-great grandmother, who never saw the light of day, having been born blind of sight, composed a poem that she recited, without a fail or tail, each and every Christmas morning,

anise
sweetened lips
Christmas morning
the tooth fairy
and you

She lived well into the next century, and a smidgen beyond. As she had no teeth of her own to speak of, she had little faith in the tooth fairy.

Hare-bells for Spring-Joyce

2008-02-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

Two dainty hare bells made of bite-mouth china. Hand dipped in milky glaze and two hare paws dipping amongst blue Spring flowers.

Ah, the youth of hares and hare-bells. Their flippant feet pushing and boxing in the March air. Joycean hares twinkling with bell bulbs. Up through the fast dampening black earth. The joyful curve, or arch of a pink-lipped open mouth bell. Green, the snot-green of Joycean seas - a tiny Foxglove mouth all open and ready to ding-a-ling.

Hare-bell hanging under white roses, made of tin. Where the light shines always. Tink and tink and tink again it's a beautiful bird in the sun sometimes. Whenever the darkness finds me, I can swing in the pendulum of tiny china hare-bell swing.

How the hare-bell swells in the lightening year. No frost fallow for me.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921

2008-02-16T08:54:00.001-08:00

-I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.-

RiverRunsPast

2008-02-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

…a tithe of vicar’s plum for the blest James of Airlann, fader thrice-transubstantiate, eater of skillet-blacken kidney, highest-high Moyle of stropper, e’ though poor dead Paddy’s rotting, O’ yew cursed lye, oxen-cart re-crossing the Liffey at dawn, Moylan, reamer of surd, trackman’s stub weaning clove from crown and folly, mounting turret’s arse in excelsior Delores. Happy wee-birthday dearest dear James, adman, and blest be the heckle on the pub of yore neck.

James Joyce meets me in the kitchen

2008-02-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

And so it came to pass in the kitchenette, past the towel-rubbing efficiency of hands, past the soda crystals of despair, past the long tongue of a knife edge against skin, ah yes, past all of that, I met dear Jim down in the corner. You see it there? The tiny slither of onion skin there, dear James. The soft lace of spider web and eight legs clasping a lemon pip. No, not a fly dear spider. Not a fly. Just a hard knot or pippy sour. Dear old James, holding my hand down there, like he did. Always on an evening.

Hungry I was. Near starving. Not eaten since 5.30am and worked the day of the Gods. It was so very tiring. It kills me, I whispered in your ear. It near kills me. And to God, I hoped that you would come and lift me up in your arms and say, 'Here, darling, here's a cup of tea, lar.' Or maybe just a tiny morsel to eat. White pudding or something of the sort, with apple jelly. I just sat there, by the freezing cold of iron handles and don't push me hands. I just sat, there by the lonelier than ever before or since. I sat there by that lonelier than ever. It was colder than a Derry day. Whilst all that time where you held me before with the curves of our backs agains the door could still be seen. The steady gasp of a hand-print, yes I can still see it there, or so I thought I could. Perhaps it was just some old slime or jelly of tinned sausage. I flicked it there, that must be it. In a flight of passion, I gripped the can edge. The click of can opener and there it was, jaggedy Anne.

Sometimes I dream of tipping the ripe juice of tomatoes out over my skin. It looks like blood. Ripping open stuck labels of skin from this spot here and raking it. It would look pretty against tomato pips and froth. A mess of vegetable and earthly, bodily matter. Why, you pretty thing, you. How could I treat you so? With your working hard all day and nothing to eat inside your little belly there, slumped under the cooker.

Why do you work so hard? And I hug myself and wonder why the people who seem the happiest are always the saddest of all. You shake me and try to wake me. Just a cold, slumped shoulder of wet flank. And sometimes the imprint of a fingery bruise is all that is there. You say that I am your biddy. I can almost see down on your cheek from here, you used to say.

You don't trust me and I fly up into the air and feel the bite of it all. Ripping at the flex. I wonder how much longer I can hang on, the bleached out face, the used to say eyes. The memory of what I once was.

Past all that, yes, past all that. I sat down next to dear Jimmy and traced the lino with the fingers, as I had done all those years ago at seven. Seven, when the innocence was taken away. Dough ball days of heaven and hell.

Spindlewood

2008-01-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

his grandfather roughed in the staves, then planed
the end of the stool, wicker soft as calf’s tongue, his hands
bled through with sweat and plumb chalk, finished wood
and oil, and the smell of coffer’s tobacco and mint

Youlysend to

2008-01-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

...you offered me goatsmilk off the bulb of your tongue, youlystened to the scolding in my heart; you shared bread and Whiskey, you chased the surplices from my thoughts. I wrapped you in sailcloth and tears, cinching my arms round the corset of your hips. We stopped our ears with paraffin, the masthead tight between our legs, your eyes two green skips of coral, mine beery with fret. Be there one god or many, gods’speed and milk.

A-What's that?
B-Over here?
A-There…
B- I can’t see…
C- Over there?
D-I can’t…
E- See?
F-Yes…
G-At all?
H-Some…some…
I- Over here, look this way.
J- Away from there?
K-Over there.
L- Here?
M-There, here…there the same…
N- Oh.
O-Yes…
P- The same?
Q- As there…yes…identical, the same.
R- There or here, the same…yes?
S- Absolutely…identical…
T- The same, then…?
U-Yes…
V- Yes…
W-Oh…
X- See?

Rhythm of Sorrow

2007-12-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

The rhythm of sorrow made me swing. It makes you fit into tomorrow. I was made from a Manhattan sky-line. In dangerous light. That fellowship of cleft. So many who you rely on fly up into the sky. Like a bomber jacket that once wrapped around you, now ice cold. That porpoise flitting across water, it dived down and drowned me. I packed away all of the things that were in the light. I tried to suck in a pillow.

Pressing buttons that take you nowhere.

James Joyce on the Spice Girls Reunion: 'I was moribund and found my legs wrapped around a tree with it. I prefer the merry widows.'

James Joyce on Leona Lewis: 'She alright.'

James Joyce on the Christmas Number 1: 'Hoping that Kanye West will come up with thar thar summat.'

James Joyce on life: 'Well it this there nothing right. Snowstorms, corks and bottles.'

James Joyce on friendship: 'You didn't meet me in the tower, you were with Boylan.'

James Joyce on suicide: 'You are stook in that thar middleum. You will be pulled and tighter and then your nex will thar be soor. You won't pool that wire tight tho my darlin' meeting with them all.'

Sometime in the future. She had two children. She had a child, who was dead on arrival. She feted that underwater death was quite right and fitting. In 2009, friends were sorrowful of that moment when they shouted. In 2010 someone found a green covered book belonging to Grandma and held it to their chest. In 2011 someone thought about you when they looked into a flower. Remember how you once were.

James Joyce on shoes: 'Take my shoes and wear them Sammy. They'll hurt you like buggery.'

James Joyce on love: 'Yar, I told ye it was only a cork and a bottle, they get so lardeedar boredom with it, do they now? Like when you wore your red shift and sat in between his thar knees with his smile, but soon his feet with kicking your red bloodied nose against that wall thar. D'ye not see the scar on yer cheek thar? D'ye not see that grey mark on the wall where yer feet pushed against it, him pulling yer hair thar? D'ye not hear that mouth-shout gritting against your cheek. You'll remember that hot breath as if it were love.'

James Joyce on Westlife: 'Him thar with the spike hair, he might have loved.'

In 2012 someone regretted not taking a chance with her. Her hair, her eyes. The touching moment of a letter. Print out your dreams, with one of those £269 gadgets and sit it in your portable dock and leave it there. Place it by your bed-side and realise that the grey-faced, washed out woman was a cup of warmth, like you'd never known.

James Joyce on tea: 'I left you in Paris that morning with your china tea-cup. You shall see in leaves the future.'

It has been said that Christmas brings out the best in people. In 2013, someone gave their family a good time. It was one of tinsel and baubles. It was one time of forgiving and I went away for a while, but I brushed up my mess and I wrapped it all up.

In 2007 at approximately 4.15 sometime in Winter, the police found a girl by the side of the road. So lovely, fair. So unfair.

James Joyce on suicide: 'Oh she were lovely.'

I Oft Often

2007-11-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

No I said, no never No, yes. I said yes I no know Yes, I no yes I know No, yes. I, I do yes, Yes I, I no I know, Yes. Skim the oft off the top, yes? No, never yes, no never no yes? She said Yes, I said No, yes. She said I said No, yes? Yes, I said No. No, she said yes she said no, Yes? I oft often think of her, yes. And she, yes, she often oft said No, I said yes, no. Yes, skim the oft off the top, yes, with an oft and wooden spittoon, yes. Yes no, No yes, I said oft, I did, she said, yes, you said yes, yes you did, Yes.

Annotated Dublin

2007-11-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

Thankyou father, for when you sat near to me at the door to Trinity, I felt your heavy hand on my shoulder. Thankyou. I knew that you were giving me a tip-off. As if to say, 'I have walked with you for all these years and now you are free to go in. Find the Book of Kells and the heavenly illuminated texts. Let your eyes feast on them.'

After many years, I wanted to return to those streets. The sandy walls of Trinity. The box set of dreams. Re-packaged. I touched the tea-set, yes the one with the figures of Bloom on the side, dressed in blue. Bloom. I did not follow dressy Ulysses crowds of pretend-to-be. I did not follow walking tours and Davy Byrnes open sandwich fillers. I wanted to see Gerty and dive into Night-town. I dressed up as a dripping, snorting pig and cantered through soft hoof-hound-holes. I ripped up and down and knocked small children legs flying. Weeeeeee. Snort. Garuf. And that kind of thing. I went into hide-outs and under the pebbles where Gerty left a tiny wet patch on the shore.

I pushed cyclists, rollerskater bois out of the way. Joyce would have loved that whizzing, fizzing sound that they make on the lonely pathways on Sandymount. I like to trace the Polly loves Davvy on the seat-graves we make. Shoddy days with make-believes. Climb to the top of the tower and dive into the sea with naked men, aged seventy-four. I am a mermaid. Goosebump and shiver, naked among thieves, old men peeping a gawy mouth under the water. Wide, wide, wide. Your tendons, aged, tightening in the freezing, lusty air. I dive downwards. Slip-holes and blow-holes, right through the white air. It's like the centre of a snow-drop. Even maybe grey-green. I look through old age and see eyes. Hold my hand, old man and dive, dive, dive. Old eel man, your heels on my shoulders.

Tiny Drip of Tea on the Saucer of the Cup in 'The Dead'

2007-10-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

As my finger turned to that familiar drip that was cold and slightly off-putting by that point in the conversation, I wanted to leave the saucer and be done with it once and for all. I looked down at my still warm cup and wanted to say sorry to the warmth of tea. I wanted to say, I'm so desperately sorry for wasting your time, my tea. I wanted to shake hands with the delicate porcelain and say, you know, it will be ok.

You replied to me:
- No it will not be fine.
- You can always buy a present to make it up.
- No it will not be put right, I am broken and so is he.

Up and up we soared there in that sitting room/parlour and everyone knew that it would not be fine and that the splash of tea was simply a reminder that the snow was coming. That ice that would cut my lips. Yes, actually cut through the lippy strips that extended inwards in that red glow that you used to pull towards you. I would flop into your arms and lay there. Hearts all glowing and red and wantyou. I can feel your breath there now, where it has left a liver spot now. Where you bit me that time. Where the cut was, a tiny glimpse of grit got in there and you can feel it when you rub your finger across it. I play with it when I'm nervous. Like a bruise. If you push hard enough, it taps on the teeth, slightly blue.

Decreases With Cress and Tarn

2007-10-18T23:28:00.001-07:00

She had the pubonic-plague, wither on the stickpin that decreases with cress and tarn. ‘Hoe and stickle such a pickle I’m in’, she said…’and the damn polemarks, a ballbearer’s mock in tattle’…

Mehta Does and Mehta Did

2007-10-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

Mehta ate her fill of soda-biscuits Mehta did and Mehta she does the dandiest things with ball-string and bland-pudding and peach cobbler corset-knotted round the mousiest part where the apron-strings cinch the pushcart of her hips, where wee babies and fealties and toes and finger-nubs red as beetroot peek peek-a-boo through the savoury seed of her woman’s-part. Atcham she has these swivel-pin hips what’re made for plopping wee-ones down the drainage-pip, sad Soddy bastard never saw it coming, hit hitting Atcham in the fontanel just below the naval-port where mommy’s catgut kept him well aired and fed.

Mehta wore those sots of slacks what’re made from mutton-hide and bustle-cock, the knee-to-britches as seen on the telex when the men are away poaching kittles and malt-whaler. She has a notion bout the way the wee-ones slide sluicing down the inseam of her pitch-grave. It’s sorry sticky down where the heads crown and the blueblood sops like pot-gravy. On a count of the stink and Quigley its best to take a ball-O-malt to flush the Soddy wee bastards out from the pitch-grave. She Mehta does the dandiest things with ball-string and peach cobbler.

CIE's Teat and a Plinth-carver

2007-10-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Piker Paddy Paddock tapered a wee Ball-O-Whisky with Declan Wavell, who sold a fife-on-fife to Smith-on-Hyde. At bell-chime the bastard chancy of Salamanca bade a flare foreboding to a mister Hollister J. Bottom not knowing the difference betwixt a CIEs’ teat and a plinth-carver. Ole Piker P. Paddock lifted a Dram-O-Castle and said in cloying, ‘fuck them all, every last bugger of ‘em!’

Curried in Rime and Mallow

2007-10-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Declan Jones soaked his toe-corns in Epsom salts whooping a wee abrasive to curb Speyside poor dogsbodydog poked with spitcane and churn all this kafuffle and oblation from seed to seed ran Declan Jones toe-pads curried in rime and mallow stop there a wee moment master-none an adman’s stub to feather the ticker’s-palsy allow me I beg to relieve you of pox and whooping dear man dropped the slaving mirror down turret and offal.

Under the Snowflake, right under the discarded tea-cup in 'The Dead'

2007-09-29T12:01:00.001-07:00

Her fingers toyed restlessly with the tea-cup, wondering if really she had stolen all of the thunder. Was it thunder? Or was it foot-tickling snow? She made that trinket sound as she placed the tea-cup, or rather, let it tip slightly to the right, into the saucer. It was a sound that reminded her of jewellery boxes, mother's necklace, a golden brooch. Perhaps with a real pearl. From a Dublin oyster.

Lightly, delicately, she touched the underside of the still warm porcelain. Were it real, she could have explained it. However, she swore that she felt, just for a second, the tiny chill of a snowflake there.

It took her back to that day, forty years ago, the untouched blanket of snow. The dog-prints. Early morning tip-toe. Under the mutton-grey sky, there she stood. So she was, she was. And now, the touch of cool ice. As fingernails on skin. When warm by that fire over there, over there, over there. And then there was the shrill porcelain smile of sound once more.

Take me with your chill lips, she pleaded. With a tremble, she clipped the tiny cup and it fell with a ready thump to the carpet. Was that a lovely joyful glimpse of snow?

Porker's Ham and Grain-fed Eggs

2007-09-26T16:41:00.001-07:00

The alms man likes Albacore tuna on single-wheat bread lightly toasted and left to cool. His grandmamma told him that the British preferred they’re toast stone-cool with whey curd on top. ‘They even have toast-racks’ she said ‘to sleeve the warm toast into’. ‘They like peanut butter on it?’ he asked. ‘Nope, just with curd and hard butter’ she said. ‘Not even a wee dram of jelly, grape or marmalade?’ ‘Just the way God made it, cold and hard to swallow’ she said, ‘and with curd and iced butter’. ‘Pads, you mean those wee pads of butter like you get at the fancy restaurants?’ he asked. ‘No, now listen for once, with hard-churned butter straight from the cows’ teat’. ‘Fancy, you mean fancy butter but from a fancy cow?’ His grandmamma gave him a stern dismissive look, the strings of her apron twiddling like nervous fingers round her waist, and went back to kneading a loaf of single-wheat bread.

Flue the spigot shit, the shot and narrow isn’t all it’s made out to be. Murmur stalk-stem, she isn’t all she’s made in to be. ‘Pads, you mean those wee pads of butter like you get at the fancy restaurants?’ he asked awake (all that offal awful, sluice-gate bilge, all that awful offal swirling down the drainpipe maw). Jimbo Mansard like Albacore tuna on single-wheat bread lightly toasted and left to cool. Me mama made it toast-side up with pads of wee batter and salted scrod.

(He wears a hatman’s hat, broad brimmed, felt brown and quail with feathers. He has on a haberdasher’s jacket, brownish gray with widespread lapels and a two-rose buttonhole. He rides a bicycle without a horn, flagon or bell. His trousers, brownish brown, are cinched round his ankles with tape; the cuffs tucked into his galoshes with object care).

‘I remember remembering that’ he said ‘and some other things, too’. ‘Do you own a bicycle?’ ‘Yes, two.’ ‘Two, my goodness two, how odd indeed, two’. ‘One for jockeying about the other for cycling errands and the so’ said he. ‘I like Porker’s ham and chicory pate’. ‘You do, yes I see you do, how strange and offal indeed’. ‘Porker’s ham and grain-fed eggs such a delectable parish treat’. ‘Me? Me I prefer them boiled yolk-side up with a wee poke of salt and paprika’. ‘You’re a cad you are, a real cad so you are’. ‘I prefer card, a real card so I am’. ‘I’m a billfold off the dim and sparrow, just a wee smidgen’. ‘So you say, so it is, it must be so you say, so it is, most certainly is’. ‘So I say, so it is I suppose’. (She drank Jonestown Gin from a tea cup, closeting it between the sewing basket and the laundry hamper, and swore she’s never read Neruda, though she did once tip the mailman at Christmastime. Her youngest child Rudy died from rickets, his legs so twisted and deformed that he had to have braces coddled between them, a piece of wood the size of a doorframe secured in place with metal screws and washers). ‘That’s a strange one, strange indeed’. ‘Yes, I’d say so myself, strange indeed, indeed I’d say’. ‘A billfold off the dim and sparrow so you say’ he said asking. ‘Just a wee smidgen, not enough to cause a tilt and rowdy’ he answered in saying.

Pullman's Lager to Salve the Stain

2007-09-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Mostly I think of gemstones lips, a bower-rag of wooly warmth. Scone-flat palm turned heath narrow (I wish I dreamt of fairies and children’s smiles, sun and rain) where Biggs shone its glisten light. I smell the anise-root of scalloped skin, braids of wild cherrystone, a (tinker’s tankard) of Pullman’s lager, crackle lime and hawker’s spit, Biggs cinching mansard-peg (I wish I slept in Browning Manor, cuckold cold, a bower-rag to stave the hole). Sluice offal down the swirling wail, Abbott’s flue the spigot shut, tamping spirits, bread and Paxton (I wish I dreamt of fairies and children’s smiles, sun and rain) cinch taut the mansard-peg, a bower’s-rag to salve the stain.

Registration Mark on the Tail End of a Jug Placed on a Table in 'The Dead'

2007-09-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Did Joyce trace his finger over the jug on the old oak table in 'The Dead' - you know the one, the one where the snowflake landed. The one where I gently rubbed my fingers that time. Dear Jimmy, you made the touch of gently lifting the green slip-in-my-arm gestured handle of it. Up above you, you looked at the watery mark. Shimmery fish-eye blue slitty lines. What was it you said? Moulded. Moulded into the delicate shine of raise and bumps. Such a glorious snow-storm that evening. Don't you drop it, you whispered into my ear. The raised pears of porcelain. Running your fingers over it. Our wet mornings in the dew at Howth, it told me of fingers there. Seed-cake - tiny diamond chips, enamelled fingers that lay there on white skin. The two little pin-holes where they fire the glaze.

Replace me with a plaque. What this is, he said, was a rare and beautiful piece. I only paid little for it. If it happened to be rarer than that, you would keep it forever. You held my cheek in your palm. I was embossed with your letter. Gold and in the light, I never felt so beautiful as there, my dear Jimmy boy. 1910, and the delicate, amateur chippings were so carved that they left me shaped as joy. William, John, Henry, mum, sister, working those waters. We searched for Jack in the puddles and pools there at the tip of Martello. We looked down. Oaky and secure. I slip inside. Feel raised, outwardly. Witty and brown eyed, I look so rose-pip. I love my darling very, very much, I breathed into my Jimmy's ear. As you put down the vase, the raised places amongst carved, detailed wood, we rubbed sides. We daubed our love on each other's cheeks with lips. Un-like anything. Competently done, you smiled.

Gerty - Part the Second

2007-09-19T00:28:00.001-07:00

I know that my feathered leg was the cause of the distance. The boredom of knowing that I was not what was wanted. A craggy gap that was always to be left open.

I felt him move away.

Into the sea-sky.

Into the distance.

My pale hands shaking sand, with anger and sadness.
Knowing that I wasn't needed anymore.
Pebbles clicking for a moment.

From a million years before.

The Hat of Straw

2007-08-20T06:35:00.000-07:00

His chest did smell of man. The hair tipped into my ear and tickled there. I cannot know how it became that way, all inside like that. I wondered what had become of the day. How it knelt before us like that, arms open and melting towards noon. Nothing quite like that white light.

Your feeling and feathery fingertips under my ears. The lobes feel like baby toes. Did I see a little down at your cheek? I drank from a puddle once and it tasted of pebbles and see-to-the-bottom. It was cool and like no other drink on this earth. It tasted of foot-fall. Pool and before it even had water in it. Where did you get such a story?! Oh, the lies you do tell.

I carried home water in my shoes to show my mummy. Drippy brown leather and one sock all black and grit. Tippy red knees with blood and a tiny robust bitty right in the broken skin. Where I'd knelt to grin into the splashing puddle. Lippy drips on the chin and nightmare wobble reflections of toothless smile and when will they grow? Tie up at the back the hair that would later lead to all sorts of unearthly trouble and handfulls of pull-back and look at your neck!

Piles and piles of it lay on the floor as it was hacked off. You don't go telling your lies and puddle-drinking! Look at the state of your shoes!

Toes pushing out of leather on one foot. In protest. Little Molly there, by the white tub, all hair-shorn. She littlegirl. She lost. She in the puddle there with her reflection. One sock down.

Jumping in Neon Dublin

2007-08-12T07:05:00.001-07:00

I didn't want to see the Book of Kells round that corner there. I just wanted to see MOLLY in neon pink on the corner of the street. I thought Jimmy would put my name up there one day. After I had hiked up Howth Head and nearly broken my ankle on a stone that jutted out, I swore and shook my knobby bone at the sky. I just didn't want to be a tourist. I sat at the top and hugged my knees. Looked at the ragged lips of the skin where it was torn open. I poked into it with fingers. Rubbed, slutty blood into white skin. Malted freckles took on the hue of ripe cherries. Somehow it would be ok to be covered in blood when I undertook the cliff-strides down the raw edges of stone and then onto solid ground past the cottage. Say hello to the where and who lives here.

Two trained rivulets of blood that had formed and hardened at my heel. Liffey drips. Two torn lines of skin. Stop for a cool drink at the bottom and no, don't wipe it away. It looks new.

Pigs in Night-Town

2007-07-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

The split hoof. I never realised that ya would take my wages. Did ya think I'd never find yer little eyes shining there? Ah, the human skin of ya. So deceiving. So soft, with hairs.

Against the fire, it all turns to hard bristles.

Look at the dark cobbles, all glistening and slippery underfoot. Burlesque, ya spin and twirl, make faces at windows. Dance under light and fiery abandon. Two Irish notes for ya my boy. That will make ya pay. Ya can't take moy money as I'll take yours alright, my laddy. I shall set the dogs on ya. I really shall. Their fangs will bite at ya! See ya run thar my boy. Down on yar knees! Yagh scurvy thing! I'll show ya some thing or two under here. Yarr don't take from me boy.

And then the light on the back of the neck. It changes everything.

The Word Pages

2007-07-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

The word pages are all gone,
They were all taken away and destroyed.

The Dead.

The snow came down,
But only where it was created.

The Dead.

How does it feel to take away the words?
The snow on your fingers.

The snow,
Only snow.

All of the hail-stone hellos,
All of the crystal frost.
All of the faces from The Dead.

Ah, they only find new places,
In the heart.

Flickering silver words in the heart.
Shake-domes of upside-down,
Sparkle.

You shall not find that there,
Only I shall see that.

The Dead.

Peeping

2007-07-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

When I first met you down by the water I was slipping under the seaweed. Hiding. I dipped and slept in cave-pockets. I hid there. I was waiting for the ammonite swirl to twist and turn me over into the rock-pools of you. I was watching for you in the pink air.

Gradh, oh how it hurts. That Irish gradh. That lovely place that shimmers and shines. Take me back there in your velvet cloth wrap me up and take me back there. I'll cut you and break you but you'll always come back for more. Until morning takes the credit for all of this. You shall not be. You shall not be.

Pebbles. With the top notes of all of this. One day I shall sit here again with unfurled flags and round red-cheeked smiles. I want to take you in here with me. Once up there with Atlas I held you. I held the roundness of you and held you up when you needed it most. I didn't want to let go with shiny green wet sea. Gerty looked at me and held out her hands. I wanted to let go of you. But you never let go. I saw you in eyes in Trinity. Heads that dipped into books and followed words and fullstopspunctumtimeless. You are timeless.

Stop and camera.

I saw you in the Book of Kells staring back at me always. I wanted to paint gold in where your face was. Gold leaf for hair too. You deserved to be gold. I wanted to take you into blue sheets and put my face into your feet. I wanted to see the mothy morning through your toes. Just a trickle of toe-nail.

It was so new. So fresh. Back to bed. Soft, red Irish hair. I had a rose-red tint. I love you. Oh, how I love you.

I said that your head rested like an egg under my arm. I wrapped it around you and held you there forever. Even after all.

Darkened Deathchamber

2007-06-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne.
Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know.
He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads.
Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm.
I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged.
Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing.
(James Joyce)

Joyce in Translation

2007-06-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Brazilian
SOBRANCEIRO, fornido, Buck Mulligan vinha do alto da escada,... STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, ...
Italian
Solennemente, gravemente, Buck Mulligan veniva dall'alto della scala...
English
STATELY, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a...
French
Majesteux et dodu, Buck Mulligan parut en haut des marches...
German
GRAVITÄTISCH kam der dicke Buck Mulligan vom Austritt am obern Endeder treppe...
Spanish
Solemne, el gordo Buck Mulligan avanzó desde la salida de la escalera...
Czech
Otylý, statný Tur Mulligan se vynoril ze schodu, nesl misku s mydlinami...
Danish
Buck Mulligan trådte op fra det øverste af trappen;...
Norwegian
Statelig trinn trådte Buck Mulligan frem øverst i trappen...
Swedish
Högtidligt trädde den satte Buck Mulligan fram fran detöverstatrappesteget...
Finnish
Komea, pulska Buck Mulligan tuli portaidenpäästä kädessään vaahdokekuppi,...
Dutch
Statig kwam de dikke Buck Mulligan uit het trapgat...
Catalan
SOLEMNEMENT, el rodanxó Boc Mulligan aparegué al capdamunt de l'escala,...
Turkish
SARMAN, BABAC BUCK MULLIGAN, üzerine bir aynayla bir ustura haçvari...
Portuguese
POMPOSO, rolico, Buck Mulligan veio do alto da escada...
Slovenian
Dostojanstveno je sisao gojazni Buck Mulligan s vrha stopnišca
Croatian
Dostojanstevno je sisao gojazni Buck Mulligan s vrha stubista...
Polish
STATECZNY, PULCHNY, BUCK MULLIGAN WYNURZYL SIE Z WYLOTU SCHODOW,...

http://amseverino.sites.uol.com.br/bloomsday.html

In The Heart Of The Hibernian Metropolis

2007-06-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

What question, upon observing Bloom, formed in the cerebral hemisphere of Boylan (a bester, a boaster)?
Did he ever put it out of sight?
Confronted by Boylan (a bounder, a billsticker), with what question did Bloom inwardly smile and arrive at a state of equanimity?
Why doesn't Boylan go to blazes?

Walesbone and Ashes

2007-06-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

He was the king of Wales, besotting liver with Whiskeys and Port and a well-crafted Armagnac made from putrid berries and lye, tannins in the word, not the tower ad cloister. Horse clomps and sea tightening round manse and collar. He died in rime and curse, nary a hopes hell nor a cleverer chap as he. The vouchers in the word, scored on walesbone and ashes.

Nethermostparts

2007-06-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

Her eyes are green scallion-green. Not blue-cobalt or turquoise like a mountain lake, avian-blue, yet bluer. Hazel-blue, sclera, snot-green, flecked with dirt muddied turbid roiling. Nile-brown, or is it Ganges, necrotic with the stench, mortified and scabby; lice-scales flittering in an alabaster whiteness whiter than a priest’s robe, so it is, that white; Platonic-blue sodomy-blue, the Form of forms blue, yet bluer still. Too much blueness and not enough greenness, death’s ripening, in this the best of all. Blazes Boylan’s blissful assignations with Molly’s netherparts, undergarments hiked up around her throat warbling madly, seedcake seed everywhere. Not even the good manners to lave his privates with lemony-scented soap, purloined from poor cuckolded Leopold’s greatcoat pocket; the nerve of the man, this Blazes Boyland, opera enthusiast, sodomer of Molly’s nethermostpart.

Blazes Boylan's Gobspit

2007-06-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

You are a bogeyman, a mountblanche, a scrofulous fuck. I, however, am the beauty that beholds the eye, the confectionery sugar that sullies the pads of your tongue, the eyelash that you brush away from the fop of your trousers. I am l’ amour oral, the teeth beveling the manse of your thoughts, the shift in perspective from hygiene to soiling. You are a Freudian night-terror, an intractable pathology, a STD that can neither be stayed nor rescinded; a viral spirochete, head bullying thighs, mons and parturition hole. I am Molly’s defiled Bloomers, Blazes Boylan’s gobspit slathering the cleave between a whorish thigh. I am lemony-scented soap, lurched in pocket ruffs trove with lint and candy wrappings. I am a postcard from ‘what’s-her name’, that bog-land slut with Dublin’s dirt in the squirrel of her treeing. You, whomever, are tonsure bare, blunt-cut and stained through with night-wetting and bucking soars.

Robin’s egg-blue, nature, nurture, pollute, corrupt, soil, profane, infinitude, destitute, refute, confute, salute, rebuke, collate, reprobate, allocate, falsify, dolomite, hard Etruscan bone, white, whiter, whitest, pale-white, junk-worry white, whitest white, whiter. And tongue balanced lolling in the chance of her mouth, sullying saltlick-cowing cud and grassland muddy with Dublin dirt and tenor’s railhead siring poor mad-footed Lucia dancing madly, mad. Patchy-eyed ginstone, hiking trousers to knee and ankle and foot and arch, mollycoddling commode wiping ass with Sears and Roebucks and Atlantis Monthly. Joyless’ eyesore, river runs round pound, errata, drowsing never to awaken to quillwort, barnacle and tackman’s stub.

Bloom's Dairy

2007-06-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

Leotard Bloom stood at the foot of the stairwell and intoned: e pluribus malediction, in his pocket a bar of lemony-scented soap, what’shername’s name scribbled on the postage-window. It’s Blum’s Dray he said, liveries and cattlecarts and oxen on the hoof, poor Paddy in Cossacks’ do up and hemp soled sandals. When I was a boy my father bought fishing worms from the man who owned Crèmes’ gas station. They came in a Bloom’s Dairy Styrofoam container and smelled like mulch and leaf-rot. Today is Blooms Day, the day that my father bought me worms. I hated fishing, but liked the Styrofoam container the worms came in. Happy Blooms Day, and may the fish be biting.

For Seamus Heaney

2007-06-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

cocks wither in the summer heat
necks wrung like washing rags
languid socks of skin and thew

your hair twisted into cornrows
a quarrel of pale yellow sun
tracing the crib of your lips

cats prowl the silage for mice
tails scab with viscera and douse
the summer heat spun into shadow

my uncle’s gore callused hands
chucking necks like slough rags
into the silage trap

I lift the barrows of your skirt
revealing a warrant cat
a severed cockscomb in its mouth

Moth Collections

2007-06-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

flail-points rasped to burr-edges on a match striker
and a pull of yellow-sulfur air black with chamfer and junk-worry
skin anointed with grain alcohol and puddle tarn, and the hex of her arm

roughshod with brittle, lost in that corner where thoughts are devils

and children’s scabbed over knees are revenants of dog’s tongues, milk
teeth and whalebone, and church spires tracing blood and scrimshaw
on the boughs of moth-nettled arms

Ray begged for coppers and unused change with his left hand, the right one having been sheared off by a cog pin. He disliked cows’ tripe, moth collections and anything soaked in formaldehyde. His father drove for the Mercury Fish company and liked molasses candies, which he pilfered from the walk-in freezer behind the punch-in meter. Ray’s mother volunteered with the deaf and wore red taffeta dresses with beige stockings. She had rickets which she salved with desiccated goat’s milk and castor oil. Ray’s brother had spayed feet and a cowlick that formed a cone on the top of his head. He wore shoes with struts and a hat that keeled to one side, making him look off-centred and fat. On his twenty-first birthday Ray lost his mind two hours after dropping acid and drinking a Coke laced with Bufferin, which he stole from the Cantor’s Bakery behind the Mercury Fish company. That Wednesday Ray’s brother moved into his room and took down all his posters.

Siren and Seaweed

2007-05-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

I sang and I sang and I sang. Once more onto the rocks we cracked. Laughing at mermaids and trilling. The 'O' of the high just rang. Sometimes the sound of our voices even made us tring. When we were all there together it was enough to make you go on your knees. Wrapping our hair around ourselves. I wanted to see what it would do to me, to you. To our waxy ears. Open, curved. Beautiful ears, that would burst, if only they could. We pushed ourselves with beatings and lashings to see if we could make new noises. New croaks and gasps. Lashing la-la-la. We knew that the best moments were created like that. Crotchets and minims formed in our throats in fear and longing. The songs of sadness and a thousand goodbyes. I waited until the dusk came and thought of all the lush seaweed that bladderwracked my hair. China skin that was covered in the swollen eyes of it. Just the thought of it was enough to send them to madness. Lying on the rocks, looking for the gutteral swirls of sounds. New natural rhythms that mingled with salt. The grey hot-rocks of sounds in the throat. The delicate throat. It was only in that dark, secret place that we could create the best sounds. Sometimes they sang together. High notes. Getting their pitch exactly right. So we were together at that time. All three of us. Linked and dipping and Summersummerlunglipstogetherhigh. What was this new sound?

It was the sound known to all men. The upper lips. The tongue-throat sounds. Hearty and low. Glottal stop fingery sounds. Tripped up and swing sounds. 1926 and rubbed knees. Gentle kiss-slopes of sound. Oh, how I love my siren voice and what it holds.

Le Batard

2007-05-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Gromwells Von Julep

2007-05-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

Strumuwell Bracket did paperwork for James A.A. Joyce with an ivory cusped pen and an inkpot made from racing stubs and lard. He scribbled and penned letters-ex-epistolary, Fidel’s get you ten stamps and God’s fleetingness’ O so, so he said, saying he said from front to back round juniper heckle von Jackleg, that paltry no-do-gooder with a nose like a rotten cabbage, sad bastard bustard braggart coalmen stave Tilley’s boater upside the brow-comb of his head where nary a bulb or egg-stay lay settled or in lieu. It’s been some time, more so than some, since we ate coke-sausage tripe with blue-cheese and custard. Me mama made wee tiramisu in a doable-boiler, then relayed a lemon sauce on the crisp outer ends, some more brittle and crackled then more. Then with fists fustics and tinctoria she made me swear up and down that I won’t nor wouldn’t tell a sole or me papa who sat rereading the paper in a potter’s smock and no tie or socks. Time’s a filching, said Gromwells Cliffy, where that rotter Buell made a henpecks a million on hedges and orange julep.

Claxton on Stokes

2007-04-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-02T00:48:00.000-07:00

For My Dearest Betty

2007-04-02T00:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Tonsure-comb and Salted Biscuits

2007-03-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

tonsure-comb
separates sin from succor, pumpernickel
from flesh, tongue gorse
with blood, welts
and prayer

Night-town

2007-03-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Under the dark pillars,
She sits,
With pig-thighs and a sickness of skin.

In the dark, we whirl.
Up frills.
Down stocking-tops.

Ripe and in corners and waving goodbye faces. The down-turned mouths of bye-bye miss you and away away away. Tiny hands and into doorways. We gossip in halls of light. We tickle each other with our lips in castles. Little noses touch and cheek-readiness. Waltzing drives.

Agh, you, gradh, the lovers in doorways fighting for you. Ag, ya gradh, you find us cuddling up and ripping, roaring together in passage. Like a doggy thing. Ready. Hup, hup. Agh, gradh. You look at the whistling burlesque - did you find it there? Oh. Lift up, lift up.

Trembles of lady-callers rest their gentle, knowing hands on your shoulders. Come here, love, come here and over here and under here and your head bowed under over and up and over and over and round and back and front and mess. She makes whirring sounds like a machine. She tucks herself in. And mops. Weary eyes and far away. Just like Gerty.

Calypso faces, terrible lunges at you. Tap-shoes and wriggle-off clothes. Noises and Bakhtin looks on, smiling, laughing, jumping to see such a crowd. All together now. Red and green and lace and net and lines of cleft and oh, such a shoe. Oh such a thigh. Oh such a glimpse. Let me more. More of let me. Let me. Oh let me. More.

Well, I said, you can walk along cobbles and feel so much more than in the other parts of town. Stephen, Poldy, red drawers. Sickness. The hat. You left the hat on the end of the bed. Poor man. He'll come a-home later.

Beckett's Bicycle

2007-03-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

Beck
ett’s
bicycle
has
neith
er
a
horn
nor
a
brake
tyres
fluting
gravel
a
play
ing
card
of
Joyce
in
the
wick
of
the
spokes
the
stench
of
cab
bage
and
onions
boil
ed
skins
on

DEI ALTARE AD INTROIBO

2007-02-14T01:27:00.000-08:00

The shamble leg man slept with a gypsy who had flies in the seams of her eyes and breathe like spoiled onions. She spoke Romanian and wore goatskin shoes with birds’ talon claps. She claimed to be tutored in tap dancing, a claim he cared not to challenge, and knew how to cut hair with lit matches. Her hair was a covey of twigs and balled string that she twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head. She had a scissor cut just below her right eye and a cyst on the knob of her chin. When she spoke she spoke in gibberish and Esperanto, a consonant wail that deafened his ears. Her eyes were black shale, the sclera pitted with green, the lashes curved inward like apple peals. She had loose skin under her arms; skin boiled until it separated from the bone, a marrow whiteness in the rook of her elbow.

She hooked her legs round his neck and wailed into the trove of his ear. The gypsy woman smelled of orange roughie, creel and roe. The heels of her feet were bricked with calluses, a plagiary of hard skin that caused her to keel to one side like an abandoned ship. He tried to push her from his chest but she heeled upside his kidneys, so he shook his head from side to side hoping she’d declutch and leave him be. When this didn’t work he boxed her ears and whispered, ‘you gypsies are a miserable bunch, all this wailing and plagiary.’ When this worked to no avail, as her ears were crated, he shimmied to the left, then to the right, and threw her to the ground, an odor like spent matches and sulfur creping his nostrils.

The man in the hat awoke and ate a peameal sandwich with raw onion and Macquarie’s mustard. ‘INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI’ he said to no one in particular, ‘DEI ALTARE AD INTROIBO' and good riddance to you all’. He felt the rickets in his legs again this morning. He much preferred mock chicken, sometimes Porker’s bologna or a mild capriole, but the Hasidic butcher where he bought his meats refused to sell anything cloven or un-bled. The man in the hat’s father ate pork sausage and tripe, wingtips of blood clowning his face. He once ate a cow’s head, the ears curled like prepuces, a dead fly balled in the seam of its eye. His father told him that gypsies ate calf’s testicles, boiling the scrota in the same pot as the potatoes and cabbage, a placental hash that encouraged vitality and good hair growth. ‘GOD BE WITH YOU ’he hollered, ‘DIEUS EX PLURIBUS IN HASIDIA’. He shook the worms from his legs, a mischievous grin on his otherwise dower face, and climbed the stoop leading up from his lean-to.

Happy Birthday James Joyce.

2007-02-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow it is James Joyce's birthday.

Pages of words, which flow and cascade. The book as world. The turning cycles of words, which lead to equanimity. A state of equanimity. Nothing moving. All is still. A glorious, cascade of you. When you open the book, find the page. The one, which tells you about the sea.

The words, which tell you where the day begins and ends.

The special day.

Dear James,
Dear James,
You are remembered.

Tosspot and Jawbone

2007-01-30T22:40:00.000-08:00

The corpsedresser put halfpennies over Paddy’s eyes and wired his jawbone shut with copper brads and wire, resized his denture plate to fit in the coopery of his mouth and sealed him up in an oak box, a leftover from the groceries last delivery. Bloom, lemony scented soap pocketed, left the funeral precession and recrossed the Liffey from the other side, the one he’d crossed before purchasing his morning paper. Mrs P. Dogman dressed in foxhound wrapper and beaches boots threw the first curd of dirt on poor Paddy’s hole and then recrossed the gravesite in small even strides, her hair a will-o’-the-wisp, arms akimbo, teeth a thither and at chatter. 'Fucking sot', she intoned. 'Needlessly wasting a fair to middling day'. Bloom strode underfoot to the Sham-o-tam and hoisted a gin and phonic, his ears paraffin and none the banter, Blazes tosspot cuckolder of Molly, Parnell and Ramsblood gibing from beneath bedsheetsstokinglardpattythighs, bloomers cinched high and over.

Kidney for Bloom

2007-01-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

I sit opposite you, Bloom, and wave a finger,
You take your fork,
And put this plump, firm kidney in your mouth.

Feel it in your mouth,
The smooth oval of it.

The urinary tract love of it,
Run your finger along its edge.
Let it tickle your tongue.

Mr Bloom, can I interest you,
In my forkfulls?

I want to tempt you with heaps of urea.

I want to let droplets of blood grace your chin.

Let me lift up my fingers,
And feed you pancreatic ducts,
Lippy feeders,
Maybe a touch of dressed film.

I look at your gorgeous lips,
Find them enticing,
Want them open a little,
For entering.

The kidney,
It is wet and dripping,
It is ripe for tasting.
It is fresh and plump.

Oh Poldy,
Lay kidney like in my lap,
I shall stroke your ear,
And make you rise,
Like fantastic breakfast.

Haematites

2007-01-12T00:59:00.000-08:00

the
sea offers
up cod’s tongues, onyx shells, a
basket of
salt

I awoke disconnected to the thingamajig that haematites my fingers. This, so I was forewarned, portents a genocide of grammar and syntax, an elocutionary enchorial common to roustabouts and dustbin-men. Corruption, especially in the pre-frontal midrib, can cause horrid whooping and colic, night-sweats and coopery, a barrelhouse of shit-aphelia and whorish language. I will see what can be done, and rewire the cursor that attenuates the Babel in my head, next to Roget’s commode, a cowslip and the rector-rector’s bench.

Molly Sleeps

2007-01-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Molly sleeps with one foot on the pillow. She dreams. She dreams. One whole thigh on the pillow. Near the face. The melon places are full and rounded. She lets free a depth-giggle from her lips. Molly lets free of the night. She sits at nine and twelve with one leg that side and one this. She makes shapes under silk. With the gentle shapes of her breath, just visible.

Molly finds hats.

When she, I, you. She, me, together, we, us, delve under blankets of skin. Delve under dressing table frills. She opens. Toes. Feet. Mouth. Round rotundity. Round smells. Dripping lips. Wake. Drip-tips. Armed grids of broken foot-under. Touches. Morning glories. Within hands and grips of soft melody hands. Molly arch-under and over. We, you, three, one, two, clean, dirty.

Rudy was alive once. Now no more. He wears his tiny velvet suit and hides a lamb.

Tonight, she only thinks of two things.

Neon Lights in Dublin

2007-01-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

Saw your name, Molly, up there in pink Neon. Saw your name up there on Trinity College and it stood out for a moment. But nobody really cared. It flickered and then there was big fuzzy fizz and it disappeared forever. And no-one even noticed or replaced the light-bulb. It fizzled out in the night.

I saw your name, Molly.
I remember your tender face and smile.
I remember when we sat on top o' Howth Head and shared seed across the lips. The seed-cake crumb. I won't let you go out. Saw your name, Molly.

Saw your name Molly, standing out on pink. Standing out on arch-backs and green wisps of grass. Saw your face in pink-pout. Saw the hat cocked a-top the spade. Blazestakeinthearms.

Saw your pink Molly. I shall not let you go out. Tender arms shall cradle you one day. Back there on Howth. And Molly, frail and mahogony eye of you. Your hair in the wind there.

Trinity. Trinity. Trinity. Martello.

James Aloysius Aquinas

2007-01-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

Coalmen Milquetoast sat in a child’s plastic swimming pool with an umbrella, a can of sterna and three gimlets, one with gin and bitters, one with rum and cola and the other with absinth and Jamaican spruce beer. He was sunning, so he said to whomever queried, as it was midwinter and his skin was sallow, white and crumbly. ‘Have you read Aquinas?’ he trumpeted, for no other reason than he felt so inclined, recumbent and besotted on the trinity and spruce beer as he was. One man, on onlooker with a crook and palsied eye, asked, ‘have you ever been to Jamaica, dear sir?’ Coalmen Milquetoast replied, begrudgingly, ‘have you ever read Aquinas, dear sir?’ A fat woman walking a dog on a bejewelled leash, a gift from a cake-maker who worked on and oil derrick, stopped and inquired, ‘dear sir, have you ever read Jacqueline Suzanne?’ The onlooker with the crook and palsied eye, interrupting Coalmen Milquetoast who was fiddling with a loose spar on his umbrella, replied, ‘have you ever been to Jamaica, Madame?’ The sky fell in atop they’re heads, all three, and the dog who was busy sniffing and scratching and peeing, a sign from God, or Aquinas or the Beriberi Spruce Beer company, the very same one that Jacqueline Suzanne visited while on vacation in Jamaica with the cake-maker, the fat woman’s dog and Coalmen Milquetoast’s copy of the Summa Theologica.

Bioscopy of the rectos: surgeon’s gel and scotching, Rebus suckling Romulus, nipple-rings and inking; a colonoscopy of anus and cuckold. Foxtrot calliope, a ring-around-the-posy, seal fat, bleb and oil of castor, for those hard to reach spots, beneath armpit and gland-cove, scoured clean with mason’s trowel and lye. I had a bream last night, he said, Abramis brama with salt cod and capers, not the sort of thing you’d want to eat on an umpteen’s stomach, all that jujubery and blackstrap mole-asses, a whales-worth of eel’s tongue and flesh-eyes, not for the faint of art or nervosa. He said, ‘have you read Aquinas, you blubbery fools? Mine was swiped by some menace with a dog’s collar and a thief’s shim, Summa con Gentiles, too, wrapped in wax-clothe and chutney, sad day it is, when Aquino’s tome isn’t safe and round’.

Sandymount

2006-12-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

The waves lap like joyous pride,
And all the different skaters and pram-pushers,
Whisper messages across sea-spitting time.

Two salty memories of the stop of Joyce.

I wish I was on the miles,
And miles,
And miles of shore.

Towards black ship horizon testimonies,
The tide comes and in its ineluctable way,
Shifts,
Shifts,
And shifts.

Two lips of waves kiss me.

And oh,
The day of kisses is living.

Threads of sand-lines,
Two wormy-wrigglers,
A toe-mail brush of love.

Ode de Joyce

2006-12-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Gerty

2006-12-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

Sand on me and me oh my he can't see my secret I see him watching and then I see him sitting here with his leg cocked and just the tiny tilt of his head and then he sees the pink-shin of skin. When he sees me I feel sad with crying eyes because I think he will be another another, yes another, who will turn away and not see me for who I really am and well, when he gives me the respect of his eyes I think that I shall burst with joy and tears. In my heart I just think that he notices me and that he will perhaps walk away and never return but then he lays back on his shoulders, grey. The eyes, yes, you can see eyes. They are bright for a moment. Pickle-eyes. With wet ginger bottle spirit. White vinegar. I said to my ma that I could see the look sometimes but then they see the fault, the physical, damning fault and they walk away. Get off on the side view the soft view, the wide-angle view and don't take note of the physical. If I just show a bit of. That. Yes, that part is ok. And it holds you back and you cannot do the things that you want to do and the face is pretty but they say oh no when they see it all. The big eyes and the laughing smile and sometimes the glint of sparkle. But, even though they don't want to admit it, when they see the whole picture, they aren't wanting you anymore. I'll give him a glimpse. A glimpse, of sand-calves. And soft, white skin. And little dark patches. And rubies. And all the girl. He can see in there. He watches from the pebble-seat he has there. I am sideways, over the shoulder at you. In rock-pools I hide. Star-fish secrets, all by myself, always.

2006-12-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

Fragmento-Finnegans Wake

2006-12-13T17:36:00.000-08:00

Poverty and Bad Grammar

2006-12-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

Syphilis-tremponema-pallidum, gonorrhoeal-mitochondriosis, discharge of stout and lager; Soave-of-bitters for the cockle and moan, embalmer’s-oil to encourage blistering and clottage, a most inaccurate science of alchemy and dross, but a science nonetheless; trackman’s-harp, tympanic-foil, {musical frottage} not for the weak-kneed, bubonic or deckle {flail-skin-of-feta}, a ghetto of dilettantism, poverty and bad grammar.

It’s 2:23 in the morning; Sartre’s wristwatch set to naught. My goodness-me, how time flies. Beanery and Time: what an extraordinary treatise, scrota in C-minor with fluting, a deontological jumpstart without cable and handsaw. Its 2:37 in the morning; a Profurn in D-major, sans flutes and oboes, but accompanied by a French horn and Basque bassoon. I must say, I do prefer the oboe, such a pleasant non-cons-anal refrain.

Brodhead grinds powders to talc, metallurgy of substance; felon-ash to prevent loss of abject.

Molloy, off-cantor and bilious with ale, his Monteux soiled with mud-wagon, bilge and cockney, trying to dissuade the constabulary from running him in said ‘you dear sire are a dupe, a mountebank and a fool!’ The detective shoved Molloy with the curd of his boot, saying ‘and you, my imprudent man, are a taproot and a burbler, a roughneck and a thug’.

Morton Salk had skinned knees, a pug-nose and wore Birkenstocks and calf-tripe gloves, regardless of the weather. He ate celery-rot, frozen parsnips, glue and pastry-sugar, and was a wee bit taller than a Lagerkvist’s dwarf and twice as cunning. He disliked people who wore sunbonnets, capes, strapless shoes and a doctor of philology named Karl Millermanstein. He penned a book on cattery, a style-manual for those absorbed with stupid notions and catcalls. He scorned and belittled dog-grooming, chivalry and cock-sniffing; as he felt roosters were God’s scourge on man and chivalry for imbeciles. Morton Salk died in a brothel-fire in 1642, and was found day’s later eating celery-rot, frozen parsnips, glue and pastry-sugar, and wearing a sunbonnet, cape and strapless shoes twice his size.