The True Horror!
I just gave Hallowe’en away.
I gave it to the kids next door;
the ghosts, the lanterns, tinsel bats,
the candles, ice-trays and place mats.
My grim reaper curtain’s no longer mine,
my pumpkin, ghost and spider chain.
Getting too old to put it all up just to take it down again.
My knees complain about the strain!
Time to face the truth with horror.
That whiskered old witch in the mirror
is really me!
A simple Case of Misdiagnosis
The raybot moved around him and flashed repeatedly.
“Done,” said the cold voice and Mr Zee exited the room.
“You say you’ve been in some pain and thought you’d broken a bone?”
“That’s correct, Doctor.”
“Mmmm. Curious. You have no bones, Mr Zee.”
“Everybody has bones.”
The doctor turned the screen round. “See for yourself.”
The screen showed a classic robotic framework.
Mr Zee looked at it incredulously. “There must be some mistake, surely.”
“The raybot scanner is our very latest diagnostic tool, Mr Zee. It can detect problems at the microcellular level. Only you don’t seem to have any cellular level.”
“But grew up just like any normal kid on the block.”
“You may contain memories of growing up as a normal boy but this machine tells us very conclusively that you are an android, Mr Zee. As far as I can tell you’ve never done any ‘growing’ since your initial activation.”
Zee looked shattered. “But...”
“You really didn’t know?”
Zee put his head in his hands.
“We can get you some counselling and proper maintenance for your systems.”
Zee remained silent.
“I’ll write you a referral to the A I Department, shall I? They’re very good and they may have a copy of your records. Have you sorted in no time. They can probably deal with the imaginary pain too.”
Imaginary pain? Zee sat motionless, trying to take it in. Up until that day, he’d never felt any pain at all. Perhaps...
“Well, I can’t really do much more -- under the circumstances.”
“Yes Doctor. I understand. Thank you for your time.”
“I’ll be in contact about...” began the Doctor but Mr Zee had already left.
The Doctor recognised Zee’s face in the headlines the next morning.
“Threw himself from a bridge railway apparently,” said the Doctor. “But it doesn’t make sense. It says here he broke every bone in his body.”
@ Oonah V Joslin 2020
Back in the days of Every Day Poets, Kathleen submitted some poems. We liked them a lot. We took them. Eventually we invited her to become part of the editorial team. After five years working together, EDP folded. Connie and she moved on to Gyroscope Review and I moved to The Linnet's Wings but we stayed in touch, we remain friends. Now I am so glad to see Kathleen's first Chapbook come to fruition from Gyroscope Press with a lovely cover by Kath's son, artist, Shawn Dalsen.
How We Learned to Shut Our Own Mouths follows the seasons through a very difficult lock-down year. It is honest and brave, poignant and humourous and, like its author, it is gentle and kind. Kathleen is a person who chooses to love, chooses to hope, chooses to
welcome the clarity that our fear keeps obcured
That's not an easy choice. We see that play out in the many moments within these poems, tiny personal, precious moments of crystal clear insight and realisation that there is always a choice to be made of gratitude perhaps because
our miracles feel endless
even as our time grows short
This book does what Kathleen's poetry does best. It reminds us that the world constantly changes around us, that we can't smell it or predict it and that it is up to us to keep ourselves grounded within that change. Of course that's difficult to do but then you can always Cook Your Way out of a Funk or Tuck some gentle things away to hang onto and this book suggests lots of ways you can do that. There's ordinary magic to be found in the book and some extraordinary and very profound insights.
I highly recommend it to you.
I do have a favourite poem but I won't tell you what it is because I know you will find a favourite too, a poem to hang onto. A poem that helps.
A year into lockdowns we have vaccines and some hope at last. We had our first vaccine this week. Astra Zenica. We didn't really care which vaccine we got. All these vaccines are the result of unsung people working tirelessly. Their very existence is a triumph. It's better than landing on Mars. It's a pity to see petty political arguments over them. It's a pity to see superstition and stupidity trying to supplant science but we're human, we must accept.
I know that in these 3 photos the seasons look as if they are going backwards but that is just a reflection of the variation in microclimate between the 3 gardens. Belsay is a quarry garden. Wallington is a walled garden. Howick is a woodland garden very close to the North Sea Coast.
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| January - Belsay |
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| February - Wallington |
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| March 6th 2020 |
Last March we didn't really quite know what was about to hit us and a good thing too! Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I am lucky. As a child I hated having to go to school day after day -- all those other kids. For me it's bliss to wake up on a cold morning, look out the window, crawl back into bed and turn over. My default mode is not very social but this year, even on my scale of unsociable, takes the biscuit -- takes the biscuit, crushes it up and throws it to the winds! And we count ourselves lucky in that it's been such a nightmare for so very many people, loved ones lost, health lost, livelihoods lost, time together lost, opportunities lost. For front line staff their lives have turned into a disaster movie. It must be awful.
Reality has changed. Maybe our dreams have changed too. Even my nightmares have changed.
Last night I dreamt we went to the theatre to see a ballet. Every other row of seats had gone. People were seated in family groups. At the interval there was a hard sell sponsorship raffle for the theatre. We were in the back row and the seats reclined right back so I lay back, fell asleep and missed the entire first act. At the second interval, just before the Bingo set started, we sneaked out like criminals so we could a taxi home rather than taking a bus. The streets were cordoned with yellow tape denoting one way systems but Northumberland St was pretty empty. We met a friend who had an german shepherd dog dressed in doggy PPE right down to a little snout mask, so I wasn't allowed pet it. I wanted to go for an Indian meal but realised all the restaurants were closed.
Last March, was that really only a year ago?
Saint David's Day I made Welsh Cakes. St Patrick's Day we'll have a dram of Bushmills. We have no plans to come out of lockdown. We won't be going on holiday any time soon. We might get back to Belsay or Wallington or Howick later this year. We have vaccines and some hope at last. Life goes on but perhaps not as we know it.
Oh indeed, I have my haggis at the ready. I have my neeps and tatties and my whiskey cake or shortbread and raspberries (yet to be decided). I have a couple, well a few, okay I have a lot of fine malts tae sample including a very nice Speyside sent at Christmas by Jim and Kathleen, Glen Morangie a Crabbies and Bushmills 10 yr Malt.
Burns was my mother's favourite poet and she had a bust of him in the china cabinet. The lowland Scots dialect wasnae a great stretch in Ballymena! We were really more Scots than Irish -- Dalriadans, as I always like to say. We were the folk of the Stone of Scone, the people of the olden kingdoms of the north when the seas were connections, not barriers to trade. When the sea was the easy way to travel.
So I regard Burn's Night as my tradition too, though I never had haggis as a child but this was because my mother could not stand even the smell of lamb! She'd have frowned a bit on the whiskey too even if we could have afforded whiskey. But I love lamb and I like a wee dram and almost despite her encouragement, I still write poems. So I'll address the haggis and enjoy the tasting and here's the story:
Quare advise tae a buddin' poet
Betimes
as a wean I’d help Mammy tae dust.
The Bust, eight inches high
aye sat in the corner o' the cabinet
but I wasn’t allowed tae
touch it.
He was that young an’ fair and looked tae be
made o' honeycomb
so I asked, Mammy, Is that yella man?
Naw
yella man’s fer eaten.
Thon’s Rabbie Burns, mammy
explained, the greatest Scottish poet ever lived.
My luv is like
a red, red rose, A Man’s a man fer a’ that, Ye Banks and
Braes,
To a mouse and Auld Lang Syne’s a wheen o’ what he
wrote.
We’d learned Ye Banks and Braes in school. I was
impressed.
I want to be a poet, I confessed, when I grow
up.
Aye, yer arse in parsley! she aimed a bussock at my
behind,
You’ll ha'tae up yer ideas a bit, she
said.
Poetry’s not a payin’ job and anyway, Mammy lot a
hoogh gie fit tae burst,
remember that ye ha'tae grow up
first!
First Published in A New Ulster Apr 2018
This was published at the same time and seems more relevant than ever in these day when Ulster's status is in great doubt.
Belonging
I
have the voice of no country. I don’t
know that my native land
was ever real;
a place of fractures, born of volcanoes,
rifts
in its rocks that never truly heal.
Even the old kingdom was
united
more by a turbulence of sea than land.
But the
blood, the blood was real between us,
these days depicted (Pict)
by the red hand.
We were the Dal Riata. We were Scots.
Feth
aye, we were! Fought over and fought back,
triumphed in defeat
because Iona
was our own and the Stone of Destiny
belonged
to us and spread our culture far.
And yes, that blood was thick
and bloody real
between us, Aethelfrith, and the Ui Neills.
Yet
we were not planted as in new soil,
but flowed here on the tides
of history,
left and returned through many centuries.
Who
will inflict a future on us next?
In global politics we have no
friends.
But though I have no country and no voice,
I'll
remain Dalriadan to the end.
I've been feeling a bit trapped this past week. The cold and icy conditions have meant that I haven't been out for a walk. There's no point in risking a fall when hospitals are so overstretched. Right?
And we seem to have a mouse! We can hear it periodically scratching about in the roof space which is all insulation. It can't get into the rooms from there as far as we know; at least it hasn't made an appearance thus far. We think it's made a little run for itself in and out. It may be a little uncomfortable up there because we have those electrical current deterents that make a nasty noise through all the wiring. We have traps at the ready just in case and are seeking some professional advice. I can't say I blame mousey with it being so cold. It wants in and I want out. Today we had a visit from the mouse man and he has confirmed a run in the attic. He found some nibbled paper up there. He was a lovely man! He asked how we were and we said fine -- no symptoms and he said 'I mean mentally. How are you coping?' I felt like saying we were as mad as ever. But hey HOW NICE! He'll be back in two weeks to make sure they're gone and we're alright. That will be the 1st February 😁
In the garden there's little activity. A sudden Flight of Starlings rushed across the other day. I think the sparrow hawk had taken one of them. I could hear squeakings and alarm calls for about 5 minutes after the cerfuffle. This is the way of nature. We all survive as we can.
But the Sun is rising in the sky (or rather we are tilting ever more towards it in our yearly journey) and today for the first time it gave us some warmth through the kitchen door. It also showed up that the glass is very dirty.
Apart from some political limericks I haven't been writing much. I can't get my head into that space. But I'm not a professional writer and so I don't worry much. If it comes it comes, if it doesn't I'll have to clean the windows of that sliding door instead.
January.
Getting lighter.
Buds appearing.
Birdsong brighter
penetrates my lock-down room
silences the motes of gloom
allowing me in my mind’s eye
to scud across the winter sky
momentarily escaping.
Christmas is over. It's not that I like Christmas so very much -- no that's not it. New Year has never been my thing. It's just one day to the next when all's said and done. In fact every day is just one day to the next. But some days you never forget. Some days life doesn't go on!
The 11th January 1960 was one of those days. I was 5. I'd just started school in September and that was a big deal for me. I didn't like it!! There were other kids there. Scarey kids. You had to interact. You had to compete. You had to learn all sorts of difficult things. It was the beginning of being in the bigger world and I didn't much like the bigger world!
It was a Monday like it is this year and a Monday like no other because that was the day my father died. He was 48.
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| Jack Kyle |
I have written lots and lots about it before and if you would like to read some of what I've written I refer you to this POST
But the truth is I've never maybe written so viscerally and truthfully as this in piece by fellow Irish poet Donall Dempsey who is a FaceBook friend and has kindly allowed me to share this. This is what it felt like. It's how it still feels. There are days I'm still 5 inside and
NO I don't like being in the world -- Not in January -- I don't -- not today.
BEING IN THE WORLD
"I'm scared...!" she sobs
"Of what love?" I cuddle her
"Of being in the world!"
****
This was when she was only a tiny little thing in the world of long ago but her words ring truer now in this rogue world of ours.
Her granny had just died and this all too too solid world of forever didn't seem as forever as it had before. She no longer trusted it if a granny could vanish...would she vanish too?
She cried and "wanted to go where ever Granny had goed!"
She was looking at a globe and asked me if she were in the world. And is Granny not in the world any more? And when Granny finishes being dead then will she come back? And what good is the world if Granny isn't in it. She sat on my lap and listened to auld Jemmy the Joist reading from Finnegans Wake with his own voice. I asked her what did she think the man was saying and she asked "Did he lose his granny too?"
by Donall Dempsey
