My mother smiles
as if
she’s just
been kissed,
taking me in
through misplaced eyes.

More of her mind
absconded
each time we meet,
but there,
in the bygone simplicities
of black and white,
she stands proud
as a sentry
on her wedding day,
next to a man
she has forgotten

smiling,
as if
she’s just
about to be kissed.



Having One's Cake

No

and turn to go

Then that little- girl- lost voice

filters through the duvet:

Roger’s chairing a conference

all next week

in Ulan Bator 

something to do with quantum physics

or theosophy;

you could

drop by,

smear me diligently

head to toe

with unleavened chocolate,

scatter glacé cherries

at ingenious points

about my person

afterwards we could talk

promotion prospects.

Roger likes your style

...and so do I.

My hand rests briefly

on the Victorian doorknob

I'll get back to you.



The Art of Impression Management

Pop-eyed and lugubrious

to the waistcoat born,

patting the bottoms

of his young charges

in that prelapsarian age

while he patrols

his academic satrapy.

He rotates his head

as if underwater

when yet another

disappearance is announced.

“Who could do such a thing?” he asks

during Tuesday’s

Whist Night at Dr. Nathan’s

and in the foxed silence

which ensues

lays down the four of clubs,

and carries off the trick.

Once Bitten

During supper she mistook
the far-off tinkling
of broken glass for a waterfall
and as our jollity
swelled with the Christmas poitin
carrying us into the small hours
she related
how a fellow-passenger
on the Transalpine Express
turned out to be a palmist
and foretold that she would
have six children, all girls,
and live to be a hundred.

I could tell by the incline
and stillness of his face
that my father was
bewitched by her.
Some months later
when I’d returned alone
he and I strode
across Hunter’s Field
through a bar-room mizzle
in search of rabbits.
Out of nowhere
he mentioned her,
likening her smile
to opening a chapter
in a favourite book,
though I wasn’t so sure
precisely what he meant.
 
Through the dormer window
I could make out
the fingertips of dawn.
We lay in my childhood bed
cradling against the cold.
This is like
the fucking third world
she said,
deflecting my hand
as it sneaked towards her breast
and turning non-negotiably
to sleep.



Street Angel

My daddy
could lift
a horse
above his head
as if caught midway
through a barbarous dance

skin a hare
with a pianist’s
delicacy and pace

hold an audience agog
with his concoctions
of farce slaughter perfidy
and wasted love

leach stark spirals of regret
from the Uillean Pipes

and with a single
airy gesture
despatch me
to the shadow-world.

After Saskia

Things did not go well for me
after breaking up with Saskia
I missed the heat of her perfume
the way we hugged like we were
trying to creep inside each other’s skin
I met her once again by chance
at the Club Chinois or thereabouts
by then I had a gold tooth and a habit
she meanwhile
glowed imperious with a hairstyle
that broke categories and an amigo
who reachingly resembled me
when the world quailed before my
explosive chutzpah

she looked away

no kowtowing to the days

when she kept a scrapbook
of my smiles and gestures.

Submontane

Boats lollop
in the bay,
the wind distractedly
picks at the hem
of your Sunday dress.
Widowed clouds
crest the hills
which mark the boundary
of our terra cognita
in that hair-shirted Ireland
of the freeze-framed Fifties.

Our laughter ousts

the clacking of the gulls

on the Martello Tower
as we tamp the week’s joy
into the precarious furlough
between the end of Mass
and repossession by your Da,
a bellow on him
for all the world
like a thwarted minotaur.

Brand - by A.E. Plastic

What consequences do we lay up
by bringing home
the wrong detergent?

Bloody typical she says
as if a man can be summed up
by the difference
between tablets and powder.

Meltdown - by A.E. Plastic

Stub-weary of

those PowerPoint personalities,
the Beowulfs of the Netscape years

the martyrdom
of rough sex
in Marriot Executive suites

hobnobbing with
the pre-nuptial cuties
at the tennis club,
bared arms semaphoring
a life of décor and therapy

the gourded compassion
for the stately declension
of my options underwater

Concourse - by A.E. Plastic

I spend far
too much time
in transit

waiting
for connections


Condor Airways advises passengers that departure time for flight KNZ 334 for Hanover has been delayed until 17.30. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience to customers for this delay which arose due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft.


From: LucyG@ hotmail. com
Hi Honey
Hope you have a safe journey. Charlie is still coughing so I’m keeping her home. She’s not a happy bunnikins by no means since she is going to miss out on drama class. However, she’s making up lost ground here, with yours truly cast as the wicked witch.  No show from the builder again; his office said his grandmother had died.  She seems to be making a habit of it. Must run; the man from supermarket.com has just arrived with a palette laden with
life’s essentials. I can hear the chink of Chablis from here!
Later
Lulu

[save]


Breaking News…  Newlyweds slaughtered  in machete  horror… ….Police warn public to be vigilant…Shares slide after interest rates rise again….soap star gives birth to quadruplets…


From:  Tanya_ Deville@ yahoo.com

Miss you horseman. Sooooo much.  Just thought you’d like to know I’m doing my bit for global warming -cutting down on the laundry by not wearing any panties today. See you tomorrow at the usual g-spot hahah.   

 XXXXXXXXXXXXX plus an O!

T

[delete]

Condor Airways advises passengers that arrival time for flight KNZ 378 from Rome has been delayed until 19.30. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience to customers for this delay which arose due to the late departure of the outgoing aircraft.


From: roger.brakewaite@ galacticsolutions.net

Hi G

Just so as you can quaff the Kool-Aid, here’s the long-awaited Version 10.3 of the Mission Statement, delivered after mucho angst and the lavishing of elephantine quantities of our ill-gotten gains upon our friendly (and why the fuck wouldn’t they be?) global brand consultants:

Galactic Solutions e-enable our clients deploying leading-edge research and next-generation technologies. Organizations gain critical competitive advantage from our holistic strategising and user-centric paradigms; we architect and deliver client-specific solutions by combining our in-house competencies synergistically with the aggregate expertise of our global network of world-class partners.

Stamp that on your forehead, boyo!

Looking forward to a right royal nosh chez G come Saturday; Lu is so tragically wasted on you.

 Rog

[save]

This is an important security announcement. Please do not leave any bags unattended at any time. Any bags left unattended will be promptly removed and may be destroyed.


From:  infomaillotteryaward@yahoo.com

Yahoo! Mail announces you as one of the 10 lucky winners in the ongoing Yahoo lottery Award for 2008 SUMMER. All the 10 winning email addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 50,000,000 international emails as part of our international promotions program which is conducted annually. Consequently, you have been approved for a total pay-out of SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATE DOLLARS

 [delete]

From: LucyB@ hotmail. com

PS Charlie says be sure to send a postcard (her new best friend Simon collects foreign stamps!!)

[save]


Soap star gives birth to quadruplets…North Korea announce next stage of nuclear power programme...Ronaldo moves to Real Madrid for world record transfer fee…Breaking News…Newlyweds slaughtered in  machete horror….

I spend far
too much time
in transit

waiting
 

Surge - by A.E. Plastic

kids left

with cummerbunds of flesh

and (poets aside)

tears are no use

in making trenches

 

back in the Foreign Office

a girl sends mip-

mapped images

of her breasts

to an unknown male

asks with amorphous mockery

“Is this Art?”

Apart - by A.E. Plastic

The misfortunes of voyagers:

we know all about those,

don’t we?

Bushwhackers, troglodytes,

cut-purses and cozeners,

all lie in wait.

But don’t expect our Penelope

to kick her heels at home;

there’s visits

to the sleek-haired dentist,

the school run,

bridge classes for the neophyte,

hazy village fetes

and her tricked out

in a veil of aloofness

edged with misgiving.

The misfortunes of voyagers:
we know all about those,
don’t we?
Bushwhackers, troglodytes,
cut-purses and cozeners,
all lie in wait.
But don’t expect our Penelope
to kick her heels at home;
there’s visits
to the sleek-haired dentist,
the school run,
bridge classes for the neophyte,
hazy village fetes
and her tricked out
in a veil of aloofness
edged with misgiving.

Hanging On - by A.E. Plastic

Nobulus in ermine twigs

the faint fannings of treachery

orders wood and nails and

takes the most limboesque

of his concubines

to bed that night

The Blind Chiropractor - by A.E. Plastic

Dr.Staisier turns to me,
as if lassoed out of the blue;
then, stubbly and purposive,
he taps out my particulars
on a laptop which dutifully 
regurgitates them
in greyed-out tones:
age 58, married,
sedentary, non-smoker,
academic, no medication
except for Sertraline.

The consulting room
is devoutly anhedonistic,
the only mitigation
an ormolu clock
screwed ostentatiously
to the mantelpiece
(is the good doctor on his guard
against light-fingered patients?).

At his bidding,
I prostrate myself
on a theatre-of-war trestle
and his hands reach out 
to that obliterated communion 
of muscles, bones, nerves
ribs, sinews and cartilage.

Man was designed to crawl
not sit he tells me
holding up a plastic spine
to prove the point,
and prescribes daily
acts of contortion
sure to straighten me out

I surrender my platinum card
to the blonde cashier
taking in her evacuated smile
and flesh infinitely silkier
than I will ever broach again
(it tickles me to imagine
that, inexplicably, Dr. Staisier
has an eye for the ladies).

The Squat on Good Fortune Street - by A.E. Plastic

was:

- (as I later wrote)

a cross between

a lost property office

and the lair

of Dr. Fu Manchu

- a shaded gooseneck

from the all-nite pharmacy

where you purchased

your maquillage and

extra- strength Tylenol

-where we conjoined

in Rajan’s borrowed bed

like muscles in spasm

he professing carryingly

that it didn’t bother him

if we left stains

You’re not ghosts after all

later he whispered

My turn will come

to screw her too

though he was strung-out by then

on “Be the real you

through Self-Hypnosis”

-where your compeers

hovered like Hindu gods

over somersaulting dice

and in the cum of victory

flashed their teeth

like carving-knives

-where Rajan knocked out

chequered renditions of

“Light my Fire”

on his baby mellotron

choking on dispraise

a premonition

of his final huff

-where my beetle-browed refusal

to work the Schrodinger ticket scam

on the London Underground

became a crow-bar of misgiving

sometimes (as I later wrote)

it’s only recklessness that pays

Mine - by A.E. Plastic

mine

she’d never be

 

though it did seem

on the cards

just then

strolling past

the fusty hotels

and the blacked-out

betting shops

on Merchant’s Quay

 

maybe she

was distracted

by the tumbling

of the gypsy kids

in the carpark

or perhaps

(is this vanity

or its last toehold?)

she was

dreaming up

new ways

of goring me

 

 

the unheralded

change

of perfume

a run

of unfamiliar

phrasings:

so many ways

to skin a cat

whereas only one

to split an atom.

Baptism - by A.E. Plastic

Colette equine

and lacquered

watches her words

under mama’s stinting gaze

molecules blood fluids

all out of sight

plough on

Reverend swishes past

lunch-bellied satrap

assured and thespian

Mrs. McGinnity’s girl

isn’t it ah you’ve the look

of your da

a sad loss

to the parish a sad loss indeed

in one fell movement

larrups the back of

Padraig crestfallen father

aren’t you the fine fellow now

begod we thought

you’d have hung up

your boots long ago boy

 

and molecules blood fluids

all out of sight

plough on

I am Jane - by A.E. Plastic

Good to meet you too, Mel.

Mine’s Jane.
 

As in Calamity. Exactly.
 

Yeah, that’s right

Larissa the check-in girl

was much smitten by your coat;

don’t see Crombies

round much these days.
 

Flame-resistant!

Ohmygod, you’re not serious!
 

A Bacardi Oro thanks.

You might have to remind her

about a cherry on a stick.
 

Yeah, a bottle blonde;

from a long line

of bottle blondes.
 

No, not full-time.

I study customer relationship management mornings.

But this town

being this town,

my real self

is, wudncha know, a writer.
 

Poems mainly.

Notched up a bedroomful

of certificates at school.

All still there, proud

and new as yesterday.

No, not love poems;

most decidedly

not love poems.
 

Yeah, six doors up. Hotel Elysium.

Reduced rate for gentlemen

booking in with club employees.

Sure, I can do that too.

Is that all there is?

 

Hard times have fallen
on Gentleman Jenny;
the rubbernecks
won’t shell out
to have their pictures
taken with her

the landlady refuses
to fix the hole in the roof
says it never rains round here

and now Doctor Mulgrew
with his aniseed breath
tells her
with solemn unconcern

there's blood

where blood shouldn’t be