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Patrick Walsh

Ireland

Bio: Patrick Walsh, Cork, Ireland. Graduate of U.C.C [Cork]. Worked many years in feedmilling. Loves the late work of Sylvia Plath. Published in U.K  & local Cork Anthologies. Work read on national & cummunity radio.

2004 work in Facets,Surface-on-line,Antipatico,PW-Review,Aught,
and Moonwort Review.                     

2005 work in, or due in....Tattoo Highway-10,Coffee-House-UK,Carillon,
Black Heart,Underground Window and Southern Mule.

Caesar’s February Strategy


Dog-eat-dog embrace,
Sweat’s sour radiating salve,                [ with senators ]
Spring-light offloads chill.

River sucks gods-light
From suns seasonal weakness.           [ with friends ]
Fears a flooding weir.   

Light’s going, moths drift
To any candle flicker.                           [ with the god Caesar]
Roll on "Ides of March" .
 




Studs Terkelling


Eastern, chilly-cloud, cream-snow.
These basin-inverted Knockmealdown hills
On my right. We roll slowly with the flow,
Long line of lit-up vehicles like aliens waiting,
In early evening, on Cork border roads.
This is a brooding, intro pan shot
To an imaginary Studs Terkel movie,
Where perceived lives are, were, or could have been,
And in process become lightning codes,
Beyond a nod of mere distraction to fool’s-gold,
While gods of bone-scraping intractability bend
A knee at this foolhardiness.




Kith & Kin

Sister
...................
Dog swallowed by blood,
Be-there-Eileen reaches out.
Blind snaps the world.

Grandmother
.................................
To the U.S
All courage at sixteen.

Angry & married with five kids,
In West Cork of 1915 .

"Daughter.....which way is home?",
At the local crossroads 1950  .

Grandfather
..............................
Were you ,as some said,
A street angel,house devil?
DNA rides god .            





The Hurling Game

Where fields lie, like mounds of
Exotic,green folded napkins,
Between Bandon and Newcestown,
I come upon the god of war.

Innocuous challenge game there,
Involving neighbouring places,
With dusty,turning,country roads
And memories shaded as dusk.

From first whistle,cornerback-2
Is at it,  gurrier tactics,jersey-pulling,
Slapping,spitting, mouthing unknowables.
A knowing-crowd awaits inevitable twist

Of fortune's wheel.  Suddenly he's hit,hit again,
Fists finding flesh,blood splashpainting nose and face.
Guy next to me says"that's sure well-deserved".
At wire,I hear a child screaming"daddy".

I can imagine this kid come-darkness.
All those future-chaotic dreams,
Like black-ice in clever disguise
At moment of slide,as once I would slip.

Now I'm tired as creaking backbone
Of a fallen idol who's seen too much,
Cold and calcium-calling for some god,
And how I want this game to end !.

My adrenalin flows over
A strange abyss, fossilizes that child
In the heat of dark momentum,the game
Stopped as these fighting men seem stopped
In Bogart and Bacall time-frames,
By the blink of eyelids in fear.                                       





Optimum Time

Too much time for thinking
Makes a man turn from
The grasp of things
To inevitable darkness
Of finding the meaning,
When a white horse
Chasing  some truth,
Dies foaming on the horizon.