The Priestfall Incident

Of What Wounded Innocence
Were These Bodies Bore
Bare Skin And Bruised Cheeks
And Sunday Clothes Tore

Lapsed To Be Draped
And Carried By Brothers
Now, The Two Girls Are
Followed By Their Mothers'

CK

I Thought Black People Couldn't Ski? Or Is That Swim?

Throw Rope Over Branches
While New York Keeps The Orchard,
It's Not As Strange As Hoilday's Fruit.

The City's Shores Will Shake It's Shells Off
For Those Who Have Enough Time To Lament The Dead
Shaking Pulse Checkers, Breath Tracers And Cough Catchers,
Ambulance Chasers And Necromancers

Wood, The Water, Beat And Drown People
While Cityscapes And Escapes
As Buildings Blame The Sea

CK

Conclusions

Sit Under The Rage Of Those Days,
Counting A Misspent Lot,
Forgetting What You Had To
Recall What Was Not.

Sure No Need To Worry For If What
That Book Says Is True
Everything You've Ever Lost
Comes Back To You.

CK

Fragment #41

Her Poster Footed
His Bed So He Could Get Off
By Crossing Shoulders

CK

...Is Your Only Man

Self-exiled...
For The Week At Least
But There Will Always Be
A Trace Of It In My Blood
Tracing Out Bottle Red Noses
Tracing Out Banal Beer Bellies

No Lineage Like Kavanagh Or Behan,
Less Hunter And Even Less Bar-fly Laureate
Something Felt During That Dawnburst
An Urge I Can Only Feel Echoed In Blood

Such A Small Spent Empire
I Try To Leave Behind

CK

Return To Sender

Half Written And Half Filled
French Letters
A Necessity One Stranger Told Me
In Which I Try To Show That I Like You
But I Couldn't Afford The Stamp To Go The Whole Distance
So Please Do Not Read Too Much Into These French Letters
For It's A Means Of Grip To Put It On Some Foreign Tongue
For When I Come I Am Struggling To Ask
About You But My Pen is
Now Fallow
I May Return To You Later

CK

Longacre

I Am A Planner Of Broken Roads
For It Is Easier To Leave When You Have Somewhere To Go,
Crumbled Under Heavy Loads

So Pick Up A Piece Of Your Own,
I Guess This Is Why Some Many Of My Friends
Live Where Their Stones Are Thrown

CK

This Was Sacrosanct Until We Forgot About It

Listen To Me Say This So
It Distracts Me From My Grandmother
Who Slipped Slow And Known
Into Old Age With That Memory Loss
Of Those Younger Years Which
Relived Themselves Before Times Unknown

Strokes Forgot The Plot
Which I Didn't Take Serious Until My Father
(And Her Son)
Rushed Her With That Twist In Her Gut
From Forgetting To Eat
And All The Good She Said It Has Done

She's Now Sure My Aunt Caused It
With That Half-cast Baby As It Is Often Called
From Some Father Still In Valencia
Who Forces Me To Knock On Wood Or Veneer
When His Name Is Mentioned
In Our Whispers And In Granny's Growing Dementia

CK  

Mother's Diary

Like Downpours Measured
Out In Half-Cut Coke Bottle
His Outpours Measured
By The Force Of Each Throttle

Living Most My Days
Under Which Ireland's Tethered 
Mark Out Sunny Days
So I Know What I've Weathered

CK

Fragment #40

Her And Me, Why Knot
These Affairs Closer Than Needs
Be Calling Others

CK

The Stars Above Saint-Omer Make Our Nights

Drunk
Is All We Are
The Early Hours Afterparty
Fingers Pick Strings Between Smoke
An Older Hand Stops The Other From Clapping
Over One Of The Girls Who Sang Of A Divided Land

Till Sunlight Forces Most To Bed
And Others To Their Cars And Backseats To Relive
What Just Happened As Desperate Fucks
Were Said To Be Nearer Than He Thinks
And Ever So Close For One Of Our Lads Got A Girl
With Mixed Standards And Drinks

And Then The Tape Was Flipped As The Flooded Fields
Turn To Lakes That Came To Meet The Road
But Could Only Scrape The Edge Of The Ditch
While We Swigging The Sea Foam From The Cans' End
The Driver Says It Can Be A Lovely Or Lonely Time To Drive
I Can't Remember Which

Some Sleepy Bats And Hares Cross Tyre Paths
And Then A Checkpoint Crowds The Horizon
Unlike Those Drunken Sleep Caked Stars
Who Are Rested As The Moon
Is Lost In The Morning
Clouds

CK

Sent I Mental

Hand Me That Bottle
And I'll Show You Something You Don't Want To See
Hand Me That Bottle
And I'll Be Somebody You Don't Want Me To Be

Hand Me That Bottle
And I'll Say What You Don't Want To Hear
Hand Me That Bottle
And I'll Show You What It Is You Fear

CK