Flaghopping

by Michael Pattwell

He thought she'd be easy to catch.

  As she fluttered her eyes

  She made deep throaty noise

  As she preened her black ebony thatch.

  Then when it was time to go home,

  He offered beside her to roam.

  But she swiftly demurred

  With a voice that fair purred,

  With a glint in her eye like new chrome.

  He felt it was only a tease.

  Her favours he'd win at his ease.

  So he crooned her a song

  As he tagged her along.

  Her protests he thought he'd appease.

  Soon Cecil got braver and bold

  He tried Cindy's waist to enfold.

  She was sure having none

  Of his efforts at fun

  As the rest of the story unrolled.

  She cuffed him right under his eye.

  Before he could even reply

  She took off towards a tree

  And with agility

  She climbed over forty feet high.

  When Cecil recovered his breath

  He thought she was playing with him yet

  So he followed her up

  Saying, "Come on Buttercup

  Don’t waste time trying to play hard-to-get.

  But Cindy being nimble and slight

  Took one bounding leap to the right.

  She caught onto a limb

  And being nifty and trim

  Ran off and escaped from her plight.

  When Cecil looked down at the ground

  He panicked at what he there found.

  He was forty feet high

  And too frightened to try

  He simply could not turn round.

  The fireman in black coat and hat

  Told Cecil on the tree where he sat,

  That though by love bitten,

  Was no longer a kitten

  But merely a randy old cat.

  PART IV

  FROM OBSERVATION

  (With a bit of home-spun philosophy thrown in)

  This poem, 'Business as Usual', was born in a waiting-room in a hospital and the quoted spoken words are not mine at all but the voice of a smartly dressed young man who was speaking on a mobile phone but in such a loud voice that a curious people-observer and eavesdropper, which I am, couldn’t help overhearing. The loud voice, I think, bore witness to more distress than the speaker was letting on.

  BUSINESS AS USUAL

  This father of mine is dying

  and I don't know

  how long 'twill take.

  Silence.

  Don't forget our meeting Friday,

  we're almost to the last hurdle

  Silence.

  Phone switched to left hand.

  You can get me on the mobile.

  Anytime.

  Silence.

  Phone held between forefinger

  and thumb.

  Better not ring if there's a funeral,

  but I'll let you know.

  Silence.

  Phone switched back again.

  Fingers combing gelled hair.

  Once that's all over

  I'll be back

  Silence.

  Then we'll get on with it.

  Click.

  Phone transferred to pocket

  with aerial sticking out -

  just in case.

  That's the image.

  That's the pitch.

  Then why

  were you crying

  alone

  in a corner?

  MISERS' GOLD

  Gold that is hidden has no value or beauty.

  What cannot be seen is formless mass.

  Love that is secret and locked in the heart

  When it is needed may very well pass

  Into darkness and faded memory -

  Like the glow of a sunset as it loses it's light

  Turns gold into silver; turns silver to grey;

  Turns grey into blackness; turns day into night.

  For love that is silent

  Is love of the self

  And love of the self

  Isn't loving at all.

  “The Coalman” is, I think, one of only a few poems I have written about something that happened in the course of my work. The young man in question wasn’t long out of school but when he couldn’t find a job more suitable to his educational level he had taken a job helping on a coal delivery lorry. He was in some minor trouble but I have to say I was impressed by the fact that he had taken work, tough, back-breaking work, rather than stay idle and drawing on his parents. I felt he merited some sort of a second chance.

  This poem was chosen to be read at the “Open Mike” at Galway’s Cúirt Festival of Literature in 1997.

  THE COALMAN

  Standing on the back

  Of a flat-bed truck;

  A seventeen year old coalman.

  Rain, wind, grey, muck.

  "It 's a job anyway,"

  till I'm eighteen when I'll get the dole

  and so till then I'll carry coal

  on my back.

  My seventeen year old back"

  Head covered by a sack

  Carefully folded so that

  One corner fits into the other

  And now it 's not a sack

  It 's a cape from head to back

  Made from an old jute sack.

  "Not jute," you reprimand,

  "For jute there 's no demand

  Anymore.

  They 're made of polypropylene now."

  "Polypropylene!",

  I exclaim.

  "Polypropylene."

  you declaim.

  "You have no trouble with hi-tech words."

  "Course not,

  I've got my Leaving Cert.

  Three honours, three passes

  Did Irish too, got an F in that."

  Stoop, pull, lift, heave.

  A strain on polypropylene weave

  And it 's on your back

  A lumpy black eight stone sack.

  "How does it pay?”

  "Sixty quid," you answer back.

  Leaving Cert. on the wall at home.

  Set in a frame of glass and chrome.

  Your nails are crescents of black muck

  Standing on the back of a flat-bed truck.

  CONTINUING CREATION

  The man who

  lays a stone upon a stone,

  cuts a tree or

  plants a seed,

  puts a ram

  among his sheep,

  dams a river or

  drains a bog,

  shelters an injured bird or

  culls a seal,

  restrains his passions or

  fathers a child or

  sees to its death before its birth

  alters for all time

  the order of creation.

  STILLBIRTH

  (For F.D. i.m. of Leanne)

  Young mother,

  Yesterday laughing with the joy

  Of what should have been yours today.

  Today weeping for the loss

  Of what could have been yours tomorrow.

  Remember old mothers,

  With the wisdom of many winters

  And the deep face-etching of many sorrows,

  Telling the unheeding young

  That raindrops fall when angels weep.

  Know this,

  That on summer days, when skies are blue,

  And clouds dawdle,

  You may feel a single raindrop on your cheek

  And wonder whence it came.

  You will know then

  Who, in a fleeting moment,

  Passed close to you

  And kissed you,

  For a young mother you will always be

  Though your baby is beyond your reach.

  When I practiced as a solicitor I was asked one day to attend a patient in the local hospital to make his will. He was a bachelor who had lived happily
alone in a little farmhouse, without sanitation, some miles from the town of Clonakilty. He was, in fact, quite mentally incompetent and unable to give any instructions but the impression he left on me became a poem many years later, probably about the time a court action about his intestate estate was being finalized.

  MISPLACED

  "Did you see the cattle on the way in",

  Said the voice

  In the three foot iron framed bed.

  Cleanly shaven with perfumed soap

  And tunnelled deep to sightless eyeballs

  That saw too much.

  Miserable

  In a hygienic anaesthetised

  Pastel shaded ward.

  Temperature and blood-pressure

  Proclaiming good health thrice daily

  In neatly marked rows of irregular dots

  On white forms lined and cross-lined

  And hanging at the foot of the bed.

  Distorted image

  In a stainless-steel spittoon

  With spring-loaded cover

  Scrawny blue-veined hands

  Couldn't open. Reflecting

  A man who had ploughed all day

  With a pair of seventeen hand Shires

  And harrowed before bed-time

  All he had ploughed.

  "Take me home," a croaked whisper

  Captured from a lucid moment

  Before the present

  Was mercifully buried again

  In pastoral memory.

  Living

  In the flaky white-washed one-storey

  Farmhouse with four-pane windows

  Front and back.

  One wall black-stained

  By the splashes

  From the piss-pot

  Thrown through to the dung-heap

  Where the chattering magpies

  Had chased the sparrows away

  To greedily guzzle

  The undigested tit-bits

  That always fell short.

  "What nature gives she can take away"

  He had said

  Until he too was taken away

  From where

  He was happy.

  SEMI - CIRCLES

  "Get up," she said,

  "Look to the sun

  And sort yourself out"

  And I felt guilty

  Of emotional masturbation.

  She did not know

  That if you face the morning sun,

  And walk all day towards it

  You will, at night, be back

  As near as dammit

  At the place

  From whence you started.

  I have a terrible hatred of violence of any kind and none more than domestic violence. In the course of my work I have come across many cases of it and though there are, of course, cases of women being violent towards men, by far the greatest number of domestic violence cases involve men towards their wives, partners and girlfriends. I can never understand it because it seems to me that even one instance of domestic violence should be sufficient warning that the relationship is devoid of any real love and respect. But the victims, in many cases, just keep going back for more and very often the level of violence escalates and sometimes leads to murder. During the course of my work I have come across the phrase: First come the flowers, then the black-eye. Then come the chocolates, then the other black-eye. I have found that to be very true.

  THERE WILL ALWAYS BE FLOWERS

  In the beginning

  There were flowers,

  Red, yellow, and pink roses,

  Daffodils trumpeting love messages,

  Exotic orchids in delicate china vases,

  With cards, toys and tokens,

  Vivid coloured sashes,

  Lilies with gold and scarlet flashes.

  On the first St. Valentine’s Day,

  Twelve long stems and a real vellum card.

  Delivered by a liveried man

  In a white limousine.

  In the good days

  Sprays and bouquets,

  Wrapped in lace.

  Spring brought

  Golden tulips

  Struggling for space

  In cut crystal.

  Summer was

  Sun and intimacy.

  Blue forget-me-nots,

  Woven game-keeper style,

  Gave witness to ecstasy.

  Three children later

  True love hides its face

  In the depths of red weals.

  Blue and ochre eyes

  Spill tears of pain

  From wounds make-up conceals.

  He doesn’t mean it.

  I see his sorrow.

  He cannot help it.

  We’ll be grand tomorrow.

  Making up with

  Never-again promises and

  Petrol-station posies.

  Followed by cruel reality

  Bringing new pain

  In predictable seriality.

  At the end

  The veins in his arms

  Stood out, purple and prominent.

  The pale ivory of her skin

  Turned pink,

  Then never-to-be-forgotten blue.

  Crimson crescents of blood

  In her finger-nails

  Betrayed her fight to live,

  As the colours of the spectrum

  Flashed,

  Dimmed

  And faded to black.

  Come Eros, come Cupid,

  Come out from your bower,

  Come tend to her grave.

  Let her memory empower.

  Bring seeds and bring roses,

  Bring sunshine and showers,

  So that year after year

  There will always be flowers.

  URBAN RAILStillbirth

  (Looking out the window on a train journey)

  Nobody ever talks about it,

  The hidden face of civilisation,

  The backside of respectability

  That everybody - and nobody - ever sees.

  Houses with roses and flowering cherries

  In front gardens

  Have weeds withering behind.

  White house-fronts

  Of plinths and pillars

  With plastic Georgian windows

  Have daubed concrete for back walls

  Enclosing bottles, cans, and broken egg shells.

  Rusty bicycle wheels

  Roost on blistered felt roofs

  Of rickety garden sheds.

  Mottled black plastic bags are,

  Since the last bin strike,

  Piled in a moldering mess

  Under twiggy privet hedges.

  Here and there a flash of lawn,

  A green oasis of brussels sprouts,

  Cabbages and runner beans

  On wig-wam skeletons.

  Grey clothes lines strung

  From sewage down-pipes

  To outside lavatory walls

  With the grey-white washed rags

  Of the street-front rich

  Hanging in surrender to limp lethargy.

  The click-clock, click-clock

  Of wheels on rails

  On sleepers underneath -

  The sleepers within seeing nothing

  Of the trash-cans, fence wires,

  Foraging cats and weed-lots sliding by;

  Shells of old cars

  Housing hens now; lean-tos; ash-pits;

  Lofts and pigeon perches and

  Haggard dogs dragging limbs of trees

  On rusty anchor chains

  Through muddy puddles

  Of their own filth.

  Black numbers on white squares

  On smoke-grey limestone bridges

  Mesmerise the blind eyes

  Gazing through furrows in city grime

  Made by raindrops

  Running down the window pane

  With faces staring back at faces.

  Click-clock, click-clock, click-clock;

&n
bsp; Going past, going past, going far past;

  Going fast; going fast, going very fast.

  Screech of metal braking metal,

  The whispered whoosh of pneumatic doors

  And the tiles and tannoy of arrival.

  YOUTH’S GOOD YEARS ARE STOLEN….

  Youth’s good years are stolen, never given.

  They seem, in hindsight, to have never been

  and looking back are nowhere to be seen

  for lives, inexorably, are driven

  to where our pasts and futures are riven

  into two. On one side Youth’s guileless green

  and on the other Age’s less than clean

  experiences which souls need shriven.

  True forgiveness is not easily found.

  It must be plucked from cunning and untruth

  while they in turn keep men to sin well bound

  in chains and bindings woven in their youth.

  They could have changed, they could have disengaged,

  embracing peace and love when young blood raged.

  PART V

  FRIENDS AND FEELINGS

  This poem, The Box, is about a siren used in our town to call the volunteer firemen when a fire was reported. It was an old World War II air-raid siren and it was located on top of a wall about twelve feet high and directly across the street from the front of our house and about level with my bedroom window. Jack Connolly was a local carpenter and an undertaker. He made his own coffins with remarkable craftsmanship. He also did work for the local town council and I recall him making a sort of shelter to house the siren. It was a lovely piece of work.

  I was terrified of the siren and when it went off – often in the middle of the night – I would lie petrified, totally unable to move and only barely able to breathe, in my bed. Sometimes the siren would die out only to start again and again.