Flaking the Rope
Mother
there is a frozen silence
both sides of our window.
Outside, a white sheet steals
the joy of herbs and plants,
decorates the half-worked
green climbing our un-finished fence.
Three electric poles are alive.
Daffodils are popping through
disliked moss greens,
calves entertain electric fences
and woken tractors are feeding fields.
Inside, a voice is echoing your
granddaughter’s telephoned message,
stilling thoughts, and delivering
the cold news that you have passed.
©Gene Barry
On the Homestead
I dream myself into an Irish pallbearer
Sniffing one pink Cypripedium,
Two Heliotropes,
A little bunch of violets.
Engraving before departure.
Out of that peripheral sky
Drifting across her kitchen table,
Mother will waltz with
Clicking needles while father
In his workshop builds concepts.
He will visa-clear her undiscovered continent,
Syntax her morning noon and nights,
Say nice-father sayings,
Perhaps hug and donate.
Mother, she will iron the dyings
Out of Emily’s sheets,
Defuse the Mother Wound,
Horse in a few mechanisms.
Later, she will exorcise hangings shootings stabbings,
A suffocation a crucifixion a drowning.
Steal the earth from premature burials
And blunt-make her guillotine.
So many heart deaths she’s had
And hidden in complex notions,
In outdated prayers and diatribes
And unvaluable family values.
She coughed up volumes of blackness,
Diluted to taste the unsociably awkward
Who lived beyond her home.
How kind of death
To call her back to safety.
To where flies buzz
And kings spoon in sleep.
She would have liked that.
How comforting to know
She died of Bright’s Disease.
©Gene Barry
Sanctity
for Charlie Vella
When I am older my love
and Zurrieq is sleeping
hoarsely, I will go to her
and ease her tiring larynx.
My stang of love
I will take and plant
each hank in a house
Barocci failed to influence.
A set of arms from each one
I will invite and let it hold me
and seduce a pair of loving
lips to steal a moment, or two.
I will waltz her medieval
streets with Ptolemy and at
the temple I will listen
to his Sunday Miscellany.
I will be a Vella for a day,
drink with Victoria and
sway my youthful arms at
A La Veneziana,
and when the pick is
whispering to be harvested
I will bend all day and sleep
in the safety of their Għorfa.
©Gene Barry
An Għorfa is a small room or shelter or, more accurately, a room on the roof of a house.
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Unfinished Business
Michael
After polio had visited
the boy it chose
was never the same.
It paralysed his mother.
Young men lit their laughter,
pubescent girls wondered
and dogs slowed near him;
the years after his father
could take no more.
He paddled upstream
to a school and a room
for special people and
at a bench he called his own
he cut leather, punched it,
put coins in between the strips
he managed to sow together
for the brothers who flogged him.
He tied four longer strips
around his neck before
he pushed the stool away.
©Gene Barry
Redundant
These nights his right hand rests
behind him pining for its spooning perch.
She no longer jadedly whispers
‘nite, love you too’,
concentrates on the tears
filling the pillow’s pool,
makes another note to change it
while he’s away at work
where he will cry a half dozen
times in the deaf toilet.
In her dreams she will be
younger than 13 again,
in her wedding dress,
hugging her adult children,
climbing the Sydney Bridge,
picking up rainbows of toys,
swimming with the mother’s group,
losing herself to the anaesthetic.
She is awkwardly lighter there now,
the new weight resting on her shoulders
toppling her into an unfamiliar world.
When the consultant spoke of rebuilding
she ran into bricks and mortar;
their shed flattened in that storm she’d forgotten about
without laughing her father’s unfinished coal bunker
without pride the pouring of their first foundation
without joy their villa in Sardinia.
Built a wall around her unexplainable pain.
©Gene Barry
A Kennedy Moment
for John Liddy
Mary, my lips hadn’t dressed
Your name in a multiple
Of decades, not until you
Perched between us tonight,
Landing yourself on a
Republican lap.
It was a Kennedy Moment.
Etching wasn’t deep enough
To hold you. The memories
Danced to polkas, reels
And jigs and were held
In volumes of uninterrupted
Slow airs.
When I looked again I
Noticed that the tide had
Ebbed and a feed-bag
Of torments had discharged
Itself. You wore that same smile
That introduced you to
Us in the Phoenix bar in
1977, when your lips seduced
The plastic tip and drove a
Decade of fingers to entertain us.
Jesus you were great!
My memory fumbled and
Fumbled in its recall, till
You excavated a hunk of
Deep-bored and unmarried
Memories and exorcised an
Unwelcome landscape that
Had found an inappropriate
Home. I left my hosts and
Danced my way through Limerick
Streets that once held your
Stride and winked at the
Variety of unwritten plaques
That hold you now.
Unwittingly ordering a confluence
Of memories to entertain
Themselves. Later today
I’ll drive to Cork and on
My way I’ll erect a cortège
Of finger posts, to you, and
Bless them with a lifetime
Of acceptance.
©Gene Barry
First published in The Stoney Thursday Anthology
************************************************************************
Stones in their Shoes
Closed Line
For separated fathers
I would walk to my gallows
once weekly and feed the rope
with single men. And witness
the gawking families
unilaterally waving the many
colours of unity’s insults.
They would do it without
moving or speaking. Without
even knowing the pain they
had infused. Marrow bound.
A line of useless drones out
of sink with family matters.
“Us” was parked in every garden
that wasn’t ours, dancing all
day in wind that ceased to live
in what seemed to be the only
lifeless garden. Rainbows of
stories sticking out their tongues.
“We” never did the feeding of
the nylon, nor the retrieving
of the cleansed. Eyes set down
from conversations at both
boundaries that were lent to
what we now knew as a family.
Everybody beyond our ditches
seemed to gel with the laughter
of coal bunkers and barbeques,
to continue the unfinished over
the flapping icons that waved
them inside their castles.
©Gene Barry
Líne Iata
do na fir scartha
Shiúlainn go dtí crann mo chrochta
uair sa tseachtain agus chothaínn an téad
le súgán fear singil. Agus romham amach
teaghlaigh ag gliúcaíocht le drochmheas,
ceirteacha a gcuid maslaí á gcroitheadh
acu orm le gach dath faoin spéir.
Gan ghíocs gan ghuth dheintí é,
gan chor, gan chaint.
i ngan fhios don arraing péine a
chuir siad tríom. Go smior na smúsach.
Gamail gan rath amuigh leo féin
gan beann ar chúram clainne.
“Sinne” ina staic i ngach gairdín
nár linn, ag rince go fiata
i rith an lae sa ghaoith sin a
múchadh ina lios gan síóg.
Bogha ceatha a gcuid scéalta
ar ghob geabach a dteanga.
Níor dheineamarna na héadaí
a bheathú, ná an glantachán a
theasargan ón bpoll. Súile a
d’fhoghlaim teorainneacha na
cainte ón dtuiscint chúng a bhí acu
don teach, don teaghlach, don mhuintir.
Dhlúthaigh gach aon duine eile le chéile
lena ngáirí barbíciú, lena gcabaireacht
theolaí cois tine. Lasmuigh dár gcuid
clathacha lean siad orthu ag sméideadh
lena gcuid meirgí gan chrích
laistigh d’fhallaí a ndúnphort féin.
©Eoghan de Barra
The Burial
In Memory of Clare O’Connor
Time’s dose of uninvited turmoil,
engulfed their pre-planned world,
a silent unforgiving hew
within each triggered beat
struck harder as they walked
with their box of future memories.
Cheated,
no beat within.
A broadcast of childish laughter
moored closely,
uncaptained.
No stolen spoon of jam.
Their anagram of wounds
quarried into their old-age and
brushing them helplessly adrift
through seas of detached empathy.
A cleft of unseen sorrow
kneading ceaselessly
and successfully.
Hurting.
No chiromantic map,
no dialect, no tell-tales,
the subterranean pedestal
dutifully beckoning.
As the feral child would
we stood and gawked
with unswallowing
lumped throats,
to see her walk
before she stood,
out of the world
she never entered
and like the familiar face
through introductions
I tell myself I know,
I know you Claire.
©Gene Barry
Tactile Memories
for my father Micheál
How do I know your
drive to run these teeth
over the inviting dead
what torque to chose
when indicating
and yet I rub the
chiromantic map with
unromantic oils and
smooth each surface
without life
dress the contrasting
donors with shavings
toiled and blindly
undressed in lonely
unhugged trances
why do I hold this
whistle in your
clasped hand
Spear’s index
at the ready
with the open snuff box
in distracted thought
see to your nails
massage your waiting
mound of Venus
ungloved you gave
to give me life
beyond our clasped
audience of DNA
I applaud you.
©Gene Barry
First published by the University of Chicago in Euphony
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Working Days
Apollinaireing
Nine years later you ask
Is this alright, honestly
as if I was your personal designer,
best female friend.
I want to wolf whistle, to
up my magician’s sleeve
and present you with a
bouquet of your favourites.
I’m pulled instantly to our
wedding day, to those cardiac
moments before I hear the
Oh and turn, eyes leaking,
larynx locked and accept
the fact that my world is
about to accept me.
©Gene Barry
No Gates, Just Bridges
‘Let us remain human’
Vittorio Arrigoni
There is a shadow now
beneath sun and moon;
no scars or handcuffs.
Echoes of a peaceful pulse.
No head for the punisher’s
fist and boot, but choruses of
“O Bella ciao, ciao….”
Suppression sups life from
your history Vik, tongues lilt
your pacifistic laments and
Sisyphus, he lives amongst the
unjust platoons of Münchausen
wounded who one day will
have to cease their torture.
©Gene Barry
Nessun Cancelli, Solo Ponte
‘Let us remain human’
Vittorio Arrigoni
Ora c’è un ombra
sotto il sole e la luna;
senza cicatrici o manette.
Pulsano echi di pace.
Per i punitori senza testa.
No pugnie calci, ma cori di
“O bella ciao, ciao…..”
Soppressa la storia della
tua vita Vik, cadenza
dei tuoi lamenti pacifisti e
Sisyphus, lui vive tra
plotoni ingiusti di Munchausen
feritiun giorno
cesserà la loro tortura.
©Gene Barry
Letter to Hashim
For Huda Ghaliya
I am Huda and I scream
to you in the skies above
me, please do not leave
me alone to mourn for I
have dipped my tiny limbs
beneath the hem of death’s
door and trawled for those
same arms that hugged me,
for the sets of lips that were
mine to kiss, for that parental
safety net woven by my future
and my arms are empty.
I am the only day of our
week that lives on this beach
of trading on the edge of
another bloody empire.
I would trade all spices here
today a world of olibanum
and ostrich feathers, I would
add my name to the menu
of slaves, I would tame a
thousand Buraqs and trek to
our future. But I cannot. For
Israel’s summer rain has lashed
death to my childish frame,
a burden your great grandson
will unleash, a memory I will
undress each day. But my
Boswellian roots I will anchor to
this blood-stained land that
Alexander failed to arid turn,
my tears I will trade for peace.
©Gene Barry
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