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In outdated prayers and diatribes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.
************************************************************************
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
Published in The Stoney Thursday Book Ireland
************************************************************************
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
Published in The Irish Examiner USA
Closed Line translated into Irish
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
************************************************************************
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
No Gates, Just Bridges translated into Italian
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
Letter to Hashim translated into Italian
Lettera ad Hashim
per Huda Ghaliya
Sono Huda e grido a te
nei cieli lassù
… no, per favore, non lasciarmi
sola a piangere perché
ho immerso le mie piccole membra
sotto l’orlo della porta
della morte e ho gettato le reti
per pescare le braccia che mi stringevano
le labbra che erano
per me, da baciare, la rete
di sicurezza genitoriale intessuta
dal mio futuro
e le mie braccia sono vuote.
Sono l’unico giorno della nostra
settimana che vive su questa spiaggia
di commercio sull’orlo di
un altro impero sanguinoso.
Venderei tutte le spezie qui
oggi un mondo di incenso
e di piume d’ostrica, aggiungerei
il mio nome al menu
degli schiavi. Addomesticherei
mille Buraq e viaggerei verso
il nostro futuro. Ma non posso. Perché
la loro pioggia estiva ha frustato
morte nel mio corpo di bambina,
un fardello che il vostro pronipote
scioglierà, un ricordo
che svesitrò ogni giorno. Ma le mie
radici boswelliane getterò come ancore
in questa terra macchiata di sangue che
Alessandro non riuscì a rendere arida,
scambierò le mie lacrime con la pace.
©Gene Barry
Letter to Hashim translated into Arabic
************************************************************************
Published poems
January Dew
When grief unbuckled itself
it fell like January dew
seeping right into her very marrow,
the big Clare smile was gone.
I saw her pass the first riser
head hanging like a wet bulrush
dancing to an air of no confidence.
Lonely looking, as if she was already
laden with his corpse and marching
on the cold terrazzo floor.
His stipulate in the year
of Our Lord was punctual;
Christ hold him as you would
a slow air at a fleadh ceoil,
cast a safety net over his hill
and let it kiss his family.
She hears him now as the
sleeping Fisherman
listens to his lapping,
love’s Spectral Density.
When he informed us that she was
gone, I wished I’d ridden tandem.
Return to us woman
like a welcome season.
©Gene Barry
Fleadh Cheoil is an Irish music festival.
Published in Ciphers Ireland
************************************************************************
Galvanised
i.m. Patrick Galvin
I anticipated a gaggle
Of local poets,
And there he was,
Notably perched in the
Wheeled chair
Adjacent to a
Blotter soaked
With love.
Did I see him
Stroke the underbelly
Of his unborn poems
Using his frozen uxter,
A chamfer
Of his observations
Nursing its way
To blank vellum?
Did I hear his
Midas tongue
Clatter away
Sending memos to
His waiting Ayurveda tip?
Did I see Sully
Whisper verses
Of encouragement
In his good ear?
Did I reach out and
Touch the stole
That enveloped
You both
In unisexual applause?
Did I see you search
For another half crown?
I bet I did.
©Gene Barry
Published in the Stoney Thursday
************************************************************************
A Bawl of Malt
Nights when he’d feed from the
top shelf he was to be avoided.
He could introduce you to anyone.
One night I met the OC, same
name as himself of course who
shot Three Black and Tans and I
received a lesson on how to hate
dead men and out of date systems.
That night he stared into it for a
few lifetimes, the drop with the
extra ‘e’ that is; the older barmaid
called it the Devil’s Spit and him the
Red Rager; he didn’t bother with his
alcoholic mantras and lessons, his
verbal dribbling and the shouts.
He saved them for the walk home.
Lifting the coffin in through his
narrow low-ceiling hallway was a
first for me; ‘Berthold Brecht Poems
1913-1956’ sat unfinished on a table.
At the funeral the Red Rager wasn’t
mentioned by anyone and late in the
evening with seasoned elbows we
climbed and danced with cloven feet.
©Gene Barry
Published in The North American Quarterly
************************************************************************
Circumnavigating
Kazumi familiarises herself with words
with new meanings too big for her to reason,
– nano-sieverts – caesium – irreversible –
asks honest questions about unfamiliar shaped
vegetables and queer fish with familiar names.
Since Fumio lost himself to suicide her
sickening mother dresses Inari with
luck-bringers, frequently pulls her family back
the 102 years to his birth year;
hides the emotions they daily discuss,
leaks tears for his wasteland.
Her grandfather visits upturned boats
in dreams where he trawls though
memories of catches and colleagues lost,
loses himself to small-boy memories
played in child-friendly fields.
On Monday he will lose himself
to another unwelcomed anaesthetic.
Meanwhile the masters strategically
seat themselves in the furniture of denial,
where decency is an unused noun
begging to be honestly served.
They sing press-conference tautologies
and blanket each other in minimize,
their verbal guns loaded with excuses.
©Gene Barry
Published in Fukishima Japan
************************************************************************
The Splinter
There is always
a splinter
that oozes
its way in
and delivers
itself at ease
without notice
to the point of
non-retrieval.
The pain
is constant
and has breakfast
lunch and dinner
with pills
pleads and pangs.
Small-girl
inabilities
book in
naturally
and disabilities
bend and sway
nurse in fear
set life
to the temperature
of self-rejection.
There is always
a wedding
where unknowns
invade
with Oscar attitudes
and there is always
a girl
getting married
who naturally
wishes her frame
and memories
were younger
than a time
that hurts
so through
the turmoil
she finally
wife speaks
to a husband,
refers to that
nondescripted Uncle
as a paedophile
and no longer
to herself
as The Splinter.
©Gene Barry
Published in The Toronto Quarterly Canada
************************************************************************
Stuffing Hanks
One day I will cry forever.
Not like a terrace loser,
or a baby-faced softy,
you know, a terminal cry.
I will stoke my engine with
nights-without-sleep and invasions,
childhood floggings and hidden wounds,
attacks and black-suited fiends.
I won’t forget to douse the unexpected
with rivers of anal blood and
floods of small-boy tears.
I will hold up all of those walls
I’ve fallen off and hidden behind
with screaming wrongs
and decorate my sky
with pointing children’s fingers.
A cortege of forbidden questions
will at last assemble
and trod with notice
to a brand new place of old
where every squeezed-open
pair of perfect ears
will finally embrace
my slowest form of death.
And they will no longer speak of the
odd-little-boy who grew to be
that strange-kind-of-fella,
always the loner decorating corners,
the weirdo and the dark horse
and I will meet the dark father
dressed in dresses from the dark box,
the groomer of my un-lived life.
I will wear my coat of fury and
beat and stomp and slap and bite down hard,
return the pent-up painful years of screams,
accuse and insult and verbally stab deep.
I will hand back shame,
stuff hanks of guilt deep into his larynx;
I will pleasure for my first time.
That same day a man will
fall into the carefully-planned
death of a family and each season
his only friend who understood him
will refuse to yield the buried
pictures of childhood he’d sown.
©Gene Barry
Published in the The Poetry Salzurg Review Switzerland
************************************************************************
A Different Heroin
Rotterdam 1990
One morning she saw no roads.
Street-fatigued,
she stepped off the tram
on Nieuwe Binnenweg,
a yellow cirrhosis painted canvas
at last giving that notice
she had always craved.
There was a gnawing at the
heels of her trodden wish list,
that same torment from her
equally torturing childhood.
So, she stroked
the underbelly of her ego
and stepped through
I.V. lines, blow jobs,
fibrillation and innocence
that had been climbing for
14 tormenting years
and whispered to herself;
bury me up to my conscience
in a wood with no name,
leave the headstone unetched.
©Gene Barry
Published in Visions International USA
************************************************************************
Dear Heart,
Come down from that loft,
you’ll hurt yourself.
Green trains and old radios don’t walk away.
They lie beside posted forgottens, in movies
tailor’s mannequins and framed paintings.
You’ll not find a squeaking pair of gates,
or a heavy-footed roaring engine clutch there
screaming hide quickly, don’t be a crybaby.
That pool behind your tank has dried you fool,
and the worn beam that took four of your finger nails
is now evidence-free. I know, I’ve checked.
Every known surprise you’re opening contains
father’s deafness that kicked in when you
wore short pants and skin patches that
matched the purple jumper mother knitted.
The very same year his number 12s began
to kick little bodies and murder pets.
There are no replays correcting themselves
into heartbeats and happy mindsets,
just history planning a future.
Come down fool.
©Gene Barry
Published in Episteme India.
************************************************************************
In the Black
My mother’s breasts fed a nation.
Winning-bound greyhounds
fed from them on Saturday evenings,
Sunday mornings a parish of incapable
men with hangovers dangled from both nipples,
sipping and dreaming excuses.
They could finish difficult crosswords,
paint awkward skirting boards and
tell when lies were being delivered.
Cars found parking there.
There was no post code and yet
messages of needs arrived and were read
and ciphered unopened. One uneventful evening
I pierced a redundant corner, hand shaking
and lip quivering I tasted new fresh fruits
and expensive meat cooked perfectly.
Their built-in wardrobes oozed out fashion
pleasing little numbers to perfectly fit and suit
schoolfulls of the ragged owned by sad mothers.
The day a few musical instruments
came in tow, I became a millionaire.
So I strummed till bed time came,
when she read to me the perfect children’s
books they had earlier written and printed;
somehow, I always wished for a bicycle.
©Gene Barry
Published in FEKT Kosovo
************************************************************************
One ordinary day
an affronted stalker
flirted with possibilities
like a blown bulb
he was replaced
on an ordinary evening
on our new flat screen TV
a female psychologist introduced
the others to Acquired Uselessness
I revisit notebook days
while a trail of school children
with beards and breasts strolled by
all unpromoted and unprotected
-mad meek mean men and women-
all of them humming of uncared-for
brainwashed pressure ulcers
-the smell of acquired uselessness-
and I at their feet
like a cardboard wedge
balancing
©Gene Barry
Published in The Paradox Review Germany
************************************************************************
Dousing our Genoa
I.M. of Mary O’Dwyer
Tumble into my memory Mother
and let us walk that umbilical road,
where we will cast parental nets
and trawl through seas of love,
sail through oceans of understanding.
Come tune these heartstrings Mother
and sing my favourite childhood song.
Minuet me with little feet so light,
swing me into your loving arms,
dress me in the colours of happiness.
Douse our family genoa Mother
and ease the tiller from Father’s hand,
become that night watchman
who will track a peaceful childhood course
we drifted from in times of parental fog.
Do not leave me now Mother,
but bed yourself into my heart,
for I have a room there for you
to furnish with love,
memories for you to write.
I love you Mother.
©Gene Barry
Published in Nixes Mate USA
************************************************************************
After the Ambush
For Sienna and Mac
Dad will summon intrinsic acrobats
without ropes and nets and poles
to cross lifetimes through timelines
that await his blessings.
They will fish in the unsaid
and trawl catches of unborn needs
that he will nurture and feed until
those moments when retrieval
will nod requests of birth.
And like tailored suits
they will adjust themselves
to fit every timely moment,
the pockets packed with
messages wrapped in a voice
still alive as it ever was and
lovingly transmitting the necessary.
Meanwhile Sigmund no longer waltzes alone,
and who will teach those steps I ask
while Sienna and Mac as mummers
will hope through a Chaplin gaze
of stolen not-dressed futures.
Meanwhile Ted has paved over
Byron’s path of perplexing ways
and built a podium where he nightly whispers
I did not live to experience death,
it was but a mirror that sucked me in.
©Gene Barry
Published in Calliope India
************************************************************************
Misconnections
That knocker-less door set into
the façade of the wrinkled dead woman’s
imagination begged knocking,
sent out messages to those unaccustomed
to finding bodies and body parts.
She had left that notion ferment,
the recurring eldest one,
baked it into a loaf of torments
kneaded from a lineage of inabilities
and she no longer capable of slicing and spreading.
Outside, hand-less queue-standing men
from those earthly wrinkled generations,
where laughter was a lineage of bushels
bursting to explode into reality,
stood triumphed.
Inside, the history parked to ferment
was a sheer minuscule of itself,
a perennial conveyor of aftermath
strutting top of the family parade,
where pain blew an invisible trumpet.
©Gene Barry
Published in The Honest Ulsterman
************************************************************************
My Tyro
Come away with me mother,
out of your tongue’s range
and help me build a spine to hold
your indifferent broadcasts.
Lift the veil that is transference
and witness me one man,
a nomad with ringing ankles
randomly drifting
in a famine of openness.
Open your senses my tyro
and see me, one father
one son, one target.
Is there not an unarmed Jesus
lurking in your emotional doorway
waltzing with seasoned boredom,
basking beneath degrees
without parchments?
Nike’s un-shuffled deck
sadly sits with prickly wings;
you’ve picked a bitter pedagogue
to recite to the flock.
©Gene Barry
Published in Abridged Ireland
************************************************************************
My New Boy
Today he plays games that fell
out of his head many years back.
Bath ones he once taught me
before lifting me for drying
and all of the time talking.
Sanity is partially kept clean
by reading the plethora of
laminated signs;
Hot tap
Cold tap
Shampoo
Shower gel…
I repeatedly tell him
my hand clock is waterproof,
agree that uncle Jim
is in his mother’s kitchen,
only a fool would pay1s 3d for a pint
the horses are fed and that
aunt Margaret would be better off
here on the farm and not in America;
she’d be seasick all the way over
finishes every sentence.
These days he can be heavy
and neither can I lift his spirit,
cuddle and kiss him as I dry.
Emotions trot out in abundance
and announce themselves without
warning; gifts you could call them.
We failed to see the obvious
Alzheimer delivered before he came
to lodge with my father.
©Gene Barry
Published in Remembering the Present Ireland
************************************************************************
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