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Sentinel Poetry
(Online) #39 The International Journal of Poetry
& Graphics February
2006. ISSN 1479-425X. Editor: Amatoritsero Ede |
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Eammon Stewart Fear of Victory Nike alights
on the Prow of
a ship at sea, Sick
with inspiration – After
Pascal…Libido Dominandi On
honeymoon, how it shocked me! What
Pygmalion would dare Wish
her alive? As a
child, Galloper Thompson And
headless nuns had me terrified; As a man,
victory scares me Most of
all: That
bronze apparition In the Louvre, Or
“Tiocfidh ar
La” Daubed
on a wall. If that
thing alights On The
Ship of State It must
sink. If not,
I would jump overboard Into
the drink. Disturbed Earth When
they release your name The
soul departs But it
is loathe. The Big
Bang fizzles out And
creation maunders into reverse. Now
boffins say there is No
peace in the grave – And
there is water on the moon And
I’ve bought shortcake In
Brigadoon! Through a Glass Drunkly (Old
school friend seen on the street) A
shopper threw change between his legs, In the
flood, coins in the wishing well A
maundering hand panned the gold: 10p
spinning a blow-fly colure he swatted aside to the road. This
miracle of Happened
in The Though
I was the only gospeller To
invest the pishy talents. Like a
post-modern Samaritan I also
passed by. At night, in the rain He fell through the
pavement’s chasm. John Barleycorn’s
ectoplasm materialised In one superlunary spasm. We’d have hid beneath the
river And breathed through straws But your liver was a vinegared Sponge offered to your childhood
on the cross. One, to break the camel’s
back One to slurp the Sukie at the back, One to grasp for excaliburs you lost. Camel in the crib, Sukie in a blue moon Sword of destiny Chasing your wages in the walls
– The Falls is more wired-up Than you and your jaws. *The Slugs “Nothin’ wrong with a drop in yer
hand”. But the
folk singer’s nectar – “mornin’
dew” Lies
heavier on these lads Than
Shelley’s chains of those who Were
visited with Peterloo. If not
beyond your ken You’d
be appalled at one drops’ infusoria Reduction
ad absurdum – for they – in your macrocosm Are infusoria too. From
afar, at the crack of dawn Drops
you see are really slugs – (they
would have been wine gums years ago) They
never froze when the drink froze. Slugs
have degraded them all along – Exchanged at a snails’ pace And in
their occasional slow-motion brawls. Einstein in the Wilderness With
slide rules for wands of sceptres They
worshipped the new Molten Calf Tethered
miles off, un-protected From
The Pillar of Fire and cloud, and the blast The new
Arc of the Covenant explodes: Raining
fire and brimstone on the innocents’ abodes, Making
the desert superlatively so. When
the dice in The
snow glowed but The Earth grew cold, Einstein
looked at this luminous watch, then froze. The Lock-In (At the
Submarine Bar) When my
phone went-off in the bar Vibrate
and ring; The
ASDIC* beam ping And
poltergeist shower of stones. Where
my surface thoughts crash-dived To When Stevie ran from the toy barricade And a
Pippin Fort* soldier Did
something depraved. This databurst* phantasmagoria played On the meteorburst mirror Brock’s
Fireworks made: The
hopscotch grid’s ouija board, Passing
the votive candle’s Treacly
strobe The
search barriers turnstiles Thaumatropes Re-integrated
the dead That
bombs had unmade And I
had to get out Of that
lock-in. Tired
eyes I rubbed Once
Aladdin’s lamps Became
the wreckers’ lanterns*. *A lock-in is an illegal drinking session. * ASDIC: earliest form of
sonar; an acronym for Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee. * Pippin Fort was a toy
soldier base in a very popular British TV show. * Databurst
is a military communication technique that uses air ionized by meteors to
reflect radio waves in a certain direction. * Wreckers Lanterns. In the
19th C people would lure sailing ships to their doom at night by pretending
to be a pilot with a lantern. |
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