Eamonn Stewart

Oklo Chez Sois/Oklo Chez Falls

The Muse

Sukie* was our disquieting muse.

Hypocrite moniteur du lait, J’Accuse !

Bereft of her glass laurels, bereft of desks

Bereft of pews, pharmacology is what my peers now choose.

Antecedents

Who drowned the Riverdale Rats?

The Breweries, the Breweries.

Where have their sons and daughters gone?

They’re all away with the fairies.

Whither away – to what fairy hill?

A palace no more than a little white pill.

Misunderstandings

“Enghien chez sois 

and an Oklo up your own nose!”

“It’s still natural, “ he replied

“Fuck up. What would you know?”

Earlier that night, a bouncer saw

Me do origami with a receipt –

That was a wrap, my Bond-esque quip

As I stood bewildered in the street

Thinking of Hugo from the homeless hostel

Ejected from the library,

For hurling abuse then books:

The first through Tourette’s,

The second, through the injustice of the absurd.

Still I laughed to think of  the book-hurling octopus

In Cousteau’s Silent World – the one upon whom

Another Hugo had cast slurs.

*Sukie As Cassandra

When Africa was younger by aeons

Some undine at Oklo enchanted

Orphic water to quicken the sandstone –

Eurydicized the Yellow Cake.

Proving the Achilles Paradox

Of slow neutrons –

The apports of photons

In dark waters

Bluer than the milky way

Trapped in surface tension.

But, this Powder of Sympathy

Dogs the nose,

Apotheosizes snots to Escargotique Ondes.

The moderator from which this fission of the neurons flows

Petrifies Phase Two fossils under the pilgrim’s feet

Along the Falls Road.

Myths of The Rights of Fathers

My fatal touch and turn towards/to Eurydice

Was on paper, but no less overwrought than

Morel's sysyphusian Marienbad- anabasis of my thoughts

correct your maps you dads  Byzantium is The family Courts !

And, let’s say/ (if) Thebes is the life you’ve planned with your child

Then your ex is the Sphinx there running wild.

She has no riddle to turn her mild

You would-be solvers are cursed if you try

Bar-B-Q of the Vanities

Bring Your own, Beechmount ‘97

In waking’s pay telescope,

The penny drops.

Dreaming’s shove ha’penney machine

Pays-out the lot.

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”

But, untouchable reason doesn’t want to follow.

One swallow didn’t make a summer;

Each ring-pull was not Excalibur retrieved.

Though the sun transfigured the bottles,

Each beer can was not Achilles’ Shield.

Asleep, I felt again

That barbecue’s infernal flames.

Once more you say “Buck-up your ideas or I’ll leave.”

Both of us unhappy, both of us to blame.

In sleep I’d not be the one who mostly grieves.

* Sukie Sunkap is an alcoholic beverage, what the author calls “the glass muse”

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 Eamonn Stewart