Sentinel Poetry (Online) #47, October 2006. ISSN 1479 425X
The Internationl Journal of Poetry & Graphics…since 2002
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Eamonn Stewart
Annals of The Palace of Wisdom
From the room below the strangest smell
A Mistral of spermicidal gel.
A parched cry from the landing
I can tell the snakes are leading Sandy to Siwa.
His mates lurched under a “24”
Like Amon Zeus.
Some Chav aroused from sleep
Raged that they would “all be juiced”.
He’s being led to Siwa by snakes
Through a fortnight of desert
No Giro could slake.
Some Pythia raves
As male voices swell,
Inspired by spermicidal gel.
Annals of The Palace of Wisdom II
The Blood Trail – Lee Hestia Hostel 2005
I saw a man who wasn’t all there
A human travois dragged down the stairs.
“Fuckin’ stop!” was all he could say
As his esprit d’escalier.
Those weren’t sunspots
They were flyspecks on the lens
Cast on the back of a mass card
I’d bought for my best friend.
“White Horses” on school holidays TV
The Camargue was my idea of purgatory.
The evil star Wormwood
Fell in the sink.
Each ripple in the sea
A sundial.
Every shark’s fin
Transit of Venus/Transit of Access
On the day of the transit of Venus
Belfast was overcast.
The Family Court clerk
Metered the Teardrop Effect
From first to last.
My daughter wouldn’t see me
Since I spoke to her like my peers –
Both cases reviewed in 244 years.
My First Communion congratulations
Were profane
“Not age-appropriate”
Too urbane.
Later, The Evening Star’s
Portentous Eclat,
Not sleeping, I saw it rise the same.
The Chav’s Judgement of Paris
“The Sibyl’s raving mouth
Prophesies without mirth”
Each night, The Spear Carriers
Shamble onstage:
“E”s invoke crass Judgements of Paris
or worse, Paris’s are left forlorn
and in a rage.
Delinquents drunk on The Cider of Discord,
Stabbed my friend as his girlfriend
Stared aghast.
Because some bouncer with a flaming sword
Drove them from a disco,
They weren’t prepared to let this pass.
My uncle told me long ago
That cows used to run after steam locos.
In this Thereomorphosis of Chavs
They pursue boys in filched fast cars.
Flocked round a cable junction box,
They bash a din from it with their feet.
As I pass they ominously stop.
And, in the silence of the too-dark
street,
One perches there, headless
As Samothracean Nike –
Anencephalic, in baseball cap and hoody:
I hear the box’s electrics Lamasary choir.
Fear spins awe’s prayerwheel –
Grants my desire.
Our Guns of August Returned to me in a Dream
The only ticker tape parades they had
Were our volleys of cap guns firing like mad;
And the tape worms in the parcels of shite
We lobbed in the jeeps on those August nights.
The alter boy who swung the censer
Inspired us with CS gas.
Neon cat’s cradle of tracer,
Efflorescence of windscreen glass.
Traffic intertranspicuous with pig-iron sunshine
In The Indian Summer of 1969.
Votive penny candles’ arrays
Slopped Muybridgeizing autos da fe.
The Apollo Mission left me stunned
And I was allowed to stay-up late.
Then, The Guns of August
Fired by Shankill “Huns”
“Keep throwin’ Shell was their litany of hate….