"She's nobody's child, the law can't touch her at all..." The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 10 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- Buckfast & Soda Bread / / \ \ The Ireland Poems ---|--/----\--|--- \/ \/ /\______/\ by Taj ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finally able to spruce up this list with a small hiatus away from the political discourse. We're going to start putting out some of Ella's poetry. Noteing of course that tao@lglobal.com is always open to submissions. The more voices the clearer the struggle. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Buckfast & Soda Bread: the Ireland Poems By Taj * The picture, taken by my mother, is of Ambrose and Auntie Margaret. I can see her even now, coaxing them into her sights, the shutter wide, waiting. Just their faces, wary. Smiling maybe, squinting at least, in the way of the sun. Ambrose is young, the skin pulled tight across his cheeks. The bones there are high and smooth. The hair that grows from him is almost all grey. It hides the motions of his mouth, still he looks a little surprised, covetous even. It comes from the eyes. He's schizophrenic. Margaret is in her eighties. Her face is full, deep lined. Eyes leaky, blue. Spidered translucent in the pockets beneath, her brows yolk-white. Save for the slight beard, slightly turned eyes, she's an older version of my grandmother. They live together, well Margaret lives in the house and he stays in one of the trailer homes in the yard. He visits for tea, marmite, cold cuts, and they sit. Just listening to the radio, the odd car as it passes, kicking up dirt, guessing who is it this time. Newborn kittens in the barn. The paved puddle in back overfilled the goldfish muddy, spitting water as they rub. The hulk of the trailer that burned still there, though the tenant has flown. It smells like fire, spent wool. Steeping like curse between the other two: Ambrose's, and the guest trailer where I slept, cold, but the windows wide and the sagging bed. The curtains water stained, stitched with tiny flowers. Margaret would visit, come all the way from the house, down the white paved walk to the unlocked door. She would sit with my mother, laughing, the little scabrous dog in her lap. Less comfortable when the others were around. Matthew, my eight year old brother, and I checking her out, the shared sidelong gaze as we strained to see any trace of what provoked the rumours. This one we'd heard from my mother, who'd heard it from my grandmother who'd heard it from Auntie Noni, who lives in England, but she should know. It's said that Ambrose sat in his trailer (a lone bulb, scrapped paper, the odd furtive glance at the back of Margaret's head as she watched t.v., or read) and wrote her obituary, planned to kill her first, with an axe, then submit his piece to the Mallow Times. We never knew how he was found out, or why. Just that horrible, secret thrill of the thing, and more, the inscrutability of them as they wait, possibly even out of sympathy, for the collapse of the shutter. My mother's elated, guilty look, half-suspected in the act of dispossession. Hers, like mine, is a grubby disclosure of the perceived strangeness of those who stayed. A little like "Brother's Keeper". _____________________________________________________________________ * Margaret writes. Accounts of what it was like, growing up in the Mallow orphanage, after their mother died in childbirth, wrapped in infected sheets. The war was on. She remembers being at home when the men came. The family of 12 running amok in the yard, the road. She was given a box of crayons, and told by her father, "Go in and draw on the wall or something". That's when she knew. The girls were taken to the nuns, the boys were kept at home I suppose. Some died later, in the war. Margaret describes the brutality of those nuns. I read things my grandmother neglected to tell, though I had known of the marble baths, which fit 15 to 20 girls at a time, cloaked in wet white gowns to hide their bodies. The water cold, and gray. I've seen pictures, of the tubs, taken by my grandmother when she returned some 45 years later. I've heard that she ran away when she was 15. Took her baby sister, and worked as a housekeeper, until she met a boy. They planned to marry, but then he died too, and she became a nurse, in a hospital in Cork, where she met my grandfather, an x-ray technician from the States. They moved here. When in Ireland my stepfather wanted to keep Margaret's biography, get it published when he got home. Margaret was shy, though I think she agreed. But my grandmother was upset, claiming that Margaret's account was inaccurate. So, she's decided to tape her own impression, to right things a bit. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Fleeing Dingle. Found myself at 7 a.m., tiptoeing, trying not to rouse the hostel, just my brother, so we could shake the bad dreams of freefall - the beds did that, being so high and narrow, with no siderails. And the others, dreams all twisted, foreign-tongued. These as a result of the proximity of the next traveler's head, you know, magnetic field interference and all. Peeled back the towels that hung from the upper bunk as insulation from the strange bodies. Poked him once, then twice again, anxious and envious of his sleep. He grabbed me by the throat, and whispered hard, with open eyes, "Do that again and die". Claimed he couldn't remember a thing later, when awake. My pack half-stuffed, balanced away from the piss-puddled floor. My clothes moldering, dusted with spat muesli leaking from the dented little box. There was no room in that sodden fridge down the hall to store milk in anyhow. Our memories, our bags slung across our backs. Walked past the field from the day before, where we spent five minutes, a veritable eternity, on a hill, overlooking the squat town, the sheep before us, spray-painted with big X's of ownership. They began to bitch, aimless but hostile somehow. Hundreds of them, the cry emanating to us, in waves. The foremost, the bull, eldest and nappiest of the flock, oddly reminiscent of that archaic, toothless Dread croaking primordial Rasta vibes in Peter Tosh's "Stepping Razor Red X". It began to rain. Passed the greasy pub from the night before, picked up our pace, laughing a little, thinking on drinking Guinness until the badass crew tramped through the door and plucked up instruments from the sideboard, and sang. Unchallenged by the bartender, who turned up the radio, and avoided eye contact, radiated disgust. Vowed we would walk all day, all night, just to be free of the forsaken town (home of Fungie the friendly dolphin). Discouraged, but still flashing thumbs at oncoming cars, for hours. Shoulders threatening to separate from the weight of it all. Scratching out a path along the Inch Strand, living proof of Chaos theory. How a measured distance expands in size with each successive frame of reference, how suddenly a mile or two explodes into infinity. How time stalls. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ * The first time we tried to make it to the Cliffs of Moher, we weren't prepared. Began too late and ran out of breath, still talking the same talk as before. No hope of compromise, our words as weighted, as the sweaters we wore, saturated and fated. Arms crossed, not quite looking, the other's face too self-similar to bear. Dropping frustration, dripping spite. Believed ourselves at some nether reaches of precipice at least, and not here, with just the gradual slope all the way to the beach. Paced out, pulled taut by the hand-piled fences linked like fingers except where broken away, belying the bonds of marriage and debt. Grasping, finally, the settling sun, the length of our trek, and wanting only to lose him, not to have to listen anymore. I walked into the field. Walked further over the breast of the hill, and further still, feeling soaked, so bitter. The wind yawned wide then. Its wingspread flatted out the grasses, and it gathered to bruise against my forehead, pull tears from me. Its whistle through the chinks in the fences more like the resonances from some disemboweled singing bowl than anything else. Uncanny. My brother's voice, teasing, worried, rushing to me, then away, the muscles at his mouth working like fear, like prank. The wind stopped for me, let the words drop to me, "Taj! Taj! Oh God, Taj, the bull!" His mouth was long shut by the time the words winded to me, and he had only to watch, the mechanism set in motion. My eyes (by all accounts) as big as plates, my head twisting for sight of either bull or shelter, and when none were found, the ridiculous bent stance, sort of 50-50 karate style, only the hands splayed out to the sides. The sorry feet tangled in too-tall grass. Fight or flight, baby. My brother almost split with pain, with laughter. Said he wished he had a camera. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ * My brother and I, two farmers, a cow, and its lame calf. The leg above its hoof cut to the bone dragging limp, roadrashed. The broken part knuckled under the body's weight ponderous the eyes wide seeing only the road's turns, the stones in its path. The pasture gate a notion suspended barely beyond the caul of pain. The blood too fresh, just spat from blue into air, rubbing deep into the dirt, and the flies blackflies fat like fists clotted into bouquets, frenzied, blind with smell. The farmers walking slow, swatting random at the swarm, making little head-shaking gestures, tongues involved in a slow suck against the teeth. Kissing their teeth like that and shaking their heads speaking remorse, out of synch with one another, or the delicate arc of the shears used to cut away the wire, dangling from dirty fingers. Calf blood on a pantleg. Walking slow. My brother and I crippled too, bikes folded into our sides, spokes cartwheeling sunlight, treads smearing through puddles, tracking our procession along this crooking road between nettled shoulders. Only the sky, the road home at our backs. The cow faking a rush at us, dug-heavy and grim, warning us to stay slow, as if we could run. Her desperation plodding like that, thick. I think I made retching noises the whole time, and when the one farmer walked ahead, still slow, so as not to spook the calf, who paused, broken, while the farmer pulled away the gate, the other stayed to turn at me, and laughing bitter, said, "You'd never survive as a farmer, you know, with a stomach weak like that." Or something very much to the same effect _________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Sweet on Buckfast tonic wine, talking South Africa. Rubber bullet scars and boxing stars. Kagiso and my brother and I. And old Tom, stumbling apology. Tripping, almost, into our laps. Drunk, demanding change, or just one sip to smear along his soured breath. He's pausing to gather himself into stance. Half-atrophied, the rest flaccid, flexing still. Looking yellow, bruised and wall eyed. Smells like turf. Knuckles congealed. Blunt fingertips feel over Kagiso's ring as he holds his lighter to the borrowed fag. The ring, a gift, is piled in brass. Scratchy, it describes two lovers stretching to kiss. Turns his finger green. Only Old Tom is blinded like Quixote with visions of gold. He fumbles, persistent, considers applying a tooth to loosen the damn thing. Kagiso all the while cocking his finger so the ring, worn loose, won't slip. He's working at tight-lipped negotiation, incomprehensible in other side, Salthill dialect, low and threatening. Challenging blows, he stands and my brother and I follow, curses thrown at our backs. Old Tom's too incoherent to ball a fist anyhow. Careens instead toward the others, cooing belligerence on their perch: the foot of the statue. J.F.K. memorial park, Galway ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Losing my drugs, the ones I'd taken all the time to sew so carefully into the waistband of my karate pants, wrapped in plastic, not foil, Thank God for foresight, else I would have been shamed, maimed, busted at Lester B. Pearson with my baby brother in my arms and the whole damn family in tow. I had been warned, by friends, to mind myself. One in particular had suggested that I find an empty film canister, fill it with chlorinated water. That way, when and if caught, I could whip it out and throw the hits in, trusting they would disassemble, and prove ineffective when tested. But Goddamn! Consider the dynamics of the scene... Anyhow, I ended up giving them away, thinking I had no need for them there. But my brother tripped, once on that trek through the Burren. Now I see that if ever there was a time, that was it. Just the sky, the rubble. Druid burial sights. What he must have known just then. I could almost cry for loss now, lost sight of eternity. The clouds. I gave the last two away, to the crusties jamming in the park. Quadriceps, the very very finest acid money can buy. So clean, and I told him so, yet I doubt he did them, had he had his wits. We met Andrew the next night, and he was appalled, absolutely appalled that I'd given pure trips away, to them. It all culminated in our search for a sodden mike, which we paid a full $10 for. Pure poison, and Andrew nearly got beat for it too. Rented a boat and headed to the Norman castle just down the canal, taking turns, the 3 meager lines divvied up on my passport, one rowing, one holding the Buckfast (rumoured to make you fuck fast) under water to keep it cold while the third crouched, holding a five pound note up to the nostril, snorting. The wind was so clean, the sun as it shined on our ritual. Just the three of us, lucky to be. So improbable, landed there, my brother and I and Andrew, 'Kagiso' in Bantu, moved from South Africa when he was 12. Fly in the buttermilk. Smiling. Dousing ourselves with strychnine. Feeling so genuine. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________