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FOOL FOR POETRY
ONLINE BOOKSTORE FEATURED TITLES
New Irish Voices
Liberty Walks Naked
Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Munster Literature Centre
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Ode to the Coleman
From the black and holy heart of Dublin city Your legend was born in whispers Flickering into life around the flames That fired our knacker drinking Taking flight in drug brightened Raver’s eyes on dawn strolls home
Tales told of the alarming way you’d frighten Huddled jack-the-lads, appearing Like ol’ Nick himself or the Candyman, Taking their two litres of cider from Their shivering all-cops-are-bastard hands
We heard stories of explosive power You throwing a swarm of culchie Garda Off your leather-coated back With a swing of one ape-like arm
You escaping as they chased In a fleet of marauding shitvans By leaping the too-high pointed fence Of Sundrive Park in a single bound
‘The size of him!’ we heard, ‘The sound of him landing Would make your ears bleed.’
You smashed into our lives Like superhuman feet on concrete
I saw you myself in the monsterflesh One rainy morning on Wood Quay Towering like a berserker, screaming At the paperman and me, waving Your caber-like staff at the diamond kissed cars A wild black dog on a rope beside you barking
You could be the stuff of Black Pitts Legend, like Bang Bang with his key And Johnny Fortycoats From Clanbrassil street Characters as big and bohemian As the Liberties themselves
But no. How could you be? Your’re more like the city than they For beneath the myth and the lie Hides the darker truth.
From the torment of your seventies youth You lashed out and blinded a friend The spikes of your shattered pint glass Ate his face and tore out his left eye Why? The why is lost to time.
But not your return Not content with damage done Too insane, too dangerous to let a dead eye die You traced your way back To the townlands of that slaughtered friendship Two decades on when the blinded man Was dead in the ground from drink and loneliness.
With him only a few days gone You planted your heavy booted feet Outside the twouptwodown that mourned him And with a cackling roar, you hurled A flaming bottle though his front door And left his Guiney’s curtains, His vinyl records, his everything to burn.
Your legend lives on.
©2010 Colm Keegan
Author Links
Keegan poem in the Sunday Tribune: 'Cheek Cheek Chin and Nose' 'All for Emily': Keegan story in Horizon Review
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©2009 Southword Editions and Munster Literature Centre |
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Colm Keegan lives in Clondalkin, Dublin. He writes poetry, short stories and screenplays. Since 2005 he has three times been shortlisted for the Hennessy new Irish Writing Award, for both poetry and fiction. In 2008 he was shortlisted for the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition. He is currently working on his first novel and a collection of poems, due out next year. He co-runs Nighthawks at the Cobalt, a monthly arts night in Dublin, and occasionally reviews poetry for RTE radio 1.
