You Go Out Searching for Poems

by Justin P. Cooper

You go out searching for poems at the gray of evening Ireland.
Along the River Shannon and through Limerick
with its little two window breadbox houses and colored doors.
Wonder at what it’s like sipping Tetley’s with milk,
delicate china, teapot sun,
in that contained Celtic solar system,
with knitted blanket sofas and ancient corners.
What smells of peated chimney still orbit?
Watching your feet past juice box litter on cobblestones and looking up
to a bit of music pushed shopping cart who says, “Alright Boyo?”
below the battered shell of a two story skeleton
and flower baskets from light posts.
The sky, she’s a palette of fresh bruises
whispering nearby fields through your hair
and there
at Castle street and the Sally Port Walls
two children clomp by in a miniature chariot pulled by a pony.
The fluorescent orange rimmed wheels clatter the cobbles
and though at a marked distance
you see them trot toward St Mary’s Park.

“Sure the weather is desperate.
Wouldn’t put the dog out in it,” chirps a pubbird,
but you must capture the chariot,
an image treasure.
So past the canister castle
with its reptilian rock skin flecked with moss green
and shadowed slits of arrow shot,
past the harsh crown of church
from which death knells toll and echo for centuries.
Bong they gong and the town shudders under the sound,
the heavenly shackles of Erin go bragh.
Along the river and down verdant into the fields of St Mary.
Far and away the clouds bend down and massage the hills with ghostly hands and you think, ‘Those spooky Irish skies, so haunted they are,’
as the trail turns to dirt.
By the buildings apiece,
those dripping guinness or uisce beatha since seventeen fifty nine,
and he’s there taking the piss from a lad
with those fists raised always
like the reptilian castle always and have you yet?
Ya raise ‘em skirts yet Boyo?
Always, don’ cry lad. Don’ cry.
We men we kill it with the Crayture.
And he just wants to be
to somebody,
to mean something,
a human being feeling!
But sock em!
Fists up ya gobshite!
Are ya leakin? Ya nance!
And he goes home to abuse the heavens.
A cloud full of the lightning strike.
Upon the trail,
aside river brush,
a burnt out mattress,
a landscape of ash forms squarely and deathly
with zombie hands springs rise up from the grief.

She, the wee one,
she leaves her mothers weeping to climb the monkey bars in an empty field. He, at the wheel, doing donuts before the horses,
rainbows of mud and grass arching from his hatchback,
tearing that field up as she hangs by her knees,
watching upside down maniacs rally the muddy ceiling,
they orbit her,
orbit that Celtic solar system.

And as that car chased horses upon the field,
you notice the sky reaching down,
falling down,
an ominous wall coming like that car on the horses upon the field.
Move!
Quick!
Back the dirt path.
It’s coming from out of the hills!
Phantom invader from speír dorcha!
Hooves upon the earth, charging back and the skies release their tears.
Those bruised and battered overhead,
they weep a deluge.
All the tears of Ireland fall upon your head.
Those weeping at the green,
those weeping at the orange,
weeping at inebriated,
at starving,
at sad cold without proper coal,
and gone off to war,
and talking to the crown,
those sunday bloody sundays,
bards shot by snipers,
parades under banners of frowning men.
You become soaked of it,
the island pouring from the brim of the flat cap and through the downpour and across the muddy field you see them,
the children on the chariot,
hollering,
a-spray the streets,
pony glistening,
laughing through their streaking faces,
galloping over poverty puddles with oil rainbows,
there goes your image treasure,
little leprechauns.
And wet with tears you drip to your bed,
not of straw but memory foam,
made in Sealy Texas