Image: Andrew Caitlin.
His song was a blessing shaped like a bullet
strafing the ear, rogue-raw, best heard live, feral
roars roving the gunmetal air between building site,
bedsit and tube station, London an Irish purgatory
where he and the lads first busked, heathenish
bards growling, howling, hocking, retching resurrection
into the mic, locking crimson eyes with each
and every last one of the reeling crowd, ’til one
or the other looked away as a mandolin, tin whistle,
bodhrán, cittern and uilleann pipe were all spilt
from a pub doorway, flowing far between
embroideries of rain splattering the frosted gutter
where he'd lie, far between the dope and yokes
and the punters’ thunder rising for his heart’s thawing
Gaelic bleed, as rockily as a naggin’s parting shatter
at the next lock-in, graffiti snarl, casual damage lilt
in sulphuric lamplight, with whiskey’s amber ease
dousing a bone-dry throat, and the moshpit roil
of raving ex-pat labourers, musos, chancers
and dipsos, ashtray smoke abiding exiled memories
unbottled and enraptured by his rebel yell,
his thoughts’ webbed writing unreadable ’til
their lyrical ember was ignited into a punk’s foetid
hymn, and molten, pulsing proof of his truths
with this and only this, his bullet-shaped blessing.
(© Copyright, Daniel Wade 2023)
*Irish term for lament.
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