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Your House is on Fire
Longphorts, raids
hear Granny talk about Clonfin Ambush 1921
the arrival of the first Civic Guards, her father
19 men, 2 lorries, reinforcements-150 men
14 lorries arrive later British Forces burned
inside glass houses taciturn tomatoes
blossoming endrot & what collapses again.
‘Do you still water apple trees?’ when the fruits
start to swell.
‘Madame, you are not allowed in this Safeway,
the next Safeway is in on Honeypot Lane,’ &
laugh & stumble away,
take a train, take a bus under skyless agendas
trussed jackets, the Baptism, Confirmation,
the Eucharist asymmetric warfare
The Hay Wain in a broken gilded frame,
‘Lady, barred from Tesco.’ Spider hatchery
as spiderlings do, in this case
dispersing as far as the bookcase
to house raids, checkpoints, patrols,
Coca-Cola cans stacked in reverse
& Granny, behind the glassdoor
the weight of the body
mainly on the fingers feet back,
to stand on tip-toes
one of the 'five techniques'
Dirty Mick PADDY O Green Bastard
why is your hair always grey?
& why do you wear bleach stained purple dresses?
an Audi a4 Quattro Clutch Replacement
is your new address
23 Roberts Close the garden candytuft tiles
in yellow lake deep,
a maroon coloured fireplace
& meaningfully continue, etc.
a conservatory in a catchment area
a cul-de-sac of search & destroys
Laying on the damp dogtoothed carpet tiles
to be eaten within its own domicile
the pine tree since cutdown
replaced with Bairstoweves For Sale
like ladybugs Mary Our Lady
her seven joys & her seven sorrows
filled with empty gin bottles
& your house is on fire
& your children are gone
ask what is a mother? ing mutter
back to instantly move or die
in silver hay, in Woolworths
creeping under the warming pan
elf-eared & unforgotten.
Your house is on fire
your bones are somewhere else
near a carpark where Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire? Elstree Studios,
Clockwork Oranges Durango 95
coming down the lane outside
Brickett Wood running from Munden House
to School Lane, was the
Police Landrover/ ‘Trough Beating’ scene
would remind you of suffering
of the particular intensity
& cruelty implied by the word torture
in the Name of the Father,
Gardaí told you to go to a nunnery.
& made with kid, sometimes mutter
of that particular intensity & cruelty
by the word & all the way down the banisters
lies conscious choosing
marks the watershed between
the non-violent way of being
‘repeat the mantra’ to not die
in your own sons vacant bedroom,
Our Lady Mick Paddy O Bastard Dead.
They said a sudden increase
in intraluminal pressures,
due to violent vomiting or retching
an Englishman downstairs
listening to you sometimes.
Like all Art Forms likely suffered or struggled,
to become in Nature or lithographic prints.
Descriptions of the property are subjective
& are used in good faith
as an opinion & NOT as a statement of fact.
Mahogany bannister original dado telling me
in the romantic walled garden,
telling me 15, 19, 23 bottles everyone does it
in a cupboard made of twine
at least in the dignity of her own,
like morning papered over
to a sunglow of outside
your house is on fire.
