Two Poems by Eamon Stewart

by Eamon Stewart

The Equerries

The worst thing in life is getting used to things.

Thousands of hangovers traded for a spark of jamais vu .

Cats claw at trash bags flimsy as graphene

This was the veil that was lifted from me.

Callous, like modern mountaineers.

Oblates of the craving for oblivion.

Butterflies sip nectar. Houseflies sip ordure.

Waking, I was back in Byzantium

With the sounding boards calling the faithful to prayer .

It was just kids battering the plywood

That lazy builders left behind .

The fontanelles of the loudspeakers

Shed exquisitely tangible sounds.

Still, I overheard the drunk who said

Semtex looks like earwax.

They’ve swapped their grandparents fear

Of the iron lung, for the sunbeds and dread

Of not enough sun.

In the Loney they would have been Lachikos

But now, they are trendy comprachicos .

Whose faces are portentless Dodonas

Do they tinkle in the dark night of the soul ?

Piercings evoke some Disney Saint Sebastien –

Their integuments anthropomorphic Lascaux

That Bradbury’s Illustrated Man would not know.

Carl Sagan said we are genetically close to trees.

Sunbeds turn their skin to bark – Ovid would have balked

At such metamorphoses.

Petals softer than real fontanelles

Pulsatile, pullulating in sloth.

The Anther is a finger and thumb

Rubbing scales from the gaudiest butterflies

Pluripotent odours, pollen climbing the viscosity of air.

An old man passing a black plastic bag:

The wind moved the neck, it looked like a Faithfull dog

As if acknowledging, the old man looked down.

On the loom of the park railings

An eclatique tapestry of the mundane.

The Mama and Papa tube recalled,

Like a prop from Dr. Who .

Proprieties in their Goldilocks Zone –

Pared with bigotry’s microtome .

They’ve swapped their parents fear

Of the Iron Lung for sunbeds and dread of not enough sun.

In The Loney they would’ve been Lachikos

But now they are trendy Comprachicos.

Carl Sagan said we are genetically like trees

Sunbeds turn their skin to bark

Ovid would have balked at such metamorphoses.

Their faces are portentless Dodonas , or

Do they tinkle in the dark night of the soul ?

Piercings evokes some Disney Saint Sebastian

Their integuments anthropomorphic Lascaux

Bradbury’s Illustrated Man wouldn’t know .

Cigarette paper Golems – embouchures that rival flautists’

Send themselves off on pointless missions

Hungry as Pac Man, ravening without remission.

In synesthetic proprioception I feel

An asteroid with rings and water on the moon.

One day I will clear my mind of these things

How I bought shortcake in Brigadoon…

Here is their Burning Bush –

A creosote plant and triboelectric sand

It’s message for a tribe in a rush is

It’s really ourselves we cannot stand.

Cocaine is the Hamon on their blade.

They are flies on the axle of history

Drunken with self-praise they cry

“See what a dust we raise !”

Glissandos on the metal head lice comb

One more Herostratic spliff

And they idyll ends in maundering

Chiliastic panic, The Palace of Wisdom

On the bottom of the Lethe

Where Lotos Eaters scoff Ramen Noodles

The synteresis is snuffed out .

Bluebagopolis

(My native city once rejoiced in the name of Linenopolis)

Blue bags soaring in the air

Blue bags mired in the gutter.

On every tree and fence

They flutter.

In the car parks

They sough, and scuffle and mutter.

One party’s answer

To this pyrric bacchanalia –

Let them eat Gaelic

Let them eat Feile.

I know no one who wants to be told

Gerry’s brainchild’s meconium

Is not a crock of gold.

A swarm of stinging jellyfish,

Ghosts and shrouds and cauls;

Puffs of ack ack and

Burdenless parachutes fall.

I imagine blue bags

Smother the corner boys

Like the leucocytes in

Fantastic Voyage.

Staying in bed to sleep it off,

Small stones appear

(from what etheric plane?)

In your bed.

Who in Bluebagopolis could explain?

But you pull the duvet over your head

And struggling,

Bring back you wife from the dead.