James Fitzpatrick

The blackbirds swooped in their customary jealous way, the Robin
Chirped before leaving for another year, and I patted
The well fed brown clay with my muddy boats.
I remember planting her in the spring hush just after the flakes stopped,
...

He sits on the edge of the world
Watching us come
Jotting, then scribbling, then painting, then down
To lie back in his hive and marvel at us
...

Nothing. Just a clear sky on a dulling day. A deserted street with waving flags on painted posts. The regimentation of complete uniformity. The lack of empathy in silent sorrow.

I march to where they are buried in a dark graveyard of black nodding heads, painted with wide staring eyes, and grimacing teeth. I have taken a backward step to move me forward on a sinking bog, squelching, climbing to who knows where.
...

Entombed, by a chronic Phidias,
Chained, by a weakening Kratos,
Plagued, by a ‘Pandorian' Evil,
Comforted, by a Reddening Hermit,
...

Butchered, in the modern Kiln of the obsequious,
Infected, by the septic words
Of a feral Baachus,
Laying, tongue tied by the Ghosts
...

It was a dreamy evening, one which brought the romantic sparse mist which
covers wide wrought iron platforms, like Victorian melodramas.

I was being 'Pollocked' by the puddle making, clothes dappling stuff, which soaks socks, stockings, boots and shoes, sticking the aul drowned ticket collector to their chevron Sunday best. I spied a damp flaking bench and climbed wearily aboard.
...

Queenstown Cobh, Southern Ireland
1: 30p.m.Thursday April 11th 1912

In salubrious Olympus attire,
...

In a dining roomed Mausoleum, above a worn shop
On a slight but steady incline,
I stared at crass Orange frames, corralling
Strange botanical Homilies.
...

Where a stray breeze shakes the shimmer on the sands, you stand alone leg high on a custard coloured Doon. Below you, a gapping greenish mouth chews away another sand bar, gobbling it's gold desert with seaweed dappled teeth. As the east sun meets a constable sky, you bask in the admiration of nature, as the twisting surf washes away the day before. It's a grand life, you suppose.

here you can walk for miles, days, without meeting a single person. You are surrounded in a vast expanse of Sun, lawn and hilltop, all emptied, at your request. As you climb the craggy mounds, seagulls swoop and shrill, swirling around their tiny homes, then sit and watch you stroll on by. To them, you're just another tourist on their island, stranded, lost without your bottle.
...

San Joao

I stand and then lean on a flittering ledge, staring at lanterns as they
Light up the sky, I catch their smiles as they pass through the clouds
...

As I'd lie there immersed in the ‘vapoured' scent of
August pine, dragged in by the ‘pigeoned' orchestra of
bended branch, the late Summer would sizzle pig and spit goose fat on
...

Harangued, by the sickening tweed,
Beaten, by the sweetened stick,
Mauled, by the Laughing man,
Ink dries on the folded page….
...

Heavy, is heart of youth that ticks the clock,
Beneath the light, that guards the line,
Which craves the end of dread about.
...

Dreams skip through the blue of an early morn,
Dancing on painted cobwebbed graphics,
digging up gardens of crawling carpet,
...

Savour the last of the species, vigorously jotting
Painting, scribbling on hidden rocks,
In caves amid the jaggedness.
Fattened are the other blackened hearts,
...

Along a steep hill, at the edge of a great town,
A freezing blanket creeps as a soft sparse mist
Hovering lightly above the body a of man.
For a few cool moments it envelopes him,
...

where a tawdry sun would rise,
we would amble to wash our backs in front of the brown orange
swirls on the crumbling grey earth. Here, we'd dig our toes in to the
slurping, sogging, sucking, wet, stretch to cadge the flickers of colour,
...

In front of me, haar like February breathes bellowed from the tightened portholes of three men, sat on a withered bench. They each flicked hardened crumbs from rip ridden bags, on to pigeon dappled stonework. Neither talked to another. They spoke in complete silence.

To my left, a dapper young man with a bulging bag of fresh bread took a seat. He sat silhouetted by the fountain's spray glowing in morning light, where it seemed a mini rainbow encompassed his very being. Shrouded in a prism of fabulous colours, he broke bread with his soft hands.
...

The keeper in us

Each day, alone, boxed In, she would work the lines
till Closing time,
...