A BIT IRISH (by Medbh Gillard)

"Ah! Truly, I have captured your inner beauty."

valley of flowers

the armoured car trundled
through shadows thrown
by cathartic mankind
and the gathering gloom
the general clicked his teeth
fate weaved at the loom
and the countryside drew breath
at a world made beautiful
even in the death
of the departing daylight
the sun god's dying
even now
he felt the old doubts
and tried to understand
and felt a tear for trying
who is fit to say
who to live
and who to die
the question creased the general's brow
and the armoured car turned west to béal na bláth

apocalyptics

Late evening.
Heelers flumped in front of the sexevision.
Accidentally landed on Barack Obama's publicity channel.
I mean CNN.
For once they weren't talking about Barack.
Reports were coming in about the war between Russia and Georgia.
The CNN presenter claimed that an online opinion poll showed 70 percent of people considered Russian actions to be acceptable as part of Russia's peacekeeping role in the South Caucasus.
To disseminate this obviously false figure from an obviously tainted CNN survey while the war was still underway, was an act of crass and incomparable vileness.
I am suggesting the 70 percent figure disseminated by CNN can only have served to embolden the Russians in their attack.
I am suggesting that virtually no one in the free world with half a brain, no one outside of CNN at least, considered the Russian attack to be peacekeeping.
Yes I am well aware that a Sky News journo reported the Russian actions as though they were a response to Georgian aggression and used the phrase: "The Russian Bear woke up."
But Sky News doesn't really have any pretentions to ability or objectivity. Sky News is really just an encounter group for goonish Brit Marxian trendies who haven't a clue about anything.
We're not going to hold it against them.
CNN is another matter.
As I listened on that fateful evening, the CNN presenter trotted out the following:
"Of course, President Bush's hands are tied because the American army is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan."
For a moment I was speechless with fury.
I really was.
You have to wonder.
What exactly does CNN want?
That America should have ignored Al Qaeda and her associated backers in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Syria and Iran, for the past seven years?
Done nothing after Nine Eleven?
Ignored the threat to the world from Muslim terrrorists so that presumably now, the American army could be despatched under the leadership of CNN to fight the Russians in Georgia?
I ask you.
Are the brave heroic staff journalists of CNN absolutely f--king insane?
I mean are they congenitally stupid or just plain mad?
Here is the news.
Under no circumstances can the West, meaning the free world, meaning America and Australia and Europe, under no circumstances I say, can any of us countenance a war with Russia.
Russia is either our partner and entitled to respect, or else she's our enemy and the world ends.
War with Russia would mean the end of life on this planet.
I am appealing to those great warriors of the newsroom at CNN to cease suggesting at every opportunity that if only the American army wasn't so busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, it could just march straight into Georgia and turf out the Russians.
CNN you should know by now that advocating war with the Russians can get people killed.
Millions of people.
Hundreds of millions.
Ah yes.
Apparently CNN is so mired in trying to discredit President Bush that all news stories must now be interpreted as a refutation of Mr Bush's decision to liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban and to end the Saddam Hussein family murderocracy in Iraq.
Of course it's most strange that the heroes of CNN would presume to mention Iraq at all.
They do have short memories don't they?
Why, it doesn't seem like five years since we discovered CNN had deliberately covered up murders by Saddam's regime in order to preserve its broadcasting rights in Iraq.
By covered up, I mean "failed to report" murders they were aware of.
Some of those murdered were actually working for CNN.
They didn't even report those.
Yes, you heard me right.
The swines admitted it.
(By swines I'm not referring to anyone associated with the Iraqi regime. I am referring to CNN.)
CNN's concern for the people of Iraq dates to the moment the Americans ousted Saddam Hussein.
They've been crying crocodile tears ever since.



For those readers who've been asking me to speak clearly about the situation in the Caucasus...
Well you asked for it.
My opinion of the situation is this.
The Russians invaded Georgia on the night of the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing.
They manufactured a pretext to do so.
Mr Putin (twice President, now Prime Minister) is running Russia. Mr Medvedev is a figurehead for him.
The Russians have legitimate grievances when citing the West's support for Muslim separatists in Russia's ally Serbia.
The Russians have legitimate grievances when citing American plans to locate a missile defence system in Europe.
The Russians have legitimate grievances when citing a lack of consultation from Western powers with Russia as to her concerns in geopolitical matters.
But the Russian action in Georgia is a land grab.
Nothing more.


It is not an option to go to war with Russia.
We need to start talking again.
And we need, all of us, to return to God.

august guest at the chateau

As long as he doesn't mind sharing a room with the Pope...

Memo to self: Warn them both not to look at the paintings.

the confessio

On stopping at the traffic lights near Stephens Green...
I chanced a surreptitious prod in nostril number one.
Glancing to my right I beheld Donna Roche, my old unrequited love from childhood.
She was looking directly at me.
She did not keep the bemusement from her face.
I was caught.
Caught picking percies from my proboscis.
Caught green handed, as we nose pickers always say.
I favoured her with my famous fleeting grin.
The sheepish version.
My index finger was still north of north in the nose.
I didn't want to jerk it out suddenly because people get hurt that way.
I withdrew ye aforementioned finger from my nose with all the old world dignity of Gladstone proposing Dominion Status for Mauritius to the House of Commons.
The lights turned green.
Green like snots.
I drove.
And at that moment the air filled with music as one of Ireland's more surrealistic radio stations began to play a song called The Little Spanish Flea.
All the cheery defiance of hispaniola filled my beautiful dented car.
The Little Spanish Flea is the theme tune to my life.

And Now This (by Irina Kuksova)

His Holiness meets His Healyness

the traveller in the west woods

the western woods are dark at noon
leafy shade hides the glade
where fledgelings twitter for the moon
a squirrel edging unafraid
along a branch casts a glance
through treetops edged with golden braid
rabbits through the grasses prance
the grasses live shake and thrive
the leaves shiver to make a dance
what phantom light has brought alive
the human eye would look askance
look elsewhere sweet romance
and let the vision die

out of the mouths of babes

Dublin in the rain.
Coffee with Sarah Cho in the cafe above Easons bookshop on O'Connell Street.
"Do you get any Irish music in South Korea?" I ask her.
"Oh yes," she says eagerly.
"What Irish musicians do you like?" I wonder.
"We like Westlife," she replies.
My eyes widen.
"You really like Westlife?"
"Everyone in Korea likes Westlife, young people, old people, middle aged."
"No way."
"Way."
"And what do you think of U2?"
"Never heard of them."
I'm telling you gentle travellers of the internet, this remark quite made my day.
There's hope for humanity yet.