with me fade away into the forest dim

Detail from Killinthomas Woods by Josephine Hardiman

the poetic manifesto

half heard melodies at dawn
dreams or the traces of dreaming
a woman's name said soft like breathing
memories of faces gone
footsteps in the hall on winter nights
sadness in the heart where love has been
softness on the fields after a storm
shadows bright with remembering

we will go through cowardice to bravery
into the timeless eye of mind
across the ungovernable sea
to where all poems have their end
and their beginnings naturally
come with me

the full story

Maisie Baines filled me in on the rest of the story about her neighbour today.
His breakdown hadn't just been caused by reading about the international economic crisis.
His breakdown had been caused by a more direct experience of the international economic crisis.
At the age of 72, he had recently sold his farm.
The farm where he and his brother, both unmarried, had worked all their lives.
His bank had advised him to invest the proceeds of the sale in stocks and shares.
Let's be clear.
The proceeds from the sale of the farm have ceased to exist because the bank advised him to put the proceeds from the sale of his farm into the stock market. His bank gave him this advice at a time when the dogs in the street knew the stock market was on the verge of a calamitous collapse.
When Maisie told me this I felt a brief but telling fury.
I was remembering a famous incident from the 1980's.
An Irish couple had been advised by their bank to put their retirement money in a company called Gaelic Resources.
Gaelic Resources was a half baked Irish outfit purporting to be an oil exploration company.
Like the other half baked Irish oil explorations companies of the 1980's, it managed to pay its board of management substantial salaries for a few years before ceasing to exist.
Even I, a young naive enthusiast for democracy and the free market, had been outraged that any financial services adviser would tell an elderly couple to risk their nest egg in such a heap of crap.
That was back in the 1980's.
As you can see it's still happening.
Well folks.
Here is the advice you won't get on Bloomberg television, which is basically a publicity channel for the stock exchange, or on CNBC which is a subsidiary of General Electric a company that props up the Islamic Republic of Iran, or on CNN which is a nothing.
The stock market and the banks are finished.
There is nothing left of them.
They are a heap of corruptions.
Let me tell you.
Being pro business doesn't mean you have to be pro these things.
Being pro business means we believe the best possible economic model involves encouraging ordinary people to own their businesses and providing the widest possible avenues for all citizens to enjoy direct participation in enterprise, culture, politics and society as a whole.
The greatest con job of our era happened when the banks and stock exchange quoted companies convinced governments throughout the Free World, that those same banks and stock exchange companies were somehow integral to our freedom.
The policies that resulted were not free market policies.
They policies that resulted were corporatism.
Corporatism that vilely and manipulatively negated the economic positivity of the freedoms we so cherished.
Corporatism which has led to the emergence of a neo feudal generation of robber barons paying themselves astronimical wages without ever having done an honest days work in their lives.
Corporatism which has led to the creation of artificial monopolies undercutting the vitality and vibrancy of our freedom.
Nay.
Vitiating it.
Yes.
Artificial monopolies have been constructed before our eyes by companies purporting to engage in honest competition.
Big car companies in the US bought up other car companies so they wouldn't have to compete with them, and then the jumped up car company executives flew around in silly little executive jets because, well everyone else was doin it so why can't we, and now the Big Three car companies are bust, bust, bust and looking for free, free, free, money to keep em in the executive jets jets jets to which they have become accustomed accustomed accustomed.
Big banks bought up smaller banks and then paid themselves ten lifetimes of wages every year because, well, everybody's doin it so why can't we, and they kept right on doin it right up until that day a few weeks ago when every bank on the planet earth went bust and suddently there was no way they could keep on doin it unless the idiot governments of the free world bailed em out with our money.
Media moguls like Rupert Murdoch in Australia bought up newspapers and television stations they knew nothing about, homogenised every ounce of originality and integrity the hell out of em, and brought em to the edge of extinction.
I would mention the Irish media mogul Tony O'Reilly at this juncture, only O'Reilly's greatest fantasy is to rank with Murdoch in a Heelers Diary diatribe, and I'm not about to give him that satisfaction.
Truth be told, both of em are rank.
But I digress.
Too much anger folks.
I'm laying it aside.
We can be well.
We can make these swines irrelevant to us.
I commend you all to a reading of the gospel of Saint John.
You know in my heart of hearts my profoundest hope, is that everything in that gospel is the truth.

the last knight of europe enjoys some down time

Sitting in the cafe at Naas hospital ogling Polish waitresses.
Ah.
The desperation stakes.
Enter Maisie Baines stage left.
Maisie is a rosy cheeked country women who does a good impression of a perpetual motion machine.
One of those tough ladies.
You know.
Heroes of the community types.
Always visiting somebody or saving somebody or ministering to somebody or feeding somebody's cat or whatever.
All that jazz.
She flumped down at my table.
Motionless for once.
Improbably motionless if you knew her.
"Auuuughhhhh," she said conversationally after a minute of companionable silence.
I eyed her keenly.
"What is it Maisie?" quoth I.
"I've been in visiting a neighbour," sez she.
"What happened?" sez me.
"He's gone nuts," sez she.
"In what way?" sez me.
Maisie allowed herself a deep sigh.
"When I sat down beside his bed," she recalled, "he accused me of burning down Crookstown church, stealing his bullock and taking an axe to his car."
The noble Heelers' piercing blue eyes widened piercingly bluily.
"You don't say."
"I do say."
There was a moment's silence.
"And what would have caused him to greet you like that?" I probed. "Was he joking? You didn't actually burn down the church did you?"
Maisie favoured me with a look that would strip paint off a wall.
"I think he's gone a bit ga ga because of the international financial crisis," she mused. "He'd been reading about it and worrying about it. It's just sort sent him round the twist."
She stood up.
"I'm going back in," sez she. "You'll probably see him chasing me out the front door in a few minutes."
I sat alone in the cafe after she'd gone.
I barely noticed the beautiful Polish girls.
I was in a little spiritual cocoon.
As regards the international financial crisis, a great weight had passed from my shoulders.
In two minutes of prattle, Maisie Baines had changed my entire world view.
None of it is worth worrying about.
None of it is worth cancer.
None of it is worth Alzheimers.
None of it is worth a breakdown.
You know folks, Jesus wasn't torturing us when he told us to forgive our enemies.
Nor was he empowering tyrants.
Nor was he asking the impossible.
I reckon he was giving us the teaching that points the way to truth, light, grace and liberation.
Sometimes it's a hard truth though.
I mean, what the hell am I going to write about if I'm not excoriating the Johnston Press?

a satire on the reporting style of sky news

Snow engulfed Britain today, sweeping across the country in a great icy swathe of mind numbing terror.
The snow fell vertically from the sky, covering everything it touched in a merciless sheen of frosty brilliance.
Occasionally it fell sideways but this was only when the wind blew it in a particular direction. (Sideways.)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking from a toboggan outside Ten Downing Street, commented: "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
Scientists say the snow is composed of water frozen into a solid state with a white fluffy texture.
The snow had carpeted the entire country by mid morning leaving a devastating trail of snow men, snow forts, and snow balls.
In other news, Al Qaeda has detonated atomic weapons across western Europe. We'll have more on that and on moves to impeach former President George Bush for war crimes, after the weather forecast.

vermin

Reports this weekend of a new editor at the Leinster Leader.
Ah.
Pass the poisoned chalice Alice.
The new fellow has been reported twittering something about the Leinster Leader's "excellent editorial team," and "close relationship with the local community."
His perception does not tally with my own view of the Leinster Leader.
But then I only worked there for ten years before being fired on the eve of Christmas 2007.
This new editor has been on the job for at least five days.
He's really in a position to know what's what.
Time will tell though which of us is correct in our assessment of that august organ.
And by august I mean crapulous.
And by organ I mean something redolent of the genitalia of a common field mouse.
I predict the Leinster Leader will not last five years without me.
Perhaps I'm not an objective judge.

possibilities

air born insects hum
homeward go they homeless
and propose this street lamp or that car light
as the all important centre of the universe

purposeless they try again
to divine transcendent purpose
the light that animates their bodies
shines from the centre of the universe