Getting ****** in Dublin

                       ******

The three fates vend tickets as you enter the center of the city's speculative life. Reflect on how the green is gray and brown and how all the leaves are dead on the dirty ground. Over the bandstand and the pergolas the uncertain shapes of dark statues gaze out over their Elysian fields. Joyce's head on a spike, still talking: "your vagina he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round those rich one's off Stephen's green running up to him for every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina". The path is clear. Coins sitting at the bottom of the water feature glisten like souls crossed over. A central torque rotating the traffic in a lunar cycle and causing the ebb and flow of the rush hour tides. The sound of some half remembered song stirs the nameless throng into the faded faces of old lovers who left me here behind. In lisping tones they make their sweet entices to my wanton yearning by letting slip the name of she upon the sea of vanished loves returning. Black poetry. On the bridge the red unrested eyes of an old warder glow in futile rage as a white bag floats by like a drowned sailor. Sorrow multiplied by the company of sad others. The city through the trees.

                        ******

Good girls go to galleries. They take their mothers their for lunch and exhibit themselves at exhibitions on their birthdays. Outside the National Gallery they convene, converse and conduct themselves; upstairs Christ feels the coldness of the cross in Judas's kiss. Security guards sit like prison wardens on the end of every cellblock of paintings. The Picasso smuggling gear, the Bonner lighting a fire, a group of Henrys ganging up on an Osborne in the shower. Around them schoolboys sketch uninspired and tourists recognise nothing on the walls. A regretful Rembrandt, A joyless Goya. A residue Rubens.

Then it happens.

The Blessed Fra Angelico is a candle and a warm hand in the dark. My own blank stare in the eyes of Vermeer's waiting maid that turns to me and says I am your life. The country frown of Jack Yeats as he sits in Shaw's somber parlor listening to his bronze discourse on the dramatic. Out into Georgian Dublin to leave behind the boarded up windows of this palatial facade.

                        ******

No messages. No missed calls.

A crescent Luna in neglected gloom. A cold Diana in her fountain shower. A pretty Proserpine lost in a dark wood. These three statues of the same broken girl guide me on my way around these gothic gardens. Schoolboy gangs pass silent office girls in a busy crossing of an ending lunch. At a funeral pace two elderly priests amble past their easy recognition of the Ionic, the Doric, and the Corinthian. In the dark undergrowth shattered stone gods pour lamentations for forgotten feast days. The day you put your fist through the window. The day you thought you were a father. The night she never came home. These high ivy walls keep away the controlled irregularity of our modern towers and shelter the Zen of a Victorian rosarium. "Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden". Eliot on his knees. In a child's maze a stone sundial reminds us of time's intimate task. This city is teaching you how to die.

                        ******

I slip into a simple world as I stroll down Sandymount strand. The sea and sand are forms of space the city has ignored but there's nothing that you won't mind sometimes. Smell the seasalt in an instant and later remember; finding the scent of a lover in your room the evening after. Somebody passes and suddenly everything that can't be is everything. Her big blue eyes, her blonde hair, girl I wish I knew you. A hell in knowing what you are missing and never knowing why. Happiness passes through us as if right before our eyes and it's only in reflection that we notice just how happy we were. Byronic gloom on Shelly lost at sea.

Getting dressed for me as a teenager was the meticulous preparation of a magician. My father's jacket, my brother's trainers, my sister's beads; anything for the illusion to work. Anything to make people believe without looking too closely that a conjurer could be taken for granted. From Poolbeg to the Martello tower this sea accepts my mind's sad offerings.

The wind sings and bellows and polishes the sea with gusto. Are there Sirens in you still? The corkscrew circles of the rain, the intricate shell patterns of time's dalliance and delay, the red and white banners of the barbershop towers. All the rings of Saturn. "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand...?" No. I am already spoilt for life's long awaited joy. In the darkness of my return home I saw all the lights of Dublin and all the lights of Dublin did not matter.

                        ******

People who don't believe come here to think and people who believe come here so they don't have to. "Pray with you? For you? Again". Sanctuary. At this stage the sound of some words make me cry. Grace. On the street life is passing on and it is of some solace. There is one more place that I have to be. Stella Maris. Queen of the sea. Pray for the wanderer. Pray for me.

                        ******

This is our last goodbye
I hate to feel the love between us die

This is a poor area. All the houses on this street were built to hold a grudge. You could rip out all the identical front gardens and you would be standing in a used car lot. It's a friend of a friend's party and I am looking for the last just women in Dublin

But it's over
Just hear this and then I'll go

The guy who answered the door was huge. Over six foot tall with no hair and dressed from head to toe in white. His arm barred my entrance while he listened in silence. Half way through my epic tale: "there's room down the back, don't go up the fucking stairs".

You gave me more to live for
More than you'll ever know

She stood halfway up the stairs barely noticeable in the dark. Her sheer dress, her thick square heels, dark hair, dark eyes, dark lips. "I wish I looked like I didn't belong". It took her a breath to see all that I could offer and then look away.

This is our last embrace
Must I dream and always see your face

"So where are you from?"

"Roma"

"Italiano, Si?"

"Si is Spanish"

"This is going to be a rough sea"

"And your boat is so small"

"Hey!"

Did you say 'No' this can't happen to me
And did you rush to the phone to call

"So Venus, is that guy your boyfriend?"

"He is not by boyfriend"

"Really? He keeps looking over here, I think I know why he told me not to go upstairs, is they're something going on?"

"He is my boyfriend's brother"

"Oh Venus, what have you done, still the heart wants what the heart wants"

"The heart only wants what it knows"

Kiss me, Please kiss me
But kiss me out of desire, Babe, and not consolation

I tired to kiss her. She ever so slightly drew away her head, ever so slightly drew back her hair, ever so slightly tilted her shoulders. In her simple gestures my act was rejected, distained and disguised. Her eyes let me know never to try that again.

You know it makes me so angry 'cause I know that in time
I'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

I just started to talk. Bypassed my head and my heart. God knows what I was saying. I was thinking if I brought this girl home my flat mates would carry me around the room on their shoulders.

"Love's not so great. Being in love is being to lazy to get out of bed".

"Your heart is broke"

"Hearts don't break. Love clogs them up like drains".

I had hit on the right topic and she opened up. The room swam with all her previous lovers; her first, her worst, the mistakes and the retakes, the oval mouth ache of her...

Why can't we overcome this wall?
Well, maybe it's just because I didn't know you at all

"Andy Warhol's work won't last"

"Of course they will, there Icons, they will live forever"

"No they won't. He was using cheap paint"

Your drifting away, gently steer the conversation back to love

"So this love tryst with your boyfriend's brother?"

Gently steer, you just dashed over the rocks and into the lighthouse

Well, the bells out in the church tower chime
Burning clues into the heart of mine
Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories
Offer signs that it's over ... It's over

                     Getting ****** in Dublin

Biography

I'm from Tipperary but have been living in
Dublin via London for the last few years.
A funeral forced me to remember my English
from college and produce this, the first short
story I have ever written.