Dublin (and the world) Writes Bloomsday

16th June 2004

Degrees

Three steps to wisdom.
Portrait, Ulysses, the Wake:
Joyce, Joycer, Joycest.

Lean Ni Chuilleanain

***

A Grand Cake, Nora

The radiograph at bedside's side excreted into excretable livelong anamorphine and unslumbered him meticulously. Having been enstoned in his slumbermaker for four sevenths of a fifty-second he was begrudging the Scotsman his earful. He was beginning to see through him, thankfully to the radiograph. It used to be music but was painfooly becoming moosic thankfully to the man from the country who loves the trucker phucquers. It was contempt for the lessening of educated eardom.

He couldn't innerstand why his insufferance was so bolsterated by the whinginess of a mentholated airfresh.

'Why is my insufferance so bolsterated by the whinginess of this mentholated airfresh?' he asked of the candlestick odourdown that encovered his bedside's middle.

Hearing nothing except a muted rustler he jumped from the mattress and stumbled to the netherfloored ablutionary, where he aquified his facial dermis and aquafreshed his chompy molars. With a scratch of his head he picked up the tae kettle and emptied some into a handled bowl, watching detritus swirl through the amber liquidity. Cow juice made it float to the brim like mice droppings in space. He plucked the astroturds away and smeared them on his jumper while blowing the tae.

Nora's Sir Gerry was today.

'Nora's Sir Gerry is today,' he thought.

Nora was his financier. She had a limp on her hup that her cyster said was a sist. He had tried to consort her, 'it's not a sist, it's a barnacle.'

'It's a boil,' the consortant, Professor Lance Boyle, said, 'give me a tanner and I will varnish it for you.'

The job was set for oseven hundred in the Matter and Nora was first. A jab, a snip and a quick wipe later she was unenslumbered by a starchy matron at her cotside's side screaming to see if her slumber had siezed. A plaster held the blood in and the cut was stinging loud.

'It was a goat,' the starchy matron said and held up a sample jar.
A clear fluid ensnared a little pink piece of Nora. An ex-piece.

'Not a barnacle?' Nora enthused.

'Not a barnacle,' starchy ensued, 'barnacles is on chips.'

'I'm enlightened, starchy matron, felicitations.'

'That's allowed.'

A twelfth of a seventh of a fifty second later Nora was stood standing on the linoleum near her cotside's side. She was covering herself with produce of Penneys and respectablising herself in the looking glassed wall.

Her travail home took her to Dunnes where she stole the ingredientals of a baked good. Raisins, flower, marj and Chivers occupied the bottom of the whitened receptacle as she hung up the receiver wherethrough she made an invite to his ears for high tae in the mid-evening.

She mixed the mix and shook the tin. As she opened the furnace opening she shook the sample jar into the tin, mixed it in with a digit and baked the good.

'What's this?' he asked as he bit into it.

'Fruit and goat cake. Nice?'

'It's a grand cake.'

Jack Portland

***

Bloomsday

River
Mother
welcome me

city
you are Jerusalem
I a pilgrim

the beautiful is in
in the familiar

the word is in the word

you are one
of many voices

you are the many voices
of the world

and a woman's voice
will sing you
to your end

there is no end

there are these songs
and various singers
-though they are one voice-

the world
in its manyness
and unique singularity

in which the heart lays down
and asks the river
to name it

and the river replies
as only it can
I am the yes and the yes.

Martin Burke

***

Leopold Bloom's Close Musical Shave

Tick tock. Ten o'clock as Bloom clatters
down the steps to Ferlingetti's barber shop.
He slides his bum into the cracked, burgundy
leather chair: bloody blood red as the swirling
pole he passed as he entered off O'Connell Street:
red white blue red white blue red white blue red.

Mrs F lathers his chin and neck, her ample
bezoom presses against him, comforts him
O! Molly! O! Molly! as she ladles the scented
soap onto his fizzog, spreads it round round.
Then the Signor strops his cutthroat razor swish
swish, backside of whale, Papa's strap, cut into bum,
as bad as I am, I cried, shamed in my room, ho hum.

F says, "Eez good weather, no, Meeeester Bloom?
I thinka we hava good summer, no?" Mrs plunks
the piano: "You're the Flower of my Heart." Bloom
sighs, feels the letter to Henry Flower nestled
in his side pocket. Does she know? Summer's a-
blumin, a letter from a naughty lady to a naughty
boy ho ho. Mrs F's bezooms bounce to the music,
will you be the flower of my heart? F's razor scrapes
his cheekie cheek so, tickles his neck, oh oh, Antonio!

Christopher T. George

***

Stream of the Subconscious

hidden behind the multitude
of wooden lawn ornaments
he crafted in his cellar workshop
a cache … hundreds of identical likenesses of his wife
in full figure … extreme full figure.

in the kitchen above
his wife barked out the usual orders of the day
things that needed to be done
things she couldn't possibly do
why did he spend so much time in that shop …

"yes dear" he mechanically intoned
selecting a likeness from the heap
he adjusted the blade accordingly on the power saw
lining the cut-out with the saw-teeth
he began cutting at the neck …

Alec Kowalczyk

***

Mirror

Oh mirror, you prince.
You capture me as I am,
Desiring pleasure, avoiding pain,
Never tormenting, nor degrading me.
The perfect gentleman, or is it lady?

Oh mirror, you coward.
Upon further reflection, I see
You capture only the surface,
Not reflecting my scarred soul.
The perfect cad.

Oh mirror, you robber.
Upon deeper reflection, I wonder
Did you pull me in to shove me out,
With my soul blackened, my eternity in flames?
The perfect devil, or is it victor?

Oh mirror, you aberration (thank God).
Upon reflection from within, I see
It is only I reflecting you, reflecting me back again,
Just in time to redeem this image
Before it is consumed forever.

Robert Melder Sr.

***

untitled


Vehicles sweep down hot mirrored roads,
Oasis appear like wanted dreams of passion,
The air a monumental ice-box,
The wind as soft as feathers on newly born skin.

People gather around golden road kill,
Passionate for cheap thrills and wiry laughts.
Small birds swoop down for a closer glimpse,
They fly as free as angles.

Cotton backseat thoughts comfort the un-concieved child,
Unaware of this righteous world that's too calm to preach the
moment.
This thing they call 'Heavenly God' from unthought minds.
Grasp these present moments,
Grasp and hold on thightly the night is approaching.

Emma Coyle

***

Joycean

Rejoice!
Bloom!

Leopold, you are not dead.

Meticulously you live
in film
in ink
on screen
on page.

Still you are seen.
Still you are read.

Marian O'Brien Paul

***

...as if to show the simoniac of his sin…

- I do not remember where I recall these things, yet I suppose it is enough that I recall them at all.

If you stand at the crossroads of St Germain des Pres and look down the rue St Benoit you can see all the way to the river. If your eyes are good you can see the Louvre. A little over half way down this street there is the black gothic ramparts of the Medical Institute. On the precipice of its North wall there is a dark and weathered statue of Hermes. He looks down on the shabby row of buildings on the opposite side of the rue St Benoit. He looks in through the grimy window of the café le Petit St Benoit.

At the turn of the century this café opened at noon. It still does. But at the turn of the century the first customer through its doors was given a free bottle of cider with their meal. It is an old tradition from Brittany where it was used to entice sailors just in from the sea. In Paris it made for a very convenient early house for those just in from the night before. With enough change you could get enough drink to get you over the worst part of your day.

- With the poor eyes burnt out of my head. Weeping like women at the tomb. Stinging like sulphur. I rub them and fag ash falls into the plate. A burnt offering. Atonement for my simony. Nora. Screaming louder than the children. Nora. The bit between her teeth with a sup taken. O Musha, a frosted glass lowers my lower lip. The choice apple juice of the coast. I recall the harsh waves on the gray back sea. The white tips turning like page ends, turning over their leaves, turning back to the beginning. Back to Dublin.

- Looking down on the city I can follow the river all the way to the bridge. If your eyes were good you could see the top of the windmill at St James Gate. Half way down Sackville Street ladies are lightly alighting from trams. The tugs are going to dock down at the East wall. My eyes are closed. I can hear the gulls. Out with it, Man!

- Down the quay to Merchant's Arch through which I meet my younger self on his way to school. Then on through Temple Bar and out on to Dame Street. Left down towards Trinity College and right up towards Grafton Street. On the corner of Dawson Street stands John Whelan, or Whalen, or O' Whalen. A great wreck of a man.

- I can still smell the cinders. He would burn his old slips and deposit the remains in his pockets. Known in Egans for his use of medical terms whenever conversing about the body. His hands under his oxters waiting for a carriage to cross. He is on his way to Mulligans of Poolbeg Street from the garret in Clare Street. He must be dead by now. Burnt out. Consumed by fire.

- I do not know why I recall these things, yet I suppose it is due to where I recall them.

James Foley

***

Rosie

Even now, nearing her sixtieth birthday and thirty-eighth wedding anniversary, Joyce's "Araby" had stayed with her. Not the entire story, she couldn't pretend that, but the ending, that boy, his eyes, self-discovery, and more, his yearning, so real and terrible she felt it too. Then as now. She had wanted to be Araby, someone who could change someone, be so winning a boy would remember her through his youth, manhood, old age, even as his dying breath rattled in his chest. By the time she had turned twenty-two, marrying Harry on her actual birthday so as he'd have less dates to remember, she'd somehow put aside such aspirations.

She had read "Araby" only once, when fifteen, the story assigned by the sadist Mrs. Clancy, only she didn't think any of them knew to call the teacher such a thing back then. They did call her 'Fancy Clancy,' on account of the way she talked, a pseudo-playing marble inside either cheek, her eyes sometimes crossing, colliding into the bridge of her nose with the strain of mimicking the Queen, for who else could the Loyalist tyrant be modeling herself after? Now there's a thing she hadn't thought to put together before, she and Clancy both wanting to be somebody else. Well, well. Clancy would hardly be anybody now, living on only in people's memory surely, unless the never-tiring over-achiever was holding fast, hard-after some Guinness Book of Records' longevity prize.

Many times she had toyed with the idea of reading "Araby" again, but could never bring herself to do so, fearing it might not live up to the version she had stored in her heart. The roar of a lawnmower in the distance interrupted her reverie, and she laughed self-consciously. Her knees creaked as she stood. She bent to smack the dust and gravel from the legs of her herringbone trousers. The smell of cut grass coated the air.
"I better be getting on." She stooped to re-arrange the bouquet of lilies at her feet.

Harry had turned smiling to her when she'd reached the altar, a white lily in his button-hole, and taken her right hand, her father letting go of her left. She remembered his smile most, its earnestness, and the feel of her own, less sure. He wore his brown hair slicked back for the occasion, the oil emulsion blackening his strands, bleeding onto his shirt collar, staining it grey.

"Are you all right, Rosie?" he'd whispered against her ear, his spearmint breath warm and damp on her neck.
She'd nodded yes, and he'd tugged her toward the waiting priest.

She kissed the crown of Harry's headstone, tapping its granite side three times, as always. She didn't know why. Dead five months, she missed Harry so, still fancied the Maker would return him one of these days, chuckling at His practical joke.

"Are you all right, Rosie?" She had been all right, not Araby, but all right. That had proved enough. "Life is the substance of stories, but stories not always the substance of life." Maybe she was finally getting what Fancy Clancy had meant. Well, well.

Ethel C. McDonnell

***

Nora

June 16, 2004

The fact that she did what she did
was the butterfly's wing to start the storm,
energy for existence on a Dublin day in June,
material to shape a life together away.

It took a Galway girl to do what she did,
to run off with a man to foreign parts,
not minding what people thought, reciting
the Galway phrase: I'm not bothered.

She had to make a man out of him
feed him stories of so-called experience
lived out in back lanes in the west
secretly along canals, near the river.

And because she put up with him,
pages got written and lives were lived.
If others banned books, so be it.
Thoughts burned as their passion.

Sandra Bunting

***

Riding two horses

She has been married to a man
The most wonderful in every way,
Except one.

He is not home enough,
Earning more money for the family,
When he is home,
His work is important,
And not the family.
Her needs are met,
Starves for her sexual need.

Her ex-husband was a man,
The most hopeless in every way,
Except one.

He was home all the time,
Never keeping up a job,
When he was home,
He had nothing to do,
She starved for every need,
Except her sexual need.

Ram Mehta

***

Re-Joyce

Finnigan woke up
Two too to an unaudible applause
Such a state of revery(ie),
One could not have presumed presumptable.
Wake up! They said, in their best
clenched-teeth sunday suites.

Then all was an uproar, roar, roaring
In the most silent of ways
In somnorous sonority, sonatas sounded
with an interlude or two.

***INTERMISSION***

There are clusters, of both granola and sound
Co-existing in simultaneous juxtaposition
Phantaztikelly attached to the arm,
From where they clash. Montag makes it a year.
But wait, that makes no sense! they
proclaimed, while arriving at the
departure where nothing began.

Carolyn Hance

***

Bricks!

Try, try, I do nothing else,
warm his dulse wash out socks,
let him take liberties, or dry crusts, same thing.
Now on the long list of things he'll
never know, there's a litany --
they call it that -- list with a hook .
And at that meeting I heard
not a word that made sense.
Talking the whole time to someone
not there, or not to my eyes.
"Keery, hey, a light's on.
Christy, a light's on,"
they kept saying, til they gave
up altogether to sing. Then
moved things around, the way
you would if there came a brick
through your window.
After that song about
"Hold me, hold me, hold me,"
naturally I wanted to
be out of that place, and with you.
The landlord, they spoke of without
ever so much as using the word
"rent," just like that, but I knew who they meant.
When they got close
to admitting they
expected eviction, it
was "After this our axe-isle,"
or maybe it was "this our ex-aisle"
but it was so crowded
and they were starting to head for
the door in an unmanly way.
Something like a dream came next,
about a valley of deers --
poor things, totally mad, the whole bunch.
So I left, and won't darken that
cave again. From the beginning,
was no word and not much light, after all.
So take me home and make me
feel like a woman.

Nancy Nahra

***

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea.
- A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

I've suffered his gaze long enough
Him standing there with his shoes
Round his neck and a bit of old salteaten stick
For a cane well what a grand gallant he makes
Hush now hush now the sea says
And here's a fine gift for you
Hush now hush now maybe he'll speak
And I've suffered his gaze long enough
So bowing my head now maybe he'll speak
Hush now hush now and bending my neck
But see his guilt burn as he turns on his heel
Off away home to his Mammy no doubt
And spinning her lies like a priest

Kevin McCann

***

Bloomsday 2004

bawdy Ball
Blooms
on celluloid

purist tourists
ReJoyce
in situ

pub a Dubs
authenticates
the odyssey, that is Ulysses

Sam McMyler

***

The day belongs to me

- Get up outta that and be off to school with ye, my mother screamed up the stairs.

I rose quickly seeing the bright sun slicing through the crack of the curtains. I opened them fully and a beautiful summer's day greeted me. This is too good a day to be wasted on school, I thought seeing the blue sea of Dublin bay off in the distance. In no time I had my shorts and school shirt on, and laced my old leather boots.

- Get a move on or you'll be late, my mother growled.

I came down the stairs like a thunderstorm causing my mother to shout again.

- Go easy.

I said goodbye and was out the door into the sunshine. I took my usual route to school, running all the way, but when I reached the rusty gates I kept going. I saw children lining up for class and I smiled to myself. I wasn't to be a schoolyard prisoner today. It was Sandycove and a day for swimming and relaxing for me.

When I got there the narrow street was empty except for an old milk-woman dragging along her cart.

- Lovely day isn't it son, she said.
- It's a grand day, I said running by her.

I carried on passed the beach, up the winding path and passed the Martello tower. A smell of fry hung in the air. I took a deep breath of the salty, greasy air. I made my way to the water's edge at the forty-foot and looked out at the big creature that is the Irish Sea. Two men stood nearby watching a boat offshore. My gaze went beyond the boat to the jagged cliff faces of Howth,clearly visible in the sun.

I took off my sweaty blue shirt and unlaced my boots, the breeze refreshing against my milky body. Standing on a rock, I was ankle deep in cold water when I heard the approaching banter of invisible men. A moment later they appeared from behind the wall and my heart bounced when I saw Mr. Dedalus with two other men.

I waded through the water and hide behind a rock. Luck had never been a friend of mine but today it was laughing in my face. My teacher Mr. Dedalus was a patient man but I knew he would not take too kindly to one of his students splashing about the forty-foot while they should be in school. I watched them through a gap between two rocks as they chatted heatedly. One of the men then began up undress and my legs went. My worst fear: they were all going swimming and there was nowhere left for me to hide. But then I saw Mr. Dedalus hand his friend something and threw some change on to man's clothes before walking off up the upward curving path. Mr. Dedalus's friend dived in and I laid back into the sea and floated along with the waves. No school for me on this fine June day.

No way! This day belonged to me.

Stephen Wallace

***

Joyce

Joyce was
Is
Still today
Bawdy
Irreverent

Read the book
Don't ask me
What its about

I haven't a clue
Do You???

Try to do him justice
Play the games
Someday you'll win
Like him

Daughter ill
Poor lamb
The ham between the sandwich

Lost causes

A day in glorious Dublin
Sun is shining

Dress up
In all the gear
Straw hat
Scarf to match

Let's celebrate
The man
The Genius

Anne Morgan

***

My Caliban Year

Once, me and Nancylee in high holy
spirit jumped thumbtacks, suffering
for divine attention like our 2nd grade
Patron, St Rose of Lima. Nan's rosary
hid bitten nails. I longed for Lourdes,
or any sighting of a holy show of soul.
By 3rd grade, faith fled. Sulking, we regouped
as "The Roughty Toughties", hostile nine year old
avenging angels roaming Bayside
to make crooked the straight, smiting teacher's
pet, chiding mothers. Merciless. After tying the Griffin
girl to a tree for developing roseate buds
like stigmata, our gang dissolved wordless.
Nancylee's brother, a Jesuit, said she lives
in the Midwest. For a while, she was a nun.
Caliban disappeared.

Claire Curtin

***

The Wholly Officious

After The Holy Office, by James Joyce

Myself unto myself will give
This name, Lord Justice Purgative.
I, who was hired to overlook
The quisling and elected crook,
Bringing to website and to telly
The mind of witty Machiavelli,
Lest Beeb in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:
Wherefore receive now from my court
This most miraculous new report.
To enter Whitehall, sup with Blair,
Get sinecure or peerage there,
One positively needs by rights
To dress in wig and matching tights.
For every true-born British jurist
Advised by three wise monkeys is.
He'll savage any Junior Counsel
Who dares disturb his Privy Council,
Like him who costive makes a scene
Expending on the world his spleen.
Ruling the land by nod and wink
Of course deserves a decent drink.
But I must not accounted be
One of that woolly company--
With him who drinks just to forget
The penny that he'll never get.
While they console him when he whinges
With yellow ties and Cornish fringes--
Or him who rises from his coffin
To vampirise our Bambi often --
Or she who thought that giving birth
In manacles was prisoners' worth --
Or him who tramps his Texas ranch
And thinks he's smarter than the French
But privately his pants would crap
If asked for Paris on the map --
Or him who rode on Roland Rat
And in the face of Justice spat
Though loved by all his employees
He couldn't kow tow on his knees--
Or him who thought that mushy peas
Were guacamole, and 'Oh please,
Oh please," cried, 'lend me money
To buy a pad for me and Ronnie.'
Or him whose name is so immaculate
T'would make a saint himself ejaculate
That any sinner dared besmirch
A name as blessed as the church,
Although it's known to dullest junkie
He's only ever been a flunky.
But all these gents and dames decreed
That I absolve their every deed,
So while they scheme their seamy schemes
I carry off their filthy streams...