Author: Sionnachaí

Was it too much?
Do I disgrace this life?

There is no wick to me
No salt
No gash
No spittle
Or poitín.

I am timeblind
Desireless
A dishrag
Boil me.

Limpet
invalide.
Smash me
off the rock
where I am
clinging
and

Crush Me.

To Purity.
To Smithereens.

Go Ahead
slap me
on the wall.
I am limewash.
Astringent.
Chalky.

A bleached
beacon
blinding the fishermen
come to shore.

A beached
cetacean
a cadaver cathedral.

Another mammal
stranded
inches from their
world.

I dare not bleed,
I have no stigmata.
I will not wander
I won’t climb a hill to die on.

Immaculate I am
I am flax linen
Stitched into
the fascia beneath my skin.

There is no undressing.

No tip of the phallus on my tongue
No hook of fingers between lips
My nipple is not bitten by lover
or son

I do not knit geansaís or booties.

I am a white spider.
All eight limbs
spin the good name
of my family.

I am their daughter of sin.
I am their mother of mercy
Jesus Christ did forgive me.

Now that there’s nothing left
but
the lace
and
the laundry.

All the world is crabs on the flagstone of my threshold
and the crushing of shells.
Some beggars do come to the door
looking for fights to keep them warm.
Some peddle their woes for wisdom
One pulls the loose thread of me
until I am unravelled and nearly no more.

The magpies saunter the road
and tut pity
offer to lay their bindles
live in my skull
keep me company
I am too sorry to be filled with their trinkets
there’s no glint in my eye.

I am visited by a man about to die
He tells me of the devil who appears as a redeyed swine
to men who played cards too seriously
down in the valley
long before my time.
He leaves to be with his wife,
and walks to a lonely home tonight.

From the doorway I am keening
that such beauty could find me
alone
that I could be sought
to be blessed
by the dying.

In the morning I am a haysack of irritation
and churlish want of soothing
I am stretched between
a red welt of weeping
and a meloncholic photophobia
bedridden
and angry.

Neantóg, little grandmother
scold me
and cross my arms with lashes
tell me I am a child and it’s not for me to know
or decide.
Let me tremble on the sting of your smarting touch.
Say ‘give up this nonsense!’
of my own tight and selfish sorrow
the red eyes and streaming nostrils.
Tell me’ Give over this woe betide
You’ve had enough.’

I can’t help but pray all day
I waddle through stuffy rooms
bleeting like a ewe
tutting like a raven
convulsing like a lamb
trapped in the placenta.
Numb until I am sleepless in an empty fuss
and I am pulled to the window as the moon sets red.

Angels scythe through the cobalt night like daggers
and cut me with their wings in bed
take me apart in limbs and quarters
carry me to the coalshed
and tarnish me so I can feel starlight in the mica
and remember heaven.

They thread me by the hands
a crucifix on a silver string
and dance me down the valley.
I shake on the rosary
and bless the earth with rubies
of blood
and tears of ammonite.

In the cage of my ribs
the angels set a fire
Owl beats a bellows
to the smoke hole of my hollow
will
and the ghosts of tiny animals
gather kindling
stuffing me with moss
and the curled spines of ferns.

The angels clap their wings
as I ignite.
The dolmen yawns
and old ghosts waltz home,
and bid us all goodnight.
As ancient songs and future tellings
reel and begin to turn.

For luck or labour,
I caught heaven’s fever
and the earth
that bound me tight
promised me no saviour
for whom to yearn

but at least in her combustion
has graced me with

the audacity

to burn.

Angels
feed me feathers
without flesh.

Do you
remember,
mother,
when I let
the cascade of
entrails
swing like rubies from
the hare
I found
at a crossroads
on a full moon
(who I knew, and
knew I,
was a witch?)

Be.
Come.
Death.

Aye
titch on carraigs
in water
brother
I see your veins pump
under transluscent skin
and no longer
hunger
but let blood
flow where
it goes to.

Be.
Come.
Death.

Aye we
famish
in the cillíns
stones without names
beget sons with no memory
beget womyn fearful
of crying.
I ate soil by the fistful
and still you could not see me.

Be.
Come.
Death.

Father
do you remember
when I thought you were
the face of God
and so when you hurt
me
I felt it was holy
and I was sainted by you?
And how when
most coveted the blood fell
it wasn’t to the earth
and so the earth died
and so did I
and so did you?

Be.
Come.
Death.

Daughter
You are unborn
hung like a storm cloud
I am spitting ash
and dust
cry me water
blessed by falling
so I can taste you
as this is as close
as I can ever come
to kissing the swirling
crown of your head.

Remember
you said
if I said
the right thing
the good Lord will take it away?

When he does though
where does he hide it?

And is it not
in this
crisis
that he is giving it back
again?

On the bluff
in cairn castles
bog dragons laugh
in smoking stacks

White water cracks with
the whips of the dorsel morse of dolphins
etching s.o.s. into the crest of sky

There the
sea cave
is a
doorway
to the place
of the ones who are
formorian
electric limbed
triple
jointed
arms and legs
eyes of black apple seeds
and hollow faced.

Atop their
world those who
remember
are one creature
mending the fragile.
We protstrate
as Mná Ghlúine
We brace
for the breached birth
of earth into sky.

Knowing
never was there going to be
a first time.

Encircled by our keepers
Lios-ting and
woven in
mistletoe.
With angels standing
on our elbows
and at our fingertips
our eyes bloom like anenomes
and
we too are freckled in
lichen.

I sit
with Seanmháthair
dilligent and brisk
wisen and sanguine.
A wicker basket woman
swung with shawls
of dilisk and carraigín.

She weaves my hair into a wick
Whisper’s;
Selky
Selky
Selky
I am oilfurred, slick and seal tallowed,
slipping between the sky and sea.

With a lick
I am torched
a beacon…
(like you told me
that time.)

My crown is ate by fire
blessed by the fingertips
of those shining folk
who broke the sky.

Then the lull and hum and drone
you’ve known
ends.
And the world wakes you up
and says

‘The Ashes of Her Body Will Be Your Deathbed,
…the ashes of her body will be your deathbed…

And you will tell the men
And they will tremble
and begin to cry.
And their fathers will don their felted woollen hats.
Close their eyes
and tell their sons
as they’ve been told and tell a thousand times;

‘Ne’er mind the burning woman son…
she is no beacon,
nor heaven’s sign.
Only some phenomenon
the wise men call St. Elmo’s Fire.’

On the street at the peaky heroin pulpit
the heretic spat soliloquies of prophecy
and bullshit
between the stars and the stones of the pavement
while the shadow of his slight frame slipped between the cracks in society
the drone played by the wolftone the only home
he ever knew was dangerous.

Kiss and kettle comfort long gone
there’s a hole in the wall where he punched it
and how he acted wasn’t on
he heard words that stung like nettles
and needles
‘theres no need for you to be such a prick
and voices that were raised like cathedrals
shattering glass and empty echoes
it’s not my fault I am dying sick

Back to the pulpit with him
to sermonize
with rheumy eyes
shimmering in his tinfoil cloak waving smoke to choke the moat of three castles with the spit from his broken jaw
sob stories about bad da’s and sad ma’s and dya know it’s not me fault.
There’s tricolours on the coffins and swastikas on the walls, knock knock on the magic door.
Except you’re not wanted back in inchicore.

I am not even sorry. I am not even sorry. I’m not sorry at all.
Runts of the litter, dirty river, dirty canal, junkies in the hall.

I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry at all.

What are you bleeding looking at?
A blackeyed cyclops says his sister works in catering and she’ll batter me, and he didn’t mean to be funny
but sure myopia has a tendancy
to miss out on the duplicity of things.
And there’s an wretch in the air of piss and cider and the whisper of the smoke of that tinfoil sucked up through a pandemic note rolled up between his teeth and the blanket on his back swept the street and he couldn’t get a nod off it not one bit and
not fucking fair man living through this shit.

Who am I to be looking at him askew as if he needs it
When I’m out here too looking for my next hit
Gimme something city, something sexy or something violent, give me the peace of knowing that what’s inside me isn’t impossible to silence.
Turn up your sirens
Make the chaos cradle me like I’m a child back in the tornado of my dysfunctional family.
Make the whiskey boil up into some sort of pain or revelry
Let me forget about the shame that keeps me insatiable for everything.

You see
I’d prefer the company of another honest junkie
than anyone else whose bothered pretending that any of this is healthy.

And i’m not sorry, you’re not sorry, no one is sorry, cos there’s
no pity
no fame
no love
no money
in the world that could feed our blackhole bellies
it’s absurd
but at the least these
words are worth remembering

We think it’s normal to live in a crisis
And it’s our pride in our pain what keeps us divided
even though
you don’t owe
me any explanation for how your life is.
and I don’t you any justification for why I am like this.

Whether it’s cash
Sex
Status
Drink
Phones or
Loneliness

Have the dignity
Dignity
Dignity
to admit
we’re
all addicted

And at least take the grace
to contemplate
what kind of machine
could masquerade as fate
so as to isolate
and subjugate
to seperate us from love
and live in weakness.


Consider this

who makes your choices
And who dya think would choose this?

No touching
Just breathing
and you can hear what I am thinking
and think that I am speaking
when really I am quietly beside you
although we feel like the same being.

No talking
Just listening
to papery skins and their shedding
to all the sins in their confessing
to the day in her undressing
swooning at the moon

And we know the moon knows something
and we waste no moments guessing
as not knowing is a blessing
we will not surrender soon

No rushing
Just touching
pale palms in their caressing
trace a map of what was destined
and the fortunes told by questions
asked before this life

No other
Only us
taking steps that we both trust

through the dark’s cruel possesion
and the briared claws obsession
as we shed each layer clandestine
sacrificing strife

Until
soft shadows
small sighs
angel headed
starry eyed

home is quiet
home is wild
hold my hand
make me smile

There’s no reckoning
Just walking
Until we are sung up by a dawning
And the echoing
of soft steps in the dolmen
standing at the centre of the truth of all
we were born to.

You and I
We are reeled together by
a whole earth revolving
an axis spun beneath the sky
a knowing waiting for all time
for us
to return
to.

I lay down
by the rocks of the cairn
and loved the blood in my wrists
and the water
the salt on my skin

This body is an altar
our body is an altar
Am I the dirt?
Or am I her daughter?

I ask the
summoning
thunder
to eat me
chew me up like clay and berries
spit me like pips
Starlings from a storm cloud
Stars in a coal pit
and
from the menacing split
the seams
between what is
and what isn’t
Let me root
deeper than indifference

I’ll
thrive in those faultlines
exiled
goathorns
blackthorns
and a cornucopia of
the prim-est roses
crowning a queen of
gentiles

If it means that the girl child
gets to stay a child
longer than I did.
If mean that sons get to rise
higher than the price on their life is
If it means the wild stays unbridled
and spared weitiko violence.

If it means that you’ll learn how to respect her
I’ll sing a siren song of a selky spectre
spitting fishbones
and fears
I’ll string along the threads of truth
stitching thistles
twitching ears

If it purify the colonised bodies and minds
I’ll flint the fire
and fold the willow into a basket weave
hidden under hides
and sweat out every tear denied
and every stolen grief.

If it emancipates
from the pain we recreate
I’ll get over myself
and make space for the voices of the villians
and listen to the illness
until I hear the medicine within it.

You see to heal the rapist, the racist, the haters, the hopeless
We need to dry the leaves, brew the teas, steep the tinctures, chew the poultice
We need to slow down and listen to the silenced heart until it’s no longer voiceless.

We don’t need more shame, more blame, more hurt, more hatred.
We need more home, more known, more care, more kindred.
You cannot heal the parts of yourself that you have discarded
And those who live denied are the ones who suffer hardest.

We are all the colonised and coloniser,
The dehumanised and the life denier
We are all heretic and fundamental
naive yet instrumental.

Scared and scarred and sacred.
So lie down by the cairn
and let the earth be naked.

Our bodies are an altar
Our bodies are an altar
We are all born of wind,
and soil,
and stars,
and water.