{"id":11226,"date":"2021-04-05T13:15:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T12:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=11226"},"modified":"2021-04-05T13:15:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T12:15:33","slug":"poetry-elliot-moriarty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/04\/05\/poetry-elliot-moriarty\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry – Elliot Moriarty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas\u00a0of\u00a0Bari<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another night fifth in a row
\nunsettled but unfrozen
\nthinking I get it I get it
\n(I don’t, but I have skin and nerves):<\/p>\n

Whatever sustains someone doing what you do,
\nI mean never mind the privations! that unseen hand,
\nShoulder cupped, steering towards the leper colony \u2013
\nthe Big Bewk saints, the Seenitalls, Tell-you-what-I\u2019d
\ndo-if-I-were-yous\u2026
\n(enthusiasts who sleep one to a room
\nand who if we just roll up that sleeve
\nfor a couple hundred spare months)
\nyes that too. If we just….<\/p>\n

And you break away and plod on
\nAs they foretell your grit will kill you.<\/p>\n

Well this too, a mile away: Perpetual Motion!
\nWind or tide or compressed chipboard or wherever they’re
\nfrisbeeing the tax breaks this current? cycle?
\ninto laps of pals slash creditors ABCing
\na redesigned polity, where battery tech \u2013
\nSorry \u2013 Nology \u2013 excuseme, will\u2026
\n(impilmentated\u00a0across<\/em>\u00a0the economy)
\nWill save\u2026<\/p>\n

The child in the lithium mine, fingers
\ndeformed, the first knuckle gone.
\nOverheads, always overheads.
\nBut we’ll outsource to Europa
\nwhen the talent pool is Exhausted.<\/p>\n

Which will take a while yet.<\/p>\n

Half a mile away:<\/p>\n

Our Vegan Monday grinners,
\nOff setting off in the fake jeep,
\nEerie silence til the gas kicks in
\nOver Charlemont bridge, arc of
\nOur hero stolidly crossing,
\nDashboard screams, driver jolts,
\nkeels, (rest of car buried in phones)
\n“Watch where YOU’RE going!” he starts
\nTo shout
\nAs the eyes turn
\nthe whole corpus twists
\ntoward him and through him \u2013
\nan air-conditioner chill then gone,
\nno trace in the rear-view.
\nHe tells himself he <\/em>dodged, but\u2026
\nThis has been happening
\nMore often lately. Overtired, that\u2019s all.
\nNewstalk. And an early night tonight.<\/p>\n

They sleep eight hours.
\nBelatedly, worry entered their guts
\nonce they had genetic skin in the game, but
\nOurs will be fine: Business Cantonese, crypto,
\nYoung Scientist, fun size beers (better
\nthey’re in the house than eff-knows-where) and
\nThe Talk About…
\nThey sleep nine hours.
\nA theatrical yawn.
\nBack to the salt mine, conference call.<\/p>\n

I get it in the sense that I wouldn’t either,
\nI think you’re right, and if I had your honed instincts
\nand scalpel humour\u2014
\nBut on days such as this, fifth and counting
\nSurely a den of thieving fuckers is better
\nthan another wet gutter screaming match
\nwith a fifteen hour night?
\nHusband your fuel and your wits. Arm yourself
\nwith a rock or a crunched up can
\nin your goto pocket. Breathe out, finish anything you’ve left,
\nstride towards the LED light.<\/p>\n

Don’t be late, they’ll lock you out to die.<\/p>\n

\u201cyou’ve made your point
\nyou holy few
\nyou’ve made your point!\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus Christ, like.<\/p>\n

I mean Jesus Christ, they’d fling you in
\nthe Liffey stamp “buried at sea” on the docket\u2014
\nQuickly \u2013 pick three: Psychiatric History, Known to Garda\u00ed,
\nMintil Hilth\u2122, Engagement Izzyous \u2013 which is why \u2013
\nRefusal, Reluctance, the cracks \u2013 \u00a0and again this is
\nAgain why \u2013 yet another \u2013 yet
\nAnother No Fixed Address – sponge, waste, nosh Abel
\nfor\u2026For?
\nWell, whether the brown liar was once his thing,
\nHe wasn\u2019t using: he wins. He haunts at his pleasure.<\/p>\n

Remember that as ever decimating rootless scum
\nwas an inexpensive way to impress upon sit-in
\nstudents down a year of Law, sneering at
\nthe empty Jay One cancellation threat: –
\n\u201cAustralia America Canada New Zealand,
\nwe will see them all while you\u2019re here minding
\nYour handicapped kids, you inbred bogscum\u201d but
\nbut what if – surely a contingent?:<\/p>\n

Cracks invisible under carpeted floors,
\nThe weight of Relying On You, son,
\nAnd such a long way down.
\n\u201cWe know you\u2019ll get your act together.
\nPerhaps you\u2019re just overthinking, your\u2014\u201d
\nFogged vocation? or, The base fear:
\nmarooned and slowly draining amid the dying
\namongst the dying in between the bonesunk husks,
\nour holy dying knackers dying at midday without a fuss,
\ntown on a weekday, going peaceful after years howling
\ninto their mobiles their streets those trams,
\ndying for no reason, dying without ever even
\npresuming to arrogate a version of what same
\nArtsblock Stephen Heroes claim\u2019s birthright
\nto lose, yet perhaps too they\u2019re just
\ndying for a lungful of a dreamt cracked Rome:<\/p>\n

nicotine and subway vents and rumour.
\nHarlem, The Bowery, The Hands That.<\/p>\n

Twenty years later the bootlace daredevils\u2019
\nConspicuous Return: Lo! It Can Be Done Son, says
\nthe cute one, a quiet deal on a struggling licence
\n(add strip lighting, carvery, Guinness mid-strentt\u2019)
\nWhile the others…<\/p>\n

Vanished Camden or Rockaway or Justfuckedoff,
\nnever left the tower no matter how far they fled
\nfrom the ripped places those ripped up were next sent,
\nthose banished home staring at the wall of unsaid,
\nsleepless over decisions unmade, failed
\nstabs at intercession with mute smiling friends
\nthat went early on,<\/p>\n

back when the junk suddenly dropped from the sky
\nlike manna \u2013 sufficient for each day<\/p>\n

turns out most people don’t want to die,
\nso explain it to me again.<\/p>\n

*Concurrent to the events depicted in noted docu-drama Rambo III, western cities were flooded with cheap Afghan heroin. Dublin – largely unfamiliar with opiates \u2013came out of it badly.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Feature Image: Daniele Idini<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas\u00a0of\u00a0Bari Another night fifth in a row unsettled but unfrozen thinking I get it I get it (I don’t, but I have skin and nerves): Whatever sustains someone doing what you do, I mean never mind the privations! that unseen hand, Shoulder cupped, steering towards the leper colony \u2013 the Big Bewk saints, the Seenitalls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":11232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[31,92,2708,2909,2910,2911,2912,2914,2915,6272,7341],"class_list":["post-11226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-31","tag-92","tag-dublin-poetry","tag-elliot","tag-elliot-moriarty","tag-elliot-moriarty-dublin-poetry","tag-elliot-moriarty-poetry","tag-elliot-moriarty-writer","tag-elliot-of-moriarty-nicholas-of-bari","tag-moriarty","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}