When the priest made his entrance on the altar on the stroke of 10:30,
He looked like a film star at an international airport
After having flown in from the other side of the world,
As if the other side of the world was the other side of the street;
Only, instead of an overnight bag slung over his shoulder,
He was carrying the chalice in its triangular green veil--
The way a dapper comedian cloaks a dove in a silk handkerchief:
I'd like to say how glad I am to be here with you this morning.

You could see quite well that he was genuinely glad--
As if, in fact, he had been actually forward to this
Sunday service,
Much the way I had been looking forward to it myself;
As if, in fact, this was the big moment of his day--of his week,
Not merely another ritual to be sanctimoniously performed.
He was a small, stocky, handsome man in his forties
With a big mop of curly grey hair
And black, horn-rimmed, tinted spectacles.
I am sure that more than half the women in the church
Fell in love with him on the spot--
Not to mention the men.
Myself, I felt like a cuddle.
The reading from the prophet Ezekial (17:22-24)
Was a piece about cedar trees in Israel;
It is a long way from a tin of steak-and-kidney pie
For Sunday lunch in a Dublin bedsit
To cedar trees in Israel.
The epistle was worse--
St Paul on his high horse and, as nearly always,
Putting his hoof in it.
The Gospel, however, was home base;
The parable of the mustard seed as being the kingdom of heaven;
Now, then, the homily, at best probably inoffensively boring.

It's Father's Day--this small, solid, serious, sexy priest began--
And I want to tell you about my own father
Because none of you knew him.
If there was one thing he liked, it was a pint of Guinness;
If there was on thing he like more than a pint of Guinness
It was two pints of Guinness.
But then when he was fifty-five he gave up drink.
I never knew why, but I had my suspicions.
Long after he had died my mother told me why:
He was so proud of me when I entered the seminary
That he gave up drinking as his way of thanking God.
but he himself never said a word about it to me--
He kept his secret to the end. He died from cancer
A few weeks before I was ordained a priest.
I'd like to go to Confession--he said to me:
OK--I'll go and get a priest--I said to him:
No--don't do that--I'd prefer to talk to you.
Dying, he confessed to me the story of his life.
How many of you here at Mass today are fathers?
I want all of you who are fathers to stand up.

Not one male in transept or aisle or nave stood up--
It was as if all the fathers in the church had been caught out
In the profanity of their sanctity,
In the bodily nakedness of their fatherhood,
In the carnal deed of their fathering;
Then, in ones and twos and threes, fifty or sixty of us clambered to our feet
And blushed to the roots of our being.
Now--declared the priest--let the rest of us
Praise these men our fathers.
He began to clap hands.
Gradually the congregations began to clap hands, Until the entire church was albaze with clapping hands--
Wives vying with daughters, sons with sons,
Clapping clapping clapping clapping clapping,
While I stood there in a trance, tears streaming down my cheeks:
Jesus!
I want to you about my own father
Because none of you knew him!

[This message has been edited by tomije (edited 03-28-2001).]

Thanks Tom

I have a request: would you post the other poem by him that you sent to me? I'd have to go through long ICQ archives to find it, but I think it is more than worth sharing. I believe it was entitled (something fairly close to) a man in Barcelona smoking a cigarette. Or something!

cal,

ive never seen the one you want tom to send to you.
but, if you like durcan, then you will like two more irish poets;
paul muldoon and seamus heaney.

their rhythm and dryness are similar.

------------------
"warm and soft, in the flesh.." -blondie.

While Muldoon leaves me a bit cold, I have to agree with Turquoise that Heaney is the man. He should have won the Nobel for Lit a half decade before he did. You can't go wrong Seamus. Callie, accept any poems by Heaney that Turquoise is willing to transcribe, but push for "Digging".

But I shall include the Barcelona poem ye asked for....

"Man Smoking a Cigarette in the Barcelona Metro" by Paul Durcan

I was standing in the Metro in the Plaza de Cataluna
Waiting for the rush-hour train to take me home to Tibidabo
When, gazing and staring--as one does gaze and stare--
At the passengers on the opposite platform,
I saw a naked man smoking a cigarette.
I cannot tell you how shocked I was.
He was by no means the only passenger smoking a cigarette
But he was the only naked passenger smoking a cigarette.
It was like seeing a horse in the rush hour smoking in the crowd.
Although I was in a hurry to get home to Tibidabo
I was so shocked that I ran back down the stairs,
Past the buskers and the jasmine-sellers and the Guardia Civil,
And crossed the tunnel to the other side of the tracks.
I went straight up to him and with no beating about the bush
I expressed to him my indignation and my ideological position:
"I happen to regard the naked human body as sacred--
If you want to profane it by smoking a cigarette
Have the decency to put on some clothes
And go about your smoking like everyone else
In shame and concealment, in jeans and ponchos.
What do you think clothes are for but to provide an alibi
For perversity, a cover-up for unnatural practices?"
He snatched the cigarette for his mouth and threw it down
into the tracks,
And immediately he looked like a human being
metamorphosed--
He began to quake with laughter, whinnying, neighing--
As if he were the first horse on earth,
Sauntering up and down the platform of the Metro
All knees and neck,
The bells of his genitals tolling in the groin of time.
As he rode up and down the platform,
In ones and twos and threes the women passengers
Began to fling their smoking cigarettes down in the tracks
And, as they did,
Their garments fell away from them
And they stepped out into themselves cigaretteless,
As with a newborn sense of pride and attraction.
In the end only the men were left--
Fuming aliens--
Chain-smoking in their clobber,
Glaring with clumsy envy
At the naked man, cigaretteless,
Circled round by all of his newly equipped fans
Fanning him with nothing but the fans of their bodies
Riding high on thigh-bone and wrist:
No longer hooked on trains, or appearances, or loss.

Go buy some Durcan!

------------------
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed--they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
--Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in The Third Man

muldoon leaves you cold?

" the entire population of ireland
springs from a pair left to stand
overnight in a pond
in the gardens of trinity college,
two bottles of wine left there to chill
after the act of union."

he is a guru.

------------------
"warm and soft, in the flesh.." -blondie.

this is by one of my favourite sydney poets, benito di fonzo.
he reads his stuff every tuesday, at a performance poetry evening i attend.

wendy, im missing you at poetry...

Her Name Was Champagne

i should have known she was that kind of girl;
the way her magic breasts screamed at me from across the room.
seemingly inviting me to drink from her vineyard.

her eyes fermenting the mood;
the way they barely opened.
her bashful black pupils hiding like school girls caught drinking.

her cabernet lips, rich with red juices.
seperating hesitatingly,
like lubricated lovers on a summer's evening.

she gave me a look that made the blood
rush through my body like an inebriated speed freak
and then she began to move towards me;
her mediterranean thighs struggling to escape
from the black velvet levis that hugged them
tight as a nun.

she told me her name was champagne.

she was as p***ed as a poet with a pension cheque.
yet, continued to consume her own weight in her name sake,
challenging my meagre income to keep pace.
i suggested we exchange phone numbers,
she suggested we exchange bodily fluids.

so we staggered up the drunken sidewalk,
towards my futon.
where she parted her thighs and recieved candlelight kisses against her moistened lips.
i rose like the sun and she showed me the moon
and we cradled each other
like freshly opened bottles of spumante.

i entered her vineyard and drank heavily,
drinking of her flesh 'til dawn
when we passed out, plastered.

next day, half a dozen hours later,
and the baking light of midday wakes me.
i spy her through a half-open eye,
and she thinks im still asleep as she flicks through my possessions
as if my bedroom were a bottlo'.
she moves as efficiently as fermentation
as she packs my stereo into the large vinyl bag
that swallows it like a thirsty bucolic alcoholic.

as she begins to flick through my cds,
every now and again throwing one into the bag,
i follow the line of her body to that
raw plain between the kingdoms of t-shirt and tight pants;
a bountiful land of flesh the tone of bailey's irish cream.
i watch the sleepers and jewels on her belly-button bounce
like drunken peasants as she flicks disappointedly through my wallet.

she zips closed and lifts the bag,
now as heavy as the corpse of a whino with my worldly possessions.

i know that this is my last chance to stop her,
but im anaesthetised
as she moves languidly towards the door,
and i adore her moving languidly towards the door,
and all i can do is admire the way
her muscles manoeuvre the booty.

i should have known she was that kind of girl,
but im not one to whine.

[ 04-03-2001: Message edited by: turquoise ]

I can not explain, much less defend, my reasons for finding Muldoon lacking. It's more a feeling than anything else. However, this di Fonzo character clearly knows how to write a good dirty (yet, not explicit) poem. He leaves me warm and rather ticklish. He may be a little heavy on similies (at least in the one poem I've read) but they are damn good similies.

In return, I'll drop the best written sexy poem about death by the finest Insurance Salesman-Who Got His Ass Kicked by Ernest Hemingway-American Poet--"The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens:

Call the roller of big cigars
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

any poem that talks about 'wenches', is usually guaranteed to be on the bawdy side.

and thank you.
benito is quite a delicious man.
that piece was one of his tamest.

here is another young, hip aussie poet.
lynda hawryluk.

love this.

Generation X.

i grew up in the early seventies.
i grew up with the television on.
i know the lyrics to 'josie and the pussycats'
and still own a 'scooby doo' board game.
i wear unisex fragrances
marketed at me by slouching models with sour faces.
i read important young fiction by cutting edge authors
but when i get together with my friends we talk about kramer
and reminisce about 'sunny boy' flavoured ice.
i have seen 'kids' and 'trainspotting' and 'shallow gave' and 'reservoir dogs'and 'south park' and 'pulp fiction'
and 'natural born killers' and laughed at all the sick bits.
i can quote tarantino films and i know what was in the briefcase because i have read the biography.
a lot of my friends know the dialogue to star wars.
i have seen 'the breakfast club', 'pretty in pink', 'st.elmos fire' and 'sixteen candles' and used to have a deep desire to be just like molly ringwald, 'cause she's so cool.
i wonder what ever did happen to ally sheedy.
i wear converse sneakers and i know what mosh means.
i saw nirvana when they played the 'big day out'.
i think courtney killed kurt and i know all the lyrics to 'smells like teen spirit' and what they mean.
i dont care about anna wood.
i can relate everything back to a movie or a song or a tv show.
i gained more knowledge from trivial pursuit than i did from school.
i shop at stores where they have collected all the good clothes from st. vinnie's to sell.
this way i dont have to look for them myself.
as soon as k-mart put out a grunge look line i decided not to dress like that anymore.
i do not practice any form of religion
i have lived through a decade which is being defined for its lack of events with any historical importance.
i have seen the video for jeremy.
i am employed in a creative arts field,
where i can wear my sneakers to work, or not employed at all.
i will stick with my job for six months then find another non career job.
if i am male i have a goatee,if i am female i have a navel ring.
i dont care about politics, but i know about yugoslavia because there was a benefit cd.
my idol is kevin smith, but kurt is my messiah.
i am going to ruin the world with my apathy and i dont care.
the american press call me a slacker, but i dont care, because thats what the principle in 'back to the future' called marty mc fly and look what happened to him.
i drive an old gas-guzzler or ride a skateboard to work
and i supplement my income by selling hand-made jewelry at markets.
i hold serious discussions on the internet about 'xena' subtext.
i cried when river phoenix died.
i watched 'reality bites' and nearly threw up because it was so condescending, but i own the soundtrack.
i understand that i am a target market.
i suffer from tinnitus.
i have a degree that i wont use.
i live in share houses and have more cds than books.
i know what brit pop is and i like manga.
i have tried jolt and other drinks made from guarana.
i dont have a superannuation fund.
i wouldnt eat at planet hollywood but i own a swatch watch.
there are more programs on my computer than there is food in my fridge.
i am media saturated.
i spout slogans instead of shakespeare.
i believe that less is more.
i have not planned for my future.
i am generation x.
youth orientated magazines pretend they dont use this term, then put issues out on the subject.
i cringe at the thought, then buy the magazines anyway, because i like to read about myself.
i am generation x.

Wow. I respectfully disagree--if I had written that poem, I would have ripped it up, because I would have found it a self-pitying screed, even if it was supposed to be "ironic".

It reminds me of Alanis Morrisette.

Who reminds me of Paula Abdul off her Prozac.

I've read (and written) bad poetry, but wow, did I hate that one. Bring back the pornographic simile guy! Better yet, bring back Muldoon!

fair enough.

i liked it.

di fonzo that is clean enough to put on here is a tall order, however.