Poguemahone, p.30
Poguemahone, page 30
the body of the light bulb.
It’s just a pity she hadn’t mentioned them to Luke
but she couldn’t, seeing
as he had been back in Wales at the time.
Because, in actual fact, he had experienced
the exact same thing
on another occasion.
One particular night when all was quiet
after they’d had a real good smoke-up
& enjoyed some of Troy’s best rogan josh.
Because did I tell you that as well as everything
else
Troy McClory, man could he cook
o what a genius
& Luke could still taste the
pungent spice on his lips
as he lay there, blissed out, snugdeep
in a sleeping bag.
O, man alive, Lukey o Luke Luke. . .
Luke Powys, aged nineteen, all the way from a
South Wales pit-town.
With it soon transpiring, in his case
that in terms of undergoing inner turmoil
Luke Powys was far from being alone.
With recent events in 45 Brondesbury Gardens
in the process of exacting a heavy price
on the potter.
Although, as no small number of neutral observers
had already pointed out, it would have done
the Welshman no harm at all
had he elected to significantly curb
if not altogether terminate
his considerable intake of both narcotics
and alcohol altogether
instead of moderately curtailing it
a fact of which he was volubly proud.
With the truth, of course, being
that he was still drinking heavily
&, regular as clockwork,
was still to be seen at the counter
of The Bedford Arms
consuming bottle after bottle of
Newcastle Brown Ale, along with
chasers of Crested Ten whiskey
when he wasn’t engaged in continuous
stoned games of pool in the back room with strangers.
Where they had only just
started with the latest fad of
‘underground discotheques’,
where everyone now
so unlike before
appeared to have taken the trouble
to dress up to the nines
in kipper ties
& polyester
not to mention
eight-inch platform heels,
their myriad reflections
reflected in
speckling mirror balls
revolving above
a continuously flashing, tessellated floor.
Which wasn’t what Luke & his friends were
used to at all
with their tatty ponchos and stonewashed
jeans
not to mention the music
its beat a continuous non-stop shuffle
dance dance dance
urged the deejay
like a space explorer
gum-chewing in mirror shades
in his cylindrical glass booth
high above
with a twin turntable
pushing buttons &
sliding levers
dance dance dance
to the discotheque rhythm
where the hi-hat drumming
infectiously rolled on like a loop
beneath the baroque strings
and gliding horns
& Luke all glassy-eyed now
like some stranger in
his own skin, discomfited
by all these elements
which, all of a sudden, seemed so alien –
so far from the parties they’d had in
the garden
where drifting smoke from the barbecue
rose up above the sounds of Captain Beefheart
& Jethro Tull
white-hippie days
so at odds with this,
skinny women wearing
great big hats
and shaven-headed black men
sporting pastel sharp-cut suits,
interested in nothing
only dancing
boogie-ing, yes
and the all-nite party
no books
no politics
high on drugs –
stimulants,
astonishingly,
whose names he didn’t
even
know.
Which was hard to credit
but
true,
nonetheless.
Something is leaving
but you don’t know what it is
do you, Mr Powys,
he heard himself say
now you who were once
on the inside laughing
at everyone there
on the outside looking
in
why, that is where you are
now yourself
how did that happen
that happened suddenly
didn’t it, Mr Powys,
with those self-styled psychic warriors
all of a sudden having become
citadel-storming
establishment-burning
children of the revolution
no longer
hiding your eyes
behind dark shades
partied-out hippies
with their Socialist Worker badges
lying slumped,
supernumerary,
in their rainbow beads and
tie-dyes
a shadow gliding past
the decade of the sun.
‘It’s time to take the A-Train, my friend,’
Luke heard a soft, grating voice begin to play
inside his head,
‘with the only problem being I don’t
know where it’s headed. One thing’s for sure.
It ain’t going home.’
Lifting yet another glass of whiskey
as the rhythm section thumped
while he did his best
to relegate such unnerving thoughts –
the idea of them not being numero uno,
of being at the very centre of everything! –
to the edge of his mind.
With them only, even more,
infecting its core
& he found himself stammering blearily, to no one:
‘It’s history, Powys.
Your motley crew
of ragbag nihilists – it’s finished, my friend.
Your privileged time in this world is done,
or can’t you see it?’
Repeatedly muttering those same sentiments
as though attempting to precisely determine
not only their particular sense and meaning
but also that of every single aspect of his surroundings
– most pressingly the ebbing, flowing, super-clean
extended electronic, highly mechanised
and deeply sensual nature of the music palpitating
from the space-shuttle booth –
hissing, heliumated – with that
distinctive, string-heavy chunk-a-chunk
ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-
ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-!
As, in their genital-hugging polyester trouser suits,
the lissome dancers in ice-cold sequins
and disco glitter
gyrated underneath the
revolving mirror balls
to the thudding
bumph bumph beat and the basso profundo
of soul-man Barry White
who insisted baby yes
yes baby that
love could conquer all.
Except, I’m afraid, not for you,
astral traveller inner cosmonaut,
Luke Powys –
because everyone gets their chance
& you and your friends – you’ve had yours.
Your time in the garden
your day in the sun
like I say – it’s almost over,
taken a walk.
So, screw the poetry of e.e.
cummings,
the Bhagavad Gita,
The Angry Brigade,
Angela Davis
& the Furry Freaks.
Because, whether or not you accept it –
your dreams are,
already, passing into myth.
Capiche?
Which were the last words remembered by Luke Powys
that night
as, back in Brondesbury Gardens
now in an inebriated haze
and having failed to wring any sense
out of the broken stereo
he had stumbled, snorting defiantly,
across the floor, aiming a hopelessly inaccurate
swing with his boot at the infuriatingly recalcitrant
machine.
‘What’s going on? I say – what’s going on out there, man? That
you, Luke?’
he had overheard Troy calling out from the bedroom
but decided with a chuckle to ignore him completely.
And, within a matter of seconds, had fallen into a
deep deep sleep.
Not suspecting for a moment what was going to happen
that he was on the point of encountering Cailín Éan Aberfan
The Bird-Girl Of Aberfan.
Luke hadn’t actually been at school that day.
‘You’re not going in this morning,’ his mother had said,
‘because even by looking at you I can tell that
you’re in no fit state.’
As a result of which
at his mother’s unswerving insistence,
Luke spent the day tucked up in his bed and being as far away from
his school as he could possibly be.
Yes, far from his desk in the front row where his teacher, a lovely
lady in her forties, was explaining to all his classmates just how
funny and flighty fairy tales can be. Especially in the way that not
only the same tales but often the very same characters as well,
except maybe in different guises, can often turn up in all cultures
around the world.
With some of them being funny and some of them being sad – and,
just as often, both at the very same time.
Take the German kobold, she continued – and no doubt Luke would
have been rapt had he been there, being very interested in such
things.
Yes, take the German kobold, his teacher went on, a diminutive race
who live far underground and who are extremely hostile to all of mankind.
And who are not unlike, she smiled, some of the little rascals one
tends to find in this class – in that they play tricks but look
after lost children and guide them home.
And the English fairies – tiny sprites who dwell in lakes and rivers
and who maintain perhaps an ambivalent attitude to the human race.
But, the teacher concluded, perhaps no other people have
differentiated between the various forms of supernatural entities as have the Irish.
Strictly speaking, the fairy creatures of Irish folklore belong to the otherworld. They co-exist with humankind but generally remain invisible to human eyes.
The colliery tip began slipping to the side of the mountain at
approximately 9.15a.m. on October 21, 1966 – killing, eventually,
116 children and 28 adults.
When Flicka and Luke had played World Cup, Luke had always
been George Cohen and Flicka Bobby Moore the captain, sometimes wearing plastic sunglasses that he had got out of a lucky bag, kicking the ball as high as he could, shouting: ‘Cross it, cross it –
use the wing, Lukie! The wing, my friend – come on.’
He had even had a special World Cup jumper,
a red one with three lions that his grandfather had brought him after
a trip to London.
Luke never got over it – because Flicka Evans wasn’t the only
friend he had lost, even though he was his best one.
Though he rarely spoke of it, ever since the 21 Oct of that year, his
relationship with the world had never been the same. Always that
little bit dubious and fragile, he now found it conniving, selfish and
untrustworthy, with part of his soul burnt away.
Only not gone down abruptly in flames, like Saigon –
but ruined in a much more subtle and substantial fashion,
as though erased, wiped away – by a single
deft swab of a giant blue thumb of ice.
Which was why they had found him one night
on the landing of Brondesbury Gardens
with a knife – a kitchen knife, waving it –
hysterically pointing it at something.
‘I can hear it!’ he was shouting, ‘It’s over there! Surely you can
hear it! It sounds like birds. . .!’
That’s what they had called it at the funeral – the mass funeral, at
the open graves.
‘These precious creatures born of our hearts,’ the vicar had said,
‘Gone at last, those precious little birdies – to rest with Him in His
beautiful bower. Along with God at the end of the sky.’
Who would ever have believed
yes, I mean
who would ever have believed
ever, really,
that the memory of that night waving his knife
on the landing in the squat
swearing there was something lurking in
behind the skirting
would never, not properly –
be seen to fade from Luke Powys’ mind.
Because, after all, we grow up, we forget.
& let’s remember
it was a long time ago
But that wasn’t what happened to Luke.
O no
not at all
in fact, if anything
the memory
it grew
stronger
&
stronger
&
more vivid
with every
single
day
that passed
And was always to be apprehended
just lying there
a little beyond the perimeter of his brain.
Just as it was, many years later
when, leaving the hospital where he was now employed as an
ambulance driver & looking extremely smart in his white
paramedic’s uniform – he had been coming just past
Selfridges when he heard that same familiar sound,
and found himself distracted by what at first had been
nothing but a blur
slowly transforming into the unmistakable waving image of a
little boy
standing there alone, just a little ways
up ahead of him,
on the traffic island directly opposite Oxford Circus tube.
With his eyes twinkling as he smiled:
‘Lo, Luke,’ the paramedic heard him say, flicking back his
darkish hair. ‘Lo, Luke,’ he repeated, ‘Lo, Luke.’
And then was gone.
That was all he had said, his best friend Flicka from Aberfan.
And one thing was for sure – Luke Powys was lucky he
survived, what with the way his vehicle had mounted the
kerb.
As, indeed, had been the bus-stop passengers.
Well, anyway, as I say
those visions ‘proper’, they’d begun that
night
when someone had turned down
the cover of his sleeping
bag
as he lay there licking his lips
& dreaming about the rogan josh
that the famous Troy McClory
had made
hello, said Flicka Evans
I really have missed
you so much
Luke Powys
I really & truly
have missed you
Luke
Luke
Luke
&
I suppose, here in Cliftonville
or anywhere else
most folks would
say ah sure at the end of the day
what is it
it’s just an auld story
like something the old people
maybe
used to tell us all long ago
another wee birdie
a hoodwinky fib
of the Margaret Rutherford variety
one to be taken, for sure, with
a pinch of salt
the way that Una’s always
coming out with things
& then not following them up
with an explanation that
might make any sense
but then, sure, of course
aren’t the country people
in Ireland renowned
across the world for that
wee fibby mc birdies
they don’t even know
they’re doing it.
‘You couldn’t believe their oath,’ you’ll
sometimes, often good-naturedly,
hear visitors say.
& maybe that’s true
but this much I will tell you
that you cannot doubt their abilities
whenever it comes to the fields
of drama & variety
with Una’s plans for her Cliftonville
Capers now rattling along
full-steam ahead
the greatest show ever in The Cliftonville
Bay Hotel
she promises
pinning up a whole pile more
new posters
really colourful ones
with everybody now
getting caught up in the excitement
even Margaret Rutherford
&
Connie The Princess
but here, what am I talking about
especially
Margaret Rutherford & Connie
The Princess.
With everyone, as I say
over the moon with excitement
wondering what my sister is going to do next
coming barrelling along
directing operations
with Butley Henderson,
I think,
being the most
agitated of all
with it being nearly impossible to
get him to stop interrupting proceedings
on the stage
blowing these solos
willy-nilly
on his cornet
especially since he heard Terry Wogan died.
No, you just can’t stop him parping away
delivering his very own special & personal
