From the Gallery

1
 
Christ, you seem to float above your mother's lap.
The halos of the assembled
look like next year's piercings.
 
Polystyrene Christ!
                 Cardboard cut-out Christ!
                                  My biggest fear is that I will
                                                   bloody sneeze all over you.
                                                   Two of the assembled look
                                                   vaguely disenchanted -
                                  one gives me the eye as her
                 finger runs and tingles
the spear-slit of corpus
Christi's side.
 
2
 
When you are
close enough to me
to see the cracks in the
paint on my forehead,
applied centuries ago,
then (and only then) will
I relax and flake
away those years of
pigment and
opinion and
be a fresh,
blank
canvas
for
you.

3
 
Europa is being raped by a bull
while her friends
nonchalantly look on.
One bids her a pithy farewell,
two barely give her regard.
 
A god can rape whoever the hell he wants, I suppose.
 
I can't do anything
from this bench either -
no flower garland nor ornamental torch
would help me
to help her.
 
I'd just look stupid and
I am no classicist, anyway.
 
4
 
James Barry looking sickly as Timanthes,
I must leave you behind as
I have an appointment with the wife of William Leech.
 
She is waiting,
glowing green radiant under a sunshade,
                 glancing deftly at herself
leaving a convent garden,
                 wearing white and brushing lilies
in her husband's
dream.

And when I leave I walk
at a rhythm against the
shuddering buses
of Trinity street.
 
And I don't mean that things make massive amounts of sense
or that I've just been imbued and dipped in a new-found confidence.
I'm just a little bit pleased with myself. And
that is all as much as that
is that.