As/Is

2.07.2006

Sweeney Astray

Sweeney spat flakes of monologue
to an invisible foe in room 108
before he took the plunge.

A flyer of thought
who'd lick round corners like a knife wind

sweep up shined steps and
cyclone through the swinging doors
of a red brick kip called home

trailing his underbelly aura of tramp glamour
through a smell of pine fresh floor polish
lining the corridors
like yellow smoke in Eliot's Prufrock.

He'd wake to reality's nightmare
cursing in a feral wheeze or grunt
and shout about

"cunts....bastards....lazy wankers dying of cancer"

then bang the wall with his fists
to start the day dissolved in tears.

He never socialised
or idled with others

just the one time of a long chat he had with
himself in the communal area
before Oisin complained to the warden
who shut him up and
stuffed him back in the dressing room
where he worked on the final scene.

A plasterboard box he left whistling
as he stepped onstage at the shelter
deep acting
at 8 12 and 4
dressed in a drab bundle of black rags
clutching a mug

with a look to no one
and none to him.

What demonic cause sucked his life
away behind the eyes
and forced his lips to pucker gumward;
curdle twisted words in his mouth and
draw sweat onto the one shirt he ever wore
and never took off?

Years of liquid cosh and ECT
beat and drained Sweeney's blood bound scrap with life
nuked his mind
and buckled his passion on an anvil of despair

razed thought to desert where a phantom's whisp
frazzled his nut to
a brain baking recipe
the gards scraped from a pavement
and time scrubbed from the memory
of other residents the day of his exit.

posted by Coirí Filíochta on Tuesday, February 07, 2006

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I wonder did you ever see "Rise Up, Lovely Sweeney" by Tom McIntyre at the Peacock in the mid eighties? I was in it. This poem has the same disturbing energy, the same lunacy, the same compulsions. The play itself sadly didn't get published but the main speech (aria, more like) Appalachia was spoken by Tom Hickey every night, over my dead body, and it's etched into my soul. It's published in The Word for Yes.

# posted by  Dermod on 11:58 AM

 

Powerful images. One can feel the
accumulating rage, alienation and desperation in this piece.

# posted by  Rachel Phillips on 9:12 PM

 

Good work. Vivid.

# posted by  Nobius on 4:25 PM

 

Cheers me dears, you are very kind to be so supportive of a literary bum such as myself.

# posted by  Coirí Filíochta on 9:39 AM

 

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