Dancing Night at the beach

and youd be bouncing of the walls

the red lemonade was pounding in your blood

waiting for you with the ice melted and

the heavy set lad with the accordion was putting

the skinny boy strumming the guitar under pressure

while the drummer smiled the knowing look

of a lad who smoked rollies and whacky tacky

and didnt mind if the walls fell in or the women wept

as

the red lemonade called your name and your dad told stories

and your pupils widened with the additives which the gobshites

got rid of on account of the widening of

childers pupils

and the wall of limerick met the siege of Ennis and

the smoke rose

and the man at the bar laughed and slapped

the auld lad on the back for the gift of the yarns

and you bounced of the walls

and she had brown hair and green eyes and flares

and she smelt of daisies and sand

and she was 12 and you were 12

and she smiled back and the music rose

and the auld one in front of you

lost the run of herself and near swung you

into the wall and the siege rose higher and higher

and then dreams were lifting inside of your head

and the ice was melted and the fizz was fizzing in your stomach

and the farmers wife let you down and you kept spinning

and the girl who made sand castle with you in the morning sun caught your

eye and your heart smiled and the floor went away from you and you

bounced of the walls again

and your auld lad stood tall with

his perfect suit and the hair groomed and you were proud

he cut a figure and your ma wore dresses fit for films and

the accordion player lost all control of himself and the ballroom expanded and shrank

and they were yelping and cats were hiding and the gunniess

was spilling and the smell of the beach mingled with the smell of sweat and lynx and old spice

and you spun and spun and spun and

inside where no one would ever see

or touch

or understand

where words grew and grew

and thoughts formed and scrambled and reformed

beyond the taste of the red lemonade

where cross eyes and speech impediments

were essential and beautiful and magic

and crazy wildness

and a soft touch

and a strong grip

and the banshee’s wail

was a gift and a wonder and the well of freedom

well deep

in there

the 12 year

wished it would never end

Frankie at lunch time writing stuff 2nd august 2023

Daisy jones and the six

Daisy daisy show me your garden true I’m half crazy all for the love of you

The mark from her fingers fades from crimson to white and I can feel the heat fade and I pray for the cold to leave well enough alone to stay far distant so the touch of her slap streaked across my heart will never be lost for with its loss melts the touch of her upon my soul

There’s something different unique unusual undefinable in her presence in her trail in her voice in her song the one she sings alone. Searching for something someplace she doesn’t know exists but hopes. Hopes it will wait for her for her song for her passion

And the world pulls back fights back anger against the beauty her wings to be clipped her love to be broken her mind to be seen her thoughts to be erased eradicated. A world of fools doing foolish things

Essential in the darkness her candle her truth her innocence her fragility her dreams her delusions her illusions

He wanders in the shadows in the darkness he sleeps grasping for the world but only wanting the moment the minute frozen the thought observed preserved the idea completed the theory proven the concept born created and evolved. Anger pain delusions illusions dreamed and forgot remembered and surrendered

Afraid of the fear of the need for her blankets and shimmers The moment the look the knowing the sense the feeling he knows she knows they know . It’s there forever from time began to time finishes and beyond the truth can’t fade the love can’t burn the lust can’t smoulder.

Words become songs and songs become tales and their fingers touch and their minds mend and bend and send them from two to one together with harmony and a chorus and they are different and strange and beautiful and the world is blind and the sea not deep and the sky not blue but all shades of pink and green and purple and shadow

Frankie writing words for daisy reminds him of the dragonfly

She will be for ever Flittering on the moon skirting the wheat chaffs of the sun while the song caresses the wonder inside.

Mental health

Sure he was always a bit quiet

No harm in that

No harm in him

Oh don’t know

Shocking temper

Mild to nuclear

Took no prisoners

Blood flowed

Ah no more than before

A bit more

Sure the size of him he has plenty to spare

His memories flowed

Away and back

To and fro

Meandering here and there

Just beyond reach

Then cascading in

I’m in in in they screamed

The voices screamed

No he roared and he cried

And bleed from his eyes

The head case

Ah no harm in him

He liked to touch the petals

The petals

Caress the petals to feel the quiet

To sense the calm of nature

To hear the colours he closed his eyes

And dreamt of the leaves falling

Drilled a hole in his head

Nah his lower back

And his head

Nah that’s just mental

A rumour

A procedure

So many thoughts to decipher

Intelligence breeds the madness

A strange world for one who thinks

Too much

Way too much

Can’t change a leopards spots

Or a mule’s nature

An inclination to be thick

Thick as fuck

He figures stuff out you know

Solves problems

Sees the wood

For the trees

Awful dense jungles

In the labyrinths of the thoughts

As they flow from paranoia to dreams

From theories to substance

From imaginations to poems

Drained the black from the white

Pressure he was under pressure

His brain or his mind

His soul or his self

Who knows who cares

Who wonders

He wonders

Why kindness is scorned

Why love is lost

Why lust is carved from stone

When love should be found

And lust melted from the wind

Of a butterfly’s wings

Is he mad

Or bad

Does he dream nightmares

Is he a nightmare

Is his violence in his soul

Is his kindness in his mind

Lost or found

Leave him run free in the field

Wild screaming to the banshee’s air

Calling out to the world

Sure who’d be caring or listening

Not even himself

A funny fucker at times

Strange

Nah just funny

He’d make you laugh

Or smile

Just wants the quiet

Sure who doesn’t

Loads don’t

Loads do

Hasn’t much to say for himself

Would talk the hind legs of a mule

Different strokes for different

Moments in time

Sometimes the words are lost inside

With nothing to say

Or nothing to feel

Just calm

Calm waters are the easiest to disturb

Throw in a pebble and a tsunami

Rips the heart out of the island

Still they drained the black

The pressure gently easing

Close his eyes

Close his eyes

And let his mind see the dreams

He seeks inside

Clean the blood and clean the skin

Refresh the mind

Let the river flow

Let the thoughts

Crash and flow

Gentle and wild

Let me be the man

Who touches the petals

Who talks to himself

Who sleeps in the quiet

Who roars in the night

Whose brain works and works

And travels here and there

North to east south to west

To see all the beauty

He can imagine and feel

And write something

Of beauty that meanders over your

Mind and touches your heart

And makes you shiver

And smile and love

Frankie writing after realising mental health is just a fine thread so easily tripped over. Where in lies the blame? Certainly not with anyone else but Frankie himself and not even fully with him for chemicals mix and match and swap and combine and he takes responsibility for everything himself and for his mind and thoughts and anger and the line we walk is one we can balance upon but the tight rope walker has a safety net because no matter how good he is he knows sometimes he will need the net to catch him. Thank god for the doctors and the nurses and the therapists who are our nets . And thanks for the pen and paper or keyboard which is the estuary to the opium of my soul which is my need to write

Why

Do Birds suddenly appear

Every time you need

To see the colours

Behind the morning song

Does the dog come to your side

When it needs you hand

To heal its aching throat

Does paranoiac dreams haunt

The reality of your days

Far from the lies outside

The truth inside whispers

The tale you see through

The window opaque with

The species failure to feel

The embrace of the whole

The gentle temple of your mind

The roaring taste in your heart

Does the god they create

Pander to the needs of the

Majority who fail to see

Beauty on the skin if the lost

The wonder of the strange

Do you wake up Sunday morning

With no way to explain the feeling

In your soul.

The sense you had for breakfast

Tasted right so you wanted one

More for desert

Do they feel what they can’t understand

Do they wander from you

Allergic to the presence

To the place you can go

To the sight you can see

Do you smell them from

Across the field

Across the line

Dream the dream

Feel the air

Find the sound

Of the spirit in the sky

But more the sense in the air

Of banshees and ghosts and spirits

And dreamers and writers and

Singers and the lonely and

The lost

And the found and the ones

Who know but feel nothing

Island

Melted languages

Languish a wild

Mix of black and white

Yellow and pink

Talking and whispers

He she they him it

Screaming and crying

Echoing songs in

our one tongue

Embracing our words

Our thoughts

Our dreams

Of wild nights

And mellow days

Wandering

And wondering

Where the end

Meets the line

Beyond the oceans

Grasp

Unreachable on the

Islands grass holding

Hands with nettles

Dancing round

Broken thorns

Of red cheeked roses

Cherishing bodhran

Hammered alcoholics

Bending notes from

Rusty harps

Dating polished fiddle

Players clay stained

Arthritic bows

Naked toes stripped

Of failed lusts

And forgotten play

And tender loves

And stolen rocks

Molten hearts

Swept in wind wild

Foam

The Atlantic yells

While the Irish Sea

Whines

Our nature to the west

Our sighs to the east

Our brethren to north

The beached sand south

Laments in glory

Slagging and shagging

Dragging and laughing

While beyond

In a turf bog vacuum

Death awaits but once

While in our smiles

Of misery or joy

The days slide behind

On the abacus of living

An infinite life ahead

Each breath a step

From wonder to

Beauty to wisdom

To who we are

Memories renewed

Of ancient celts

And wild hounds

And wooden boats

Of clay

Frankie writing of who it is to be Irish

Boyne Writers 24.11.22

Childhood

There was cheers and bees

And apple tree

A river of swans

Where the dawn

Rose in the honey valley’s shadow

We walked and ran

Shot guns of wood

And kissed a girl

And swam in a pool

There

Were dogs with mange

And cats with claws

And a mongrel who followed

Us along trails of dreams

And screams

And springtime treats

With tayto crisps

Mixed with yellow snacks

She was wild

In the head and she smiled

And held my heart

I should have held her hand

And the fish whooshed by and

The gooseberries would cut the stomach out of you

And when it rained the sun was shortly behind

The cowboys killed the Indians

And the soldiers won the war

Before dinner and

The Vikings beat the rest

Before tea

And we smiled

And we laughed

And the music was disco

And trad

And our jeans were ripped

And jumpers were from Dublin

In a black plastic back sent by

An aunt with older boys

With longer limbs and stronger accents

Who were all sophisticated

And the beach was once a year

And she was from cork

And tanned and sweet

And we played ball

And swam and build castles

And the parents drank

Guinness and brandy

And the bar was filled with smoke

And we sat and listened

Of stories with a hint of truth

And he carried us home on his shoulders across

The sands

And school had mad Brothers with metre sticks

For the hidings and teachers in need of prison

And laughter and we took the bruises

And ran and played and forgot the rest

Amidst the noise and the clatter

You stand inside yourself

Comfortable in your silence your words flow gentle in your mind the rapid thinking the peaceful reflections and internal smiles wam the hearth of who you are

Retuning to the true self you open the door to the calm you once loved but feared

If only in days of youth you could have recognised the strength embraced by the gentle touch and the near silent whisper of words

The shake is now gone from the echo of your voice. The embarrassment of a younger you the nervous tremor passes with the scars of life .

When you talk now it’s a whisper which comes from so deep inside of you it’s volume has reduced to near silence yet the words are full of the child inside you never lost

How can you be the writer you are with out clasping dearly to the child inside

The one who held wonder at everyone and everything the beauty of the sea the sounds of the daffodil the touch of the bee the colour of the rain filled sky when the sun defracts the crystals

Even when the volume rises the softness has now returned and the smile of peace with a world where sometimes the sky is a shade of purple and sometimes red and sometimes a vivid blue. Where the man with the cup outstretched touches your soul and you don’t know if he’s tale is true but it doesn’t matter because when his knuckle hits yours he reveals himself to be your brother by virtue of kindred spirits of lost souls who aren’t lost at all but a different shade of the human condition.

Lost to the world of man made mind mangling muscle massing medical mistakes you lost a bit of yourself while gaining a bit you would never forego for it was the journey which mattered but the journey now is softer and gentle and your mind wisps to the ease of the summer stream and your soul touches the world with the gentle kindness of the ladybirds dream

The need to fight the love of a good scrap the blood flow of the lift is still there but different . A changed perspective a controlled rage of beauty where the physical utilisation of the body mingles with the working of the brain. A peace within the chaos

The making of a man who was old when he was young and now young when old. The fake bravery of the drug replaced with the returned courage of the gentle. The loud and boisterous a sand burying shield no longer needed when inside their is no storm to defeat

And the pen feeds your soul. The moments when you transcend reality to touch the reality of the story growing inside your mind the smile as the words flow and when you read them and the people laugh and smile and you feel a warmth because you could sense one of them needed to laugh and one learned something and the rest just for those five minutes forgot their worlds and abandoned themselves to your paragraphs and your gentleness touches the world with a tiny slice of joy

Frankie writing on his return to the peace of the introvert who now understands the whisper reverberates beyond the reach of the scream . The picture is of me with my mam and my aunt chrissie the two most intelligent people I have ever met who’s humour and joy have touched my heart and my mind making me laugh and ponder and love. They have always understood my words and concepts. They have given me their thoughts and understandings and concepts and theories and stories and made me think more than any lecture or book by people of educational prowess. I am forever in their debt. When I hadn’t even a whisper when silence was my own means of communication they were the guardians of my self on this reality which sometimes is difficult terrain for us who aren’t quite the standard creatures of a poorly defined normality

The wisdom of the scars

Wisdom lies

Where the line ends

And along the trail

Of livid white

The cut of pain

Opens the flow

The scarlet path

Tracing the

Sprinkling stars

Where

Clustered thoughts

Delve beneath the skin

Waiting to reveal

The man you become

And the lady you are

For

the mind

Deprived

Of the scars

Loses

The fertiliser

of the soul

Frankie writing stuff

St Patrick’s day

Happy st Patrick’s day

To all the people

In the world

From Ireland

Everyone of you is beautiful

In your souls and minds

From Frankie and Lukey mcgivney father and son

Irish strength

When the crown killed

Our children with hunger

Feed through greed

A nation learned to fight

By

Talking with words

Rhyming lyrical beauty

While saying nothing at all

A rich culture

Devoid of material wealth

Adorned with tales

And sceals

Of Swans sailing across

The wide sea to heavens door

Silence holds the strength

The foreigners never could

Sense within the feelings

Of the mothers in the uplands

Who dug stones with hands

Worn of nails

And skin trailed with tears

Wept for children

Starved

A genocide fed

Of potatoes rotted

And crops on ships

Set sail for English lands

Frankie mcgivney writing of a march day after listening to a historian waxing lyrical with mr tiernan