Author Archive for M. Toole
GAELTACHT
Driving left of logic
on that mean, misty roundabout
leftover from the pubs of our roots
four-corpse fried full breakfast to boot.
It’s one regular Celt cult over here
splashed Eire green, beaches of pebbled priorities
ages of breaths taken
then released along the boreen.
Blood relatives rolling chimes off lips
brandished by the paths of armies
and mythologies dispatched
by vigilant moss, cutting sea breezes.
Harbor in tears, crashing waves
judged too soon by Cranberry Druids
land of emigrant departures
Fenian convicts on the sea.
Endless red cavalry stopped
in its tracks by angry fir
with only pikes against artillery
potato stars and mad mornings.
And the lough came into the sitting room
for his afternoon tea.
Boatloads of vanquished Blasket Islanders
victims of a fishless ocean
drift toward the rocky An Daingean
refugees from Europe’s most westerly isles.
Paddy’s last name is O’Flaherty
It’s been so and is sure not a rarity
his whiskey pot still
his life a crisp parity.
Where they still speak it
in out of the rain
telling the tale
in careful ancient words.
The Travelers and the Selkie
He stood among a crowd at Drumahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care…
From The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland
by W. B. Yeats
Since before Cuchulain and the raids of Finn McCool the grey sands of Drumcliff Bay had been pounded to fine-grain powder by wizard’s winds off the Dartry Mountains and the indignant surf of the North Atlantic. Relentless beggars in rags, these two and more, had banged against the cottage door all winter in hopes of a vile handout from peat-fired peasants resigned to another morning’s hunger. They’re here again today. He’s here again tonight. She’s gone now.
Away on that far beach, near Sligo town, a myriad of polished pebbles spews flattery onto haughty, high-born driftwood, all dressed up in the lace of sultry seaweed for the sailor’s ball. Enchanted seals, specks of black from the beach, wait for a moment of sunshine. The dance goes on all day, all night, then circles back around for more while freebooting revelers gasp, coming up for a breath of air.
The heavy waves cry out for company, all a constant haze and gaze of the endless luster, the white-eyed sky…only ever blue with a child’s imagination. Laughter wasted on the hardened hide of the planet, a painful monotony to some, a jousting drama to the rest. Is this the end we have long feared or only the very beginning of act one?
Looking to the horizon there is no separation from the sea. It all comes together like salty crepe paper hung mindlessly in apprehension of the grandest of social occasions…but some were not invited. They are the tinkers, the gypsies that travel in brightly painted wagons, along with faery spells and dark, curious behaviors. There’s music to soothe, poteen to swallow, and feet to dance ancient troubles away.
That eerie, earthborn mist seldom blessed by a bashful Irish sun, a reluctant cameo call, as satin spring flows green into summer. Slick, violent ledges drop to the beach. Rocky spired spirits jutting out into the brine. Puddled pock marks carved into rock, home to eternal sea creatures eaten only in desperation by people deprived of lamb, sausage or pork with their praties.
She used to sit here on the beach and stare for hours into the surf, your mother, but now, son she’s away. The father sadly put his arm around the shoulder of his only child, attempting to say just the right thing, feel the right feel. How could a boy of five even begin to understand what had transpired here. But where has my mother gone? Is she in heaven? Yes, in heaven and away*.
Three weeks ago Maureen had disappeared. She was perched above the beach in her familiar posture staring at something out in the water. She often came to this spot in search of peace in the shadows of her skeletal existence. They were always hungry despite her efforts to collect the treasures of the sea, in treacherous boiling pots, survival on the half-shell. One day she just went mad and, wandering down the canting beach in the direction of Carney, was never seen again, a mirage to the fretful tide.
It is common among the tinkers to run off and not face what is real said the townsfolk. The travelers were not to be trusted. They were thieves and liars…and they had no land of their own. They trusted in leprechauns and selkies. Were they blood gypsies from Romania or orphans of Cromwell’s wars? No one knew and after three centuries what did it matter?
I remember your grandmother talking of Irish orphans sent to the New World, to the Caribbean, to work for the planters. Blue eyes and African skin and a lilt in the speech…indentured slaves to a heartless empire run by men with vest-splitting bellies and rum-soaked cigars.
Maybe she’s with them in Jamaica asked the child, his eyes drawn to the sea.
What do you see out there, my beautiful lad?
A lovely seal, father.
Why do they hate us, da? Are we bad people as they say?
No, son, no worse than any. They hate us because we are free, we are different…because they see us in league with the faeries. They fear our music, our connection to what is beyond their tiny imaginations. They are chained to the land and we are wanderers.
You were too young to remember, but two years ago gypsy caravan stopped at a fine hotel in Ballysadare inquiring as to the lease of a hall for a large wedding uniting two families from Lough Gill. The proprietor would have none of it and ran us off with the aid of several local bullies. They told us never to come back. Where should we go? This is our land, the land of our ancestors. Shall we cross the Irish Sea to Britain? Shall we embrace the devil? Cursed to travel the roads repairing pots and pans, sharpening knives, acting as midwives, spinning reels on the fiddle. But where is our lullaby?
What happened then, da? the boy asked his eyes a prisoner of the ocean.
We went back into the forest and held the wedding under the blackthorn trees. It was quite the celebration. It was then that I danced with your mother for the first time. We were safe from harm in the woods. The gommach (fools) would never follow us there. We were under the protection of the pookas and the townspeople were afraid. That night the slooa shee (host faeries) burned the hotel to the ground. Despite the fact that there was not a tinker within sight of Ballysadare we were unjustly blamed. Now even a fool knows there’s a time for dancing and a time for hotel burning.
There is no peace, no right in the life of a Traveler…just months spent going in circles in search of another meal, a place to sleep for the night…and no escape from the sadness at seeing another poor child come into the cold, wet world of their grand and glorious Gaeltacht!
The boy looked like his mother and had the same penchant for salty meditation. He looked to the sea as his father spoke. Look, da, the seal!
Ever since I was a boy we have been methodically cut off from the rest of Irish society. Farmers with pig shit on their boots, pub owners smelling of stale beer, ladies in second-hand finery look down their noses at the Travelers. The righteous ones run and the unforgiven seek to taste our fruits and drink our poteen, then they go back to their fields, their sod huts, their priests, their churches…
The boy was spellbound, mesmerized by the seal that had now come closer. But why can’t the faeries save us?
They are only powerful below the ground and cannot affect change in those who do not recognize them. They prefer to play with us, to sing with us…to dance the jigs of the deeneeshee (the spirits). They see our fate as temporary and harshly amusing. The magic is only for those who will reach out and grab it, then hold it like there is no tomorrow, no yesterday.
Then the father hung his head. I could not give your mother peace and now she is away.
His son continued to search to waves resting his eyes on a solitary seal that had landed on a massive rock cropping on the north side of the bay. It looked back at the father and son, lingered for a moment then dove into the surf. The boy continued to stare. Soon the seal emerged again and came even closer, through thickets of kelp and mounds of ancient stone. Then there came a whisper:
It is your wife and mother. I hold peace and now you must join me in my paradise. Do not hesitate. You have only an instant to decide. Come to me. I cannot linger and I cannot bring myself to come back to your sad world. The sea is the matriarch where the deeds of evil men are washed away. No tinkers, no kings. Take on the pelt. As I could walk upon the shore as human you must come into the sea. Come into the water.
Taking his father’s hand the boy stood up and walked toward the water. Come da, the tide is rising and my mother awaits us. We are now the children of Fata-Morgana***. Accustomed to the ways of the selkie** and true believers in the faeries, both father and son held on to each other and then waded into the water until they could be seen no more.
A great man in his pride, confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone—Man has created death.
– Yeats
* According to Celtic legend sudden or unexplained death was seen as only a temporary departure, often brought on by madness. In some cases the soul would take on another form until it had decided it was prepared to enter the afterlife.
**Selkies are seals that can shed their pelts and walk ashore as humans. They are known seduce desired lovers into the sea.
***goddess of the sea
Less and less visible on the modern Irish landscape, the remaining clans of Travelers or Tinkers are still not tolerated by Irish society. It is not known if they are the descendants of families destroyed by the Famine of the 19th Century or if they are orphans of the Cromwell wars of the 1600s. Some say they originated in Eastern Europe and are in fact Gypsies. Consorting with the faeries. The Tinkers were thought to be the favorites of the deeneeshe, the spirits that inhabit the underworld in Ireland.
-Kevin Haley
Homeless Tough on Grocery Carts
(Flop Alley) Grocery cart abuse at the hands of street people has reached epidemic proportions here this winter, leaving authority figures perplexed as to what, if any, action can be taken to alleviate the problem. Despite strict warnings and heightened security in parking lots an average of 8 to 10 food buggies disappear each day in an assortment of cities across this country.
The carts are used for the transport and storage of all kinds of personal belongings, aluminum cans, blankets, tools, urban survival gear, rescued kittens and, yes, food items. To many of the wandering, desperate homeless people the carts are their world, their security and often even their identity. Stolen or simply borrowed indefinitely, they represent a sense of mobility to the disenfranchised but a breakdown of social order to the rest of us.
“These carts are not provided to be used in this way,” said a spokesperson for one of the nation’s giant food cartels. They are for the temporary convenience of our paying customers. They are private property and are not intended for any other use. Deployment of these carts for joy rides will not be tolerated!”
The spokesperson went on to say that he knew of one vagrant who had amassed over 35 grocery carts and had hidden them in an abandoned basement.
“She had about three she used for cruising and the others were apparently for parts. Two were nicely customized and one reflected primitive experiments with wind generated power.”
A gov’ment source was quick to echo the alarm.
“One can well mark the status of a society by how it takes care of its grocery carts,” stressed an agent from the Department of Final Affairs. “These rolling devices are provided through the kindness of the supermarket bosses. When one is stolen we all pay. Sadly, these barbaric people often misuse the carts, ruthlessly trashing the steering mechanisms beyond repair. Then they abandon the provender chariots in so many back alleys in so many bad neighborhoods.”
The homeless themselves admit that they substitute a wrecked cart with a new one whenever they pass by an unlighted parking lot of an inattentive grocery employee. Officials warn that if the present crisis is not resolved consumers may see rental fees and identity checks required for the use of the grocery carts.
Human rights groups say the homeless should not be held accountable in that the calorie carriage thefts are only a tragic symptom of a much larger disease…that of corporate greed, inadequate mental health services and an heavy-handed distribution of wealth. They add that if consumers would be more responsible, by using wheelbarrows or sleds to haul their loot, or balancing their groceries in a straw basket atop their heads, the problem would diminish overnight.
“I am so tired of listening to this liberal drivel,” said the Final Affairs source. “The Committee for Accidental Impartiality has undressed this issue countless times and found the homeless to be guilty of criminal trespass, pandering, conspiracy to deface, smuggling, sabotage, espionage, urban revolution, creating a nuisance, theft, and trafficking in stolen merchandise. Back in the good old days they punished cattle rustlers with the hangman’s noose. I think it’s high time we got tough on these law breakers too.”
Stopping short of connecting the homeless to international terrorism he said, “Just see how you or your sweet little grandmother feels when you get stuck with one of these lame, funky contraptions in a crowded produce aisle.”
One homeless man told us that although he was ashamed of staling carts it gave him something to do since he couldn’t find a job.
“It’s the thrill of the chase,’ he smiled. “It’s a challenge. I will be happy to repay the food brokers for their losses just as soon as I wake up rich,” he smiled, “or at least get a paycheck.”
− Kashmir Horseshoe
Pentagon to Release Cartoon Show
(Arlington, VA) What ever happened to the refined violence common to Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Pie? Wasn’t the punch of Mighty Mouse enough to inspire primitive instincts in children? Apparently not.
This morning the Pentagon has announced the completion of its first cartoon pilot entitled Bazooka Joe and Friends. It will air this weekend.
The cartoon, which features military tactics that would impress the likes of Napoleon, is the brainchild of General Worthington Bulbous, the 300-pound war horse/animator who has given himself so many battlefield commendations (right there from his desk drawer) that he can barely stand. He even wears the medals to bed. Aides say its’ the shear weight of his accomplishments, and not the Old Forester from the night before, that causes him to be so difficult in the morning. Either way…
The cartoon cast, all of them volunteers, reside in the endless system of Pentagon tunnels (even more than the Idarado) attempting to evade the alien oil creatures from the planet Opaque, who seek to pacify them. If the story line isn’t original the level of violence certainly is, leading to concerns on the part of parents and teachers that the show is destructive.
“Bazooka Joe sends the wrong message to our kids,” said Patsy Paste-Smith, a principal at Lee Harvey Oswald Junior High, in suburban Virginia. These cartoons are far too life-like and far to itchy to pull the nuclear trigger.”
Sources at the Pentagon defend the program in that it may work well as a recruiting tool and gives the military a safe place to test weaponry.
“Bazooka Joe is the perfect recruiter,” said Bulbous. “Just watch his tear-jerking plea convincing the other cartoons to get up and fight! We want to educate the kids as to the advantages of war while they’re still young enough to enjoy it in its purist form. Explosions, dematerializing and capitulation to fire power are part of their sacred legacy here in these United States,” said the general.
A stunning cameo by Uncle Scam himself will highlight the first episode while the inventive neutron bomb ring and decoder will be featured by the third episode.
All profits from the broadcast will be used to paint the Pentagon camouflage as a defense against the imagined incursions of guerrillas operating out of the Zoological Gardens across the Potomac.
-Suzie Compost
“They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything (I) recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard–denial– of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail. All of it was engrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence. Most, too poor to afford slaves themeselves, fight a war to secure the wealth of the rich.”*
– Union surgeon after repeated failures to engage Confederate patients in dialogue, 1863. In Horse by Geraldine Brooks
*Little has changed to this day: Racism, ignorance and Trump fueld now by television.
Royalty Gene Isolated
(Vail) The long sought after Royalty Gene, that unit of heredity that determines who is royal and who is not, has been discovered in laboratory rats in an underground bunker somewhere deep in the Gore Tex Range. Known to insiders as the Queen Gene, which too forms part of a chromosome, the Royalty Gene appears to be more prolific in rat populations that presume royal heritage or entitlement due to money in the bank.
“If they think they are the king, then they are more likely to be crowned king than a common rat out on the street looking for something to eat,” said one researcher who was not qualified to speak on the matter and demanded animosity.
What postulates emerging from these finding indicate is that (according to the late great Inspector John Musick) “the gene pool is becoming a gene puddle” and that only a slim few will live the palatial lifestyle that so many yearn to embrace. Not wanting to appear politically incorrect or insensitive, scientists here carefully stressed that the so-called Queen Gene had nothing whatsoever to do with queries related to sexual preference.
The biggest problem they now face is finding enough volunteer rats to continue the experiments.
“Tests conducted here are no more harmful than a simple flu shot,” explained the scientist. “Crazy as it sounds we need these rodents to step up now, since they are an integral part of the program.
“How rats deal with the residue, the seemingly unbalanced reality is their own business,” said one researcher.
– Small Mouth Bess
“YOU ARE THE BLADDER OF PIG, THE SNOUT OF A COW, YOU ARE THE LEAVINGS OF A HOUND, THE STING OF A WASP.”
– CURSE LEVIED BY A TRAVELLER IN “SIVE” BY JOHN B. KEANE
Colonese Accused of Gerrymandering
Unidentified persons in the town of Colona are suspected of manipulating the boundaries of this constituency to favor the Know Nothing Party, which disbanded some 100 years ago. Sneaky back door maneuvering has been going on since the gov’ment threw the Tabeguache Utes out back in 1881. The former site of what was then the Los Pinos Agency has been coveted by East Colona Company heirs who have threatened to occupy Buckhorn Heights and Lower Billy Creek unless they get their way.
Then came the dirty gerrymandering incident.
I don’t know no Jerry Mander or nobody,” said one of the many flowing burgermeisters in the municipality. “He must live up on Log Hill”
Progressives here favor putting the town’s fate in the hands of the Know Nothings, an anti-German and Irish Catholic immigrant party in the 1850s, which they contend is more in keeping with the general state of politics in the county. Moving streets around, changing fence lines and replanting trees in an attempt to confuse voters is against a host of visual impact ordinances according to complaints received at the state level.
In response to the growing threats most Irish and German immigrants have relocated cross the Uncompahgre River to wait out the storm. One can hear their constant drumming and smell the aroma from large fish fries held nightly to remind the often lethargic public of their predicament.
“You let in one gerrymanderer and pretty soon the place is lousy with them,” said one resident who wants things left alone. “The next thing you know we’ll have legitimate town government. If that happens I’m moving to Canada.”
Both sides have scheduled a meeting at the Colona Roadhouse, which sits directly on the proposed redistricting line. Politicians set things up that way back in 1899 so that each district could have its own bar.
– Small Mouth Bess
Dog Catcher leaves town, tail between legs
An ex-dog warden, who many believe is the Missing Link has vacated his blockhouse and appears to have left town as of this morning. The speedy escape came as angry peasants demanded relief from dog shortages in the town. It has been acknowledged that pet to human ratios have fallen well below acceptable levels since late winter and many blame the former dog catcher for cuts in canine services.
Some say funds as well as bags of dog biscuits employed to entice new litters to town have gone missing and the poorly evolved passage of new leash laws has been held up in Congress.
Police are certain that the departed pooch duper is the Missing Link. He is wanted for crimes against humanity and a bevy of parking tickets.Readers may recall a January story in The Corral a high speed chase through town after which police thought they had corned the Link behind the old slaughterhouse. However, after a three hour standoff it became clear that he had eluded their grasp and slipped over Log Hill. It is no secret that they would like to collar him and have increased surveillance on the Utah border and have stepped up frisk stops on tourist in an attempt to apprehend their slippery prey.
– Dinty Moore
Boycott sends shock waves
(Beijing) A three year economic boycott of Chinese goods in Colona is being blamed for the recent credit market’s freeze up in the world’s second largest economy and most populated nation. To some it may seem ridiculous that a consumer statement on the part of one small town could make such an impact.
“They all thought our efforts would be insignificant,” said Bill Spooner, an organizer of the standoff, “and now the Chinese banks won’t lend each other so much as a chicken egg roll. We knew that if we stuck together, if we persevered, our message would reach pay dirt.”
According to a story in the Beijing Bee“the town of Colona and its sister city of Ratnapura, Sri Lanka have done irreparable damage to the Chinese economy by passive aggressive methods of bargain basement exclusion principles. Their grass roots sanctions have tipped the trade balance and taught us all a lesson in micro-economics.”
In an attempt to smooth feathers, the People’s Republic of China has repeatedly sent emissaries to Colona only to find the rank and file hostile to their advances.
“We just don’t speak the same language,” said Spooner.
-Alfalfa Romero
Colona Train Schedule
Morning: No train
Afternoon: No train
Evening: No train
“Joyce may have been a perverted but at least he never wrote bad country music” – graffiti we found on what must remain of an ancient rock wall somewhere in the green meadows of Connemara. The only literary validity here is hinged to a local custom of writing humorous graffiti that really made little sense, but then it did.
-from Sullivan’s Tavern, Bay Ridge, 1896.- Testasterone Brothers Press
