Peter Branson

CELEBRITY

You morph into your smiling fix
for chat show host or journalist.
Which YOU will they pin up today,
goddess, donkey, world’s wife, slut?
Red carpet’s out, so blood won’t show
when shutters open, gossips spill
your private beans for real cross page
and screen: no air-brush fix; no shame.

Folk you’ve not met claim ownership.
You face them down with badger mask,
from harmless soul to psychopath.
I’d rather be an also-ran,
the I know you and you own me,
but only bits I let you see.

Aftermath

They’ll come as ways
are opened up
spring solstice time.

The lord, his fate
a certitude,
dines with his ghosts.

Through sun and rain,
folk soldier on
much as before.

We mind far less
than burying
a winter’s dead.

Things green apace
as furrows ease
their frowning brows.

Livestock will thrive,
God’s holy will,
the grass grow sweet.

One dragon slain,
another beast
will take its place

 Peter Branson © 2009

Brotherhood

‘Molestation and rape were widespread and endemic.’
The Ryan Report into Child Abuse, 2009.

‘It had a stench of violence about it.’
Artane Boys’ School, nr Dublin, 1963, run by
The Congregation of Christian Brothers.
 

Shed my religion here soon after faith
and hope abandoned me, unseen, unheard
to hard-faced charity; anonymous
as monstrance smiles, rootless as autumn leaves
at these school gates. So many years ago;
I’m damaged totally, for life I sense.
All that you need to do, to comprehend
what happened, hold this mirror to my face.

Just one more station of the cross to bear
with no respite: thrashed if you rocked the boat –
and some got off on that - after they’d come
for you at night. Tripped by their second vow,
burning they fell, yet reigned, Guinness black – white,
estate within a state, as safe as saints.

 Peter Branson © 2009