The Poor Poet buys the Dead Poet a Mug of Coffee

(Dedicated to the poet Maurice Scully)

It wasn’t the afterlife
Not quite
Where they met
More a kind of residue
Of might have beens

And
Or
Of

Po et mon
gerings
gerings
Po et an

It was a world of con text
The voices of the dead

Po et mut
terings
terings
Po et stut

Of
And
Or

f r a m e s
r e
a am
m e r
s e m a r f

Or
Of
And Struc tures
tures
struc
struc
tures
tures Struc
turings

A world of bereavement
And must have beens.
Some experi
me
n
tal some kind of beens
kind beens
in some kind
kind of after beens
Where Coffee is rich
And the Mug is King.

The Dead Poet asked: Why did you pull me from my grave?
The Poor Poet answered: I had no other wealth!

^

Biography

My name is Tom Quinn, I live in Dublin (Terenure area), I've had stories published in STET, Passages and Norway's bilingual (Norwegian and English) Ragtime, I've had journalistic pieces in the London-Irish News and The Irish Times, one of my poems "Fingerprints Left in Eden" has just been published (March 2002) in the Anchor Books collection Snowflake Kiss, another poem "Topless" has been published online at Catalyser Journal... I maintain a site www.irelandstories.com which contains a half-dozen short stories, two poetry collections with a third collection of more than fifty poems on the way in November (The Birth and Death of Angels), the Bonus Poems on the site are Lorca translation, the site also contains a wild Irish-eyesed translation of Alfred Jarry's absurd classic Ubu Roi (King Gubu in my version!) which I would dearly love to see read and/or performed by some adventurous and anarchic Theatre Company. The Catalyser Journal poem can be accessed through a link on the Ireland stories links page.