excerpt from MacSuibhne, a book-length poem
MacSuibhne
Novelty & ignorance are always reciprocal but I found
the Hebrides & scoped The Right Madness on Skye from
a cubby at Atticus; I passed thousands of orange barrels
north of the dinosaur
I'm inspired by Jonathan Richman's towering neon pines
but I share Kim Addonizio's primal dread of Spring; our
unvarnished Mystic Bridge's cantilevered ribs crackle
& oxidize
I swung branches bent like antennas but seldom aluminums
& never an iron or wood; I was a lax remedial nidan wielding
the bo & sais like they were contraband; I was loath to work
a chainsaw or claw out a crooked nail; in this gong-tormented
zeitgeist I'm about half-abashed
I won't give my ancestors credit or blame them for anything,
no heraldic blackened boar much less a battle-axe but telltale
griffin beak the better to stand apart
I espied the cryptic tomatoes & crapulous goat remains
of Rock Valley Avenue; I was adjacent to Tiny's Cafe where
the Strangler drank minus the nylons & tape; I'm just fine
with Everett's latest Thai & Brazilian joints
During my sophomoric growth-spurt I was McMaximus,
learning the simplest things last; I sought novelty in the familiar
& precedent in the new; I would savor my first tongue kiss
but also parse Reznikoff's (yes, my Patricia) have been
& shall be with you
They loomed blurry as comancheros in Blood Meridian
but that was no sitdown vision & they never budged an inch;
they were exhausted, bent near their tops, naked tawny eyes
blind to my approach; they were only their skin of grime
above the pygmyweed, arachnids & Ballantines
Traumas are boring & anthems grotesque half a decibel off;
cringe as we must but our Brad Delp that tragic lonely soul
never hit either note; our old dojo's Isshinryu kiais sound
almost doberman
I'd revisit shrunken wetlands full of A People's History, Ulysses
& Aqualung; I'd discover Ludwig Van via A Clockwork Orange
& deutsche grammophon; during Nixon's Christmas bombings
I was impervious
That old Angel by the pagoda opposite Kelly's Roast Beef
brandished an eight foot anchor chain & barbwire neck tattoos;
it was the season of algae rot & bastardized Shaolin koans;
I got lucky under a jagged sturgeon quarter-moon
You can find my near departed in Octagon Commonweal
alongside scofflaws & troglodytes & icons & also-rans; I wrote
ave atque vale into the dark beyond but I'll save my elegy for
blue-eyed Kathy Norie
I'd apprentice with Jersey bards & senseis extraordinaire
during the Reagan years; I'd unleash a fair reverse-punch
but never relax my legs into a seisan stance; I got wind
of awesome refrains rippling from Sundown Poem
Praise endurance & lawful struggle & headlong brave escapes
but stipulate most Wednesday faithful don't have the luxury of
daylight or Kierkegaard; my dear brother calls me the rambler
but he was too kind by half
Pepper's PowWow was my religion after A Love Supreme
it kept blowing north-northeast & acres of thunder-snow blot
my geography; down forever in that groove a front-loader
cradles its corpse, cryogenic trash, over the city truck
Wit can stand its ground against truth only a little while;
I've stood drinks for raconteurs who toasted the "red cunt
griller" & almost coughed up a lung; it's too much to read
Men Talking's perfect vernacular after Len Roberts died
I admire Cherrylog Road's wild to be wreckage forever
like it was yesterday & I rode the bike myself but I applaud
when Gerald Stern weeps like a human being right there
on the page
Few things are impossible to diligence & skill except virtuosity;
I got by on diffidence, what I saw gurgle & spit from cast-iron
skeletons; I'd defer to strung-out geese honking in the sky
Weigh the terraqueous globe rather than know thyself's not
that preposterous, what with computers now; Neanderthals
had larger brains but much smaller frontal lobes; I've been
weighing whether Ray Allen makes my all-time greatest
Celtics fantasy team
If temperance were pork I'd be kosher & vomit all over
your couch soon as the eagle flies; bravado's nothing but
a front for bankrupt self-esteem said the great Jim Brown;
if there's an original thought out there I could use it right now
I got from Brownsville Girl, where even the swap-meets
are pretty corrupt
Melancholy & superstition are thicker than Port-au-Prince
but I've spent some happy hours suspending my disbelief with
Hamlet & James van Praage; as a Salem State alum I doggedly
misread the climax of Young Goodman Brown
Any skeptic can use a woolsack & deaden an arrow's pain
but I'm even mortified by passive-aggressive slights; it's a chore
to make an authentic thumb-locked vertical fist; sanchin kata
made me iron but I was upended & pinned before my first
sanchin step
Maybe pleasure fully imagined or terror we can predict isn't
astrology; I escaped by accident into the Yorkshire moors & left
more Bostonian; Brooklyn's Dugan ascertained that all new art
decays
I would register glacial improvement practicing taikyoku one
maybe ten thousand times; I'd heed Marriage of Heaven & Hell
rather than Poor Richard's Almanac or Einstein apocrypha; I'd
wreck vinyl & compact discs wearing down Mountain Jam
I'd deflect his slow-motion rage with multiple forearm blocks
& sticky hands subterfuge; as atonement I'd go unwelcome up
& down the Lynde white-haired, myopic & lame; if this weren't
a whisky dream & he wasn't decades gone Daddy would've
rocked me like I was Wladimir
I would share the only joys I'd ever call my own from ecstasy
down to hope but never by serenade; George's stripped-down
Any Road's evanescent as frost; we all search for better ways
to prestidigitate
Tell the clock by algebra, have tea like a samurai, use a Sears
hydraulic jack rather than elbow grease; study classic Mandarin
so your next tattoo doesn't say "noodlehead"; don't be a binary
Dunkin-slurping underling like me
Management is seldom wise but almost always cunning; our team
raked Monsanto dirt at Sacramone Park just for the hell of it; my
compadre Tony Sanders shot his perfect jumpers at the only back-
board with no rim
I'd extoll the cardinal virtues & envy the turpitudes, or what's a
mythology for; I'd police the narrow aisles of corporate academia
in my polyester blue proud associate vest; I'd be chastised overtime
but I wasn't beaten with sticks
I was never so full of myself to throw good counsel away except
when I got enthused; I'd be eyeballed in Neptune, New Jersey like
I was Mossadegh; maybe I'm in their database but I say I didn't bunk
at Middlesex County Jail
Once forgotten, lost forever used to be ironclad but I've known
frozen tundra sagas going on fifty years; I had zero skin in that game
& Bart Starr's no Shackleton but what an intrepid slog; who's to say
who's comatose if there's no Lambeau leap
I'm a journalist of the weather, not a philosopher; there's no cob-
webs or dark matter strands when you scull the Housatonic after
your graveyard shift; I'm a wikipedian, not a historian, but I'd kick
some arrowheads
I'm no genealogist but I can spell Schaghticoke; we've been
well-going since Robert the Bruce drove us from Castle Sween
seven centuries back; being it's always about the journey I want
the latest wear-resistant polymer scaffold hip
Easy, vulgar & therefore disgusting isn't just Lycidas but any
such fakery; Donald Trump I understand but how do you stomach
Stairway to Heaven's turgid arpeggios; I'd project despondency
to camouflage relief after my mother died
I kept dribbling with my head down after I sprained my toe
against that baseline post; I'll have nothing to refute after I gimp
offcourt, not gravel or Saint Therese; I'll have nothing to declare
except my ungainly self
I saw Charlestown gentrification & Somerville autoyards spiffy
as Lexington but I'm still a tad confused; Leo Connellan rode to
his floor next to a refugee yoked to her rubbermaid; I'm a secular
humanist but Suibhnes gotta serve our service economy
I was always comfortable with naked asperity whether in nature
or art; I'm no transcendentalist but I'd write muddy nothingness
rather than what was there; I've been sleeping forty years with
a half-Russian girl whose hair's remained pure brown
Reason deserts us at the grave but maybe also fear, Under
Ben Bulben says; as a fledgling orthodox coward I was half
paralyzed by Village of the Damned's radioactive eyes; I'm
indebted to Laura Nyro's girly insouciance & almost down
with Walt's luckier to be dead
The blameless life, the patient sickness, the artless tenderness
beg for a son's fierce tears but only after you commandeer an
objective correlative, only after the yellow bile's flushed from
your pancreas, only after traumatic statutes of limitation expire
I stood idle every Friday during the Lenten rains sans hoodie
or alibi; I was froze by over-coaching & stung by solicitude;
I was stone to warn the boy after his wayward ball
I would always emulate the well-nigh impossible with all
due humility; I was fifteen when I attempted my two-handed
Russell stuff; I flew on a cargo plane out of Pease Air Force
base but I haven't flown since then
I'd explore immensities not of the octagon inside Edith
Street Park's WPA rock walls; I'd bemoan dyspeptic rants
from dyslexic formalists; this forever awkward southpaw
made a Yastrzemski catch wearing a righty glove
Every source of pleasure's polluted & since I quit Gentleman
Jack; what sounds like thunder's just some machine Igor Sikorsky
loosed over Iranistan; Allston won't let Marky Mark shoot
the Tsarnaev bros
MacSuibhne , a book-length poem by Michael Sweeney, is forthcoming this spring (2026)
Mike Sweeney's books are In Memory of the Fast Break (Plain View Press) and Octagon Commonweal. These stanzas are from his work in progress, MacSuibhne.