'In A Mirror 

 Darkly..'

Selected Poems...

Despite having written his particular brand of verse for nearly five decades: and having been published in countless journals and anthologies;  'In A Mirror Darkly' published in 2008, was in fact Sullivan the Poet's first individual collection...

Here below then is a selection of works, all individually selected by the poet himself to be as diverse a snapshot of his current work as possible, from that very same 1st illustrated collection...

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'In A Mirror Darkly'

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your pious words sculpt no disguise;

Is it because my twisted limbs offend your precious eyes?

I heed the whispers in your lies,

they clamour what your tongue denies,

or is it yet your prejudice you secretly despise?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your face too quickly turned aside;

Is it because my clockwork gait too loudly ‘cripple’ cried?

One act, revulsion, chanced confide,

is my humanity denied,

or coy your obscene ignorance you shameful seek to hide?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your back, too casual, turns my way;

Is it because my drooling maw makes sick what I convey?

Afraid my slack jawed words will say,

aloud what vulgar minds portray,

or barely chained repugnance which you fear will open lay?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your smile too warm, your touch too firm;

Is it because my wilful hands, quick, mindless, make you squirm?

Pale lucent claws that spastic worm,

in fleshless laps like dying sperm,

or that you dread their moist’ning touch you fear your eyes confirm?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

You studiously elude my gaze;

Is it that you’re afraid therein a human spirit lays?

A fellow life your heart betrays,

who ‘lone within their husk decays,

or do you fear to see reflect what censure therein preys?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Too well you chrome clad limbs ignore;

Is it because my cyborg world you furtively deplore?

Do my steel spinning legs abhor,

grey tubeless feet that kiss the floor,

or merely your indifference you mechanic’lly encore?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your fear laid nude for all to see;

Is it because your callous core cares naught for such as me?

Or torments you that ugly we,

flaunt our afflictions blatantly,

or steeped within your perfect world your turpitude shames thee?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Your sham ‘correctness’ counts for nought;

Is it because in your world absolution can be bought?

What phrase can cleanse each putrid thought,

pale synonyms for suff’ring sought,

or think you that with guileful words we’d be so simply caught?

 

I see my presence bothers you!

Within this broken glass proclaimed;

Is it because you spy reflect your sanctimony named?

Do you see your complacence blamed,

your lost humanity defamed,

or just quicksilver echoes… In a mirror, darkly framed?

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

‘Bring Me Your Tired..’

 

I lit a single flame to guide them in the blackness, and stood open my doors,

crying out into the night… “Bring me your tired…

Bring them to me, your worn and your spent and your weary;

Give them to me and I will give them rest.”

And they came,

in their thousands and in their tens of thousands they came.

And with them;

They brought their idle and their indolent, their work shy and their feckless,

lie-abeds and layabouts of every hue and race.

To hang, sink stone, about the throat of my people;

Deadweight, limp and languorous; Drawing their spirit down.

Thus have you punished me for my charity.

 

Yet still I oiled that flame and forced it bright, a beacon, and threw open its lantern,

calling into the darkness… “Bring me your poor…

Bring them to me your ragged and your hungry and your pitiful;

Give them to me and I will grant them succour.”

And they came,

a rolling human tide, surging and heaving and eddying, they came.

And with them:

They brought their mendicant and their sponging, their grasping and their greedy,

scroungers and freeloaders of every creed and colour.

To cling, parasitic, infesting the skin of a noble and generous land;

Leeching, sucking and gorging; Bleeding it of its tender will.

Thus have you punished me for my benevolence.

 

But higher still I turned that wick, casting open its sheltering window,

loud, out, into the gloom I cried… “Bring me your stateless…

Bring them to me; your scarred and your oppressed and your dissident;

Give them to me and I will give them freedom of speech.”

And they came,

limping and broken, legion and hopeless and debased, they came.

And with them;

They brought their criminal and their fugitive, their murderous and their sociopathic,

gangsters and warmongers of every colour and nation.

To prey, insatiable, a cancer consuming the very heart of my people;

Whoring, child mongering and dope dealing; Sapping them of their strength.

Thus have you punished me for my humanity.

 

Still brighter yet I strained that flame, fanning it ever higher with my best intentions,

strident into the murk I pleaded… “Bring me your persecuted…

Bring them to me; your faithful and your defiled and your denied;

Give them to me and I will give them freedom of faith.”

And they came,

debased and defamed, clinging to their holy books and their broken gods, they came.

And with them;

They brought their fundamentalists and their zealots, their fanatics and their pedants,

bigots and blasphemers of every faith and fashion.

To terrorise, ostracise, debase and threaten the very soul of my people;

Bombing, murdering and mutilating; Sickening them in their fragile faith.

Thus have you punished me for my tolerance.

 

Tomorrow and tomorrow that single flame will burn no more in my open window,

and no voice will cry then out into the darkness…

The doors hang loose on their hinges now: But no one passes through;

For I have nothing left to give.

And they come no more,

not the tired or the poor, the stateless or the persecuted; no one comes.

For when they came;

Like tics on cattle they brought their fanatics and their miscreants and their dogmas,

journeying with them, on scar crazed backs, those very things they had sought to flee.

Brought them to tire, impoverish, oppress and persecute this gentle and humane host,

to bleed it of its charity, its benevolence, its humanity and its tolerance...

Thus will we be punished all. For our cowardice…

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

'Dancers..’

 

"O gentle place”. Too sweet the breeze

that languid sings and stirs each branch'ed aisle;

Of low, regretful sighs its songs

lament your legions' unsung dreams a while.

 

Humming, sadly, the long forgotten lyrics of life's tragic opera

to the gentle insistent rhythm of some silent orchestra;

Whilst an unseen Maestro softly marks time,

to the scarce remembered tempo of a multitude of long stilled hearts.

 

Soft! Tender shades, as zephyrs whirl

to tempt the twirling leaves their steps confide;

To loving, touch life's cheek once more

forgotten dancers; Soundlessly they glide.

 

Turning patiently their slow reverential waltz

'neath sombre sepulchral tree tops bent deferentially in prayer;

Silently they dance into eternity, along leaf slicked avenues,

wet slate grey with the burden of a million stolen tears.

 

Blessed tranquil plot what treasures hides,

what unfilled dreams your wood bound vaults encase?

Yet sorrow, mellowed, sips as wine;

No acid sting to taint this poignant place.

 

As guileless as a child's embrace, this tear washed gentle soil

tends them still; Close and tender as any mother's bosom;

While 'neath each moss clung marker, abandon now,

the dust spat bottles of a unique vintage; Too oft but half supped.

 

"O gentle place!" This tide of blooms

whose scents disguise this furtive vale of grief;

Each watered with a loved one's tears

to dew the night spun cloak of death ... The Thief!

 

Yet love 'tis fill the grieving heart's tortured cup to overflow

and spills and wets this kind and sacred earth;

Wherein, humbled in their mortality, and pressed cheek by jowl with eternity,

all men lie equal; Remembered each, not for the price of their shoes...

 

"But for how well they danced!"

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

‘Father..’

 

So frail.

Nut oil brown still from three score and near ten vital

sun soaked, swallow filled summers;

As if in spiteful ridicule.

Now broken and weary and spent, diseased and wretched and

burgled by fate of its very being.

 

Yet still that spirit.

Free as an Irish mountain zephyr

yet bound tight by chains of duty;

Holding me fast in its shadow yet letting me run free,

childlike, in the gentle spring rains;

Standing sentinel over my grazed knees and muddied elbows,

torn trousers and berry stained shirts...

 

So bent.

Knobbled bones, ungainly, disjointed, clattering

unhappily within their puckered, parchment skin;

Loose and awkward.

Like broken sticks, dry and withered, slipping haphazard

and unwieldy in a corner shop carrier bag.

 

Yet still that will.

Cold iron resolve, unyielding, granite hard that asked

nought and in return gave nothing in quarter;

A will that supported my child’s fragile, careless world

on its back like a cloth capped Atlas;

Gathering up, unspoken, my mangled bicycles and broken teeth,

lost shoes and bloodied coats...

 

So weak.

Spent and enfeebled, muscles strain, once more

to pull erect their rapid failing scaffoldings;

Failing they fall, desperate.

Spilling and clattering, falling loose like an

abandoned, spastic, string cut marionette.

 

Yet still that strength.

That potent wraith, hard muscled, all steel sinewed

and wind and weatherwork tanned;

Tossing me high aloft, carefree in cloudless skies

rich with warmth and summer scents;

Chiding, unknown, my tormentors; Standing fortress,

against the storms of a young, fragile life...

 

So weary.

The skeletal fingers that clutch feebly at mine

cold, mechanical, their flesh withered;

Holding reluctantly to life.

Reaching out for release, for some small mercy left in passing,

for freedom from their tormentor.

 

Yet still that dignity.

That head up jut jawed, cannon barrel gazed, proudly

arrogant, hard fisted and defiant;

Parting burly, heaving crowds; Cutting them like ploughed

snow to suffer me safe passage;

Bulwark to the tidal surges of childhood, taking the breakers

on his back that I might play in the wash...

 

So tired.

Tremulous morphine laden lids, pallid, heavy leaden

shutters dragged open by sheer dint of will;

Lift eyes straining now for focus.

Shining the sun found lights and shadows,

of a last precious day, into a rapidly clouding mind.

 

Yet still that light.

Burning now, in eyes that lit with laughter, took

tears at kin’s passing and melted in love;

Eyes that blazed once iron furnace red with anger

and sparked yet with a thousand Erin stars;

Watching always, yet invisible, knowing, seeing,

forgiving or punishing; Each in its place...

 

So sad.

A gentle hand on my forearm, as my tears run,

wetting the waiting shrouds of hospital corner sheets;

”Why the tears boy?” Concerned. Compassionate.

”I don’t like to see you this way.” A child again,

the pain of imminent loss torrential, all consuming.

 

Yet still that voice.

Still timbred, manly and familiar. Above and apart

from the cancer that consumed him – Untouchable;

”We’ve known each other a long time haven’t we boy?”

Words. Man to boy. Man to man. Father to son;

”And we didn’t always like each other.”

As my heart ached to bursting; My chest too small to contain it.

 

”But you were always my Dad - and I always loved you...”

My father left us that afternoon - I miss him still...

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

'Invisible Lives..'

 

Old women; shuffling and tapping, hunched and weary, heads down,

stumping stolidly their bow legged and woolly stockinged spastic gaits.

Crumpled chicken wing legs and cream puff ankles over putty coloured shoes

spur on their lame and stiff legged aluminium steeds;

Lucent tissue paper hands tremble in worn out purses,

searching amongst the bus tickets and the hair pins;

For coppers: For the remaining small change of their lives.

 

Bright, gimlet eyes in crumpled liver spot faces;

Peering at the world through national health specs

propped on florid, bulbous, strawberry pipped noses.

Bright tufts of silver couch grass on puckered sand dune chins

smile at blue rinses under rubbed and bagpussed woollen hats.

 

Do these women, these spent and wrinkled memories of women,

ever speak of those bomb scattered days and pyrotechnic incendiary nights;

Of the candle lit terrors of dank and damply corrugated Anderson coffins?

Or of picking amongst the debris of their homes, their lives, their spirits,

for the bodies; The torn and bloody remains of their shattered children?

Do they give voice, ever, to the endless nights of fear and empty bellies,

the screaming, trembling, sweat damped tension of the munitions factory;

Of fulminate fuses, bright brass keys to oblivion, only ever a tremble away?

What is their story... Is it worth the telling?

 

Old men: stooped and crack kneed, mumbling and wheezing,

their sticks aclatter as fragile marionette wooden limbs.

Frail, in bag pocketed unkempt sports jackets and ragged sweat stained caps

watching a mistrusted world from the corner of a bloodshot and watery eye;

Finger stained flyes in cinder holed and razor creased crimplene trousers,

flapping loose, spinnaker sails tacking their heel worn shoes into the wind;

Laces and toes diamond bright from a thousand old habit polishings.

 

Bony fingers with nicotine stained nails clatter in trouser pockets;

Stirring the coins and clutter and sea shells of unreliable memories

singing; Melodic and metallic; Their song falling now on failing ears.

Deflated balloon necks under jutting blue chins, scraped to the bone

by thirty thousand wet razor shaves in their lives’ steam run mirror.

 

Do these men ever speak of long nights in the screaming, sound filled black;

Cramped and freezing in the bullet spat, flak torn guts of the bombers

as they danced their dance of death in the sizzling fire woven lace of the spotlights?

Or the panic in a stranger’s eyes as he twitched and grunted, spitting blood,

dying loud and ghastly and grisly; Belly full of their unyielding bayonet?

Will they ever share the filth and the terror and the disease and the starvation;

The broken bodies of their mates that line each and every gore soaked yard,

each blood bought, soul crushing and twice cursed inch of the Burma railway?

What is their story... Is it worth the remembering?

 

Broke backed and year weary and spent what terrors now, what fears

does the night bring; do they fear the passing of the light or beg for the dark?

What now? What now for the invisible old and their invisible lives?

Does the reaper ride their backs, clinging, merciless, to that faded cloth;

The loose folds of faded coats two sizes too big, in long out of date fashions;

Skeletal fingers entwined, cruel, unforgiving in that threadbare tartan bridle?

Or does he walk with them, beside and close, gentle as a welcome friend?

Carrying the travel scarred bags of their being;

The trinkets of bare remembered days,

as he shoulders the last minute shopping of their lives…

To the last bus home.

 

This was their story... Are we worthy of its telling?

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

 

‘Out There..’

 

What gross deceit to dream life's well should favour but one cup,

or 'magine for a heart beat's width thence only man might sup!

What pomp decrees that chalice sole should from its bounty slake,

one thirst for form, for thought, for life, whilst other lips forsake?

 

A thousand times ten thousand lights bejewel a darkling sky,

each spark a brightly shining grail, think all but one lay dry?

When through that sequinned curtain lay, had we but wit to part,

ten thousand times ten million more, bright veils within its heart.

 

And with each beat, each pulse, that heart, another star gives birth,

Oh! How we microbes in life's blood do overweight our worth!

When savage eyes we dare to lift; to starward turn our face,

what fevered soul dare contemplate one tread above our place?

 

Above the worms and angels waits, in unfamiliar guise,

celestial kinship for mankind had we the heart to rise;

For life will not by rock be stemmed, nor fear congeal its blood,

it gives it bounty not by sip, nor trickle, but by flood!

 

A river, rolling, surging, strong, its spray the mists of time,

whipped hard by interstellar winds to living, fecund rime;

And where it whets, with life it coats, cold unforgiving stone,

with living form, in alien flesh, to garb some alien bone.

 

Though we, still damp, dare yet presume, thigh deep in shifting sand,

of all the shore's life's sea has wet, it moisten but Man's hand?

Drink deeply worm, aye fill your cup, bear not a droplet's loss,

for 'ere you savage cease to be; You've ageless wastes to cross...!

 

© Sullivan The Poet 2008

'Suffer The Children..'

 

What shade, what mind, to harm a child; First turns its thoughts to such a course,

where breeds the seed, that forms the sense, that sexual holds an infant so;

What demons seethe within that brain to deed from fragile form divorce,

or find they welcome fertile ground that ‘llows that evil spirit grow?

How black the soul that gives its’ leave to turn so young to foul abuse,

to take a brittle blossom so and force it to such brutal use?

 

Ask what the psyche’s process then; That owes a babe such meagre worth,

that Father might a fist, a boot, a knee in violence contemplate;

What mother stands yet idly by to witness harmed those she gave birth,

or sets her self on such a path that her own hand dares desecrate?

How lost the spirit left to stoop, so low to break an infant bone,

no human spark, be it so dim, might ever such a wrong condone.

 

What beast may harm that tender flesh and know no whit of self disgust,

call what you will these blackheart fiends, but not in my hail call them man;

Depravity in human guise might best describe their sadist’s lust,

when bend they to their evil work a cigarette, a boiling pan.

But what the sin or what the crime the blame must not there solely lay,

for guilt must weigh in equal gauge on those who blindly looked away.

 

Can church say of the pervert priest; Who sold his god to sate his needs,

that while his choir he vilely served, no hint of ill was yet perceived;

Or dare deny revealed his crimes, no word was spoke of his misdeeds,

instead another diocese, another flock; To be deceived.

Are they less guilty of the act, who hide, protect, deny, conceal,

these cowards each, whate’er their cause, who fail the pervert’s wrongs reveal?

 

Or will the children’s home suggest, though sheltered ‘neath their cringing roof,

and cheek by jowl in company, those infants’ plight escaped their view;

A blind eye seeking to ensure that from such stains they hold aloof,

condoning felons’ crimes commit; And each in turn inflict anew.

Of reputation, coin or power, how much does stolen childhood buy?

A single child, one second’s fear, whate’er the prize – its’ price too high.

 

Each paedophile, to ply his trade, must needful on those close rely,

the sadist too, to tend his needs, depends that they be wilful blind;

Though knowing each yet each deny, and in their silence each comply,

not in the act but in the lack; Accompliced all we felons find.

While child abusers, perverts all, must every one be called to pay,

stand guilty too those cowards all; Who simply choose to turn away!

 

© Sullivan the Poet 2009

‘They Brought Them Home..’

 

They left them there.
Each torn and twisted friend and comrade,
every shell shattered and bullet frayed life
abandon where it fell.
Left them there;
Gore soaked and crumpled and filthy,
strewn and scattered;
As if of cast off piles of crimson oil soaked rags,
catholic; As spillings from hell’s own rag and bone cart
as it lurched and rattled across the blood spat fields.
Each and every one holed, and scooped, and pock marked
by the bloodied hooves of the hell cart’s infernal nag.
Left them torn of their lives
and cast eternally on that alien soil.
Abandoned and alone…

Abandoned and alone.
Each orphan limb and filth caked entrail,
every shrapnel ripped son;
Every unknown father and lost brother.
Left them all behind - Always and alone – Left,
to the dogs and the crows and the night worms.
In days and in ones and twos they went;
In weeks and in hundreds
they left that curs’ed foreign earth;
In months and in thousands
gladly they left those barren unfamiliar fields.
Those alien pastures and their bloody harvests,
sown wide with the seed of a million young lives;
Ploughed and reaped with shell and scything shrapnel
and wet still with the blood of Britain’s spent manhood. And...

They went home…

They went home.
Walking, stumbling, carried alitter,
mud and gore spat heads too heavy to lift,
spastic and broken, filthy, remnants of men;
Torn and numbed and debased by what they had seen,
what they had been.
Each horror sodden mind bruised and bloodied and scarred;
Minds that bled crimson tears for what they had done,
for what they had become.
Crushed and mutilated in victory and in ragged lines
they went home;
Brothers in arms made strangers all.
They never looked back…

They never looked back.
Not once for the dead and dismembered,
not once for their faceless comrades;
Neither to cast eyes one last time on the gore that
had been men, once, so long ago;
In the arms of a lover, in the eyes of a child.
Nor the hideous panoramas painted
with battle’s razor edged palette;
Painted thick, obscene, glutinous
and rich in its dazzling colours.
They marched only onwards, eyes front...
Going home.
Home to wives and mothers;
To pale children as yet unmet;
to dead fathers and shell shocked brothers.
Home. To unknown funerals and
unseen headstones over empty caskets.
Bearing their fallen…

Bearing their fallen.
Carrying them gently in every broken,
bruised and aching heart still with the will to beat;
On each broken back and in every faded and crack
folded love letter.
Stained still with the tears and the mud
and the blood of a thousand readings.
Bore them home in each dog eared, bleached and
cracked filth smeared photograph;
Home; In the face of a lover, a family, a wife, a child.
In the shabby and ragged paper threads that nightly
darned their threadbare existences.
They marched their spirits homeward in every
grubby enveloped unsent love letter;
Every shared cigarette and gulp of luke warm
stale tea in mud soiled mugs.
And in each indelible memory, of each last day,
and of each last parting breath,
they brought them home…

They brought them home.
Not the butchered corpses that hung still,
ravaged and bloody in war’s grisly abattoirs;
Or stocked the mud and gore dressed butcher’s
window of every gut strewn day.
Nor the grisly remnants that flowered
obscene in those forgotten pastures.
But the men they were, whole and untainted,
untouched by the obscenity.
Men amongst men; men whose courage and
comradeship bore up a nation;
Men whose sacrifice & suffering would serve
to humble an entire generation.
Ordinary men; Men made warriors and heroes
by extraordinary circumstance.
In every life owed their comrade’s sacrifice
and in every free born child;
In every mind and heart and in every spirit
that set foot again on homeland soil...
They brought them home…

© Sullivan The Poet 2008 

 

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