Stephen Moran’s Museum of Illusions

On the Island of Me and You

On the island of me and you, there are no worries.
It’s only cold enough to make us keep warm.
I get up early, you have a lie-in, the dishes are done
When you appear and I go for a walk along the shore.

On the island of you and me, we’re always online.
Hundreds of friends in your mind, a few in mine,
So I listen to yours, playing ukes, reliving youths,
And never tire of your old friends, who loved you.

I can see the island of you from the island of me,
And I’m going to swim over.

Photo: With Tess on day out at Burrow Beach, Dublin (2015)

My Year in Writing, Editing and Publishing, 2021

Since I self-published Day of the Flying Leaves (Selected Poems) in March, I have posted the following new poems online. I will eventually move them into a new collection, working title “A Hot Sup From the Teapot”.

May 11: Every Day I Go Out Down
May 24: High-Flying Birds Know
June 6: Rearranging Curios in the Museum of Religion: The Rooms (RC Wing)
July 1: Grieving for a Bee
July 6: Every Morning is a One-Armed Bandit
July 12: Now We Are Trees
July 26: If You Stop Thinking
August 14: Outpatient
August 19: Country Sayings
August 24: Snowdonia from the Boat Train
September 18: Outtakes from Knots (excerpt)
September 21: Santo Niño of Sudbury Hill
November 15: To the Get Hawking and Spitting in the Next Stall
October 17: Look Both Ways
October 22: Why the Leaves are not Leaving
November 28: Tim Berners-Lee Cried (a parody on “Dem Bones” for Willesden Herald)
November 29: Some Lines of Late (six poems)
December 21: Honey, I Shrunk Myself
December 25: Maid of Light

I updated this on December 26, 2021 and as yet Day of the Flying Leaves has had no reviews. To be fair, I only sent out one copy for review, to someone a friend recommended as a potential reviewer. Zip! Sales were two or three in the first month, and none since. My poems have only been recognised online by one or two kind friends and a few far-flung WordPress bloggers I don’t know at all.

This year as editor, I published brilliant new short stories by Jack R Johnson, Jessica Fogal and James Roderick Burns in Stories of the Month. I continue to work on some unpublished short stories and two or three projects that have the potential to blossom into novels or novellas. There are also more poems in the works. Ever onwards!

Picture: One of the cover concepts for Day of the Flying Leaves

Maid of Light

I washed my face in the mud of faith
that turned into a holy spring
ever effervescing from pebbles
made of light made of light

and I saw the Maid of Light
who was made of light,
heard a voice tell
secrets from the secret well

and her secrets fell into me,
into the secret well within,
into the water made of light
and one of her secrets this:

there are no secrets in me
and the well is all there is,
the silvery water made of light
made of light.

Photo: Sunburst over St. Bernadette’s grotto, Lourdes. Foreground: the river Gave du Pau with a footbridge in the distance. Background: the Basilica. Visitors and crowds can just about be made out, silhouetted.

Honey, I Shrunk Myself

In bed, alone, hand to forehead
shrunken by weariness, fingers
spread but little, like on a pear
and smaller, till I am a mouse
perhaps. Tiny nostrils flare.
Settling jaw onto paw, nestling
the fragile, ever-lighter skull,
an empty shell in the open air.

If ever you see one you know
shrink inexplicably, in want
of something, on the edge of need,
like a baby about to cry, go –
turn into children, run away,
invent new words and paint the sky.

Photo: SJ Moran outside the Guinness Storehouse, St James’s Gate, Dublin

Some Lines of Late

Don’t do anything

Don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere,
don’t say anything, the water whispered,
and nothing will happen, you’ll be safe,
don’t rock the boat. The water in spate
then roared, keep still, you’re too small,
lie down and surrender to the waterfall.

People are like atoms

People are like atoms in molecules
bound tightly with other atomic people
as elements or compounds, stable/unstable,
in tension with the heat of passion,
volatile reagents, heavy waves of opinion,
wicked catalysts in the rolling news.
I’d go to mass only I haven’t got the energy.

The fearless old lady of Wood End Road

It’s raining but she walks with a stick,
its ferrule worn to thirty-three degrees.
Her feet are tiny but aright, her smile ready
to reply a morning to my good morning.
White hair under beret. Not tall.
I saw her walk with ski poles when it snowed,
the fearless old lady of Wood End Road.

I am a time traveller

I am a time traveller, same as you.
I travelled here from the nineteen-fifties
and I hope soon to visit twenty-twenty-two
and further into the future as well.
It’s always lovely, entrancing to see
old ones when they’re young, to meet
other time travellers in their home places
but heartsore to hear them wail.

Baby blue sky

Baby blue sky of November,
a touch of jaundice around your nape.
Nibs full of microscopic people
are drawing white lines on your face.

There are people walking behind me

There are people walking behind me,
I hear their steps and distant voices.
Will they see me looking here and there
At a willow or a birch, elm or linden,
A tree fern in a pretty garden? I wish
They would turn away somewhere
Because they make me feel uneasy,
Yet I laugh to imagine them saying
There’s a man who knows his trees.
I know nothing. Leave me in peace.

Photo: The Thames at Deptford, 25 Nov 2021

Airs and Disgraces

Tim Berners-Lee Cried

Air: Dem Bones

The DotCom’s connected to the WordPress
The WordPress ’s-connected to the Facebook
The Facebook’s connected to the MySpace
Now fear the bulletin board [… Read more]

The link will take you to some singable ballads/parodies in the Willesden Herald. I thought of publishing them separately but their best home is in the Willy. (Not something you hear very often.) Such things as the above, and Maruha had a Little Llama, Poor Paddy Works on the Software etc.

Updated 26/12/2021

To the Get Hawking and Spitting in the Next Stall

With apologies to K.A.

Damn you and your slam door, hawk and splash.
I’ve been through the hands of the Christian Brothers
And their open-air urinals,
Burnt soup, shorts and vaulting horses,
The poor reeking boy ill beside me,
Canes slashing palms and wrists all day.
So damn you and your door slam.

I bet you’re one of those guys who
Tries to crush the other’s hand when they shake,
Who puts a foot up on a colleague’s desk or
Manspreads like a spatchcocked bullock on the train,
Unaware that somebody opposite or nearby
Abstractly imagines stoving your face in.

There was one like you in the schoolyard,
Whose game was to kick boys in the balls.
Maybe it was you, and maybe you remember
I splatted you over my back with instinctive judo.
You were too heavy, landed hard, face first, flat.
You never bothered me after that.

All you door slammers, desk footers,
Manspreaders, tailgaters, hand crushers,
Balls kickers, street spitters, dirty lookers,
Fascists, clerics, misogynists, racists,
Self-adoring egomaniacs and bullies
Can go straight to hell.

Photo: Former Christian Brothers’ torture chamber in Dublin. I escaped.

Story of the Month, November 2021

I would like to draw your attention to this unusual story, give it a read. Go on, there’s more to life than Netflix! 😉

Willesden Herald Stories

Give your mind a workout with a short story that I, for one, will not forget any time soon. Ed.

The Willesden Herald Story of the Month

November 2021: The Blood of Our Virtue Smells Like Dirt by Jessica Fogal

Her mouth is wide and painted royal blue, her teeth stark white in comparison as she bares them at the ceiling in thought. She can pass for a corpse pulled cold from the salty water of the ocean outside her window, frail and blue and perfectly preserved.

“What do you want to be?” She asks me.

Jessica Fogal lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest (USA), where she’s a full time legal assistant, amateur street photographer, and author. She’s been published in The Ilanot Review and has had many prints showcased in art galleries such as Terrain Spokane, and continues to use her lifelong passions for performance, visual, and…

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Why the Leaves are not Leaving

The trees of South Vale are in summer regalia.
October and hardly a leaf has left.
All must await the great oaks’ decrees,
Reluctant to fly and leave them bereft.

Ashes are quiet, aloof, preoccupied;
They’ll decide without a by-your-leave.
Evergreen laurels imprisoned in gardens
Have no opinion and they won’t grieve.

Bent and scrawny, a hawthorn is fearful.
Italian alders would complain if they dared.
Winter cherry saplings are naively cheerful.
If only they knew how little we cared.

Photo: View of South Vale Harrow, 20 October 2021

Look Both Ways

Look right, left and right again before crossing.
Unless you’re in a country where they drive on the right,
in which case look left, right and left again.
If you don’t know what country you’re in
or which side they drive on, always
go walking barefoot and someone will help you.

Photo: Two black shoes beside a kerb