Sam Byrne

A Finalist

I did well to dream of depthless days

Spread beneath June skies,

Aimless portents of laziness

And laughter among friends,

Empty hours spent in the sun.

Or rain,

To wet a limb or two,

Smacking them with an outer life

In the humid air riddled

With little plashes and steps

Taken towards balls, final events, college days,

A cry perhaps about how

We’re soaked, but it’s taken

In good humour.

I’ll miss those summer showers,

Their endless promise,

A torn-up bridal veil

Over the land

And all the more beautiful still,

Eventually pulled to reveal

Earth anew, fresh-born,

Cleansed of itself

And here, now, 

For our fulfilment.

I only want more. Is that so much to ask?

For once in my life I ask only for more time.

I only wanted more.

Robbed, a second year running.

Before the allotted slot, I’ll make the most of cobbles,

Churches, bars, grotty little rooms

Dug into cupboards,

While ridiculous men 

Who can scarcely exist shall be entertained

Into the bowels of the night, 

And all the while I shall examine

Every bridge by lamplight

And every bank

Of that sacred river,

Memorise and memorialise

Every curve and sweep of the surface,

Ball-point every tip on a map,

Mark them for my own 

And not show them to anyone.

I will make the trudge past

The black plateaus where by sunlight

Students of the city encampments

Drink and seduce one another,

And I will feel I have made no mistake

In not doing so more than once.

Passing this, steepness will invade

My legs and press

The muscle I have left as I am lifted

Out and past this.

Shifting beyond, blank flashlights

Will run across the road,

A shape too low to the ground

To notice if not for the dazzle

And the sudden retreat.

The end will creep up on four limbs,

A silent black cat running 

To stop a car.

Graduation, June, 2019

---

Moratorium

I

Stepped out from the plastic shell of the shower,

I am stood over the basin,

shaving.

I focus on what is ordinary

and hone the craft until it is muscle memory.

I examine the strip of fluff that has sprouted

from my chin- a barren patch, though given to weeds.

Beneath this are stray wires on the neck.

They are as black as frost-cut January branches,

isolated and half-sunk in a field of sloping snow.

The chin, though, maintains rows of ginger,

a root which catches in the right light

the ruddy hue of an island 

for which I possess no passport.

It is the gift of a grandfather 

whose voice remained muffled 

behind a stroke and an accent so thick

you could carve it with a knife.

II

Disposing myself of this,

the clippings float loosely down the plughole,

dislocated from life.

I leave my upper lip untrimmed,

a thin protest against parental advice.

Up top, I sport a quarantine trim, courtesy 

of the household salon downstairs, not half bad,

and better without my would-be sedition

that would have actioned a tramline

above my brow.

But also, that parlour visit brought me 

my first white hair,

snipped clean and handed over 

for a closer look;

a snow-cloud condensed and whittled down,

sticking archly into my head.

In exchange I gave a shrill laugh,

high like winter's wind through a sash frame;

too much, I think,

to pretend I was indifferent.

III

Even in these acts of normality I find snippets

of a grander disorder,

movements below and under cover

which unsettle my sense of scope.

Amongst lockdown and unreality,

I find these three second

indictments of my present condition,

glances into a colder future-

But these are the thoughts that must attend all men.

They are only envisioned more acutely 

in the present cruelties. 

It may be better to take stock;

I am here, clean, managing.

---

Clocks and Graphs

A strange thing this,

Listening to deaths roll in off the radio,

Breaking softly against the armchairs

And lopsided pillows on the floor.

Now we tune it out –

A certain privilege lies in ignorance.

We make profit on warm days

With runs by coastal paths,

Measuring our scores,

Comparing the notes

Clumsily graphed by our legs.

I have found an uncommon freedom,

Strange or ill-judged as it sounds –

We are not beholden to work and learning

In the same ways as before.

We write, read for ourselves,

Share wine and eat well.

But life does not go on as before.

For there is also a sense of lost cause,

Empty days, filling in time.

I will not present what I am

As well-addressed

Or well-spoken in this poor rhyme,

Feeling as I do an absence.

I cannot pretend

This is without emptiness–

It would be ignorance;

A bad jest.

And so we throwaway our days in waiting,

For the schools to reopen,

Summer to have its browbeaten day,

With miserable chatter about weather, politics, and work

All bolted on along the way.

We wait, as do synchronised swimmers,

Treading water on an oil-slick surface,

Observing reflections in the rainbow pools

Hiding the thick blue beneath,

Feeling how fish must feel

Breaking the surface

For an upshoot of air.

We wait

For the statistics to subsume

All emotion, any meaning.

We wait

For our lives to resume.

---

Shopping

Shopping I have tried to reduce life down

to the bare necessities of

the three -ings-

writing

running

shopping.

Life is now a series of acts.

Right now, I am snarled up in shopping trolleys.

I have realised what they are.

Wire casings, cages without lids,

grey parodies that deserve their place

in rivers, the kind of thing

reclaimed from building site skips

in a prop department’s dream.

Mine decides to squeak.

One wheel spins wildly,

conforming to its own axis,

ambivalent towards gravity.

The sound echoes in a crowded car park

of scarecrow statues, rigid in the wind,

ambling at their own pace.

Faces are covered in cloths and glasses,

childish imitations of how old men might dress.

I feel foolish in my plastic gloves, disposable,

left for me by mum,

intended for use on petrol pumps.

Here they are my personal protection against paranoia.

I’m not really equipped.

Shuffling in time

like a poor man’s samba,

we dance forward in line,

a disconnected conga.

I try to operate my electric shopping list

while mirroring my man in front,

and the plastic up to my wrist

is not helping;

my fingers are stiff in this breeze,

not adept at navigating a screen.

In the end the glove comes off,

and I feel worse about this than before.

But I sally forth,

keeping my cart from getting away.

The line has diminished and I am now at its head.

It comes with an odd sense of accomplishment;

the leader of a ravenous pack,

scavenging their daily bread.

Then I am waved in,

and I gratefully push on,

greeted by the fan,

blinded by this sudden burst of lights.

---

Poetry by Sam Byrne

Hi! I’m teaching English by the sea, currently without a class to teach. In my spare moments I work on developing a convincing Yorkshire accent, cultivating bad facial hair when no-one is looking, and sometimes I wonder what I’m trying to say. In all cases, I’m getting there by inches.