Ginsberg in Fingal

I wouldn’t write the poem ’till I was in the right mind,
Ireland, but something is rising inside of me.
Your machinery of unvoiced gossip is too much for me.
When are you going to take off your clothes?

Why are your pubs full of conspiracy, Ireland,
conspiracy and bile? I refuse to give up my art.
I haven’t read your newspapers in months –
every day somebody more marginal gets done.

You’re obsessed with holiday and death.
When I go to town I get drunk and I don’t have sex.
I never stand for the national anthem. Ireland,
are you going to let your life be run by Hello! magazine?

Go fuck yourself with your tribunals, brown envelopes,
true crime yarns and jolly negligence. Ireland,
you make me want to be a terrorist – I’ve been a pacifist
since long before I came here and now I’m just sorry.

Ireland, you don’t really want to start an argument.
Yes, but it’s them Poles; them Latvians,
them Chinese and them Africans. And them Poles –
they’re power-mad, they want to take our money and run

back to their New Europe. Is this right?
I see the Old Empire is streaming into your living room,
keeping a tight hold on you. This is serious, Ireland:
you’d better reconsider your behaviour and language.

‘Ginsberg in Fingal’ was composed out of lines from Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘America’. It’s taken from Christodoulos Makris’ chapbook Round the Clock (Wurm Press, 2009). His collection Spitting Out the Mother Tongue is due out in September, also from Wurm Press. Earlier this year he was featured in 3:AM Magazine’s ‘Maintenant’ series on contemporary European poets. For links to this and more go to his blog yes, but is it poetry.