Poems Written by Cúán de Búrca

cycling home

— pink, mostly, briefly, this time of year anyway, all aglow all around, a slice of something you can slice through on a bicycle, far too fast, legless, lightless, bare arms in the breeze, every street a hundred perfect lemon yellow rectangles, air rent by a shrill green skunk scent, buses humming huge & empty hemming you in, not a problem, hop up & tear down, around the black church, inky oily sky not stained by any star — you live in the city! — memory of a petrol-stained smog-soaked pigeon pressed into the concrete, his pair of angel wings like powdered sugar on the path, sliding under your wheels like a pressed petal slipping out between the pages, everything bubbling out the cast iron coalholes & the tumbledown chimney stacks & up around the rim of your lipstick kissed pint glass, all your blessings bound together, & who said anything about being in disguise —

the lepidopterist

I am seeing a girl who is not (not quite) a boy

mostly we are rather mean to one another.

all love’s airs a heresy to the chronically coy;

though I have never met anyone with eyes quite that colour.

sometimes I feel I founder when they pin me with their gaze

a frail moth impaled

and quaking in his case

though pierced so sweet as to preclude

any hard feelings.

Disorganised Religion

I’m no people pleasing preacher with a gospel to console

My proselytising’s predicated on the principle of woe

I’ve a complex pseudo-philosophy I stole from Eddie Poe

Nevermind the vim and the vigour and the virtue

My rancid new religion’s based off who I pass the buck to

I’m the high priest of fuck this and fuck that and fuck you

Communion’s not so holy and it’s mostly based on whining

The host’s all gone quite stale so we got rid of the dining

Yeah there’s blood and there’s incense and there’s creepy men in dresses

And the salience of sinning is the fun when you’re confessing

The values aren’t vintage since I got rid of them all

It’s a narcissistic hedonist’s revision of the Fall

I’ve a selective invective: a directive to provoke

I’m so vain the Lord’s name I’ve been known to invoke

The glass is pretty stained alright - and filled with holy water -

All the members of the priesthood are seventh sons of seventh daughters

The nuns were all recruited from a sapphic porno flick

I’m not accepting any converts ‘cause you people make me sick

and I had the monks all put to death ‘cause they were fucking perverts

and then I killed Himself as well, ‘cause he made me kind of nervous.

Cúán de Búrca

Honey From The Bee