the stars are alive
the stars are people
they’re grannies and grandas and everyone whose blood was spilt for
righteous causes, and, babies that died in the womb who didn’t deserve it
the neighbour I was always told died by a drive-by shooting but
really it was cancer – the stories we’re told ones not of slow rot but blinking evisceration
and the stars are us
tonight we shine for dad, this is what he always wanted for us.
big bold loves, no succour here, just dodgems doing their lustful
bumps while the music twirls. God’s colonnades popcorn scented
and! the smell of strawberry jelly and ice cream meeting in the mild Irish heat
granny dancing on, winking at our lack of knowing,
how little we have seen of what she has seen
on the first day He created light, and on the second He arranged that light into cloisters
and made himself a lair of them