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_________________________________Diarmuid Corkery

Wasp

The wasp, on his weary way creates

A jangling in my temple.

With chafed heart I watch him pace

The window like a prowling fox.

He clambers up the frigid pane,

A vex to my fretting eyes,

And how such life can be contained

By but a shaving of blood and flesh

Horrifies me, to the core.

This beast who now pouncing forth

Swings treacherously, like a flail,

Electricity, energy, gleaming

At the tip of each bristling hair.

Impossible it was, to hold him,

To smother him where he was,

Probing through the fraying darkness

Of my pocket,

Where first his presence shocked

My fraying heart.

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Roisin P Hackett__________________________________

The Italian Arctic Monkeys

On the Cote d’Azur in June

The pregnant women mock me,

Happiness fills them.

They will have children with eyes

That mirror exquisitely the eyes of their lovers

On the Cote d’Azur in June

My thoughts are azure blue

And laced with you,

Like the waves I see

That lace the sea,

They smash the shore

And I can hear them draw

The stones out.

Mediterranean waves make little progress

Onto land,

But they touch Italy,

Crazy Italy, fantastical Italy.

To go back to the Italian Arctic Monkeys;

The sky was a ceiling that went on forever,

And the sand was a bed where I lay all day,

The Italian Arctic Monkeys, a band playing,

A band existing under a different name, a fantasy.

On the Cote d’Azur in June

The young couples holding hands sink me,

The pregnant women mock me,

I cannot listen to music,

Everything reminds me,

And with everything,

Screaming blue expands, far beyond beyond,

Ceaselessly loosing and lost.

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__________________________________Roisin P Hackett

Thou Shalt Not

Thou shalt not, commanded the bible,

Thou shalt not, do anything,

Have lust, have pride, have life, have mind,

Thou shall suppress thy emotions,

Let us rebel against such notions,

For the good of all mankind,

Let us fall in passionate lust,

Let us be proud,

Our self esteem to fly high,

For who else will be proud of us, but ourselves,

Let us waltz to the moon and back,

Defy everything that we have had to hold to law,

The law of god, if he exists,

Is something preposterously mad,

If cows will talk, I’ll believe,

If not, let god be shy,

Let him not take charge of us,

The master of the sky,

Let us give into temptation,

Be angry and envious, be deadly and wild

Let us reform, refuse, revolt,

Redeem our sanity of mind

Sins: poisonous as the deadly night - shade?

It’s fruit will suck your life away,

Like Adam’s apple did,

Such fantasy and fairytale

Exists only in one book,

Thou shalt not, do anything,

The power of one book is strong,

Let us, Let us, Let us,

Open up your doors and shout,

Forget thyself, forget the world,

Thou shall, Thou shall, Thou shall!

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Patrick Murphy__________________________________

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___________Rob Mirolo

MOROSE + OTHER

STORIES

Scorce plucked a yellowing eviction notice from

the crevice between his second and third chins,

rolled it up into a cylindrical shape with his stubby

fingers and removed a small bag of spider eggs

from his trench coat pocket.

"You really shouldn't keep doing that shite..."

Arthur told him.

"It helps my conditiooon..."

Scorce had cancer of the everything. He weighed as

much as three dishwashers and his rotting love

handles floated and dripped over the edges of the

aged Medcorp leather arm chair he'd been sat in for

as long as anyone still living could remember... he

had cancer, the house had cancer, the chair and the

floors had cancer, the dank room had taken on a

pallet of brown-black and mouldy green from the

terminal abuses the occupants had applied to

themselves. The house smelt of dust and cat piss

and old newspapers and salt and chlorine and inner

city children.

"What condition...y-y-y-yooou don't have a cond-

di-dition."

"I do Infestations. I need to take care of the

infestatioooons...infestations."

Like clockwork, feelers appeared out of the corner

of his ochre left eye...they squirmed in the daylight

that cut through the dust from the cracks in the

creaking, living ceiling...next came a small black

dot...formed a head, and little black legs scoured

around his eyelid and pulled the rest of a small

black beetle out of his tear duct...it scurried

hurriedly, scurry hurriedly across his crimson

varicose face, and ran straight up his nose.

Scorce dealt the spider eggs out on his stomach,

and began to form small black lines using a rusty

razorblade across his Jaundice Mammoth stomach.

"This'll learn you... ye cuuuunt."

He took a deep breath and sent a monster line of

the spider eggs up his nose through the

cylindrically shaped eviction notice.

*WHUUUH* CUFF BLEEGH.

Arthur shuddered, Arthur was Scorce's son, he

didn't know what age he was, or who his mother

was, he wasn't entirely sure Scorce was his father,

but an array of matching birthmarks and pattern

baldness seemed to confirm it. He worried about

his father, and his cancer and his spider egg

habit...he thought he should... he did, didn't he..?

"You haven't eaten in days, Da."

"Don't need to... Medcorp takes care of it..." He

said, patting his armchair.

A series of tubes and rusty hooks and chains and

syringes snaked and hovered up from the back of

the chair, and crept up into the ceiling.

There was a mellow vibrating noise, it sounded

almost musical if you got bored enough at night

time... Arthur thought of Brian Eno's Mellow

Vibrations for Adulterous Crustaceans

(Sole Jizz Records SJR023, Year . 2043).

Eno had lost his touch after he'd had his blood

replaced with formaldehyde...

Arthur got up off the floor, his bones popped and

his synovial fluid garbled.

"Look, Da...I better leg it. I have to get to work."

(Arthur worked for a production company. It was

his job to neurophone other production companies.

He would ask them for out-takes and edits, he

would sift through the edits and out-takes and

create a "humorous" slide show of human errors for

RTE3's day time semi-hit, entitled "Well Isn't That

Fuckin Gas".

Scorce didn't answer.

"Da?"

Scorce sneezed and a jet of black slummish was

thrown across the room. He was fast asleep and

snoring and moaning and sleeping and sneezing

and moaning and snoring.

"At least he's still alive", thought Arthur.

He lit up the arse end of a John Player, didn't

notice, and headed for the door.

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Jake Bourke______________________________________

Infinity

I would have you believe,

that in you is your son,

in your son is his son,

in his son is his.

I would have you believe,

that in your father was you,

in his father was he,

in he was him before he.

I would have you believe,

they stretch, back and forward,

one before the other,

one after the next.

To the first he that was him,

the she that was her,

the them that are us.