O Bheal: The Pub Storyteller

(Edited to include an essential link...For those who want to join this writing game, the weekly words are posted at www.obheal.ie .)

This is one of a series of poems produced by the O Bheal Poetry Competition challenge, which is to compose a poem using five randomly selected words, each week. Those who believe they've come up with a really good poem may pay an entry fee to submit it to the competition. I don't do contests with entry fees but I'm enjoying the pictures the sets of words bring to mind. Here's last week's set of words, and the yarn they spun in my head...hmm, when I think about it, the plot recalls Call Me Bandicoot.

distill   cloud   cork   tangent   nerve

“The best water I ever drank, or ever will,”

he said, “was the water the clouds distill

from the damp air of the green County Cork,

which I left under a bit of a cloud,

being a suspect, running with a bad crowd

that planted a bomb, in the Troubles, and other bad work.

Having no knowledge of bombs myself,

I came to New York,’twas September the twelfth

and set my young and (some said) charming self to work

at the teaching of music and mathematics

to the long-haired and unbathed young fanatics

in the high schools of the city of New York.

Shared a flat with a fellow called Bill,

I did, he being a lad of good will

but inclined to be somewhat over bold and proud.

When the bullyboys turned out in a pack

to the beating and breaking of some other chap’s back

Bill rose up with a tire iron, saying, ‘That’s not allowed.’

And I, wishing myself such a man

but not being it, packed up and ran

to the vaunted peace and order at McGill,

which, as my luck would have it, I’d reach

not one full year before the breach

of such riots and rumors of wars as would make you ill.

Then toward Cincinnati I wandered,

which I reached it by way of a hundred

scrapes and adventures I cannot recount while dry.”

“What became of Bill?” we inquired,

and the man looked so old and so tired

that a mug of beer seemed a small enough thing to buy.

“Bill? What bill?” he said with a sip,

and he put out a rancorous lip;

called, “Another round! These fellows will be paying!”

He said, “If ye be bill collectors,

here you’ll surely find no protectors;

and ask no more questions about what I’ve been saying.”

As we left, Tracy said, rather plangent,

“I suppose Bill was only a tangent

in the tale he started with such Irish style and verve.”

Then another old man we passed by

said, “Irish style me eye!

’Tis an I-talian drunkard he is, with a lot of nerve.”