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Showing posts with label Brendan Curran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brendan Curran. Show all posts
Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.


 The Army Foot Patrol (A Memory) 

An army foot patrol
is walking down the street 
Special rubber on their boots 
so you cannot hear their feet 
 ♞♜♝
They are away off in the distance
but I see them stop and weave
As the hair stands on the back of my neck
and start to heavy breath 
 ♞♜♝
The night silence gets broken
with a noise that can only be one thing 
The high pitched searing engine noise
of the army Saracen 
 ♞♜♝
It slowly drives towards you 
no lights to Avoid being seen 
The steel back doors wide open
painted camouflage olive green 
 ♞♜♝
They stop and question everyone
that is what they do
If you show any resistance at all . . 
it’s an excuse to arrest you 
 ♞♜♝
The put you in the back
and they take you to police station
Then take from the pig *
and start your interrogation 
 ♞♜♝
This can go disastrously 
depends on how it plays
You can turn around immediately
and go the other way 
 ♞♜♝
But the minute they see you turning
 then you’ve got something to hide 
They will abandon what they are doing, 
and soon be at your side 
 ♞♜♝
You have to keep on walking, 
keeping a steady pace 
Trying to avoid glances
….in case one of them knows your face 
 ♞♜♝
Then one of them spots you, 
and asks you what’s your name 
He already knows who you are…
part of the harassment game 
 ♞♜♝
He asks you for you date of birth,
 he knows you wont comply 
He makes you wait for ever and ever, 
as everyone else passes you by 
 ♞♜♝
He asks you where you are coming from, 
and where you are going to? 
But it’s really just a stalling tactic
to see if the police want to arrest you 
 ♞♜♝
The radio operator calls you name
 out across the air waves 
Response a short time later …
”Charlie one” is all it says 
 ♞♜♝
The atmosphere changes intensely, 
all friendliness disappears 
Charlie one means you're
a suspected member of the IRA 
 ♞♜♝
Take everything out of your pockets…
spread your arms and your legs 
Some times they put you up against a building 
with your hands above your head 
 ♞♜♝
The search takes for ever, 
different soldiers are brought over and shown your face
 For future intelligence sightings…
so you get watched every place 
 ♞♜♝
They can’t find anything on you,
 disappointment on their face 
But continue to keep you at the roadside 
invading your personal space 
 ♞♜♝
The radio crackles once more, 
breaking the night silence and it’s cutting breeze 
The radio operator gives the thumbs up…
they have to set you free 

* Pig - large heavenly armoured troop carrier

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

The Army Foot Patrol (A Memory)

Brendan Curran 🍺The cage search came a week early.

It was usually every six weeks, but they brought it forward two weeks to catch us out for Christmas and catch the predicted poitin run. They were right. Daithi and myself had been running through the wash for 3 days previous to create the required amount of drink for both Christmas Day and St Stephen’s Day, enough drink, both scrumpy and poitin needed for all 3 huts, 72 men in all. We had it brewing weeks in advance. 

The brewing started the very afternoon of the last cage search. It was planned to allow for maximum fermentation time. We brewed the batch in 3 huge plastic dustbins, 30 lbs of sugar to each bin, bags of powdered baking yeast and every bit of fruit and surplus dinner vegetables available that you could create alcohol from. 

The bins were raised off the floor on wooden planks to allow the required heat to get it to ferment to perfection. Each bin had a sealed plastic pipe sticking out from the bin lid into a jam jar full of water to allow it to vent and expel air but importantly not allow fresh air back to interrupt the brew. The lid of the bin was sealed with bread soaked in milk like a poultice treatment, which when cured and dried out it would form a seal so hard that it was air tight around the lid and body of the bin. 

The yeast in each bin was bubbling and gurgling away, changing the fruit and anything else we could muster into pure alcohol. The yeast was smuggled into the cage on the visits weeks ahead and well in advance of the “run”. The Cage Christmas drinks committee had ordered all the prisoners to buy extra sugar from the prison tuck shop to feed the yeast and also to get extra fruit in their weekly family food parcel> the increase of the fruit now appearing in each parcel I’m sure sent out the alarm bells to the prison authorities that drink was on the menu.

Making drink in the cages was a process which was complicated but was also simply enough. It was a well rehearsed practice. In each of the huts there were two toilets at the end of the hut. Immediately outside the toilets was a small single tap handwashing basin, the perfect location and installation for distilling alcohol from the wash (well fermented drink mix) well away from the smell and eye of both the prison screws and the soldiers in the watch tower which was only yards from and towering over our 4 huts. 

The process was simple. We used the bins to create the brew and when it was ready we began the “Run'. The timing of the run was so important - it had to be timed to as near to perfection as possible so as not to lose the “brew” in a routine cage search . . .  which was a balancing act to try and squeeze as many days out of the fermentation cycle as was possible. Each hut had a huge commercial type electric hot water boiler placed on a table at top of each hut on a large table, The boiler had a large shiny lid with a handle in the middle and a water tap spout on the front and a large numbered dial beside it to boil the water or decrease it in stages as required….the perfect modern day poitin still that they never suspected. The lid's central handle was removed to allow the copper pipe into the boiler to release the boiling steam rising up from the now percolating wash mix. The lid of the boiler was sealed onto the body of the boiler, once again with a mix of milk and bread held on with a strip of homemade bandage made from a bed sheet to create the perfect seal.The toilet plumbing and flushing pipes were stripped out of their housing and rearranged to connect to the boiler lid and fold past and under the hand basin cold water tap to instantly turn the heated steam and vapour in the pipe to pure alcohol… the very finest long kesh poitin. 

I didn’t drink so when we ran it through the still Daithi did all the tasting, and by the end of the run he had done enough sampling for the both of us. The other prisoners who entered or left the hut beside the still gave us their hearty greetings, some stood beside us to watch the ever slowly drip drip of the crystal clear liquid as it filled up the jam jar. Once the jar was filled it was transferred into a milk carton or plastic containers to be secreted into one of the hundreds of the huts sheets of tin that we hoped would draw the least attention or be too far up the roof for the trade screws to bother to search.

Anyway, unexpected or not at 7.15 Am the next morning the shout came the middle hut…curdach anois….the hated phrase …a cage search by the screws…the last thing we wanted or needed, a definite strike to kill off the Christmas spirit in more ways than one. The search went on and on for hours on end. We were all locked in the canteen which was the end hut but we could still hear all the banging and thumping of the tins as usual. Later on in the morning we were all taken one by one into the wash room to be humiliated and strip searched. 

The cage search was a serious one, all the screw trades men (joiners, plumbers and electricians) were all taken in to ensure a thorough raid and search of each hut to try acquire all our hidden escape or drink contraband. The raid was a success - they found all our poitin hidden behind the tins in two floor cleaning gallon drums. The screws were over the moon and they didn’t hide it - they strutted all around the place displaying the psychological victory of two plastic drums one in each hand. Once the raid was over everyone tidied up their wrecked cells and the now breached tins sticking out all over the place. 

That afternoon the cage OC told everyone that we would buy more sugar, that another batch was going down before Christmas. Everything needed to be fast forwarded, and it was. A roof heater was taken down rewired and pointed at the new bins of wash all day. This was to help the mix ferment faster and faster. At last the wash was ready. On Christmas Eve myself and Daithi ran the mix all day long, right up to lock up time. We distributed a share of the run to each of the huts just in the nick of time before lock up. 

Christmas was a was hard time for all prisoners but in particular for the married men, their wives and children, but also for young people missing their families and girlfriends. But lo and behold out of the blue at 11pm a drunken screw entered the cage with the 2 plastic containers full of poitin, captured 2 weeks earlier, offering us them back…a sign of Christmas peace…a bit like the football match in no man’s land during World War One….maybe. But the peace was rejected; the OC told him to stuff it, saying we had more than enough of our own. But St Stephen’s Day morning revenge was on its way: a snowfall had taken place during the night and the large cage yard behind the huts was covered with snow and a huge Union Jack now appeared made from a disgruntled screws heavy boots foot prints in the fresh virgin white snow… Merry Christmas everyone from the POW spirit of a Christmas past.

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

The Spirit Of A Christmas Past . . . Cage 12

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.



 The Land Mine  . . . Dublln Road, Newry

You drive across it, not looking down
A massive hole once in the ground
The deafening noise all around
A large crater, was all to be found
 ♞♜♝
Forgotten, their memories and cries that night 
Sacrificed in a thundering flash of light
Their faces don’t fade as the years pass by
 In the thoughts of loved ones who couldn’t say good bye
♞♜♝
So many were to die on the same stretch of road
Civilians, prison officers a terrible toll
A high court judge ,and his family too
Gunfire and explosions…in an eerie hue
♞♜♝

The death traps hidden into the ground
No longer needed, as peace is at last found
The peace was hard fought for with a heavy price
Family’s grieving …a life of sacrifice

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

The Land Mine . . . Dublin Rd Newry

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.



 British Tommies On Our Streets

British Tommies on our streets,
hob nail boots on their feet 
Big Tin hats upon their heads, 
holding weapons that shoot us dead
 ♞♜♝
Ferret cars that go so fast,
a searing noise as they speed past 
A Huge whip Ariel on the fox car roof,
a small triangular flag to detonate its group 
♞♜♝
Massive rubber tyres make a squeaking sound
as the huge metal wheels slowly Turn around
 Rolls of barbed wire on the huge green trucks, 
Large Camouflage covers so nobody can look 
At all the hooded men they just took 
♞♜♝
They say they were peace keepers
…but ignoring the facts
They murdered so many
. . . shot in the back 
 ♞♜♝
The BBC covered up their lies,
saying they were only keeping apart the warring sides
But at long last the truth starts to seep out…
but the victim’s family’s still have to bang and shout . . . to get justice!

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

British Tommies On Our Streets

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.



 Never Pretend To Be Dead

I got inside a coffin
just to see if i would fit
I couldn’t believe how hard it was
or am I starting to get stiff?
 ♞♜♝
It seemed a bit small for me
maybe I am getting a wee bit stout?
But Now I’m stuck inside
and can’t get feckin out
 ♞♜♝
So I tried not to panic, 
might as well see just how I feel 
With the fancy purple crept lining
lying all over me 
 ♞♜♝
There is a small bag of sand
stuck underneath my neck
lifting my head up high 
so as I look peacefully relaxed 
 ♞♜♝
Suddenly the room door opened 
and I pretended to be dead 
Two cleaners walked inside the room, 
and both them shook their heads
 ♞♜♝
He looks well for a corpse
the big Irish one said 
You’d think he was only sleeping,
the other one agreed nodding her head
 ♞♜♝
They both stood over above me, 
as if to say a silent prayer 
Then the Irish one took out a hair brush, 
and started to brush my hair 
 ♞♜♝
Couldn’t have him buried 
with his hair in that state 
Then second one took out powder
and started putting it all over my face 
 ♞♜♝
They both smiled at each other
at the job they had done 
Then they both busted out laughing
it sure was great fun 
 ♞♜♝
But my allergy to the make up
soon made me cough and sneeze 
They both took off like like a rocket
dust rising from their heels 
 ♞♜♝
I never thought that dying
could be so much fun 
But I’d had enough of this wake
it’s time that it was done 
 ♞♜♝
So I rose to exit the coffin
a hand firmly on each side 
But the undertaker entered the room
and couldn’t believe his own eyes 
 ♞♜♝
He had heard many’s a story
of the dead coming alive 
But the sight of a real living stiff
sure took him by surprise
 ♞♜♝
As I ran from his parlour
with the shroud flying over my head
I swore and I swore
 that’s my last time ever playing dead! 
 ♞♜♝
The undertaker was screaming, 
and following me in hot pursuit 
shouting robber come back here
with my purple coffin suit
 ♞♜♝
I was running so fast now
I tripped, fell and thumped my head
 I’m now back in the coffin
but this time I’m really dead

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

Never Pretend To Be Dead

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.



 Belfast Prison 

The invisible pain of the tourist game 
People visit but they feel no pain
they see the walls but not the stains. 
The gun towers and wire have now alas all gone
except in the souls where the memory lives on.
 ♞♜♝
The once cruel facade now cannot be seen
hidden behind the tourist screen 
A place of hardship for all it did keep
men, women and waifs off the street.
♞♜♝
My invisible thoughts hurt my mind
its fancy now, but is still unkind. 
I see the ghosts at every turn, 
the hate and violence once served upon.
♞♜♝
Warriors who once took up the fight imprisoned here 
a brutal plight. 
The hangman’s nooses hides behind bookcase door
a lever pulls a trapdoor floor.
No screws or police now with religious zeal 
to enforce their will and make you yield. 
♞♜♝
No longer confinement and liberty denied
they have turned it into a fun fair ride.
Just children and visitors who don’t understand, 
a sectarian prison with a religious brand
♞♜♝
The painted walls cannot hide 
the pain and suffering once served inside. 
A secret tunnel runs under the road
dirty damp flagstones where you were once goaded.
♞♜♝
Prison officers like death camp guards, 
no pity or compassion for your regard 
Just doing their bit for a greedy pay,
harassing and mistreating you to fill their day
♞♜♝ 
A bigoted orange sectarian state, 
rigged Diplock courts, prison, a nationalists fate. 
Though for me my life has changed,
I’m still caught up in their justice game
♞♜♝
Only your body and time moves on, with a criminal tag,
your still frowned upon a prisoner until death behind these cold walls, 
your invisible chains with its heavy steel ball 
More visitor tourists taken for a ride, 
who never see the Real prison inside.

⏩ Brendan Curran,  Irish conflict poems 2020

Belfast Prison

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.

23-December-2022

 Now The Guns Have Gone Asleep 

It’s easy to be a republican, now that the guns have gone asleep
The town is so much quieter, no army check points on each street
No need to go to bed each night, and fear the deafening thud
Of the jack boot on your front door, of a RUC sectarian thug
♞♜♝
You don’t listen to the wireless now, like you did morning noon and night
The struggle is all over now, except for political squabbles and sham fight
Bless The poor people in our community who opened up their doors
Let us hide our guns in their attics and underneath their floors
♞♜♝
Cast aside the freedom fighters, who once led our struggle strong
Imprisoned and their families broken, just remembered now in song
The prison criminals tag still follows them, every where they go
The modern day republicans don’t seem to want to know
♞♜♝
The volunteers who died in battle, some murdered by the state
Others sent out to fight with defective bombs, only knowing, when it was too late
Sleeping in strangers' houses each night, trusting in other people's faith
Hiding behind closed curtains, shielding from the informer fate
♞♜♝
But the sleeping guns were fought hard for, only grieving families know the price
To see the killers of their loved ones walk free, no one asking them their advice
But that’s the price of war for centuries, you wear the scars of the dead
Their face and smell follows you everywhere, even asleep in your bed

⏩ Brendan Curran, The Poet Without A Pen.

Now The Guns Have Gone Asleep

Brendan Curran ✒ with a poem from his expansive body of work.

23-December-2022

 The Flickering Light 

The statue still children hunched over the flickering light
Prisoners to a metal abuser, morning, noon and night
It’s good for their education you hear the parents say
But then they turn their back, and walk foolishly away
♞♜♝
Many parents are as bad, their device gets all their time
Abandoning their children, it should be made a crime
It’s a modern day catastrophe, society will soon foot the bill
Children growing into adulthood with a dependency on pills
♞♜♝
Sitting in a darkened corner, just the screen lighting up their face
You wouldn’t have thought there was a human being there, occupying that space
It’s lazy parenting, why have a child at all, it kills their communication skills
abandoned, playing games alone in rooms attics and darkened halls
♞♜♝
They never seem to hear you, or even know that you're there at all
Unless they are talking to you, via a device or mobile call
Children no longer want to leave the house,the games swallow up their mind
They are lost, to a destructive new culture that’s cruel and unkind
♞♜♝
If a human abuser broke in to their home,there would be screams all around
But the technology abuser does it quietly . . . no one raises a sound.

⏩ Brendan Curran, The Poet Without A Pen.

The Flickering Light

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