Embedded Files
from In Security
from In Security
Security Forces 1
Security Forces 1
The rebel cave
At the entrance
the redcoats sat
and smoked.
The rebels,
deep in the cave,
were out of sight
and silent. They were
pure rebel, bodies
without borders,
merging, becoming one,
and the cave, emerging,
slowly taking shape.
Security Forces 2
Security Forces 2
I
Here’s security
waving papers
with ink still wet
forcing the lock
on the door.
Here because of a
language they
don’t understand,
tracking down reserves,
cachets long underground,
bonds between families.
For the sake of security
weapons in their millions
drifted through the open sea
into the deep trench
of Beaufort’s Dyke.
Verifiably.
Two clergy
peer in.
They cannot say
what they saw,
but swear to
have seen it.
We proclaim
the mystery
of faith.
The glory of God
and weaponry
bent out of shape
or in concrete.
Bells tinkle.
These things remain mysteries,
decommissioned weapons
in unknown dumps
and those that drift
with deep sea creatures.
They cannot say what
has been seen, only
that it has been seen.
Like the dead
whose bodies
prove death but
say nothing of it.
Witness to the
act of witnessing.
I saw it and it
was seen.
II
On a wet morning in February I
prise open a blank cell of family life
where numbers don't add up
and hand out money to children
who have long lost faith. I don’t
know what to do for the best.
Moving around the kitchen,
between the four walls, the sink and the
stove I have kept myself for myself.
Security forces the door shut from the
inside. It forces my steps on the way to work,
our little life and its ups and downs.
I erect boundaries to prevent incursion.
I have systems that detect movement.
There are means to respond. These
are the forms of security and its structures.
Fences and neighbours.
III
Many names circle the
house in the small
valley but never alight,
refusing collection.
The many names
cradle the land
and its few people
loosely in their arms.
IV
Security may be the
stories we tell our selves.
The day the keeper
came and shot
baby birds,
young rooks
newly hatched,
shooting up
through the nests.
The rooks kept us
company, smart
enough to stay
together in the
clamour of scrappy
buildings called
nests constructed
from the dry ash twigs,
unlike the isolated
humans of
no consequence
who rattle around
in deserted houses
waiting for the
postman to call.
V
Security lies in
insubstantial
specks of dust
picked up
in the sunlight
as they fall
between gaps
in the boards.
The weight of these
memories when
nothing stays the same.
There is no way back.
Securities, deposits in a
savings account
that accumulate interest
over time. They have
to be made to work.
I take them out
and count them.
Security Blankets
Security Blankets
From Frongoch to Woodstock and
Windsor, from Long Kesh and the
H-blocks to wet city streets, a blanket hangs
between bare forked ribs and the world.
When America was discovered its
inhabitants were on the blanket and
unrecognisable as human beings,
and suffered the cluster bombing of
influenza and cholera. Under a blanket
in Frongoch in 1916 with dry and flaking skin
and broken bones while the enemy was
otherwise occupied digging trenches in
Germany or France the army of Ireland worked
undercover beneath the distracted gaze of guards
too old for combat and rearranged the
parts until the structures of state dissolved.
The context might have been the green
fields of Bala and the shock of a body
clinging on, but the method
itinerant and indigenous.
Taking back control
Taking back control
They can’t bear to be seen
anymore. Their tattooed
necks. If self-harm uses a
sterilised blade, special
equipment to minimise
infection, then the new
battle lines are drawn by
the edge of a rusty bucket
left over from the days
of milking by hand,
long discarded in the
nettle patch against the
side of a tumbledown shed
across a farmyard sticky
with wet soil,
and leaves the ragged edges
of an open wound that bleeds
freely through soft torn flesh.
It is a form of self-harm
that the poor, who think
they deserve no more,
have inflicted
on themselves. Borders
are drawn in the blood
of workers who lost their work
first and then their union.
They are divided
by lines that are
wounds that bleed, new
borders made from
ripping out the steely
hearts of people
on the beaches of
Port Talbot, under the
sulky stare
of a cold furnace.
Out to sea the wind
turbines turn slowly, grinding
out a crazed decision
made through desperation, a belief
that things can get no worse,
that it is important to do
anything. The kind of
decision made at throwing
out time as the lights
go up on the grey faces
after a night of dancing and
in that moment of illumination
you decide to grab hold
of anyone. Later, turning
over, you stare into the eyes
of a strange bedfellow. You
have lines cut into your face.
There is blood on the sheets
from where the rust belt
has cut into actual flesh.
Galvanised sheet metal
going into holes. Var-
iations of infectious
possibilities. You
shouldn’t do it but the
moment of distraction
makes it worthwhile.
Taking your hands off
the wheel and feet off all
the pedals at the moment
the tyres lose their grip
and just drifting. No
hands, and the pirateers
riding shotgun. It is
mind blowing, leaving
the subject with their
mouth hanging uselessly
open like the door of a
blown safe or an
atomic explosion that
whips up all the debris
and opens the
doors of perception.
We are subjects with
a yawning chasm,
stunned at the possibilities
of frictionless borders
and their easy passage.
Flight
Flight
I can but
barely
barely
just the light
for Christ’s sake
the light dull as a ditch
when the poor
become
wealthy they
behave badly
power in
unaccustomed
hands is not
a reason to
keep things
as they are
the lights leading
Ian Davidson (b. 1957) was brought up and lived much of his life in Ynys Mon and Gwynedd in north west Wales and is a fluent Welsh speaker. After employment variously as a farmworker and builder, and some years working in adult education, he completed a PhD at Aberystwyth University and became a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Bangor University.
He has since worked at Northumbria University and is currently at University College Dublin. When not in Dublin he lives on a smallholding on the west coast of Ireland. Recent and forthcoming poetry publications include 'Coming and Going' in Plumwood Mountain (2020), From a Council House in Connacht (Oystercatcher, 2021) and By Tiny Twisting Ways (Aquifer 2021).
Copyright © 2021 by Ian Davidson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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