Issue 25: Ian Davidson

from In Security

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I can but

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.

Home | Issue 25