narratives (still very much in progress)

Irish Ninja

Somewhere around the age of 20 I had been looking to get my accent back that would

have been 1995 when I first came back to Milton Keynes & Portadown

BOYO after moving to Vegas 

where the middle school 

was full of Mexicans hombre

and a girl named Candy squinted 

when she smoked a cigarette through her gaped tooth and BOYO 

did she love Duran

Duran and French kissing

I hadn’t learned the French and loved

Jesus but did play

spin the bottle with no

tongue for Jesus I

hadn’t learned the cursive 

so the curly haired Mexican teacher 

who was a finalist for space 

but Christa McAuliffe beat him to it & 

was blown up in the process showed us 

an experiment with a glass tube and a cigarette and the tube filled up with smoke 

and the glass bottom got yellow and he said 

this is what happens to your glass belly 

BOYO my accent was still thick 

and the girls wanted to play four

square but I hadn’t learned the cursive 

so I was after school with a shy Mexican girl and I was her 

Irish ninja & made up some move I called

the slot machine jackpot arm twister and I told her I was 

on the run and if any Irish 

ninjas showed up to keep 

the beans in her belly

after school I stayed up late looking 

into the mirror & tired of not 

being understood I elongated 

my a’s & listened to Grandmaster Flash & tried to breakdance 

on a piece of cardboard and a Vegas 

Mormon accent began to kick in 

then which was really 1950’s America 

but I didn’t know that then & on Sundays we took on Elizabethan English with thee 

& thou & brother & sister & handshakes & half moons under shirts & I got all mixed 

up in 1995 after visiting Portadown 

& Milton Keynes & leaving a Mormon mission which was in Boise 

Idaho & for the first time since 

I left I wanted to turn back 

the clock get back what I lost 

that whale in the belly UGH

and now I am back in London

hello again & this is 2011 & 

I have an American accent 

and my past is still my past 

and my present is three steps

behind my past oh God-

Zenie and I have a British passport 

YUCK and an American accent 

hm whatever that means 

& that’s OK too I guess I am ok 

with that & I guess whatever 

it means is sort of up for grabs and I am really up for grabs 

with Portadown somewhere down there in the cities of the belly

my green card for America has expired 

my Northern Irish accent has expired 

my Mormon accent has expired and I will expire too