Angela McCabe: Performance Art

Belfast

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

From The Second Coming. WB Yeats.

We welcome the first quiet

after our frenzied exhibitions.

Statements on walls to make sense

of what we are going through.

My boyfriend dozes

into a second sleep.

Bang of Lambeg drums

and whistle of whistles wake him.

Sun shines through a skylight.

He curses the Twelfth of July,

and how God looks down

on Orangemen.

I hush him,

bid him sleep some more,

for sleep comes hard in this city

of broken dreams.

We live over a Post Office

on the Ormeau road

often lit by

hovering helicopters.

Saracens park against our front door,

set up a check point,

block our coming and going.

Bullets rat-tat in crossfire,

a surety every week-end

Before all this we sauntered

through city shops.

Bought fabric in the Spinning Mills.

Lunched in a Chinese restaurant

near the Black Man.

Now, gates and body searches

by uniformed women with grumpy faces

reeking of smoke and hate.

Today we’re away from this,

in our attic room watching

sunlight and shadows,

as the bands play on.

He pulls the eiderdown over us.

After the drums cascade,

incendiaries explode, snipers shoot,

we shut out the last star

and sleep for all of Belfast.

Ragdoll Cat

A man with the pellet gun shot her sister. I zip her

into my parka every morning, cover us both with the hood.

She vibrates, purrs deep in her throat, as pigeons coo and jackdaws caw.

Safe along the lane now, she leaps onto the hedge, climbs a gnarled tree

the shape of my heart. Fluff ball clouds between the mountains, mist on the hills.

Field: a blanket of sacred spider webs. A thousand drumlins, a trillion drops of dew.

Buddhists walk carefully, say mantras for any creature they may step on. ‘Tread softly.’

I whisper to her. She’s taken

to walking on her hind legs, stance of an orangutan, waddle of a penguin,

sings of birds and fish. They say enlightened beings

can reincarnate in a million different forms. I tell her stories

of my teacher’s compassion, how he’d encourage us to save a life,

go to the fish farm, haul barrels of trout back on trailers,

release them down stream in the river Esk. He’d pack again for Tibet:

clothes for the elderly he’d rescue, wool for women to weave, books

for children he’d save. How small we felt

as this resolute man took flight through dangerous terrain.

I could not zip him into my coat nor cover him with my hood.

Enemies killed him, leaving a hole in the earth, wider than a crater

and deeper, bereft now of mountains, fluff ball clouds, mists and spider webs.

Ragdoll cat climbs up my parka into the hood, hums of fledglings and fingerlings.

If Anywhere Needed Punk, it was Belfast.

First time at dinner he sat on the floor

slugging cider from a bottle, while we sipped Bordeaux,

talked of Jung and Carl Rogers.

Now and again banged his Doc Martins on the wall and sang:

God save the queen the fascist regime.

They made you a moron, a potential H. bomb.

When my guests left I sat beside him:

Yer brains are locked away.

But I love your company,

marched up and down, arm salutes:

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols.

Passed out, I dragged him to the settee,

tucked a blanket over his combat suit.

He gazed at me. I fell into his deep eyes and drowned.

A mumble ‘Thanks wee girl.’

We met again and again.

Treaded dimly lit narrow cobblestone streets

to the dilapidated barbed wired Harp Bar in the city centre.

Pogoed to ‘Stiff Little Fingers’, ‘The Undertones’, ‘The Outcasts‘

and ‘The Moondogs’.

My hair white and spiked,

his, red as flames, purple as the sky above Vesuvius

and Aero blue as a rain shower.

Me in red baggy pants and a Vivienne Westwood straps jacket.

He wore leather and studs.

All heroes, all famous jumped on each other’s backs,

squirted bottles of lager in the air,.

rolled on the floor in a flood of alcohol.

He was the ultimate anarchist, a DIY artist.

We’d piggy back home, army and police looking for snipers.

Too stoned to know I was mad about him, yet our intimacies

had the passion of a boy in love.

My Mother, My Life

Their feet are guns,

their eyes are bullets in my lungs. From Remember Spain by Robert Galvin.

Sunday morning darkens. The phone rings. They threaten again,

say they’ll throw my body into The Black Water. My bones stiffen, heart freezes.

I have nine lives. I am a walking miracle. Will the lioness save me?

Pressured to Mass by my father’s side, bribed by a petite fit new gabardine coat

epaulettes and belt.

Oh, come home fearless woman before dangerous barrels open fire

and you find my flesh torn in pools of blood.

I don’t want to be buried, I forgot to tell you. Cremated. Make a bed of straw,

a gurney of ash wood, set it alight. Push this funeral pyre on to Lough Neagh.

I will watch the Antrim hills step off into whiteness, and will follow.

A red Cortina approaches the lane, turns on the street, our Nissan on its tail.

Navy coated woman dismounts, stands by the driver’s door, stands and stands again.

Windows roll down, my father resolute by the passenger side A gun points out.

She presses her chest against it. Positions held for an eternity.

Slowly the Cortina reverses its’ cowardly wheels along the side of the house.

My heart closes and opens.

I hear her voice: ‘No one will touch a hair on your head, daughter so long as there’s breath in my body.’ Stops my trembling. Mother makes tea.

I bury myself in her shatterproof coat.

How Can I tell the Stories?

I want to play the piano

and croon a lament:

A chequered coat,

draped over the cast on her leg,

as we sit on a nineteen seventies

bus, in Belfast.

I want to sit by a fire,

in Connemara, local women

‘winding me on,’

as I hum ‘sean nós.’

Masked gunmen breaking in,

barrels at our heads.

I want to sing country:

Unspoken fragments of debris,

the bomb that kept us on the run.

I want to chant deep and low:

Casualties of war,

our silent ache.

I want to write a ballad:

Growing older,

don’t mention

murder or deception,

lest this iced render,

this unbearable weight

would shatter our world.

Already fragmented.

Each May I say:

Accept these flowers,

this shrine to your memory.

Now I will sing the songs

we wrote together.

Tender We Find Our Way

I ordered hot chocolate and cinnamon toast, looked round

each time the door opened. He walked in

with two friends. I stared ahead at the menu board.

My face blushed, then my neck, my hands.

My stomach jumped and I was glued to the floor in my black

brothel creepers.

Heard chairs scratch the tiled floor where he sat,

rolled a cigarette and drank black coffee.

Felt those deep blue eyes pierce the tartan jacket I’d made,

conscious of my slicked white hair. Combed it with my fingers,

unsure of the spikes. The tea lady

asked if I wanted nutmeg on the chocolate.

‘Yes’ I said, wringing my hands along the counter rail,

wet now with sweat.

His friend grabbed a tray and stood near me. He rocked from side to side

on the balls of his feet, making me dizzy.

I moved a step away and said a silent prayer:

‘Let there be a bomb scare and we’ll have to vacate the premises.’

The Black Mountain was in a dark mood, plumes of fiery smoke

belching upwards. An explosion somewhere in the Shankill.

‘That’ll be fifty pence, love.’ The tea lady’s voice

came from outer space. I moved along the line,

fumbled through my purse, navigated a tray into the grey room, found

a table by the window.

Melanie walked in. I gestured to her, unbuttoned my jacket: ‘It’s warm,’

my eyes drawn to the boys table, ‘Let me help.’

She stood behind me, gently pulled the shoulders down, stroked my arms, my rib cage freed so I could breathe.

She folded it, red lining outward, draped carefully. I pushed

the toast and chocolate toward her. She glanced

in their direction, nodded and began to drink.

She touched my hand, said: ‘I like your hair.’

I stole a glance at his flame red hair, natural curls alive

with sunlight from the dome in the ceiling. We watched

the fire brigade hose the blaze.

On a scrap of paper I wrote: ‘He’s ten years younger than me.’

‘So what?’ All eyes were drawn to the window, hailstones tap dance glass.

He caught my eye and tilted his head toward the door.

We walked out into the dimly lit hall, down the back

stairs, whirling through one of many

pheromone orbits in a chemical romance.

Oh, how to make a new beginning?

Ardboe

Here we are driving along our favourite road,

Lough Neagh nudging in and out, flat as a plane.

I have finally returned after all these years, we are still in love,

have a second chance and take it.

Windows down on this balmy day, wind fluttering through our cotton clothes.

You stop at our old haunt to drink a glass.

The barwoman unbolts the door, cameras, mirrors, sensors scorch in the sun.

Inside, dark, airless, grills on windows, locks on doors.

What is she hiding as she buffs glasses, already polished? Why is it quiet?

‘Please, please don’t bomb us. This is all we have, this is our livelihood, our lives.’

Eyes follow me to the bathroom and back, burn holes in my handbag.

This is not what we remember, take our leave. Outside the sun heals.

Before we reach the car, the woman runs to us clutching her summer dress,

‘Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.’

I hold the woman’s hand, tell her our names and where we live.

They’ve been bombed so many times her soul’s broken, her heart shut.

I cannot help but hold her, allow her to sob.

Her tears are warm and salt, like the sea and come from a woman all washed out.

Refuge

Donna Dunlop sewed rice paper

onto fine white linen,

painted it with cherry blossoms,

parasols and bamboo plants.

On the Ormeau Road in Belfast

beside the graffitied post office,

she replaced synthetic curtains

with her prints, in the two-up two-down.

She kept the lights on

and these curtains drawn.

Shoppers and pub goers

gathered to gaze at them.

When they were caught in crossfire

on Saturdays, she opened the front door

and called the women with shopping bags

to rest inside till the shooting stopped.

Come dine with me

at this topless table, sit on these chairs with no seats,

read the hanging menu, order wine and bread.

My mouth is wrapped in silence, feathers quiet me.

You do the dinner talk, use plates and cutlery hanging in the air.

I have so much to say if I open my mouth

words will spew like the ash of Hiroshima.

I wear a marriage dress in memory of that great din,

fire and debris before the sirens cry.

Smoke rolled upward, murderess to Heaven.

I could not run or I would have run forever,

the country so full of trouble, too anxious to let me sleep.

So join me, join me, let us eat the last supper,

might heal unseen wounds, might sweeten my upside down world,

and rid me of my deepening chaos.

Installation

Two goats graze in our garden

off the Malone Road in Belfast.

Each morning we put them in a horse box

drive them through Shaftesbury Square

to Royal Avenue. Release them at Carlisle Circus

lead them along York Street to the Art College.

Punks with pink Mohicans cheer us.

Shoppers laugh out loud,

a few moments when souls are free

from the fear of a bomb.

It’s the doormen who try to stop us

as the genteel creatures foul the floor

with neat brown balls of dung.

But this time we have a paper

which says:

Goats are part of the exhibition.

These wide eyed animals like the lift.

When we let them free for the day

where grass grows in a studio

and bales of hay hang low

they munch and ignore

the smell of oil paint

and rancid discontent.

Angela McCabe

Performance Art

Thursday, 1 March 2018

Performance Art

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