Boyne Writers Group

Issue 6 of our magazine Boyne Berries was launched in the Castle Arch Hotel, Trim on 24 September 2009 by local retired solicitor Michael Regan.

A large attendance of contributors, group members and friends and family attended. Boyne Writers Group Chairman, Paddy Smith, welcomed all and introduced Michael Regan saying that he had always been a great support to the arts in the town and thanking him for his interest and support of the magazine. He pointed out that one of Michael's claim to fame was his acting in what has become a cult movie, Fatal Deviation, which was set and shot in Trim.

Michael Regan congratulated the group on their continued success, on the publication of the magazine and on their victory in the Battle of the Books during the Trim Swift Festival earlier int he year. He metioned the wide range of meterial in the publication with poems and stories from the USA, UK, Canada and Bulgaria as well as Ireland. He pointed out that for some this was their first time in print while others were well known writers with many publications to their name. He congratulated all the writers and welcomed them to Trim, town of Swift, Welling Rowan Hamilton and the poet F.R. Higgins who is buried at Laracor near Trim.

Group secretary then introduced the contributors who were present and they read their pieces to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Samples from Boyne Berries 6

MetroPolis

in a city under a glass lid
raw knees rub the rails
print the map of the net
she wolf romulus and remus
synchronicity and constant
neon eyes blink
rails and tunnel through time
metro

tomorrow
yesterday
today
randomness and coincidence
ecumenopolis
heliopolis
metropolis

skyquake
flying chunks of road
solomon's temple destroyed
nabuchadnezzar and nostradamus
synchronicity and constant
the future remains far behind us
as scheduled in the dungeons
metropolis collapses

yaSSen vaSSilev

Death and Crosswords

Death left the crossword
Unfinished, refused to fill in
The End. You imagined hearing
Those cinematic words
Over some ghostly mobile
Or in a white corridor
Where pallid clues lie
On trolleys. Later you stood
By a hole in the ground
Wondering if the displaced clay
Was really the finale or an anagram
For departing builders. Blood-red
Carnations drew your eyes to stones
Where absence lay neat
In wordless wreaths.

Mairide Woods

Sinking

The cold water came rushing up to meet Patrick as he plummeted downwards. He was jarred by the impact as the water's surface enveloped him and he was swallowed beneath the waves. It was a sink or swim situation so to speak. Patrick had little choice; he'd never learned how to swim. He kicked with all his might and clawed desperately for the surface, but to no avail. His clothes swiftly became sodden, weighing him down, dragging him deeper into the briny depths. He felt like screaming but couldn't open his mouth for fear of drowning. Instead he just sank deeper and deeper.

The water's colour changed from blue to purple around him and he could see the black water waiting for him below. It was like the transition from day into night. The more Patrick struggled, the faster he seemed to descend so he decided to surrender to the ocean's cold embrace; it seemed futile to fight it. He should have drowned and floated back to the surface but he didn't. Patrick was still sinking but he wasn't drowning. He couldn't hold his breath any longer so he opened his mouth. Water didn't come rushing in though, he just kept sinking further and further down. Patrick didn't understand it, he knew that he should be dead but he wasn't even finding it difficult to breathe.

As his gradual descent towards the murky swells continued he could do little, other than ruminate upon his fate. Patrick began to wonder if what was happening was real or if he was merely imagining it all. Could this prolonged fall simply be the projection of an oxygen starved brain or was he dead already? The water grew darker around him as the sunlight began to falter in its penetration of the ocean's lower levels.

Weird fish swam past Patrick as he sank further. He couldn't help but gaze upon them with a mixture of horror and compulsion. The creatures passed him ambivalently, allowing him only brief glimpses of their monstrous forms before they drifted into the obscurity of the shadowy seas. Some of them seemed like a remnant of the prehistoric era; monsters doomed to extinction which somehow survived out of sight and out of mind. They had great dull, staring eyes that had never known the sun and vicious jagged teeth larger than their own faces. Others were almost spectral beings, ghosts of the sea. They were largely transparent in appearance; some luminous and iridescent while the skeletons of others could plainly be seen through their scales. Patrick regarded these weird creatures with a morbid fascination as they drifted slowly in and out of cognition; none of them ever seeming to notice him.

Then Patrick reached the dusky world of the sea level known as the abyss, and there were no more fish. There was no more light either. Pitch black water just presented itself on all sides. There was nothing for Patrick to see, he might as well have been blind because of the darkness. Memories came flooding into Patrick's mind in random snippets as he plumbed the depths. They did not form any cohesive picture but he was infected by a sense of regret and insidious guilt which he dwelled upon. The ocean currents dragged him inescapably closer to the conclusion of his descent. The shadows reached out to him like grasping fingers, hungry and desperate to drag him down.

The unknown faced Patrick from all angles. He could see no escape. He wished desperately then that he'd told her. He didn't understand what was happening. He just wished that his nightmare ordeal would end. It shouldn't have taken this to show him that he had been wrong. He had to find a way out, he had to find a way back from the abyss. This couldn't be it. He was almost at the bottom.

There was light in his surroundings once more; but it wasn't natural light. It crept back into the environment slowly as though it didn't want him to realise that it was there. It was coming from below him. Patrick's gaze was drawn irresistibly downwards to the source of the murky crimson illumination. He didn't want to look down but he knew that he had to. The water was becoming hot, fast. Patrick was struck by terror at what he saw. His eyelids jerked open. She had to know.

Steven Balbirnie