Making Pesto
There are Basil plants floating
just outside my kitchen window
I don’t know how they got there
but I tend them carefully
giving them water in the morning
and pick or cut away the flowers
to help the leaves grow
because Basil leaves
are the most important ingredient
for making pesto
Basil leaves are the key ingredient
You must wait for them to grow
There is no replacement, no expedient
you cannot hurry Basil leaves
So I watch them growing, floating
just outside my kitchen window
Just when there’ll be enough to pick
is impossible to know
The recipe says it’s easy
and it only takes three minutes
to prepare the pesto
but it takes more than three minutes
for Basil plants to grow
The leaves flash bright basilgreen
which means that they are ready
to be picked
But there’s a special trick
You must wash and dry
all the leaves, without breaking one,
not one, not a single leaf
There is an explanation
Breaking the vescicole causes oxidation
I checked two big dictionaries
Italian for the translation
then English for the definition
but neither of those things
caught my imagination
I don’t understand the science-why
And I don’t follow the recipe exactly
but the pesto turns out tasty
because I’ve been told the special trick
You must dry each leaf
slowly, carefully, individually,
and be gentle when you pick
The Pineapple Conundrum
Here’s a conundrum:
Pineapples
Where do they come from and how do they get here?
And how is it that they’re on supermarket shelves
throughout the entire year?
The label on my Pineapple
says it came from Costa Rica
It travelled across the Ocean
It’s gigantic –
My Pineapple and the Atlantic
Did it swim or fly?
Did it sail by boat
eventually reaching
the European coast?
At what port did it dock?
Then it got on a truck
and was driven to my local shop
I bought it for one ninety-nice –
it was twenty percent off!
Are there pineapple planes?
Do pineapple trucks drive
in special superfast pineapple lanes?
The economics of Pineapples are completely insane!
There is no such thing as a Pineapple tree
That might be common knowledge
but it was news to me!
Pineapple plants grow on pineapple farms
There are no trees, there are no Pineapple forests
It takes three years for a Pineapple to grow
How this exotic fruit defies our conception of Harvest time
I’ll never know
Who tends to the pineapple plants?
What are their wages?
Watching Pineapples grow takes Pineapple ages!
Who ate the first Pineapple?
Who had the vision to see
that although the skin looks like bark
the inside is soft, sweet, refreshing, and juicy?
There are no seeds inside a Pineapple
At least not as far as I can see
How anyone can grow or
make money from selling
Pineapples completely baffles me
But Pineapple shapes and Pineapple colours
are things that make me Pineapple wonder
Supporting slave labour since made somewhere else
I support slave labour
since my clothes are made somewhere else
but my favourite new shorts
were made in Bangladesh!
They are a jeansy blue colour
like a big open sky
They were so cheap
but I don’t know why!
There are tags on the inside
full of information written
in sixteen different languages
Colour might come off after laundering
Contains non-textile parts of animal origin
But nowhere does it say
These clothes were made by children
Made by children
in a collapsing building
or a building that is sturdy
Sturdy like a prison
They have washing instructions
and the sizes in both US and European
The second pair were half price
dark light grey kind of colour
They are both really nice
I got a good bargain
so I’m not complaining
but I hate shopping for clothes
Inside the lights are so bright
that it’s hard to see
and the friendly sales assistant
won’t stop following me
I hate shopping for clothes
but I have to admit
with prices so low
Nobody knows!
I can’t afford clothes
that were made where I live
it’s hard to survive
on slave wages
I can’t afford clothes
made where I live
Look out below
it’s about to give!
Summer Invasion
The Mosquitos have grown
Gargantuan
They instill in me an instant
Terror
A sudden panic which skips
the Heart
And I scream inside my head
Get out of here!
They fly in my window
Uninvited and deadly
Bigger and must be
a new species for here
Keep all the doors closed
Keep the Mosquitos out
It’s Summertime
They are invading
They carry diseases
And bite you at night
Severe measures must be taken
Their presence cannot be tolerated
The only real solution
is to kill them all
But this one has just flown
back out the window
Then the War came
There were children outside
playing a game
I can hear them now
Then the War came
We had a country
It had a name
We wanted to stay there
Then the War came
We had a house
It was our home
Maybe it wasn’t much
Then the War came
We had some money
We worked all the same
Our jobs were alright
Then the War came
We used to holiday
We would take the plane
Never wanted to come here
Then the War came
We were happy there
We couldn’t complain
but the kids did – about school!
Then the War came
Life is universal
It’s always the same
Things happen for a reason
Then the War came
We were just like you
We were just the same
We were happy and rich there
Then the War came
John Austin Byrne was born in Dublin, in 1983 and isn’t sure if he is Generation X or a Millennial. John Austin went to school and university for a really long time, and was eventually awarded a Master of Arts in English Literature by the National University of Ireland. Afterwards, he left Ireland, going into voluntary exile as many budding, wannabe Irish writers are wont to do, for what were, at the time, passionately held beliefs he has long since forgotten all about. He travelled a bit, teaching English as a foreign language in Moscow, Germany, and finally Italy, where he has been living for the last seven years. He will always be grateful to the British Empire for conquering his country and imposing a foreign language on his ancestors, because it afforded him the opportunity to travel around Europe. However, John Austin does consider English to be “his native language” (because he talks to his Mom in English and always has). John Austin will never return to Ireland as he would much rather remain in Italy. His desire to “never go back to that place” has nothing to do with politics, religion, or culture, rather: the weather, the food, and his long-suffering girlfriend (whom, incidentally, he met in Moscow), who is from Italy. John Austin Byrne claims he has been writing stories and poems since he was a child.
A revealing fact about John Austin Byrne is that he didn’t even know his own first name until he had to provide exact birth certificate information to the Italian authorities. He’d always thought “Austin” was a second name, or middle name, and that his first name was simply John. Turns out, this was incorrect, and his first name is officially John Austin, which he only realised when he was 36 years old.
