John Austin Byrne Waxes Poetic about Basil, Pineapples, Wars, Sweatshops and Mosquito Invasions

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.