Poem: Winter

Winter is coming again, crisp clean cold and Christmas lights.
The plants have died, the trees naked and stark against autumnal skies,
This is my season. Briefly I pretended to be a Summer flower, for you
But of all the fairytale characters I most wanted to be the Snow Queen,
The White Witch. I was never a Disney princess.

When the sun was shining I played at make believe, pretend warmth.
I do not feel it, they tore it out of me with good intentions,
I am safe. For awhile you made me wish that I was better, able,
Somewhere deep down I think it would have be something to love you,
But it’s a relief that it is over. I am glad that it is Winter.

Poem

For a while we worked, the things I gave you were enough,
I think we were mostly happy, but you became greedy,
decided that you wanted posturing, and stupid pointless words,
Like we were living in an American sitcom.
 
Gradually you felt something was missing, me just being me,
You wanted to hold my hand walking down the street, and constant hugs,
wanted to sacrifice everything for brainless make-believe,
Until we meant nothing worth having.
 
I was never going to give in, and I was so angry
You fighting every day, so determined to make us ordinary,
And constantly saying it, buzzing in my ear like an idiot.
I wanted to throttle you.
 
Until you ruined it, you for me were my reason,
My every moment, my waking in the morning,
Bigger than platitudes, and better then needing them,
You were my everything.
 
It didn’t need saying, there was nobody else so trusted,
So treasured, until you needed me to change,
I hope you find some lovely imbecile to parrot sweet trivialities
And that she makes you happy.  
 

Poem: Different Lives

We used to sit in a group up in the park
drinking revolting mixtures of spirits
robbed from gullible parents liquor cabinets
and smoking cigarettes we bought two for ten pence
from the irresponsible shop keeper who also sold us our penny jellies.

As time passed we introduced the softest of illegal substances
and availed of the dark winter evenings to gently molest one another.
With nothing to do and nowhere to be we unintentionally
spent our days dissecting modern philosophy
and running from the Garda when they showed up unexpectedly.

Later on, through fortunate chance and happenstance
I stumbled my way into a University and blagged myself a degree.
Learning to roll my r’s and sandpaper the rougher edge of Dublin from my tongue,
While you staggered from expulsion to Dole queue to probation
And erased the sparkle from your eyes with alcohol and heroin.

I got myself an office job and a pretty apartment
And became adept at hiding the places I grew up in,
While you robbed a post office and got locked up
And died bleeding in a dark cell of an overcrowded prison.
They didn’t believe when I said, I used to be friends with him.

Poem: Apology

It is not an easy thing, to say you are sorry,
I know you wanted so much more for me
And are disappointed that I could be so ordinary
As to let myself be trapped by something so stupid.

I have tried for explanations, unfair to expect you to understand
How loud it can get inside my head, just excuses
But I was searching for some kind of respite
From always having to be myself.

I wanted to see what would happen if I took myself apart
I didn't consider that you would be the one 
Left to pick up all of the pieces and try
To fashion me back out of them.

It must have hurt, it must have made you angry
That I hid them from you, gave you promises
And presumed you were so stupid that you would miss
The best part of a bottle of whiskey on my breath.

The person that I am, that's all that there is
And no amount of tears can change it, not now
I know that it is entirely selfish of me,
But letting everything disintegrate felt extraordinary.

You need to stop trying to save me now,
The girl you want back is a lost, I barely remember her
I think it would be easier if you just hated me,
And for what it's worth, I am sorry.

Poem:Bravery

This is bravery, 
Being in this moment
and the next
and all of the moments to follow
when everything is full of hurt 
and fear, wolves at the door,
bottles of whiskey,
and regrets and regrets and regrets.
 

Poem: Deinon

These wishes,
they are such things,
beyond precious,
priceless and pointless
they breath for us,
pulse beneath the skin, alive,
fantastical and desperate,
the very essence of being, the reason.

These wishes,
they are such things,
wonderful and terrible
they sustain us, eat away at us,
unattainable in reality
they flirt with us, taunt us,
they are too loud voices
in silent churches,
they are incongruous.

These wishes,
they are such things.

Poem: Time heals

Enough time has passed now for us to talk about other things and smile.
Every word no longer weighted with your absence, every meal not tasteless.
We have stopped expecting that you will walk in the door,
And there are moments when our thoughts are of something else.
 
Yesterday I did not cry for you, the first time since.
And it seems that I was wrong, the world kept turning.
I am surprised that the sinking feeling in my stomach has gone,
And my heart still beats, miraculously unbroken.
 
Having offered up limbs, heart and soul for one moment with you
I have stopped trying to barter in vain with hearing-impaired Gods.
Slowly things are getting better, perhaps we will survive this after all,
And time will turn you into nothing more than reminiscence.
 

Poem: This Girl

She is the bravest person that I have ever met,
Despite the constant quiet fear
That makes her appear wholly unremarkable.

She has a small scar on the side of her wrist
That she finds herself rubbing in times of stress,
A tiny raised knot of flesh that you would not notice.

She has an almost imperceptible dip in her skull
Just beneath the line of her hair,
That she imagines aches constantly.

She has thin silver marks on her forearms
Indirect reference to old hurts
That well up unexpectedly to choke her.

She has astonishing reserves of bravery
That she uses to wake up every morning
And live as a part of the world.

She has a bitter understanding of cruelty
That she cannot help but replay
In the faces of prospective friendships.

She has nothing untainted by bad black memories
That she does not allow herself to think about
But which have distorted everything.

Poem: Now and Then

What are we now, after all of this is put to bed, wrapped up neatly, blonde curls in pink bows.
Look at us, we are a picture in a storybook.
I still mean all of my smiles but when I am sad, oh it hurts. 
How it still hurts.
I’ve counted them, one to ten, we do not talk about six, the worst time, the deepest one
Not that I am blaming, those were difficult times for all of us, it’s just the age thing separates me.
Mostly it is a thing that happened, a once upon a time  that spills out of me when I’ve been drinking,
Mostly it is nothing worth relating.
 
I can’t do that kind of closeness but who needs it anyway, most people are pointlessly ordinary,
I do not answer when you ask me about relationships bar an aside, something trite and glib that makes me seem
selfish instead of broken, just these little things,
What might have been, a sometimes lonely, an impossible longing
And no tears left for anything,
Which is sad in itself, I suppose.
It faded like you promised me, but still just numbed, just numb. 
Still waiting.
 

Poem: Another Love Story

This was to be the great adventure,
we were to pack up our pasts and explore the unknown, hand in hand
we would break down barriers, create new histories and legends
to replace so many broken glass moments and twisted grey myths.

We began so full of hope,
but despite our open minded wonder at the majesty of the world
childhood serpents were still hissing in our ears.
We could not escape the stains of black nonsense corrupting our hearts.

It did not take long,
the shame they had taught tracked us down and pulled us apart,
the purest expression of us debased by these pious protestors,
dirtied and distorted until we were justified in our shame.

By the time the end came
we were bodies purpled in a latticework of anger, afraid
we took refuge in the simple destructiveness of hateful humiliation,
all was lost in absolutism. They owe us a myriad of possible tomorrows.

We were to be such a love story,
this would have been the great adventure
but for half remembered lies neatly wrapped in doxology,
abhorrent as it always was, is now and ever shall be.

Seven Months

It took seven months
for it to be said aloud.

I still miss her,
this wonderful, impossible woman.

It’s been seven months
since one dark evening,
one senseless moment
that changed everything.
Seven months of angry mourning,
shocked bewilderment
and one word we were not saying.

Seven months since all the little things
were too much
and in inexplicable despair
she abandoned us.
It has been seven months
without knowing all the whys.

Seven months since she died.

Seven months for someone to say suicide.

Poem: Written

A favourite author talked about the world,
written on our bodies,
marked out in our silhouette
the small lines that tell our stories.
You are a tension in my shoulders,
a slight shrug,
an awareness of myself,
a tremor in my hands
and awkwardness in my carriage.
You are written somewhere in me,
perhaps hinted at by the grey hairs
that have started to grace my temples,
or an occasional distance,
an expression that crosses my face
when I think about you accidentally.
 

Poem: Regret

There is no reason I would have called you that night.

I wish I had.

I wish that I had thought to do it,
I wish I had done something differently,
But as it happened
I was at home, tweeting 'happy new year' 
to people I do not know
While you, in some kind of despair
Were dying. 
On your own. 

Poem: Dublin

In the morning it will be raining, or the sun will shine
And the river will flow through the centre of the city regardless.
There will be a crowd, or one or two, depending on beds and funding
It will be one short no matter the weather and circumstance.

My city is bleeding loss and hurt from the cracks in the street
At 6am they sneak in, stepping over the sleeping, to drag protestors away.
On occasion you see the missing, lost amongst the invisible
Conspicuous at last, if only by their absence.

‘We neither know nor care to look for anything but reasons’
An explanation for the state of things as they are,
But we do not want to dirty our hands
With the excrement created by our lust for progress.

You were stained with the hurt and sickness of neglect
And for weeks I watched you dying.

There is very little for which we should feel proud.

Poem: Love Stories

This is the oldest story ever to be told,
the very first tale that came with shedding gills, taking to land.
We like our words, to say forever and love
and lie with a casual banality that mocks us.
Nobody before us, or nobody yet to come, is different
and when the stars burn their last there will be lovers
who weep their soft lies together at the ends of everything.
and pretend that theirs is the first story to have anything other
than a happy ever after.

Poem: After the End

She felt she was alone – mostly this empty house,
This constant aching from nothing, nothing again.
She did not get the happy ever after that the stories promised her
The let this be the happy last page now.

Life keeps on writing the story, the parts that we do not tell.
This is murky, dirty; let us illiterate, after the ‘I do’.
A simple thing, a lying down and not waking up.
A no explanation, these things just happen, no reason.

Crumble, pour salt, waste away and ruin the dreaming,

Poem: Anonymous

In having something to say, saying it, but hiding
There is a certain kind of crawling cowardice,
In little insipid negative comments, remaining nameless
There is a nothing to respect or deign to discuss,
In being too afraid to be identified, even virtually
There is a pitiable pathetic pointlessness,
In having convictions, but no courage in them
There is no merit to the things that you are saying.

Poem: Campfire

Speaking of the past,
a crackling memory in glowing embers.
How I will remember that time
after white ash has blown away
and all that is left is scorched earth
and bitter cold. Once we ate melted mallows
and huddled together in the warmth
of living stories.

Poem: Love Story

In the morning light you said no more,
A ring on her finger, a promise in her womb
Every lie you told me proved to be true
And despite it all I’m losing you.

Built on a promise of yesterday, this is us
Shattered glass slippers slick with blood
Once upon a time we were in love.
We are mostly broken; we see the truth in hurt.

Love based on broken glass and fists,
Mouth my neck and weep with it
Slam this girl against a wall and thrust
Want, a bloody lipped parody of lust.

Then home to the woman you would never hurt,
Back to sweet nothings and safer love.

Poem: I thought

I thought, in getting older I would understand things more clearly, 
I do not understand.
I want to stamp my feet and scream at the unfairness 
That is in this.

I thought that, in getter older I would lose naivety
You have left me confused.
I want to turn back time and say the right lines
To change your mind.

I thought, in getting older I would learn acceptance 
It is beyond me.
I want to change what happened magically
Do something differently.

I thought, in getting older I would see the world differently
It would make sense.
I want to make agreements with a deity
And rewrite history.

I thought, in getting older nothing would hurt me
It would be impossible.
I want to bring you back to the living
And change everything.

I want this not to be happening.