Loss

We like to write poems about loss, being the universal experience.

I have written lines of prose, or romantic rumblings

about loss marked out in decay and gravestones.

These quantifiable losses that break our hearts

but briefly, until the wounds scab over and we continue.

 

Only occasionally, rocked by drink or loneliness,

picking at the scabs and taking perverse pleasure in briefly revisiting our grief.

 

This losing unites us; we sing with it and embrace each other

with understanding, there are many people we would like to hold again.

But our lost dreams are silent, witnesses to weakness,

these I wish moments, these growing up forgets

disguised as responsibility and circumstance.

 

Once upon a once upon a time, when we believed in magic

we could be anything but what we became.

 

 

 

Political Correctness gone mad? Or taking responsibility for what you say?

When I was a little we used to say a rhyme ‘ineey, meeny, miney, mo, catch a ni***r by the toe’, you will notice in typing it I couldn’t bring myself to type the actual N-Word, because now I know better. At that time I had no understanding of the word, it was a meaningless as the Ineey Meenies and so I can perhaps be excused for using it then, where I never would now. (for those interested, it has been replaced in the rhyme now with the word Tiger)

Jan Moir wrote an article today trying to explain and excuse the words she recently wrote regarding Stephen Gately, but she failed miserably. She attempted to convince us that the intent behind her words was not what we believed it to be – well I’m sorry Jan but that excuse might work for a child saying a word they don’t understand but when you put something into print surely you have a responsibility to ensure that you carefully check your words so such a ‘misunderstanding’ cannot occur?

Moir states ‘Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace, unread by many who complained, yet somehow generally and gleefully accepted into folklore as a homophobic rant’, well I read it and I complained – the article linked Stephen Gately’s death inextricably with his sexuality, and made gross assumptions about his life and death. Moir now claims that she would have written the same article had Gately been heterosexual, I find this unlikely- but if she had it would still have been an appalling article. Statements like, ‘Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again’ are undeniably ill-informed – so at the very least Moir is guilty of bad journalism.

Moir’s article today http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1222246/The-truth-views-tragic-death-Stephen-Gately.html , lacks understanding and integrity. A few half hearted apologies for offence caused are followed by a litany of excuses and the reiteration of her misinformed belief that ‘clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own’. She seems to be trying to convince us that she did nothing wrong, and has been misunderstood, and that she attempted only to question and seek the truth (which would have been an admirable pursuit had this been the case).

It seems to me that a little contrition and an admission that, whatever her intent may have been, she made a mistake in writing what she did, would go further then apportioning blame for the reaction her words caused.

Poem

Perhaps she is the blue eyed girl still
Under years and yards of something else the heart still beats.
She sometimes wonders if the moments of manic possibility
Are worth the absolute lows that follow
Where the entire world is dark and the walls close in around her.

The pills she takes leave her dulled and sluggish
Unable to create, like her mind is wrapped in cotton wool,
But without them she tracks bloody marks in her arms
And covers her mirrors so she does not see her face,
So perhaps this numbed lethargy is the trade off for some kind of life.

Perhaps she is the blue eyed girl still
The child she was sleeping somewhere beneath the dark.
They have caught her fast, bound her in ribbons and bows
And expectations that choke the hope from her,
And numb her heart, so she can no longer weep.

Fairytale

We were all born once, under the light of a lucky star,
these rays are only shadows now, memories
from a light whose source has long since died.
A moments sparkle lost in time.

We are brought up on fairy tales, dreams and nightmares
and cheerfully write ourselves into magic and stories
steadfastly ignoring sticky reality, so that we can be comfortable
And live in sensible fantasy.

This has connected us all with cobweb threads of deceit, silences
and uncertainties that we share and hide beneath our hurts and hopes,
successfully, we remain complicit in the stories,
Playing peek-a-boo with reality and memory.


We ignore and forget just enough to be called too much, apathetic
this whitewashed search for reason through soul leaves us tangled,
trapped, we would rather pretend that we cannot see the spiders,
Misimagining the dangers, we are also guilty.

I have so many stories of abuse and neglect and hurt stacked
in my chest and mind that I can hardly breath or think, outside of whispers,
these compartmentalised real world moments we smother,
Is everyone ready for the happy ever after?


We could end this, in theory, cut one thread and collapse the web.
If we would sweep the monsters from under the bed they would be burned
in the sun, and we would be free of them, we could begin again
write ourselves a different beginning, change to story’s end.

These heroes and victims are the shadowy parts of ourselves given names
so that we can understand, we are hiding from half remembered horrors and hurts
that History and the world has branded on our bodies,
bandaged by nonsense, magic and our myths.


We can reach back beyond the lies into the darks of time
and write the world as it should have been written
but together we gratefully drank from the Lethe,
And so we forget that we are imprisoned.

Stephen Gately's Funeral

This morning in Dublin Stephen Gately's funeral was held, there is a palpable saddness in the city because we are laying to rest one of our own.

Stephen Gately grew up around Sheriff street, an area not know for its affluence, and we like to see other Dubliners succeed from the areas that are largely forgotten and ignored by Celtic tigers and increasing wealth.

I remember being an over excited teenager and meeting Stephen Gately by chance on O'Connell street, and his taking the time to talk to a group of us with great humour and patience - his being funny and kind. It is sad to think that such a young man has died.

It is a shame that tragic death of a young man has been ued by some to air their own ignorance and predjudice - and it should not be forgotten that whatever claim we feel we have on celebrity at the present time Stephen belongs primarily to his friends and family, to the people who knew him as a person and not as a popstar. They should not have been intruded upon in the grief to have to respond in any form to the stupidity of a journalist whose words should not have been printed.

Above all else today we have buried a young man, whos life should be celebrated and passing mourned. Today the people of Dublin reclaimed one of their own, we should not forget, in the midst of the intrusive commentary that always surrounds celebrity, that Stephen Gately was a Dublin Lad, that he was far too young to die and that today is a very sad day.

Writers Block

How has it happened that I do not have the right words
all that I have ever had,
silver tongued and sad.

I want to write you a happy ending,
or a fitting epitaph.

I want to find the scripted beats to make sense of this senselessness,
wiping away this hurt with couplets and carefully crafted pose.

I would mend broken dreams with a poem.

Perhaps now is the time, after so long.

Can this be our beginning then?
Shall we create a Limerick, or a sonnet,
Like greater poets before make timelessness
From your decay?

I still have dreams where I wrap my arms around you
And I can hear you breathing through the silence
Of these endless nights in my bed.

This is not enough,
I need to write away the loss and hurt.
Maybe now is the time for the words we dread,
But I must find another rhyme instead.

I cannot write you lost with the dead.

Forget the rules and rhymes of poetry,
comma here, emphasis.
There are no rules for all encompassing grief
No matter what the rulebook said.

You used to ask for bedtime stories, that I was too tired to read.
You used to talk in your sleep.

To make this feeling go through the motions
cannot ever be achieved, everything should crumble and fall apart
there can be no beauty buried in this need,
there should never be cause for poems like these.

You were here once, a promise, a hope

But nothing matters.

I have carried you for longer than you should be carried
You have been, as you are, you remain unchanging,

a trick or treat, like a fairytale.

To fit you to form and prescribe you to tone,
To contain you in painfully scripted verse,

Will not be done.

It is enough that you are dead.

No rhyme, no rhythm, no lyrical beat,
For a poem, once begun, must then be complete.

I do not want to say goodbye.

Perhaps now is the time, after so long.
Some hurts do not fit a poem.

I cannot believe that you are gone.

A poem that took far too long to write, for what it is.

I wanted to write something beautiful about love
From some misguided notion that this is what a poem should be
But words escape me, trite and terrible.

I do not believe in this all consuming passion,
We like to tell ourselves lies to make purpose from nothing
And these old stories are stacked up in our heads are hearts
Making fantasists of the best of us, and lovers of the weak.

My heart does not shrivel and break from loneliness
And I am hungry for touch but briefly, fleetingly wanting
Until fortitude and that perfected control of mind and body reclaims me.

I would like very much to abandon need permanently
And retreat in safety from the promise of hurt
To my own numbed contentment
And to the safety of my words.

Fish Joke (abridged version)

Far away in the tropical waters of the Caribbean, two prawns were swimming around in the sea — one called Justin and the other called Christian.

The poor prawns were constantly being threatened by vicious sharks.

Finally one day Justin said to Christian, “I’m fed up with being a prawn; I wish I was a shark, and then I wouldn’t have any worries about being eaten.”

A large mysterious cod appeared and said, “Your wish is granted”, and lo and behold, Justin turned into a shark. Horrified, Christian immediately swam away, afraid of being eaten by his old mate.

Time passed and Justin found life as a shark boring and lonely. All his old mates simply swam away whenever he came close to them.

While swimming alone one day he saw the cod again and he thought that perhaps the fish could change him back into a prawn. He approached the cod and begged to be changed back, and, lo and behold, he found himself turned back into a prawn.

With tears of joy in his tiny little eyes Justin swam back to his friends and bought them all a cocktail. Looking around the gathering at the reef he realised he couldn’t see his old pal.

“Where’s Christian?” he asked.

“He’s at home, still distraught that his best friend changed sides to the enemy and became a shark”, came the reply.

Eager to put things right again and end the mutual pain and torture, he set off to Christian’s abode. As he opened the coral gate memories came flooding back. He banged on the door and
shouted, “It’s me, Justin, your old friend, come out and see me again.”

Christian replied, “No way man, you’ll eat me. you’re now a shark, the enemy and I’ll not be tricked into being your dinner.”

Justin cried back, “No, I’m not. That was the old me. I’ve changed.”

“I’ve found Cod. I’m a prawn again Christian”.

Another Ending

This has ended, as it must
White Lilly’s wither, all is dust.
Seashells crumble to fine sand
That runs through fingers when clasped in hand.

Such is love, dies and ends
My heart, as all, grieves
then mends.

Unweaving the Rainbow

Unweaving the Rainbow.
(Richard Dawkins 1998)

I have seen a million rainbows, unmoved
By colour meeting colour on a rainy day.
Richard of York gave battle in vain,
But isn’t that always the way?

I known nothing of Science, to be fair
But then I am a poet, student of art
And should wax a rainbow beautiful
Not broken into its parts.

But the delicacy of such chance
A million raindrops fracturing light
And showing a fan of spectral colour
Where there had only been white.

I saw a rainbow yesterday
And by the understanding of why
It almost brought me to my knees
And its beauty made me cry.

West of Here

An abandoned house brings to mind a ruin
Some gothic romance held together by ivy and ghosts
(and fairytales)
This house was different, looking to be an innocent.

I remember watching, horrified and awed
Black bags lined upon its lawn,
(some of them seemed small)
While a silent crowd, surprised, gazed on.

This house crumbled quietly
Beneath the weight of unspeakable deeds,
(and blood soaked endings)
But this house lived, it breathed.

It could not be allowed, this house
To stand to one mans hate and lust
(October 1996)
This house was reduced to dust.

I am quite easily amused...

Therein Lies The Difference

I would write the story of forever,
beginning when all things begin
but I would change enough
that we would all be standing in the sun.

I have watched you and you may not remember
that I held your hand and called for help
when I found you vomiting
after filling your veins with so much poison.

Today you asked me for a cigarette
and, I hope understandably,
I recoiled from you
in fright of the anger in your face.

You called me a snob and responded to my reticence
by throwing coins at me,
and it made me laugh
but this was mostly from discomfort.

I am no more then you
an old Irish ‘there but for the grace of God’.
I know what it is too be used up
and worn to nothing by the harshness of life.

It would be nice if everything was easy
but plenty of us cannot sleep at night
it is just a matter of perspective
measuring one hurt against another.

I would write the story of forever
where these smaller hurts were everything
and we could all weep about mostly nothing
and pretend that our nothings were what mattered.

We promised not to forget

It was a week worth of newspaper stories and a march and then we forgot what we had promised never to forget and we moved on, but they cannot.

What is it that they have suffered, can we even begin to imagine?

Wake up smiling or wake up crying.

What about the day when they do not awake at all? If you are right then they will stand at the golden gates and be offered their chance to talk with your Almighty. What could they possibly say to him? He’ll be another scared little man who cannot bear to listen to them. Will he dare to condemn them then, for their sins, or will what they have suffered outweigh the worst that they may have done? Will he track through the script of their lives, circling all of their faults in red ink like some angry school teacher, will he try to smite them then?

What then from this booming voice of your male God, let him try to send them to hell, we will all be at home there. Your devil is more of a friend, he, at least, admits that it is his desire is to hurt us. Will you, who shake your shiny new testament at me, please explain why He, your God, has never intervened? Surely apathy is a sin, the eighth deadly sin. His ultimate crime against man he claims to love so much.

I want you, the believer, to stand before me and look into my eyes and explain it to me, why when they were so small, why when they trusted in him so completely did he let them down so much, why were his tests so harsh?

If he can send any one of them to hell let him, your great almighty Lord, accompany them, for he has sinned as much as any man.

What will become of your world then? When all apparent goodness is held up as corrupted and evil is seen to be the driving force of the earthbound and celestial alike, how then, and why, can you possibly continue in this faith?

Set fire to your home’s, steal your neighbours food, home and wife because, in truth, there is no salvation. There is only now. What can your bible do to help you when the heavens are falling and the golden gates come crashing to the ground?

How did so much implausible fiction become the entire world to so many, the power of your fancy stories that they became a way of life.

"I believe in God the Father, of all that is seen and unseen." How did the lies of the past become the structure of our world today and how will you cope when it all falls apart in your hands?

My faith doth magnify the Lord, but he caught alight under the suns strong beam and all I have left is a pile of ashes. What will you use now to fill this void with which you are left when belief and faith collapse and your entire world has lost all meaning?

Was it a child God who created our world and has he abandoned us now that he has tired of his play? There is as much possibility, as much truth, in this as anything you believe, nothing here means what you think it means.

For the moment

If I could I would wrap you in cotton wool, safe,
and you would never need to know about when the world
is black, black, black and the rain clouds cover everything.

It would not help you, or anyone, if I gave in to this anger
and broke every finger on the hand that dared
to touch you in hurt.

Now it seems to you that things will never get better
and you think that I am being cruel
when I remind you that you are not the first.

You are better then this moment of broken
and sometime far into the future
you will call this an old memory,

For the moment it is okay that you are crying.

Reading at the moment.

So at the moment I am reading The Stone Gods, (Jeanette Winterson), which is a very strange and totally engrossing read:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stone-Gods-Jeanette-Winterson/dp/0241143950/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251709567&sr=1-2

I am also looking at Portraits (Derren Brown), which you need to have on your coffee table, (at the very least for the picture of the Queen)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Portraits-Derren-Brown/dp/1905026560/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251709419&sr=8-3

Finally, just finished The Life of Pi, (Yann Martel ), which was one of those joyous books that you can't put down until you reach the end,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Pi-Yann-Martel/dp/184195392X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251709464&sr=1-1

That is all!

Aftermath

He hates her so much, but she is his and he needs her,
She cries all of the time,
wrapping her sorrow around her like a blanket
and he cannot reach her.

At night he lies in bed with his fingers pressing into his ears
so that he cannot hear her crying,
making that sound that is more
a wounded animal then a real person.

She is an animal more and more often now,
baring her teeth
and lashing out at everyone around her.
He is frightened of her.

She says terrible things to him, forcing him to stop loving her
and to barricade his heart against her.
She has all of the power that he wants for himself
And he has no idea how to reclaim it.

She flies at others in temper, hitting and shaking them
until they cry out for her to stop and then she holds them close
in the tightest of embraces and sobs with them,
but she never touches him.

She never looks at him and he has begun to feel
like he is a ghost in that house, that he is some kind of a monster.
He hates her and he loves her and he wishes
that she would let him be her lover again.

Her sadness is a constant reminder of what he allowed the world to do her.

Religion News Blog

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Baile Átha Cliath

It was the marching
Heavy boots thumping through
What was once my city,
But a lot has changed here
Since the last march.

Sing ‘rare ole times’
And lighters five for fifty
‘till your throat is raw
It still won’t come back
And be our town again.

They thought hatred was orange
But it was only a way to mourn
What the tiger consumed
To bring us here
Where we should not be.

It reminded us of what we lost.

If I were a painter

If I had the skill to make a canvas speak
I would paint you the night sky, scarlet with expectation,
with storm clouds darkening a fairy tale of
silvers and greens.

I would draw you a promise of tomorrow in a ramshackle bridge
spanning golden waters, flecked with rivulets of red yesterday
thick with forget, slick eels fighting flying fish
swimming towards the valleys.

There would be clawed shadows crawling the edges,
but in the centre I would paint us in light,
wrapped in each other, eternally oblivious
and happy, and you would not have to hear
words that I am not able to say.