Poem: Tir na nOg

What does Oisin feel now, leaving the golden haired daughter of the sea God
Because his heart ached for the sight of his beloved Roisin,
On returning to find her magic gone, wiped out by cruel robed men
With their hatred of all of her naked glory.

There are no words to say to this warrior poet as he crumbles,
To explain away our inaction in allowing her to be raped and broken,
But we have forgotten the poems of the Fianna, and Roisins pride,
Allowing all of our stories to be named as legends.

Our dreams of Tir na nOg are lost, dug up and emptied out to make room
For another consecrated concrete block of desperation.
The Tuatha de Danann are bleeding in the back streets
Reduced to powerlessness, as are all of the old Gods.

Poor Roisin

Poor Roisin, she was a damaged child, but brave.
Gathering together her dreams, taking up arms
In the name of a brighter tomorrow, and hope,
She broke away, out alone, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she had just begun to be free,
She was not ready to break those ties, see the dangers
Lurking behind the alters, lauded and robed,
She let them poison her home, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she thought that green fields and luck
Would be enough, washed down with a pint of the black stuff,
She did not take care of the little ones, put her faith in God,
Allowed them to be broken and robbed, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she is so confused now, so betrayed,
Brighter tomorrows blighted by bygone days.
Once again she must fight, force a change
Finally drive the monsters away, poor Roisin.

Poem

I wrote you a poem, and put it inside a Valentines card,
In some sort of out-of-character romantic offering,
You glanced but briefly, we don’t do hearts and flowers,
And asked for me on my knees, for the day that was in it.

I knelt, why not, and gave you this moment of surrender,
We both know that I am the one who calls the shots,
By virtue of the darker days, and your fear of my drowning
In sadness, where you cannot hope to reach me.

I will give to you myself, it was in the poem,
But only those parts of myself that are mine to give.
Line seventeen, I am leaving you, for your sake,
Though I know that you do not want for me to leave.

Line twenty two, it was a long poem, you got bored,
I am going to find somewhere silent, and stay there,
And you cannot come with me, you cannot come,
I packed my bags while you were sleeping.

Line forty, rambling descriptions, something about sex
And you in me, and me disappearing, it’s a mess.
Hand on heart, it beats here still, I’ve forgotten
The reasons, but I have retained the will.

Line sixty, I love you, in my way, this way,
Love and hate, all mixed up and confused in
The chemical mistakes inside my mind,
No more pills, no more lines, just goodbyes.

This Woman

Mostly she does not think
Rocking, rocking in a haze of bliss
Bought with her body, hands, kiss.

The first time he touched her she reached up
To push his hands away but was confused
By tiny pin pricks of pleasure buried
Somewhere beneath the hurt.

Later she would lie still, every inch of her body
Bathed in his sweat and her shame
While he panted and pushed
Somewhere above her.

In time she would leave him taking with her a body
That was no longer her own, which would bear her strange
Beloved children that she cannot touch,
Fearing the unbroken innocence of them.

This is not my Ireland.

It should be enough now.
I try to imagine two soldiers, barely more than boys
Doing something as mundane as collecting a pizza
Before the world filled up with shots around them
And left them dying on an unremarkable Saturday,
A year ago today.

It should be enough now.

If I could

I would like to go back please,
a time before clocks began ticking away from one moment,
When I was still creating experiences, not recovering from them,
When I still measured the moments until, not the ones since
And had never wished I could stand still and stop counting.

I want to return now,
the old painted perfect tomorrow dreams, new mornings
Promising better today, wanting tomorrows and tomorrows,
Rather then this consuming continuing yesterday, it’s broken promises,
Its destruction of dreaming in showing the fallacy of wishing.

I would reclaim for myself,
moments of total expectation where the world was possibility
Wrapped in fairytale endings and happy ever afters,
Long before I was circus mirror image of myself, aching with clenched waiting,
Broken apart and drowning in the starkest expectation of this.

Best Laid Plans

You must away now, so soon?
We had just planted the first seeds, too late in the spring
Forgetting how time creeps and crawls, seeps past us.
You will not see next years Daffodils, or this years roses,
We are hoping for the new lambs, one more Easter,
Without realising I bought one egg too few, a new dress in black,
Mourning clothes and court shoes.
We used to plan for forever, it was so short,
Years to months to days, soon minutes and nothing.

Birthday Poem (since its @derrenbrown birthday!)

Birthday poems in perfect rhyme – printed, reprinted, used and abused
Until we trample what meaning they may have had into bromidic nonsense,
Cheap with our words, these platitudes speak only of negligence –
Once, in consideration, words had power, we fettered them with our indolence –

But then, in thought, with intent and meaning, we look for better wishes
Which do not sickly, sweetly mush with feigned devoirs,
It is a good thing that life has seen you kind thus far –
And these innocuous rhymes, I wish you many more.

Life?

Three times Monday, then the weekend
And time spirals into something else
Amidst bottles of wine and breaking hearts.
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

Friday bleeds into Sunday, blurred with discontent.
Mine is a Rosé, then later on straight gin and tears,
Dancing past midnight when we forget to think.
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

Is it time for white dresses and breeding yet?
Shall we continue to wallow, past growing up ideas,
To hell with commitment, meet me out back by the bins.
They didn’t mention life would be like this
But it is.

Long ago stories, cleaner then now moments
Try this one darling, you will dance with the stars.
Save up memories for when life is reminisce,
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

What’s in a name, words loved and forgotten
The promise and potential of once turned to rot,
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is, and it is,
And it is.

How I feel today

Another Queen

She is regal as she tells me, brokenly
That she came here dreaming
of a better life for her boys.
Now they speak rapidly
In a language that she cannot understand
And are embarrassed by the scars on her face
And between her thighs.

She can feel the world shifting beneath her
As she struggles to be understood.
At night she dreams of the sun
And arid plains of forever and hope,
Away from the spit at her feet
And dark rains of Ireland.

Breaking up

It is another day, another wake up and get up
And go.

You used to have eggs for breakfast and go for a run,
I stuck to cigarettes and coffee and going slow
And that should have been a sign of something I guess.

This ending has been mostly easy
Excepting the loss of your coffee machine,
Now I drink instant, and there is never fresh milk.

I can’t reach the top shelf, the light bulbs need changing,
The smell of the skip downstairs makes me gag
And I keep running out of toilet roll.

You expected that I would miss you more
But it is loss of little domesticities that hurts,
We were more familiar then we were in love.

Lost

It was a small thing, a forgotten splash in a well
Of something more hope than a wish-
Once we believed in magic, foolishly,
We would be better with coins still in our pockets
And wishes kept secret and safe
Not turning green and stagnating
In the unforgiving waters of this world.

The Garden

Garden colours,
these rustic greens and browns are lonely
for the want of vivid flashes of butterflies wings.

Flower beds running riot
and entwining in the long grass,
lapping at the edges of the stagnant pond
containing one, self satisfied, solitary fat fish.

The bird feeders,
neglected since December first, have run empty,
They no longer come here and fill the silence.

Everything in the greenhouse
has withered brown and dried.

In the midst of mourning I forgot your garden,
but with work and time it will be alright,
the hardiest plants always survive.

A bit of Sillyness

He was a gallant knight on a trusty steed, they lived in a fairytale
For her he fought the terrible beast, in love he could not fail.
She was princess fair locked away from the world, waiting for her knight
He rescued her and they rode off into the setting light.

She bore his children, warmed his bed, he always saved the day
She buried deep her terrible dread that she was living in a cliché
He was a stranger dark and strange, she could not still her heart
They came together and allowed a different story to start.

She feared and loved him through her fear, he kissed her and made her weep
She spoke and sent him to his death for a secret she could not keep.
He looked into her eyes as the fight began, she swiftly looked away
His opponent was a more skilled man, soon he had lost the day.

He was a gallant knight on a trusty steed, they lived in a fairytale
For her he fought the terrible beast, in love he could not fail.
She was princess fair locked away from the world with her gallant knight
She dreamed of a time she could go off into the setting light.

Reactionary

I have built myself from the wasted scraps of my once upon a times,
we are fools when we believe in old magics and mages
and hide from the monsters underneath the bed,
praying to stories while we bleed and beg.

It is dangerous and stupid to wrap ourselves in wishes,
when the alarms sound we play with limited time
and lift our hems away from the filth
blinded to everything through choice.

We parade wilful ignorance as blessed virtue
but the children are still crying between the pages
of some great liars book of shadows
and blood stained words of gospel.

If I was another type of person I would arm myself with them
these shameful hurts and horrors,
but still, for all of our never again promises
we cheerfully hand over our children.

Poem for a Child

It is time for bedtime stories, with loving lies
we weave for you these fantasies bred from old myths,
softened to Disney happiness, far from reality.
If we could we would make your life a happy ever after
You would be the princess who never needed to be saved
Cradled in worlds of wonder and magic, safe.
I will not be the one to speak to you of truth and tell you
that there are no princes or fairy godmothers,
you will learn that the world is full of monsters.

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.