Poem: An Irish Story

This is not a sad story,
this is something else,
a small voice saying she is worth more but another going,
‘ah go on, who do you think you are anyway?’

Its Fr Ryan, and her Da and one particularly cruel teacher
who used to take the ruler to her with no provocation.

She is adept at pretending,
the kids sitting outside the pub on Sundays
and calling that an outing.
She loves them practically,
clean knickers and (mostly) full bellies,
big loans from Tommo in number 6 for shiny white communion dresses,
but the youngest has her heart broken all the same,
what with the fucking language out of her
and continuous summons up to see the Nuns
who make her ashamed of the state of her best coat,
sneering at the her,
and no amount of smacking is any use in making her behave.

Just like her mother, not having sense enough to shut up,
mouth on her like a fecking fishwife, and useless to boot.

She is ruthless in her rearing,
dragging them up,
mortgaging all her hopes on them getting the Leaving Cert.
The eldest was pretty enough to be a model,
before she got herself into all that trouble
and ended up living down Stoneybatter
with a mewling mouth to feed and dirty boots under her bed,
so it was a waste of time,
all the nagging her to get to her books.
Jesus wept but she made eejits out of the lot of them,
going around with that bump under her school jumper,
such a clatter she got when it all came out,
she’d had to drag the aulfella off her,
damage done anyway.

I’ll teach ye, ye little bitch, you’re nothing but a whore,
riding God knows who and ye needn’t think it’s staying here.

She used to have hopes for herself,
a nice house in suburbs,
maybe her own little job in a shop
just for pocket money like,
get her hair done the odd time,
or bring the little ones for sticky buns,
but that was before all the babys,
one after the other,
and he wouldn’t hear of using anything,
saying it’s like washing your feet with your socks on,
and no chance of the other, not with the cost of it.
Once she joked he should tie a knot in it,
and he left her eye black for a week,
think you’re clever,
she should of kept her gob shut anyway,
by now she should know better.

Sure theres a pair of them in it, always caterwauling,
for all his fists, she's been known to take the frying pan to him.

The neighbors gossip about her,
there but for the grace of god
but sure, what else would you expect from a scut like her?
And those kids,
out and about all hours destroying the peace,
sure it's no wonder that they turned out the way they did,
and her with her airs,
her ma was a real lady muck too.
God forgive me,
she asks for it really,
but that man leads her a dreadful life.

Forgive me father for I have sinned, it's the thoughts in my head
but Jesus knows things are bad, likely I'd be better off dead.

Poem: Glass Animals

Glass animals casting rainbows on the wall
And ceiling, I thought they were fairies,
Dancing in the sunlight, the magic of them was spellbinding,
When I was still just a little thing, at my beginnings.

Later, I hung prisms in the window,
Hoping that I could capture them again,
But this city apartment does not let the light in,
The walls remain grey, as is fitting.

Poem: Afterwards

We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and try continuing. 
I have grey hat that makes my eyes look blue
And four hundred and sixty three books gathering dust
That swirls in the evening sunlight, as it always was. 

I launch myself into the evenings, the night is better, 
The days are getting longer and smothering us in light. 
I wear dark glasses and hide in the corner of the pub 
Waiting for the bitter sun to fade away. 

At midnight I come home and dance in the dark, 
I dream that I am flying over the city alone 
But when I wake my hands are clenched in fists, 
Head thumping and churning stomach sick. 

Whiskey in your morning coffee makes you warm, 
But the Winter is nearly over. I need to wear leather gloves 
So I do not touch the filth of the world, perhaps I can buy lace 
In summer colours, so it does not seem so strange. 

There are four thousand and seventy six paving stones between here and work, 
I am careful not to step on the cracks between them. Cobblestones are harder 
But I am trying to come up with another arrangement. 
Can you come back now please?

Afterwards, I carefully saved up every moment, 
They are bottled and waiting in the corner, when you return 
We will open them and let time flow out, it will be like music. 
I do not make big wishes anymore.

2011-05-02

The bogeyman is dead.
Can we have the world back now
As it was? 
A time before we brought our children out
To dance in the streets and celebrate the creation of a corpse.
Can we have an end to wars with movie names
And sending boys off to kill and die for slogans.
Can we mourn without vengeance now. 

Poem: Uncanny Valley

Ticking clockwork roll of time, you unchanging 
You and not you, little boy laugh
Replaced by this. Hallow eyed, 
All darker now. I have found the right shape 
Your exact size, built a tangle of turning cogs
That work, powered by missing you.
If I can perfect it, can find the right construction
You will rise from your seat, you will be here again. 
I will take whatever version of you returns.
I want you back, for the death mask to light up,
Animate, your smile on that face will be the moment.
For now this mimesis must be enough. 
In the ring of a bell, movement
I can see shades of you still living.

Poem: School Reunion

I am not as foolish as I once was, as is necessary,
We arrange everything cheerfully – same old pubs
So we can be back again. One day you wake up
And find that you are jealous of the young, terrible.

We tell dirty jokes and drink cider from litre bottles
And reminisce about long hot Summers we made up –
Must have, all it does now is rain. Bills marked in red
Stacking up in the hall, ignored and mounting.

Sometimes one of us will go home with the other
And have fast sad sex to break the boredom –
Once or twice leading to trips across the Irish sea,
Both chipping in for terminations, shared Catholic guilt.

We never talk about the things we thought we would be
All remembering the time when we had dreams –
And how that turned out. We are poets and actors
Working in offices, weighed down with disappointment.

Poem:Shame

As small children we were taught about it in baggy school uniforms and knee socks
and never wearing patent shoes lest the boys saw our underpants reflected in them.
We were taught about it at rare school dances,
where the nuns pushed us apart telling us, ‘leave room for the holy ghost’.

Later on we were taught about it in class with talk of a man and a woman,
being married and doing your duty, bearing children.
In not speaking about pleasure and desire they taught us about it,
leaving us confused, betrayed and alarmed at our own bodies.

We were taught it in girls disappearing from school once bumps began to show
and in scandal when one teacher was asked not to return.
In not talking about the diversity of sexuality they taught us about it
telling us lies about punishment and consequence.

In teaching us about it they took what was good and pure
and twisted and corrupted it until every longing was a perversity.
On our knees and confessing our impure thoughts in dark rooms
we were taught it, without their ever needing to say the word.

Later on, in trying to rebel against it we rediscovered it, deepened it
in the bottom of a bottle, a handful of pills or powder and bad decisions.
In being determined not to feel it we bargained our happiness against it,
driven by it we sacrificed ourselves to dirty dark rooms and misery.

Poem: Valentine

Briefly it made me a little sad
the lack of roses arriving, or chocolates in heart shaped boxes,
until lucky remembrance would have it recollected
how once everything was about you,
leaving me exhausted with the impossibility of making
someone else’s happiness my goal,
trapped in the misery of lost dreams,
the focus of your disappointed anger,
worn out by trying and failing, and failing again
to infuse some joy into our joyless wretched life
and calling this love despite all evidence to the contrary,
bar once a year when we pretended with flowers
that this is the life we wanted to be living.

Poem: Grief

It takes a least two bottles of wine before I feel anything now,
stupidly crying changes nothing, you still not here.
I went looking for something to let me see you again, 
But it was all bright lights and twisting shapes and you are still gone -
And me disappearing into looking for you.

If this is what it feels like to have a broken heart, I hate it.
A stupid way to play with words, it beating through the hurt,
Not broken, but broken all the same and nothing makes sense anymore
But the flying away to a place that never existed to begin with -
I wish I could find where you are and live in it.

This was always what I did before, I've reason now,
Never needed the excuses, but they have proved useful.
Hurting myself is incidental, I would tear the heart from the world
And burn everything to blackened ash to have you here -
I would end it rather than be in it without you.

It is impotent, this determined rage, no chemical can restore you.
No deed so exquisite and perfectly terrible that i can trade
And no one to trade with, which was always the case anyway.
I will take forgetting and long numb days of drowning in oblivion -
It is better than all this pointlessly grieving. 

Blog Post:Poem: Potential

It broke my heart a little bit, talking to this lovely boy,
He is pretending for his friends, who know anyway and don't care,
He is worried about his Da’, an ‘auld bully of a man
And is so scared of what everyone is going to say.

I told him, someday you’ll leave here,
and all the terrible hard things about being a teenager
will melt away to nothing again, and you’ll be happy
when everyone loves you for who you are.

He can’t see it yet, but he’s going to be magnificent,
I can tell by the spark in his eye, the brightness of him
and the fact that he shines already, still putting himself together
and working out how to become a grown up.

In a year or so he'll leave school behind, where they bully him,
He'll not be afraid to be himself anymore, free of them,
Away from small minds and mean names he will blossom.
When he finds his place in the world he is going to be amazing. 

Poem: What now?

I was supposed the be the one
Who did not know how to live in the world.
Years of abusing anything I could abuse,
And you worrying after me.

That time, you watching me
Come apart at the seams,
Too drunk to to make sense
And sobbing about something 
I could not explain.

Or the bleak dark days
When I was flying somewhere,
You putting me in the shower and feeding me
And waiting for me to come back again.

I should have been the one to leave,
Tried so hard to be lost,
Who would have guessed
I would get better at living
And you would be the one
That ended up being defeated.

What will happen to us now,
With no one left standing
To pick up the pieces
And keep our heats beating.

Poem: Dublin

How I loved you
and you tore the heart right out of me,
little things at first
just how we change over time,
but then that guy kicked black and bloody
down outside the George one Saturday,
and I thought to myself - is this my town,
and what happened to us
that we have these poor broken boys
wrapped in cardboard on the Ha'penny bridge?
And the man won't read the Gas meter because of the needles,
and the rest of last night
scattered across the streets in broken bottles
and puddles of vomit and piss.
So time to leave and my heart breaking,
wanting to bottle Temple Bar and take it with me,
just the craic, the shiney tourist bits
but not the desperation that ate away at us
after the tiger had fled
and Dublin was a broken thing,
a city like any other,
not my home at all anymore. 

Poem: Little Things

If I have the ability at all to create something beautiful, then I will.
It is far easier to condemn and be critical, the world leans that way
And sometimes we are drowning in stupidity. 

Then there is a moment, a little thing to appreciate, 
Take it, a cliche, a rainbow, a sunset,
These are few and far between, but oh, they are magnificent.

Stop and breath it in, do not be clever for a moment, embrace it,
Soon it will fade away, as these thing are wont to do, 
And there will be another reason to be angry, or disappointed,
Something else to tweet about, another tirade started.

But if you have it taken a little time to smell the roses, savor red wine,
To paint a picture or love a friend, read a good book start to end,
Then when the world bites and your heart is broken, 
And you can not take back words in anger spoken, 
You will not need Gods or Horoscopes, fairy rings, mediums or empty hope,
You will have these moments you captured in time, 
When it was you and the world, and the world was just fine.  

Poem: New Years Eve, 2010

Counting down, three, two, one
And cheering, strangers dancing in the street,
Party hats and singing songs, drunken merriment,
This saying goodbye to the year.
I wonder now if you were listening to it,
We're there fireworks outside your window
And did all the world seem happy?
Bright snow lit Dublin, drowning in joviality
And you bowing out, did you wait for that moment,
Three, two, one, and it's over, new years day,
And you, no longer afraid of the dying.

2011, and Christmas wishes.

2011 is nearly over, and it seemed like a good time to do a sort of personal 'review' of the year. It's been an eventful one, both brilliant and terrible. I left the job I'd been in for five years to start something new- a move totally out of character from my usual 'play it safe' approach to things. I decided I'd had enough of living on my own and moved house, with my sister as a room mate. I started to focus more on writing, on trying to create something. After always being very vocally happy about being single I started to think it would be nice to find someone to share things with. I made attempts to be more involved with the real people in my life, putting more effort into the friendships I have, and developing new ones. I got tired of being on my own, the comfort I had always felt in relying only on myself had been diminished. 

There was a moment that started all of this need for change, the terrible part of the year. An awful thing that happened that shifted the way I interacted with the world.  On New Years Eve, 2010 my friend took her own life, alone in her apartment, about 15 minutes away from me. She didn't call me to talk, but I'd never been that type of friend. A casual friendship, meeting in the pub or exchanging superficial chat. If she had called me I would have gone to her, and though I realize it is a normal reaction to a suicide I felt dreadfully guilty that she did not feel she could reach out to me. 

It has taken me these months to get to a point where I was not entirely sad and unspeakably angry. An absolute sense of loss and an inability to understand what the reason for her decision was drove away the ability to think about her clearly, to put together memories of her not tainted by the way she died. I will never know what was in her mind, what pushed her to that point, I will probably never totally forgive myself for not seeing any signs of what she was going to do.

She was a woman that I was in awe of, so very full of life. She was the only person I have ever met who always made me smile, just by walking into a room. She was fiercely clever and impossibly glamourous, always pristine, always full of ideas and excitement. She engaged completely with the world, with honesty but never cynicism. It is inexplicable that, in the end, the world defeated her. 

When I think about how she died I get a horrible sinking feeling in my gut, like being dropped from the top of a rollercoster. I have a memory of the last time I saw her playing over and over in a loop in my mind, I have examined it from ever angle, trying to find anything that might have been a plea for help. She seemed happy, excited by her new marriage, looking forward to Christmas and alive, in love with life. 

I miss her very much. I think about her often. I wish she was still here.

Not being able to understand has made things very difficult, and the one thing we will never have is closure, we will never know why. 

We cannot change what has happened, I will never see her again and can never ask her. I have gone through torturing myself, looking for the thing I missed, the hint that indicated she needed help. I have been so sad, thinking about the small things she will never do again. Simple things like having a cup of coffee, washing her hair, telling a joke. And the big things, finishing her PhD, having a family, living a life that had so much promise. I've missed her and I have been angry with her. I would give pretty much anything to have had the opportunity to try to help her, and to still have her with us. 

This time of year can be difficult for a lot of people, Christmas bringing with it it's own particular pressures and difficulties. This season, amid the fun and festivities, I will be thinking of the friend I lost, and the friends I have who might need to reach out. 

Now, I think about her and all of the things she will not do and am determined that I will not waste opportunities.  The simple things I have been so cynical about are important, other people and their messy, fascinating lives are the reason to be here. We only get one chance at this living, and to refuse to allow ourselves to be happy, out of some misguided idea that we are somehow too clever to appreciate the tiny reasons to be so, is a special kind of stupidity. 

For those I do not know who are in difficulty, there are supports available. If I can be so presumptuous I will say to you what I wish I had had the opportunity to say to her. There are people who love you, you probably do not even realize how many lives you touch, how heartbroken those people will be if you are not there, and how willing they will be to talk to you and support you. You are not as alone as you may feel.

My life is a work in progress, as all of our lives are. For christmas this year I will offer you all a simple wish that I would always have considered a trite cliché before, but which sums up what i would like for myself and for the people I love. A wish for a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year. Xx

National office for suicide prevention (Ireland): http://www.nosp.ie/



 

Poem: December, 2011

We have forgotten the things we promised not to forget 
And an old poem is rattling around inside my head 
About a lost idea of Ireland, and the wishes of long gone hero's, 
Over and over, 'was it for this?', 'was it for this?'. 
On the evening news I watch the stupid bobbing heads lying 
Through their soulless fixed grins, bloated uselessness 
Squeezed into a nice suit. It's almost enough to make you wish 
Bertie would come back, and at least make the situation amusing. 
Misplaced, clichéd pride in a pint of the black stuff 
Or stupid green hats and the cheapest of our fairytales 
Serve as an excellent distraction while we surreptitiously take down the 
Cead míle fáilte signs, not that anyone is coming.

Poem: The worst moment was...

I thought the worst moment was January third
Two thousand and eleven, four thirty four pm,
When I heard about you. Then it was 
January forth, all day, when I made phone calls
To make everyone else know it too.
It was March second, when we found out
What they actually meant about what you did
When they said accident. It was March twenty third,
Hating sitting in a bloody church, listening
To all the reasons you should still be alive.
It was the end of July when I realized
That I had forgotten to count the days
Since you died, and it was months now.
It was September eighteenth when I had to
Go looking for a photograph, because I had forgotten
Some aspect of your face. It was yesterday,
When I found myself crying in the middle of the day,
Because, out of nowhere, I thought about you.

Poem: Far from ideal

Sheep do not look at eagles and wish that they could fly,
That would be stupid. 
What I am is a real construct,
made up of memory and influence. Dreams are different.
I can no more take the things I want and live them
then the sheep can, it is not a question of determination,
I am no more capable then them. 

Poem: Broken

There were pieces of me left 
Scattered around your apartment
Which you kindly packed up
And left in a box at my front door
So I could take them inside
And begin the tedious process
Of trying to reassemble myself. 

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.