For One Year

For one year, we played with and against each other,
For one year, we shouted and berated each other,
For one year, we won and lost together,
For one year, we fought and died together;
Now, it’s over,
Now, we remember,
Now, we split,
Now, new pastures need finding;
And nobody cares because most never cared at the beginning.

Living in Denial

I didn’t want to do that,
Leave us unfinished and divided,
You thought it best for us,
Suiting your secrets, it coincided.
You left me with nothing,
Robbing me of what I was famed for,
Walking away, pride intact,
To you, I was just another chore.
So I wallowed alone for months on end,
Ruining potential by living in the past,
Any heartbreak suspected by friends,
I thought better to hide behind my mask.
And now you dictate your re-entry,
Deciding the terms on which you return,
Crawling inside my distracted mind,
With words, any dissent is burned.
You were all I wanted,
Time to see what we could be,
You couldn’t provide that,
Breaking our lock but keeping the key.
Now you come and go as you please,
Talking then not talking, like it’s a joke,
Not realising how it affects me,
Making what’s left of my decency choke.
I gave you it all,
Every ounce of love in my bloodstream,
It wasn’t good enough,
And each ounce decamped to my dreams.
This didn’t mean anything,
Not to you, it never could,
You will never know any of this,
Not of your residency in my blood.
I just wish you told the truth,
And just said you never fell for me,
Rather than the usual ‘it’s me’ excuse,
Saving me the trouble of digging so deep.
You’ve broken me forever,
Incapable of raising a genuine smile,
I’m no longer what I was,
Just a man living in denial.

Here

Things are standing stone cold still,
They have been for a long time,
Motionless against my will,
Hopelessly seeking a sign.

Others’ cycles circle on,
Growing and breaking before my fixed stare,
They wonder where it all went wrong,
A question I can no longer bear.

Now I sit in useless indecision,
Not knowing whether to step forward or back,
Wading toward either clouds my vision,
Remaining here cuts no slack.

The world is spinning and changing,
Passing me by in a breathless breeze,
Chances come, messages exchanging,
Every one I fail to seize.

Preferring life frozen in the present.
Cherishing moments from my own crescent.

Every Time I Close My Eyes

Every time I close my eyes,
Your face appears to me,
In real time we cannot have one another,
But in here, we can be.

When my eyes shut so tight,
We dance in fields and kiss in the rain,
When my eyes open again,
They avoid acknowledging the denied pain.

Daydreaming is a refuge now,
Living in a place where our hands clasp,
You have no clue of this desire of mine,
And no wish to have it in your grasp.

In my dreams I live in the West,
Where the sun sets last and where you live,
We would watch its setting every dusk without fail,
Nothing to you would I not give.

In my mind, you save me from the now,
Take me away from battles I cannot win,
When I return to reality I weaken again,
Committing sin after sin after soulless sin.

If I could, I would build a concrete path,
From my door to yours, as the bird flies,
Then we could be together whenever,
Even if the walk brings broken wills and anguished cries.

Now these are my feelings,
This is what I would like to do,
Take you away from the grime and the smoke,
To a place of peace, just me and you.

Alas, I live behind my shut eyelids,
A place where I have exactly what I need,
Your warmth and love all to myself,
Without any present complications to heed.

And every time I close my eyes,
I see moments when we were on our own,
And every time I open them again,
I realise sadly that I am all alone.

Air

I want to say the most beautiful things,
Images of irate tranquility to fill your eyes,
Words so telling, another need never be said,
And all the while I remain hidden in my guise…

So come away with me,
We can float on air,
Play the days away in childish glee,
And live without a single care…

One look and I see in you what I feel in me,
Reflections reflecting retractions, reverses,
I know the truth, yet do nothing to change it,
Verifying the vices in void filled verses…

So come away with me,
We can float on air,
Play the days away in childish glee,
And live without a single care…

A stroke, a touch, gentle is all I seek,
No bases, just a chance of something soft,
A hug, a kiss, embracing all I want,
Yet situation decides, so does it oft…

So come away with me,
We can float on air,
Play the days away in childish glee,
And live without a single care…

And now I see the sun rise in the West.
And I begrudge myself this fortune blessed.

(I quite like the images of this poem, though it is a little short and repetitive - around this time, which is only half way into 2009, or so, a fascination with the West enters into a lot of my writing).

I See...

Four a.m.

I see stars glowing bright white, alongside the moon outshining them all,
I see the Sun turn each one into liquid, running from something coming behind,
I see colours flash randomly in complete liberation from reality,
I see hearts drop from the sky, smashing on the ground, blood everywhere,
I see my hand rise to catch them, and see the hearts pass right on through,
I see every single dream of mine since the age of thirteen, and watch them all slip away,
I see the sky open up to a world where there is no law, no time, no nothing,
I see people breakdown into babbling as everything they know disappears into this void,
I see life disintegrate, swallowing itself whole in a wave of colours and white light,
I see children more interested in chocolate and toys than in going home before the end,
I see the stereotypical tears as people proclaim their lists of things not yet done,
I see total strangers declare undying love for those they have never met,
I see my enemies scramble in futility for safety that exists only in the chaos above,
I see my friends come to me and ask me why this is happening,
I see my family ask for one last hug, in some false hope that coming together will spare us,
I see religion break as the apocalypse hammers the final nail into blind faith,
I see science deliriously rejoice in its triumph, despite the impending doom of humanity,
I see running, and running, and running, and falling, and falling, and falling,
I see every disease in the history of mankind pass through me in milliseconds,
I see Death, and shake his hand.

Four fifteen a.m.

I see through tired eyes, playing tricks to amuse my mind.
I see nothing then but my hand shaking thin air.

Ensnarer

Even when push comes to shove,
They fail to see beyond trivial stuff,
Believing what they think they see,
Ignoring the shadows always lurking.

And I just need to know.
Where did I go?

The ensnarer repeats what is now clichéd,
Adding her cents to a price well paid,
Encouraging confidence where it’s undue,
A lack of knowledge of victories few.

And I just need to know.
Where did I go?

An old wall where my friends would play,
Is the place they meet to discuss my ways,
And having read an old notebook of mine,
And read between each worthless line,
They learned all of my secret shames,
The words, the lies, the evil games,
And they decide to tell everyone I know,
I have left already, with nowhere to go.

And I wake up and just need to know.
Where is it now that I go?

Their epitaph scrawled across my grave,
Will be titled and lament the mistake they made,
Hating their judgments’ irreversible failure,
They really believed in their lord and saviour.

And I just need to know.
Where did I go?

The tears will fall at my ensnarer’s feet,
Larger always at the thoughts of deceit,
One red rose she will leave in my memory,
A mercy not shown by mourning enemies.

And I just need to know.
Where did I go?

They all gather around my broken ensnarer,
The only one who could be my heart’s bearer,
A world away from hope and love,
Staring at a an overhead dove,
Wishing that she too could fly,
Into the heart of that cloud’s eye,
To find me, confront me, call me pathetic,
And to tell me she loves me, and everything with it.

And I wake up and just need to know.
Where is now that I go?

Do They Demean?

She looks into my eyes and tells me,
Repeating the unintended propaganda of who I am,
A nice guy, with few faults, every compliment
Rolling off her tongue unknowing of what goes on alone, inside;
We dance, us two, amidst forty others,
Locking eyes, laughing and laughing,
Waiting and waiting, but I dare not do what a man does,
Because I lose my own battles in the dark far too often
To even think of losing a battle with her in its middle;
She leaves, I stay, moving without conviction,
Smiling while crying, as those around me stumble blindly,
Alcohol and ossification damaging their sight,
Water and sobriety clearing mine;
One girl bumps into me again, and again, and again,
Wrapping herself around me, leaning in with drunken intent,
With closed eyes, in ignorance of any potential consequence
That wearing her skirt as high as her waist may bring,
And I pull away, shuddering at the thought of what someone else,
Equally as drunk and with a snakelike mind,
Would have done to this girl,
Leaving her dangling above the decision of a flight or a baby;
Then I see my ensnarer again, holding hands with an on-off lover,
As they walk away, my chance walks with them,
And his laughter seems directed at me as he wins again,
While I stand wondering if I am as different as she believes me to be,
Or do my temptations in solitude demean what I do the rest of the time?

Death of the Church

People with flags, people with flags flock to St. Peter’s Square,
Building hope, building hope in the pending white smoke,
Sceptics raise, sceptics raise eyebrows at the past and the present,
Blatant dismissal, blatant dismissal of a supposedly faithful future.

Rumours circulate, rumours circulate of a breakthrough in Switzerland,
Recreation, recreation of life’s defining moment has succeeded,
Big Bang two, Big Bang two blows up in a black block tunnel,
Religion is made, religion is made utterly redundant by protons.

Burning Bibles, burning Bibles stacked in the middle of the Pantheon,
Four hundred churches, four hundred churches shrouded in smoke in the middle of Rome,
Falling down, falling down like the divinity they have held for so long,
Lying in death, lying in death on the ground where they should stand so strong.

Priests’ naivety, priests’ naivety as they scream blasphemy at experimentation and calculation,
Bishops’ remorse, bishops’ remorse as humanity loses faith to analysis,
Cardinals’ tears, cardinals’ tears at the inevitable murder of belief,
The Pope’s acceptance, the Pope’s acceptance that science created the world.

Denied salvation, denied salvation, people blame heresy for stealing their faith,
Believers believe, believers believe repentance can save the white jacketed men,
Agnostics’ pity, Agnostics’ pity plugs no eyes nor quells no fires,
Atheists’ mocking, Atheists’ mocking fuels already rising flames.

Marching crowds, marching crowds make one last pilgrimage,
All united, all united in fury over an obsolete obsession and empty confessions,
The Pope stares, the Pope stares answerless at the masses,
All united, all united because of the now exposed two thousand year old fraud.

That was the day, that was the day the Catholic Church fell in uniting the world.

No Sound

Your world is delved in silence,
Bangs, screams barely audible,
Noiseless for most parts,
Ugly sounds, pointlessly loud,
Breaking through sometimes.

I come home every other week,
A new CD for the collection,
Every time, your face contorts in confusion,
‘Why do you buy music?’ you ask,
‘It’s a waste of time.’

I am always sad when you ask this,
As my answer is simple and based on reality,
If you could hear what I hear now,
The beauty that can be found in explosions,
You wouldn’t ask that question.

But you can’t hear it.
And you never will.

Blow

Intimacy dies here, like smashing glass,
A bible of neon glows here, a place void of traffic,
Pleasures fade here, tearing us apart,
We shouldn’t have smoked that blow.

Kreuzberg calls us, weakening our walls,
Something at the windowsill, something sacred,
A candidate for disaster, blood on our fingers,
We shouldn’t have smoked that blow.

The lyrics of their songs, come alive before us,
Breaking boundaries, breaking bricks,
Lines and stars, fuzzy and swaying,
There’s the pink elephant we shouldn’t speak of.

And there’s a party in your bloc,
Because the arcade went on fire,
And there’s a division in our joy,
Because of the music we each desire.

It all becomes one disjointed blur now.
We shouldn’t have smoked that blow.

Asterisk in the Appendix

She begins the game again, words thrown at random,
Misuse of the ellipsis and misplaced x’s pervade what I read,
More confusion, more uncertainty, more attempts at nothing,
The ugly flower blossoming from a sadly sown seed.

I jump around with the originals, the first time in a blue moon,
Thoughts dominated by the safety of security not even assured,
Fog falls and clouds my sight, but the haze was already in my eyes,
Now streams and visions have united and concurred.

She hides behind typed writing, hiding emotional expressions,
No way of telling through glance or tone her true intentions,
An elaborate guessing game played out to our detriment,
Fear of finding her heart’s abyss through her own interventions.

I relapse and return to a topic now cold on my shoulder,
Sickening those who have to hear the tale retold at every new stage,
The conclusion was written on the twenty-ninth day of a January past,
Yet asterisks are marked in an appendix as we age.

She attempts to play my notes, and succeeds in striking a chord.
I have played the extra wheel long enough; now it’s time to step forward.

Peace in a Crack Den

Wandering around a childhood home,
Lost in the transition with time of its features,
Visiting an old place in search of solitude,
It still contains the essence of past affiliations,
I see myself throwing stones now eroded at the river’s bottom,
The island of pebbles moves beneath my feet as the water flows freely around,
Once it moved beneath our feet.

The not-so-secret escape is now littered with society’s excess,
Cans and crates hanging from bushes and bobbing on the surface,
The filth forms in pools at the island’s edges,
Four Ducks swim through, in search of clean food in dirty water,
While a lone Herron stands frozen on a rock,
Watchful of the currents while taking in all that the dusk entails,
The peace is dying with the sun, but the memories remain.

But it is not time to retire to the indoors yet,
Not time to succumb to the television and a three-in-one,
The blue door of a home from home is ignored in favour of a new venture,
To the park, with its enclosures and open spaces, backways and hideaways,
That harbour none bar the birds, rats and mosquitoes during the day,
Save those of curious heart and incautious mind,
Light is fading, the chance to find something with it.

Up a steep slope, fighting gravity with tired thighs,
This is the nearest thing to a forest I have ever seen,
An almighty alcove amidst angled trees,
Broken branches and stumps of fallen family,
Hiding the ruins of a hoodlum house,
With the slogan ‘Crack Den’ branded in blue and black across it,
Strewn with the burned out buds and smashed bottles of schoolboys.

Yet odd trinkets lie here too, those fitting of a household,
There’s an ashtray, stained with the ashes of half smoked cigarettes,
And a plastic cup from Prague, brown from the muck of the ground and now stomached cider,
And smashed plates, floral patterns broken, no dinner on them anymore,
And bumpers from cars, as well as tires, doors and wing mirrors,
And even a full outer shell, burned and rusted,
No need to be driven anymore, so let’s spark a fire and brighten the sky.

And there are bones here, fossilised, like in a museum, real bones, calcium deficient,
As well as muscle, skin, soul and entirely life deficient,
They belonged to a person before,
And there are clothes bundled up and hidden in the bushes,
Or buried beneath the grass, but not buried enough,
A pair of skinny white jeans catches my eye,
Torn, cast aside, a broken pink phone smashed next to them.

A peace is here, but it is restless,
Birds fly from tree-to-tree, not singing but muttering,
Eyes piercing my presence, despite clear signs of human habitation,
Their lack of comfort stems not from my sheer being there,
But from their unfamiliarity of my life story and previous haunts,
And the vermin join in the condescending chatter,
It is always nice to be welcomed with open wings and borne fangs.

The blunted blades lie shrivelled, yellow, lifeless,
Charred in places where raucous flames roared, tips touching the sky,
Bricks lie broken beside the remains of the walls they once formed,
Glass and branches crunch and break simultaneously with every step,
While the uneven ground coaxes you to fall, hiding many pot holes,
They open up and swallow your leg whole,
Wishing you to trip just to see your blood spill on its balding soil.

And a shudder runs through my body, reverberating in the earth,
There are nothing but dead ends here.

(ah, the poem from which the blog title came - I wrote this poem after traipsing around Clonskeagh one evening in the summer of 2009 and all the things in the poem I actually saw and all the deductions I made about what must have happened were made from the things I saw whilst exploring the heart of territory only frequented on the weekends, and it got to a stage where I thought I would find something I didn’t want to find, so I stopped and turned back).

New Generation

Reading articles of a year past,
Watching and marking their rise and fall,
Increase in quantity brought decrease in quality,
A drop in numbers saw no change in standards,
But when taken out of the equation entirely,
That was when I was at my best;
As time progressed, the unfamiliar was replaced by the familiar,
Names vague, almost legendary in status,
Littered the publication in the beginning,
Making a breakthrough seem almost impossible,
But gradually, over two years, they vanished, one-by-one,
Superseded by our generation, stepping up to take the mantels;
Then my name materialised, alongside my coup instigating comrades,
We were the legendary ones now, the ones to beat,
The ones whose hands rose fastest and highest,
The ones standing and dictating, in control of what to say and what to tell,
And with a year more of this power still to come;
But something felt wrong the longer this went on,
As, while I noticed increased quantity and quality in others’ words,
My own seemed to stutter, quantity not matching quality,
Until eventually, quantity began to shrink, cutting my name away,
And finally, I ceased to exist at all within our generation’s ranks,
A faded force amidst growing revolutionaries;
And now a year lies ahead with our generation in charge,
But I am stuck here, still as a statue,
A frozen look of bitter sadness on my face,
While you all make your legends without me.

Zimmer

Shadows loom, rising of the credits,
Black on white, a mirror, a reflection,
Zimmer’s instrumentals play, note by note,
Fast to slow, hard to soft,
Each one telling its own story,
Yet all piecing together to tell mine,
Or least the story my mind wants to unfold…

Standing in the dark, counting the seconds,
Waiting for the moment when a point is revealed,
Examining the faded stamps on my right hand,
Hoping there is more to life than fancy clicks
And tuxedo t-shirts that intrigue without substance,
Yet convey the split mentality of someone who acts without thought,
Having once been the most remorseful reckoner in my world…

Competing aspirations cloud and confuse any lingering hope of clarity,
Everyday envisaging a new entity to become entwined with, a new fantasy,
Every night harbouring a fresh dream to fritter the day away contemplating,
With each new dream being as unlikely as its predecessor,
Causing pen to touch paper, fingers to touch keys,
Expressing the delirium and disillusionment equally through words,
Which in themselves hold ideals of a purposeful tomorrow…

Yet, as Zimmer’s orchestra escalates in volume,
And decelerates in tone,
Yet, as the credits conclude, bringing the death of surrounding silhouettes,
And the light reluctantly returns,
Yet, as the window is tentatively opened to its widest, inviting the night time inside,
Allowing the moon and stars the chance to voice condescending opinions,
It becomes coldly clearer and clearer that words are too a dead end in these times…

And while gazing over the locality and its dominating centre…
The epiphany strikes that seclusion from soul searching is the only end…
There is no escape from here or I.

Who are my Friends?

I get up,
I get dressed,
I go out:
To DCU,
To the City Centre,
To Barcode,
To Portmarnock,
To Galway,
To Scotland.
I talk to strangers,
I make them laugh,
They enjoy the show.
The next day
I add them on Bebo,
We comment,
And that’s it –
I may see them again,
Once or twice,
But not that often,
While with others,
With people who are,
‘Friends’,
They grow indifferent,
No interest in conversation –
Not even those,
Who I have known all my life.
They all brush me aside,
Years this is going on,
Wondering when it will stop,
‘Cause now I wake up,
Look at myself in the mirror,
And despite my four hundred Bebo friends,
I ask myself every morning,
Who the fuck are my friends?

Veins/Dog's Eyes

And I awake on a couch in a place not home,
A night ending in the morning means dreams till the afternoon,
They all sleep while tempting thoughts race through my head,
Hidden from all except the house’s dog who, with her smoky eyes,
Can see right into my mind and past the façade of my facial features;
She growls, smelling the shame.

And I lose yet again in someone else’s house,
A civil war that never ceases but continues to wage twenty four hours a day;
She occupies my mind’s mantel, her beauty enough to make me crack,
Succumbing to the temptation of apparent solitude,
Even though this place is far from empty, its occupants just asleep,
Its dog gazing menacingly with hazy eyes.

And I run away after my atrocity, leaving without explanation,
Sprinting to beat the speed of my weakness, but failing to outrun its reach,
Stumbling onto the train, where a sit down might bring peace,
But it does not; instead I see her veins on the window panes,
Etched in the condensation, alongside the eyes of the house’s dog,
That chase me now, in the full knowledge of what I did and why I ran.

And I continue to run, back out the doors from which I came,
As my eyes taunt me even more in the rainy sun, seeing veins and dog’s eyes in the drops,
Carved on every wall, drawn on every face, with howls and yells of ecstasy piercing my drums;
I try to take stairs four steps at a time but end up tripping,
Busting my nose off the mocking concrete, now smeared with blood,
Which also drips all over my clothes.

And there is blood on my jersey now.
And I see veins and the dog’s eyes there too.

Unsuspecting Lips

Twisting and turning,
Insides churning,
Blood is burning;
She is now coming,
Silently humming,
Blatantly not running;
Smiling at each other,
Hugging one another,
Not daring to smother;
A day in the park,
Searching for a spark,
Finding contrast stark;
Nowhere to hide,
She just sighed,
A part just died;
No luck denting,
Goodbye is pending,
Never a happy ending;
Then a planted kiss,
On unsuspecting lips,
Landing in a world of bliss…

The old one will not be missed.

Then and Then, Now and Now

Off I wander, down memory lane,
Sun playing off window panes,
Thinking and reminiscing of us two kissing,
While the lake’s surface glimmers invitingly,
Tranquillity in the surrounding countryside,
Contrasts completely with the storm inside,
A lone swan sails elegantly by,
Gazing far and wide, catching my eye…

Leafless trees, robbed during Winter’s freeze,
Show signs of re-birth, swaying in the breeze,
Mind’s skies are dark, with pangs of lightning,
Present skies are clear, clouds dividing,
Roof’s pebbles provoke memories of a time without a plan,
Of days spent by the now dead river with a now dead man,
And the quiet of loneliness allows common sense to prevail,
And the friends around guide me toward a path without fail…

Then and then, I walked innocent minded,
Now and now, I walk innocence subsided,
And I see the sky up so high,
And break down at the end’s nigh,
As soon as reality sets in and sums it all up,
A realisation hits that the world is corrupt,
No longer mine to toy with and tame,
No longer simply an oversized game…

They have taken the board away.