Sky Stands Still

The sky stands still while cars zoom slowly by,
A scene painted in tranquillity with the volume muted,
Seven swallows’ wings flap silently in formation,
Working together like a beautifully well-oiled machine,
Not something one sees everyday.

The sun peaks a select few rays around the clouds,
Groping for a place to shine without being too bright,
Children clasp parents’ hands for fear of falling,
Youthful innocence taken away one year earlier all the time,
A terrible truth in a changing world.

The train roars underneath the bridge, shattering reveries,
Carrying people to destinations they could walk to if they tried,
Two individuals stroll separately from the local church,
The grip of religion dying bit-by-bit, day-by-day,
An acceptance of its diminished role growing with age.

The wind whips up the Autumn leaves in golden turrets,
Little tornadoes brushing off society’s various visages,
Some of whom deal in the dark with hands well hidden,
Hoods thrown over the masks circumstance has given them,
Their true faces lost beneath the corruption money brings.

And all the while the sky stands resolutely still with a shifting scowl,
Day and night, the only thing here not to have changed with time.

(I was collecting my little brother Conor from school - as I came over the Hump-back Bridge heading into Baldoyle I looked at the sky and it looked like a perfect painting).

Three Minutes, Fifty-Four Seconds

Strings gentle begin as I lay with closed eyes,
Seeing twenty years unfold in three minutes fifty four seconds,
Memories of a youth of spoils come back to me,
Reminding me of the difficulties I posed to the deaf and dumb;
Four silent years marked me out as a mute boy,
The other sixteen have been spent making up for lost time,
Except when the Big Man took his unnecessary leave,
All went quiet then, bar the rain drops,
Rolling down my bedroom window like tears on trembling cheeks,
As I gazed blankly away;
The soundtrack to anything becomes a song for me,
Things clear when a crescendo begins its slow ascent,
Especially the mistakes made in departments supposedly superior to the standard;
The yells that leave my mouth in anger are just like the Big Man’s,
He bubbles beneath my surface, holding a grip from his grave,
It contorts my face and raises my swearing,
Bringing fear to my brothers’ eyes, his sons’ eyes,
A leader exists only in the past;
Even though my lids are shut, this all plays like a reel in a cinema,
Never a dull moment, only the pictures and the music,
The happy times play their part and I see for the first time my own face light up,
While in real time, a solitary drop escapes through a crack in my lashes,
As never before did I notice the emotions that are visible in my expressions,
My face is like a book of poetry,
Each wrinkle containing all the joy I never thought would leave,
The glow flickering in my eyes really believing this;
The same score, the same three minutes fifty four seconds,
Represents everything I have ever done, happy or sad, good and bad,
The excited laughs and the tortured empty stares fit into this one piece,
The losses, the gains, the things that just remain, resolute in their permanence,
Because those three minutes fifty four seconds play in repeat in my mind.

To a Destination

A fox lies dead in the middle of the carriage way,
Ears pricked up to hear it all pass by,

As windmills at the heart of the ocean spin clockwise,
Electricity defying conduction and the currents,

And a cathedral stands tall against the painted evening sky,
Goers looking up, enlightened, while the priest skulks away,

Fields of gold rolling across his eyes’ sight, and further again,
While cattle and sheep graze the day away, every day,

A lone mountain looms larger, shadow outreaching,
Blocking out all sunlight, darkness devouring all the cars,

With castle ruins, crumbled and broken, regaining their former glory,
Horses’ gallops shaking the Earth to protect a reborn kingdom,

Overlooked by a giant oak tree, offering a throne that sees everything,
Out to the soulless sea and beyond the heartless horizon,

Watching the three cars line up two hundred kilometres down the road,
Uniting in friendship and in a journey to one destination,

Every action taken in blatant disregard to the bordered up houses in the empty town,
Always thinking of the Worm’s Hill that awaits them at this trip’s end,

Its sheer being coincidence enough to warrant a visit.

They Don't Know

Rumours are rife that the dark days are gone,
Yet this city, ugly, pulses nightly,
They can’t see where it all went wrong,
So I, arrogantly, ignore them blindly.

Knowing they don’t know.

Running wild across my mind’s landscape,
Pondering, always, how to escape this maze,
They can’t see my mentality’s shape,
So I, crazed, just give them a blank gaze.

Knowing they don’t know.

Sleepless hours thinking about sleepless hours,
The walls, looming, suffocate the brooding,
They can’t see the moment where it sours,
So I, losing, smirk and keep musing.

Knowing they don’t know.

Everybody believes they deserve what they have,
Yet I, daily, resent what I alone gave me,
They can all see a reason for having what I have,
Yet I, save me, know I don’t deserve me.

So I’ll go, knowing they’ll never know.