Choiceless Ceremony

Sitting at the choiceless ceremony

In complete indifference to the girl

Attempting to prise her way into my

Cold embrace, as it has been for so long.

You are all dolled-up with no one to kiss,

Nobody to hold your hand as my sight

Rests firmly on a former flame that was

Never lit because of the pretension

That time has helped me come to loath so much.

Tonight is the culmination of it

All, where the awards are given to

The worthy, and the months, days, minutes

And seconds wasted finally earn

Some form of recognition from their pears.

And yet you only have eyes for me while

Mine are set across our table at the

Beautiful woman in the cream dress, with

Those eyes that just light up whenever she

Laughs, with her golden skin so soft to touch.

And she sits there, blissfully unaware

Of the conundrum her grace has caused me,

The doubts her previous confession still

Raise in my mind, as I always wonder

If she really meant what she said before

On a cold September night long ago.

And what makes this whole thing tragic is that

You brought me here under false pretences,

Perhaps believing that we may share a

Kiss under the star light of this venue,

The Mansion House, a marble marvel lost

In this decaying city of false hopes.

And the irony is I posses no 

Feeling for you, and she has no feelings

For me; we three are just chasing shadows,

Conforming to this game they all play in

Their confines of calls and chat, just waiting

To be broken again, as you cannot

Prevent the inevitable ending

Naivety brings when you have no choice.

Golden

Desperate defeat left quickly behind

With the chance to dance on deity’s designed,

Shaped in September of a year now lost,

Fumbled through fingers as chores crossed.

I wipe away lashes, disillusioned tears,

Your disappointment and your future fears,

Realisation hits, you slowly start to smile,

No more excuses or drunken denial.

Surrounding circumstance is then ignored,

Past idleness forgotten by the bored,

Focus becomes present, to you and me,

The end of an era sets us both free.

Beauty resonates in your smooth cream dress,

In your golden skin I love to caress,

And it is up, not down, I am staring,

The lights in your eyes, the sign of caring.

And even when you can stand no more,

Alcohol weighing you down to the floor,

We sit in silence, your eyes shut tight,

And we hold hands amidst the passing night.

Your head resting gently upon my hand, 

While I stroke softly every silk strand,

And by the end I walk you to your door,

Waving goodbye to your kiss once more.

Shaken Hero

I see all the belief you have in me checked

And re-checked, again and again, doubtless,

Without a single clouded thought crossing

Your mind so sure of my capabilities.

Then, I see you look into a mirror, and you

Waver, unable to meet your own gaze

Because what you see within your eyes

Is a soul so restless it feels the need to act

Without rationale whenever it is pinned down.

Flight is always easier than confronting

The issues at hand, and flight is always

Your chosen way, one flight after the other,

Until the ash trail you leave behind from those

Cigarettes smoked in stress leads you back to

The beginning again, and you realise you have

Been running in futility from problems that were

Never irresolvable, just overbearing.

Claims of misplaced faith fall onto my deaf ears

Because the only faith that has been mislaid

Is your own in yourself, dropped somewhere 

Along a rocky road that has shaken you

Time after time, rattling your nerve,

Until you become certain that every little thing you say,

Every little thought you think, and every single

Choice you make is the wrong one that sends the world

Crashing down around your ears.

And I see, then, that you need to be told something

That can help restore your belief in yourself,

And your love for those around you

And for this life we have to live.

That one thing is this and I beg you to heed the words:

My love for you is unwavering

Because you are my goddamn hero,

Shaken, but not broken.

Suppression

Suppression of thought self-imposed
By a need to complete the trivial.
Those trips down lurid lanes on nocturnal nights
Within my mind have ceased because
Straight-seeing sight with sleep-filled hours
Is the only way to finish the task at hand.
Now a different kind of delusion grips me
As hours upon hours are spent staring at
Fractions that do not add up.
Forty over one hundred multiplied by five
And three-fifths, but why?
I do not want to be locked away while the sun
Shines down on my friends outside,
Who are living their lives to the fullest.
“Providing for the future,” they say,
“is as important as living your life now,”
But not when I am setting myself up for a
Life I do not want to lead.
And I can only drop to my knees in despair
At the feet of my table bearing the brunt
Of my being, a responsibility once held
By a pen set right into prostration.
This workload has numbed my very essence,
Stifling something that should come fluidly.
Not so long ago words would lash down on paper
With the same ease as rain falling from the sky.
Now, there is no rain, nor any words to go with it.
There is only sunshine.
Eternal.
Evaporating all the emotion from me,
Silencing my gift.


(my thesis is due in a matter of weeks, meaning I've little time to do anything but work on that - this poem is about the horridness of that feeling)

News: published in Minus 9 Squared

Minus 9 Squared is a literary zine that contains poetry, prose, photographs, artwork, and many other products of the arts by various contributors. It has only been recently set up and the first issue can be viewed here.

I was fortunate enough to have my poem Chaos to Silence published in this issue, and my friend Michael Fogarty also had a poem published (and, by random chance, the poems feature beside each other in the online magazine on pages ten and eleven, which is always nice).

All the work, both written and visual, is excellent, and hopefully there will be more to come from Minus 9 Squared and its contributors in the future.

Sober Story

Same sober story, hands raised by the riverside,
Yet this is different, something is missing,
A spark or a flame for which I am famed
Has flickered out in my absence from the game.

The bearable is now beyond comprehension,
Dancing feet offer no reprieve, nor do the beats,
The rhythms that once offered respite and insight
Are dead to my ears and beneath my hands’ sleight.

Several shots sunk down in spite of the burning within,
Lighting candles that shall guide them through the night,
All around me they laugh and joke while I just choke
On the water that quenches a fire I used to stoke.

As it unfolds, plays and poems are written in my mind,
Placing people upon pedestals for the sake of creation,
That is what I tell myself when I put journals on my shelf
Now full of these plays and poems all about myself.

Yet, where once they glowed brighter than the stars,
Positive about being clear amidst the drunken haze,
They have become dim the more I refuse my sin
That is not cardinal but personal in a fear of being like him.

My father was an angry drunk who put holes in doors,
Yet he was always better at creating when he chose to be,
He was the master of his trade without a hearing aid,
Despite this he fled and the paint on his grave still fades.

And what is the point of thought clear in sobriety,
If it remains clouded by the consequences of life all around it?
Your alter ego is your shadow not seen in the here and now,
Who’s usually hid within your soul, waiting to come out.

Yet that is me all the time as everyday I see mine,
So is committing my supposed sin really such a crime?

Three Stars

Three stars flying down so high,
One for each as time flows by,
Crashing towards Earth in blazing glory,
Crossing chores, they do bore me.

A star from the past still shines brightly,
A star from the present is just as sprightly,
I am the star stuck in-between,
Deciphering doubt while crying unseen.

Light years apart, yet still so close,
Whisperers suggest an overdose,
One I knock back daily and nightly,
Prising the puzzle just to spite me.

I write myself into a cage,
Lamenting feelings on a yellowing page,
Waiting in haste for a single sign,
So I know which star is mine.


(I saw an aeroplane tonight that looked like three stars slowly crashing towards the airport...don't worry, I'm almost certain the plane landed safely; another for the Signs by Bloc Party collection).

Marooned

I thought I saw a man standing on Leigh’s roof in Donaghmede,
Hooded,
Holding what seemed to be a warning sign in my direction.
But it wasn’t a man, it was a chimney,
Smoking innocently, and even if it was a man,
I chose to ignore his selfless warning…

And then I looked up and saw the moon, so full.
I tried to strike up a conversation with the words of a poet
Ringing in my mind’s ears,
That the moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
But the moon ignored me like I ignored the hooded man’s warning sign,
Leaving me to reach the sea in solitude and ponder my mistakes…

The white light now shimmers off the surface of the sea,
Taunting me by withholding its wisdom
Gleaned from centuries of swallowing mercilessly
Those naïve enough to believe in its tranquillity,
And I can only sit and watch the water lap on the steps
Of my secret seat four rows down…

Alone.

I am a self-destructing machine who cannot have
The simplicities of the sea or the
Immaculate mystery of the moon.
They all run away before my pleasantries
Because I am from a different decade
When things were more intimate and less casual…

The handrails of my stepped seat bear evidence
Of a visitor to the sea who never left its grasp,
Their clothes’ remnants tied around the steel in a knot
As a warning not to follow them to the depths.
The second warning of the night,
But will I heed it?

The ocean could just carry me away,
Or drag me down,
Either way, I would get what I want.
The ripples are so tempting as I gaze with envy
At the sleeve blowing gently in the wind, and the
Lapping water is whispering my name…

And it grows louder until it is all I can hear.

The whispering then mocks my foolishness
For braving these Baltic elements just to watch
From afar as boats leave Howth Head to places
I can only dream of setting foot upon.
A chance of escape lies in the route of the sea
But I cannot swim so what becomes of me?

Nothing.
So I continue to look longingly across the ocean,
Willing it to rise up and sweep me from my seat,
Sweep us all from this life lived in futility,
In some falsified hope that by doing so
I can re-mould my being to be like every other 21st century man…

Then, for a brief moment,
A light shines on the horizon between the islands,
Coaxing me to take those tentative first steps
Into the icy depths disillusionment has carried me
To thus far, to a level of despair even he knew
In his short, soundless drama of a life…

But the light disappears,
Marooning me here until I die.


(I went for a walk the other night and this is everything I felt, saw, and thought I saw).