Resentment

There is a carnival atmosphere in
the air but all I feel is resentment
towards everybody around me who clings
to who they have as if slacking their grip
would let my bitterness swallow them whole;
the nearby shore is drowned out by the sounds
of the Spanish travelling siesta
combined with the usual outpouring
of drunken delinquency by the Irish,
a stereotype that fits so well I
almost begrudge myself for not bearing
it too, even though it would exacerbate
everything that doing nothing at all
manages to keep in balance; and when
the festival lights are dimmed one last time,
when deluded anarchy hits the streets,
my resentment still builds as I watch these
people, seemingly without a care, drawl
and stumble and cry over trivial
things made drastic by the temptress that is
alcohol who lives in oblivion,
a place that coaxes even me when I
witness freedom - disillusioned, yes, but
still freedom - in everyone else but I.

Dancing Dare

Her eyes locked on someone else,
His words flow and her heart melts,
Lost I brood as arms flail,
Touching lips the final nail.

Downward gaze a downward spiral,
Downward hope is down right viral,
Scuffling feet rape my sight,
‘Til a passing glimmer of chance light.

Head tilts up and falls elsewhere,
Her close friend a dancing dare,
More from waste than from spite
We kiss away the collapsing night.

Bustling sounds and the crowd’s roar,
Fading memories from before,
But flickering doubt blunts this thrill,
As it whispers “what of my will?”

News: SpunOut.ie publishes a second poem

SpunOut.ie is an online magazine I have been published in before and just the other day they published my poem 'Invisible'. I sent in a number of submissions at once at the time and 'Rat Race' was plucked from those to be published.

I wasn't expecting another poem from that group of submissions to be published as well several weeks later, so it was a pleasant surprise to find the webmasters did decide to publish something else! Click on the following embedded links for the original versions of 'Invincible' and 'Rat Race' posted on this blog.

Weep

As adrenaline fades away in the immediate
solitude of leaving the frantic house-party,
silence rushes from the dark to swallow me
whole. A brisk walk becomes a slow stroll
before it descends into a laborious slog,
sapping the little energy remaining from a
once boundless supply. Faceless strangers
of the night seem to sneer from within the
safety of their hoods, shadows veiling features.
And as I move less and less, a scratching
sound begins inside my mind, as if some thought,
some wraith-like truth long buried beneath
the layers of deceit and denial, longed to
creep up from hiding and remind me of its
existence. Drops fall softly like tears of the
stars as my progress grounds to an utter halt
outside the front garden of a childhood friend
and real-time alcoholic, lost to the fine print
of what love and life and truth really are -
but the scratching gets louder, suffocating
other remedial trains on rails toward dead ends.
The scratching stops, replaced by complete
nothingness as I gaze blankly ahead into the void,
And then I can hear only one thing in the night
but it comes from inside my own head:
it is the sound of weeping, tainted and pitiful.

Valley

We wander and trip between the trees,
Lost in the silence of the breeze;
Walking within the valley of lies,
Right beneath their judging eyes.
The moon’s light guides the way,
Hidden within the shadow play;
Snow falls in sheets around us
As we follow our well-worn trust -
And as they wait for our final fall,
I wait for you to answer my call.

Steeper and steeper we still stumble
Over fallen branches of this jungle;
Every step is designed to stagger,
Yet you skip along with a swagger
Holding your hand to me in peace,
Your shining eyes failing to cease.
Slowly we move nearer the truth,
Hope building with aging youth;
Soon we come to an empty clearing,
The end to which you have been steering.

There we embrace for an endless age,
Writing the last lines of our page,
So yellow and torn from the past:
A fool was I to think it would last?
“Old romantics are dead and gone,”
You whisper like a sing-along,
“Where do you now go from here?”
You ask in a voice filled with fear.
And I reply hoping you will see,
“In this valley we are free.”

Your responding tear says more
Than any words you uttered before,
And all I am left with as you depart
Are snowy footprints we left at the start.
One-by-one, staring eyes leave
Content with seeing what they always believed -
An inevitable end to a shock romance
That began with a stroke of happy chance.
Blinded by faith and belief in love,
I always thought that would be enough.

Reading 'If'

I sit down and watch Mike Bassett recite
Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ in the face of adversity
and hostility from the butchers that are the
British football press. The fact this film is
a work of fiction makes no difference
as I listen to the fight in his voice and
the will to keep going, even when all
hope was lost in the typical mediocrity
of his side’s lacklustre performances.
Then I remember an old possession of mine,
so I go upstairs and dust off the poetry book
a friend who shares my birthday bought
for me when we both turned 21. I flick through
the pages, searching for Kipling’s much
acclaimed ‘If’, and I read that poem
- and all the promises it makes in exchange
for courage, wisdom and patience - and I
come to realise that the ifs he speaks of
are cannots for me. It is then I walk to
the bathroom, all alone in the overbearing
heat of my house, and splash water on my face,
wanting to be both realistic and optimistic,
but failing to find a balance between the two like
Kipling did in writing his poem and Basset did in
reading it before the media hounds - salivating at his
apparent demise - with such resolute determination.
And it is then I meet my own gaze in the
bathroom mirror and goad the self I see -
an irritable shadow of the figure I once was -
in a futile attempt at reverse psychology:
“I dare you to be happy.”