Colourless Eyes

Stomping feet, swinging hips, and long gone friends
Form the memory of my last dance with
The first love of my adolescence, whose
Radiance never ceased to amaze me.
I fell at first sight, but hindsight reveals
Teenage infatuation without hope.
And yet I still remember when, as I
Was leaving the party, she stepped forward
And pulled me into a wistful embrace.
When we both pulled back, our eyes met and I
Became so entranced by her gaze that I
Bypassed their colour completely, losing
Myself in something else entirely.

Chamber

I have a chance to die here, all alone,
Overcrowded beach of faceless strangers,
But I run away, leaving my friends to
Die there instead, solving nothing at all.
In reality, the isolation
Chamber I constructed for you, that we
Joked about, was made really for me
To hide behind, so I could watch the joy
Of your life without disrupting its free
Chaos filled essence, conflicting and cold.
Your eyes in which I deign to lose myself
Are set soulfully on another man,
Invisible and imaginary,
Whom I do not know, yet envy still.
Our shared kiss is dead in the annals of
History, forgotten by you because
It was a footnote in your weekly game
Of who next? It yellows within my mind,
Tearing at the edges as I fight to
Grasp that feeling of meaning something to
Somebody once more, when the truth is
I never did, because they all run away,
Empty words floundering in fear behind.
My time is spent chasing indifferent
Shadows daily and nightly, waiting to
Catch one and never let it go, because
The order attained in books and films will
Finally be mine when I do, even
Though the stories written for amusement
And entertainment are written only
To cash in on manipulation.
They are not real and they never will be,
So this hope to achieve the scene-set end,
Of taking you on the beach as the waves
Whisper, telling us that the world has stopped
Spinning, is futile, because this chamber
Is designed to prevent, not to create.


(the last poem ever to go on Bebo).

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)

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).

Turquoise

I take your hand, lost in your turquoise eyes,
Heading to the floor, no more compromise.

Arms around my neck, body to body,
Intoxicated, nothing could stop me.

As everything else falls away, we dance,
Beating heart, I lean in to take the chance.

When our lips touch, your shock is evident,
Until you smile, as others circumvent.

With eyes shut we kiss, missing in the crowd,
First moment of respite, you laugh aloud.

No-one prying, hands wander to caress,
Ours unite to pull down your rising dress.

Other thoughts drift, savouring this sought kiss,
The past gone, forgetting our last near-miss.

We stop again, your laughter fills my ears,
In the corner they watch, with drowned out cheers.

We sway together, move through the masses,
In each other’s arms, we flee their chassis.

Blinded by feeling, your infectious smile,
I disregard morals, drunken denial.

And all the while, lights in strobes shadow us,
Hiding, becoming bright to break our trust.

A startling luster sheen, they all disperse,
As they do, the night’s end I spit and curse.

We let go, minutes for eternity,
So long, so short, too fast for you and me.

A Dreamer's Dream

I dreamt last night of us kissing inside
The pitch blackness of a rain sheltered pier
Swallowed by the night overlooking the
Calm surface of a sea that threatened to
Swallow us too, while letting us breath in
This moment of eternal happiness.

Violin

The majority are meaningless strings
Played by the conspicuous conductors,
The ones whose music gives reason
To the violin’s existence otherwise
Futile, a forlorn piece of carved wood.
Conductors are few and far between
But the strings are plentiful, coming
In boxes by the dozen daily and weekly,
Before they inevitably gather dust and break,
Replaced by a lively new set with a similar
Standing sustain as the notes that went before.
One-by-one the conductors leave the room
Having learned of a finer instrument to be
Played in a different, more upstanding place
Where the quality of sound is not hindered
By the surrounding atmosphere of the patrons.
Complacent conductors take up the violin
And mistreat its once sincere soul,
Each conductor’s iris of the eye darker
With every dropping of the instrument,
Denting its body, scratching its being.
And then, there is nobody left to play,
And the violin is left to gather the same
Dust as the strings, the same dust it so
Detested when it was at the height of its
Popularity, played by only the critical
Conductors, the ones whose influence
Was everlasting when they manipulated
The mundane strings so easily found.
Finally, the strings are taken away too
For use on another active instrument,
Leaving the violin on its own to inhale the dust,
A mark of passing time and inaction,
A mark of the inconsequence it used to mock.

Chaos to Silence

I

Strobe-light chaos splits time with black spaces,
Seconds divided, just like stop motion
Animation without any purpose.
Bodies come together and sway as one,
Shaking the floor in time to the rhythm.
Elbows crack ribs as sweat rains down from those
Perched on the upper levels, surveying
The alcohol fuelled ecstasy below.
Alone I stand in sobriety, lost
In thought while moving thoughtlessly to the
Beat that goes ever on and on for no
Reason but to inspire the masses,
Granting courage to those lives without it.
Now they hang from each other, boy and girl,
Boy and boy, girl and girl, all playing the
Tease with the desires of the drunkard,
And when they drop their glasses, yelling in
Uncalled for anger and futile despair
As all their aspirations fall apart
In their man-made spiralling abyss, it
Is clear I shall forever be alone.

II

And that is the way I left the city,
On my own, expecting the chaos to
Pervade the streets as society lets
Itself fall into the trap of being
Too comfortable in uncomforting
Times, with the sly men and whorish women
Screaming and vomiting under street lights,
While the innocent night workers curse their
Prayers that were prayed in vain to the deafest;
But instead of finding bodies crisscrossed
Along the paths of deceit and sin so
Frequented by the ever ossified,
My eyes fell upon nothing at all, save
A solitary cab and its driver,
With only three jobs in thirteen hours.
Then he told me stories of a recluse,
And how the night sky mirrored the events here,
So empty, not a soul nor star in sight.
And as deafening silence drowns my
Ears while we race the night’s casting shadows,
Solitude becomes random, not certain.

(another night out, another poem about that night out).

One Key

If I could just
Set myself free,
Then it could
Be you and me,
And then we would
Sail the sea,
Us alone,
Reality,
Ours to make
For one key,
Unlock the cage
That keeps me,
Conflicting,
This country,
Can’t breath,
Imprisons me,
Need to get out
Or choke slowly,
And just

Lead life the way it was meant to live,
Or else there is nothing else to give,
No vice to expose, no gift to share,
No truth to epos, no reason to bear,
And I need you with me to see it all,
Every orange sky and every high fall,
Every echo that is your call.

If you could just
Come through snow,
Open the door
And watch me go,
Strike a match,
Candle’s glow,
Walk ahead,
I will follow,
Not too far,
Stone’s throw,
Hold my hand,
Let me know,
You’re here to stay
To just

Lead life the way it was meant to live,
Or else there is nothing else to give,
No vice to expose, no gift to share,
No truth to epos, no reason to bear,
And I need you with me to see it all,
Every orange sky and every high fall,
Every echo that is your call.

If we could just
Say no more,
Act our intent,
Dreams to fore,
Turning the key
Is but a chore,
Escape to come
Is so much more,
Flight to water,
To Earth’s core,
And there stop,
Forevermore.

Hope/My Friends

Slipping into an abyss within the
Soul where solitude rests in deceiving
Harmlessness. A lack of reality
In my mind creates oblivion, sharp
In its coup but merciless in its fierce
Follow-through. Past memories manifest
Themselves before my eyes, reminding me
Of circumstance’s cruel interventions
And of my own mistakes, the conceited
Chases. It all unfolds again as if
It was the first time, unleashing the stream
Within and without, in front of those most
Likely to make a mockery. People
Cover the cracks yet create the faults, some
In vain trying to protect me from the
Pretenders; not my well-wishers, never
To be so. Dreams crumble from stone to shards
To shallow mud puddles, catching steps and
Dragging them down to the sloping, sinking
Depths of disimprovement, with only false
Prophets found at the end, buried beneath.
The only chance now to restore faith in
Humanity lies with those who took it,
Unknowingly, away from me before;
Hope and my friends must take each other’s hands.

Needle

They lay me back, taking the pressure,
High iron, lots of energy, healthy,
Made to donate, they say.
Needle pierces the skin, a pint the maximum
One can give away to those who need it,
Yet as they pull the needle out of the puncture,
Plaster it up as the slight bruising begins to form,
I just want to stick myself again, take it all out,
Lose all the blood that keeps me alive.

Strangers leave this room with smiles,
Knowing they have changed somebody’s life;
I laugh with my friends whose smiles I envy,
Resisting the urge to just hook myself to the
Machine and let myself slip into sleep.
A release is within my grasp that I cannot have,
An excuse that would absolve me of all blame,
Allowing me to flee just like he did,
Just not as obvious to the eyes of everybody.

Others seek an escape through needles, too,
But I am not like those who litter the City Centre,
Hogging the paths because they have nowhere to go,
No jobs to pay them, nobody to help them;
Down and outs whose numbers never came up,
Or who played Chance and paid the price for it.
I am not these people, I never will be these people,
I have more than I need and probably always will,
So why do I want a needle to help me run for?

Glimmering Cat’s Eye

Glimmer of a cat’s eye,
Shining star in the sky,
A double daring dance,
Harbouring past romance.

Face ages in the wind,
Years gone without rescind,
Movements graceful bear sight,
Seeing in a new light.

Past kiss I cannot keep,
Memoirs lost in your sweep,
Life slipping all the time,
Standing still for a climb.

My head smashes off walls,
The realisation crawls,
Never to be again,
Neither an if or when.

Sharp gaze cuts right through me,
Doubtless, what is to be.

Skeletal

Recollections pool within,
Dancing history tempts sin,
Dead and buried, dug back up,
Skeletal fragments, born enough.

Reminisces recall kisses,
Shared in rainy near misses,
Hands held tight in ignorance,
Futility without a chance.

Realisation months too old,
Forgotten with a flick of bold,
Returning lover never left,
Only concealment oh so deft.

Fragility renewed threatened,
Moans of ecstasy once deafened,
Now clouding thoughts and desires,
Reigniting burned out fires.

Heart torn manic obsessive,
Jumping the gun, so compulsive,
Unavoidable crossing chores,
Failure this time shuts all doors.

Now you will look into my eyes,
Removing those skeletal lies.

Valentine

As the conversation teeters toward the mundane,
I realise I am a victim of my mind’s game,
Always wishing and dreaming about the maybes
While ignoring the signs of the realities.
Twenty Valentines have passed me by in my life,
Cupid’s arrows have never been close in my eye,
And I think all I want is to lay by your side,
How have I forgotten lessons of times gone by?

Having barred myself from places of happiness,
And from being sucked in by the need to caress,
I grew weary of the dankness within this hole
And sought an escape from the constraints of my soul.
I begin to scale, liberation is at hand,
Condemnation comes in the crooked clefts to stand,
Then below I see you with your entrancing eyes,
Gazing up at me, like I had been telling lies.

The misinterpreter misinterpreted dreams,
A master in finding something less than it seems,
Misreading truth to see love in imperfections
And bound to discover heartbreaking corrections.
Even when my grip rested upon freedom’s soil,
It crumbled through my fingers, and I fell and toil,
Lost in the oblivion of your bright blue eyes,
Innocent’s blame absolved for my own twisting guise.

(by the time I realised I regretted trying to rhyme this one it was practically finished, so I didn't bother changing it 'round).

Dull Evening in February

A dull February evening heard through
An open window; smelled first, seen second.

Cars drive to and fro, as the dusk begins
To fade into time but not memory.

Remarkably unremarkable, this
Dimming candle light outside my window,

Glowing orange over suburbia,
No different to any other day.

Yet, on this day, the setting sun is a
Sign of something saying goodbye to me…

And of something new being born within.


(my second attempt at the iambic pentametre is slightly better than the first, I think).