Fantasies

All my fantasies are filled with people
who are not me, controlling my heartbeat
as if it was their own with actions I
could never even dream of achieving
by myself because I am simply not
able nor worthy. They carry hopes of
nations upon shoulders incredibly
broad, and they do so with the freedom
and movement of children gracing us with
the presence of their imagination.
And it makes me sad that some are younger
than I, and so much more gifted too, with
a grand stage to exhibit their talents
on; and it only serves to remind me
of my own inadequacy and my
own failings in my own life, here, in the
real world, where real things happen or do not
happen, depending on whether one can
speak up or sit down when the time is right
or wrong or never to be; and it soon
becomes apparent that my fantasies
are actually living nightmares that haunt
me night and day, and morning and evening,
tearing me to pieces to put me back
together, just to pull me apart once
more, just to piece me back together again,
like some sort of sick jigsaw puzzle which
has a jagged part that does not quite fit
because it is never allowed to end.

God

I have a friend who proclaims nothing is in our hands
because it is all in the laps of the gods we cannot see.
I have a grandfather who is convinced a god watches
over us day-by-day and keeps his son safe until the
long awaited moment when they are reunited again.
I have a grandmother who lives by grandfather’s rules,
not through faith but through hope that come the end
of it all he turns out to be right in the face of adversity.
I have a father buried beneath a headstone he did not want
because he never saw or heard the god his father claimed to know.

And I cannot claim to know him either, regardless of my friend’s
proclamations and my grandfather’s insistence that his
prayer’s for me are always answered because I am not
the bastard I need to be, nor am I as large as the life
they think I have behind these eyes so allegedly alabaster.
And it is in irony that I claim to be so cold in isolation as
grandfather truly believes if I clasp my hands in silent prayer
I could never be alone - but talking to myself, or to the walls, does not
constitute being in company; otherwise I would never be alone,
despite failing to utter a single Hail Mary for my spurious smiles.

All the Old Friends

Oh, there’s my old friend Karma,
A broken scene as the interest soared.
Cutting through pretension to grant an extension
To a time and place without record.

Oh, there’s my old friend Hope,
Temptation is truly the fabled sin.
Appeasing forever those with endeavour
So they always have reason to begin.

Oh, there’s my old friend Love,
Intervention of the well-worn friend.
Inhaling to choke on those flames you stoke
With shortened breath to comprehend.

Oh, there’s my old friend Silence,
Thickened walls offer no reprieve.
Yelling to pray while I watch as you sway
In a drunken attempt to deceive.

Oh, there’s my old friend Lies,
Trickling stream of an age-old river.
Sitting on your throne while the film is shown
As you wait for me to deliver.

Oh, there’s my old friend Logic,
Calculating prowess a point of assault.
Though you control parts of my soul
In you I can see no fault.

Oh, and there’s a new friend, Being,
Realisation cracks the white mask.
I open my eyes to reveal our guise
And find you already took me to task.

Invincible

Arms outstretched in a victory as false as his pose;
deceit spins through the air but is lost in the
tranquillity of the sea and the absconding aromas,
elements and senses teasing him with their freedom.
And as he stands there in a seemingly painted
picture of glory unrivalled, voices whisper in his ears
that his only consistent character trait is inconsistency,
that he can scale as many hills, receive as many cuts,
earn as many scars and throw as many stones
as he pleases, but that he will never be invincible.

He stands on the opposite side of the cliff now,
overlooking the ocean glimmering like gold
beneath the basking rays of the sun, which hangs like
a flaming orb waiting to be blown out; a sign of the
impending climax to his tale of thoughtful inaction.
And friends regale him with tragic stories of time’s
continuous murdering streak, forever unpunished
because the accepted wisdom is the tick-tock of
all the clocks can never stop and that age - not even
a guarantee - will occur upon hearing too many clocks.

Yet sometimes it seems time takes an age to pass,
in those moments of unheralded brooding in the
newfound wilderness of well-worn pathways
holding keys to the isolation he craves daily and nightly.
And he knows he will lose all of what he breaths in now,
this unusual, unfamiliar feeling of serenity and oneness
with a world so willing to overindulge on gossip and
death and politics and scandal and all the trivialities
for which we should not have one minute to spare as life
spins on its axis, not invincible either as the poles shift.


(more thoughts from the day at the cliffs)

Cliffs

And today June emphatically begins,
As we scale these cliffs, reliving our sins,
The sun beats down with no sign of a wind,
Just an air of hope the past will rescind.

Old war wounds burst their banks on my skin,
As rocks rapingly scrape “repent to win,”
We approach the edge, I approach the end,
And looking down I fear to surrend.

The beauty of certain uncertainty,
The unknown of life as a guarantee,
My laughter is said to bring so much joy,
But how can that be, I am just a boy?

Now the waves crash into the cliff side,
The roar grabs hold, without a place to hide,
But then it all goes numbingly silent,
So deafening, voraciously violent.

And though time drags us so far apart,
We breath in the clock, go back to the start,
And live in this scene of serenity,
Setting sun shows no shred of sympathy.


(I visited the cliffs around Howth for the first time yesterday - they were incredible)