Hoardings

Where hope is lost

Hoardings are found –

This is why we

Tear them to ground.

The Shop

Ripped clean out and held so high,
Beating still yet stunting life;
The gaze of strangers no longer met –
In looking away, I hope to forget.

Units of time distort with rage,
Dragging in shifts of minimum wage:
I kill moments with wasting ploys,
Biting my tongue without a choice.

Interest gleaned from silly remarks –
Old women’s prayers, scumbags’ barks:
Any distraction from the intrigues
And the battles of petty colleagues.

I sweat and bleed for those with reason,
Colloquial logic a tragic treason –
They embrace me like an only son,
Though I am not the only one:
Still I fail to see my life pass by,
My stagnation such I cannot cry.

And I struggle in vain to pass the time,
Yet mourn its memory never mine.

Thieves lord it over in drunken jest
Within antipodes they believe are best:
They steal two bottles of cheapest wine,
Ceasing outside their committed crime.

I give chase and reclaim our stock,
Displaying guile, to the thieves’ shock;
Yet I’d hoped it would end right there –
On the cold, dead street without a care;

Without a care because of cares scanty:
Nama’s enema leaving us empty.
The world still spins but Clongriffin does not,
Because in the end we are all forgot.

I sweat and bleed for those with reason,
Colloquial logic a tragic treason –
They embrace me like an only son,
Though I am not the only one:
Still I fail to see my life pass by,
My stagnation such I cannot cry.

And I struggle in vain to pass the time,
Yet mourn its memory never mine.

Jelly & Ice-Cream (For Now)

Where were you when you heard

The death knell sound at Ibrox?

Me, I was in Clongriffin –

Where dreams go to die –

Working in a hole

Filled with strife.

It was the day before

Valentine’s

And I was buttering a roll

For a man I didn’t know

When a voice on the radio announced

“R*****s appoint administrators,”

And we both exclaimed

“Jaysuuus!” – 

He in ecstasy;

I in trepidity;

“Sure fuck ‘em!” his reply –

“We need them,” mine.

And one-by-one

Locals come in smiling,

In United and Liverpool jerseys,

But insisting they’re Celtic, too –

Telling me how great it is,

“The end of the scum.”

But my reasoning –

Scattered –

Is lost

In the sadistic smatterings

Of the ecstatic mind,

And I have to wait to get home

Before realisation kicks in.

The reckoning was inevitable,

The artful dodger can

Only dodge so artfully –

But to celebrate is crass,

Even with those memories

Of the hearse parked

Outside Parkhead

In our own dark days.

Victims of geography,

We both lived 

Through periods of luxury:

Let us not forget the 90s

Where they loomed large

As we faced Death,

Inhaling his cold embrace,

And within minutes of succumbing – 

Until Fergus swooped

To do things properly

(even unpopularly).

It has always been

Celtic & Rangers

Or

Rangers & Celtic,

The Old Firm together

In spite of each other.

The drama of two football teams

Occasionally about the football,

But mostly about the passion – 

And the sectarianism, the bigotry,

And unsavoury things

Unrelated to football,

Yet related to history,

Which seems more important.

And we all have our own memories – 

These are some of mine:

Vague recollections of

The impending fear of

Ten-in-a-row;

The elation felt when

We won one-in-a-row

Under Wim;

‘The Humping’ of ’98,

The Magician decimating them

Under orders from Doctor Who, 

(if only they were ten years younger);

My father regaling me

With a story of how he met

A rather mouthy R*****s fan

In a Glasgow hotel –

Whose head he proceeded

To shove down a toilet;

The devastation of handing

It straight back at Parkhead

To that Dick,

And the flying coin

Which added injury to insult

(the memory of Dallas);

The embarrassing failings of

Barnes and Shite

(travails);

The day in the sun when Martin

Let us glimpse Paradise Gained

With a 6-2 win

And that “sensational” goal

By the King of Kings;

The devastation of 2002/03,

Losing to them by one goal overall,

Big John called offside in the final

When television proved otherwise

(thanks Sepp):

The golden year of the golden age

Which gleaned nothing –

And yet everything;

The season they were stung

Five-for-five,

With big Chris chipping home

In fatigue over expectation in the fifth –

And scoring nonetheless;

Reading about the unfortunate English,

And realising that a spirit 

Resides between the Parkhead posts:

John Thomson is his name;

Thommo thundering home

In the 84th minute,

And Thommo getting sent off

Over there three times –

No more a hero

And no less a villain, 

But exactly what we needed

When we needed it;

Scott McDonald

Pulling a goal out of his arse

To rob Martin of one

Last title glory

(how glad was I to see him

In hoops not long after) –

A reminder of how a title

Is not always lost in a game

Against them;

Sammy, so frustrating,

Yet succeeding where he

Failed in the South,

Blitzing them with a brace

On one of his better days;

Scott Brown levelling in the Scottish Cup

And turning, arms out-stretched,

To face that pantomime villain,

El Hadji Diouf;

And even this season,

Fifteen points away at Halloween,

The Christmas saw Joe climb highest

And drag us two points away –

Daylight at last.

Now diminished.

The shining Whyte Knight

(who they never believed in anyway)

Has sold them out,

But they chased a pipe dream,

Spending Premier League

Where only the SPL could do;

Cheating the Queen

Who they profess to love so much,

And now the Queen wants tax-back –

Such is the irony

Of monarchy,

And with so much history

In the balance,

All we can do is sing:

“Jelly & ice-cream when R****rs die!

Jelly & ice-cream when R****rs die!

Jelly & ice-cream when R****rs die!

Jelly & ice-cream when R****rs die!”

But afterwards, what about afterwards?

When we have

Washed the jelly & ice-cream down

With pint after pint,

And we wake up hungover,

Dehydrated, delirious,

Blabbering about beating them,

Then what?

Where do we look for the tense

Excitement of the Old Firm derby?

From whence will come the challenge,

That thundering blue?

When somebody overcomes

The one obstacle standing between

Them and success,

How do they motivate themselves?

The Old Firm have done it

For over a century

Because they have had each other –

And now that is in the balance.

So enjoy the jelly & ice-cream, Bhoys and Ghirls,

Enjoy the demise of them as they would have us,

Enjoy the promise of a future free of bigotry

(even though bigotry will never die),

And enjoy lording it over their fans,

As Ibrox becomes a ghost stadium –

But just remember where you were

When the team you grew up supporting

Lost its perpetual nemesis without equal:

Remember the day the jelly & ice-cream

Tasted its absolute sweetest and remember how

It will never be so sweet again.

And remember the electricity of Old Firm days – 

And remember how you will never get them back.

Happy Valentine’s Day, 2012.

Clongriffin

This ghost town succumbs

To the haze

And towers over me

With soaked insignificance.

The buildings’ monotony

Harks back to the days of Ballymun,

With some of the locals

Even deigning to call their apartments

“Flats.”

The people who live here

Do not form the society anybody expected;

A bustling city centre with

Rich business types should

Have blossomed from here:

Instead, immigrants and “riff-raff”

Make up a population

Quite tolerable for now -

But an implosion awaits.

Boarded up land contains

A burnt out car and nothing more.

Vodafone and JD sports

Should be there,

While a Superquinn and a Centra

Threaten emptily to open their doors

To a tumult of silence.

At least the train station can carry off

Those who give this place a faint pulse.

Bloodied women remain,

Screaming of infidelity

(unaware of the word’s existence);

Antagonising teens mope,

Abusing homosexuality with

Their indifferent use of its standard term*,

Before pleading their age

With yarns once spun by

My generation, though not by me.

Yet this dull, despairing place

Has within it some rough diamonds

That make it worthwhile to see -

The young woman with the British accent,

Or Captain Lotto, the bus conductor,

And let us not forget our regular,

So forward in his being that he once

Decked my manager in the face

(With reconciliation, because both are men).

And there are other champions, too,

Like the woman with the keenest gaze

Who enquires after me with sincerity,

And my old P.E. teacher

Who forgot my name though not quite me,

And my colleagues,

Who make everyday in this place

Barely living bearable:

Because they are my friends.

And that once wily proprietor

Is the cause and effect of it all,

Though this is an unmitigated mutation

Of his own dream,

A dream which saw 40,000 people

Laden with money and ambition

Flock to what should have been

A future hub of the nation’s capital -

With Sporting Fingal on their breast.

And while he may lament at

The stripped down version of his vision -

Filled with people he may not want -

I say this place is better than his dream

For one very simple reason:

This Clongriffin is real,

And is here, now, waiting to implode

And produce far more for this country

Than he ever dreamt it would.

*ie, abuse by teenagers of the word 'gay'