In the depth of a drink
Editing, considering,
I raise my eyes
Just for a moment
And watch
And I allow this distraction
And I allow it to grow,
Grow into the image
Of motion, movement,
Towards…?
The end of the line.
© The Hairy Teacher, 2019.
Friday fifth of July
Just over on Leitrim Street and Watercourse Road
Sun gleams through the freshness of the morning
Heating me from the inside.
Up at the Revenue’s Maedbh is nice
Her voice over the phone courteous, kind.
Next up and over through older and new
Along Lansdowne terrace then the top the Hill
To the school, my next stop, and where this summer will…
The laughter the smiles the general avoidance
Till mentioned and breezed over
Short-changed on overdue promises
Back through the city
Doing Pana at a stretch
Trusting and coiling till the Mall once again.
The bank building
A beauty, a glimpse of times past
The twenty on the floor
Unclaimed then named mine.
And last but not least
To the corner, Union Quay,
Not to Charlie’s but next door
Into the Grind and coffee
The comings and goings
The stories the chat
Another place I could drop into
If I ever really came back.
If I ever came back
On my own terms only
A nine to fiver would kill me
Of this now I am certain.
© The Hairy Teacher 2019, Corkban
Inside, the tap-ad-slap of falling raindrops soothes.
Outside it drenches to the bone.
All adventure set aside,
all such plans they dissipate…
along the fear inflected path…
“Enough,” I say “Enough of that!”
And yet the pen in fruit-continual
Bears Hope in words residual.
The easing of the ex-hibitions
Perhaps to failing my contrition
At every corner subterfuge
The ego does the man delude.
© The Hairy Teacher, 2019
They shall not have what we had
They can’t.
“Aw but I remember my first time seeing an elephant”
Yeah, I’m sure you do.
That sideways dance, head nodding, tongue lolling?
I’m sure you do.
They cannot have what we had
They never will.
“But it’s unfair to deprive them of that wonder”
The one that makes up your childhood memories?
Try living for them for a change,
Not through them.
Their lives will be eventful, of that you can be certain.
They mustn’t have what we had,
They can’t.
“ Surely it’s up to them to decide”
Fine by me, but what do you allow a one year old? A razor blade for tea?
Might as well if you keep excusing the present because of a past.
Seems odd to me.
They won’t have what we had
They never can.
“But…”
But what? It’s fucked, all of it.
Clean air, what a joke
Free to travel, that old lie
A future, perhaps
But not on our terms – no more.
The round faced woman with the tight Jewish curls
Let’s the sunshine sheen her face to milk chocolate brown
Red-faced I pass by complacent after storm
The mind’s eye reset one more time.
The depth of the darkness and the thick thorny thoughts
Once more a surprise here at hindsight.
In the throes of the horror all ships had set sail for the shores of respite elsewhere hidden.
The fleet, an Armada, bedevilled being broken
Sunk e’erfore a sanctuary succeeding.
And now in the aftermath I salvage from wreckage the hope to once more move on forward
Yet a scar that runs deep now further extended
A reminder of a forest and bone frailty
In the dappled moment deranged
The orange glow growing
Cancer chosen again.
The despair spelled out in Circus
The cold brought in from the spy
Douma denounced, despaired over, denied.
Sabre rattling no more
Giants braving the brawl
Borders inundated, shattered –
No divisions in blood.
A child’s nightmare comforted
While one’s own sleep deprived
Fists pummelling the shadows, haunted again,
The dark days returned.
And the people despair
Or delight or don’t care
And the people morphed out again:
No men in no man’s land.
You can pronoun the shit out of the situation but you can still be wrong,
and you’ll be made to understand that you have been so wrong.
You can apologise and yet be classed as ignorant, no room for manoeuvre.
You can be anything but right. You’re white, therefore you’re wrong.
You can protest but that’s violence: there’s a lawsuit on the way.
You have hip friends, young and interesting,
They depart with each word you say.
You studied feminism yet you’re sexist
Cos you dare challenge the new convention.
Even though the old one needed toppling
You expressed doubt that it needed upgrading.
Rather, you screamed, it needed changing
A new direction, post-instituition.
But it got lost in all and sundry:
the dreaded irony?
You die the one that wanted dialogue.
© The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
In a vision of the moment cast aside,
and yet – with each intake of breath –
There would seem to be a harmony,
what’s more – a dreaded repetition.
Why does the cycle present its terror
Except in the knowledge of what was before.
Therefore, no man feels stable, secure,
Nor draws comfort from that
which has become oh so predictable:
And in the tortured will to survive
Man surrenders life to existence.
© The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
Another step, a neighbourhood
And yet the worries call.
The darkened corners of my doubts
Put service to my fall.
The imagination builds on high
the towers to collapse.
And in the end ruination
– but what will be the cost?
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
The scaffolding still stands across the way
And under it other parties now do pass
In the shadow of that tunnel hidden memories
Some borne of repetition some of joy.
Each step a step closer to one’s abode
But- now- the turning wheel dictates the road
Will it be in hindsight our adventure or
In leaving it the spelling of our certain Doom.
The passing faces the road much trodden
The life the thoughts the everything
And in so passing us we too were passing
And are still from this side of the road.
© The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
