As the writer tries a composition
The young child delves to exploration.
The older hand deemed wiser falters
While the boy’s reality at a whim can alter.
The writer concocts mind-felt emotions
The boy just is in his devotions.
Together they occupy this very moment
But which one’s truly in the present?
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
To women
To love
To sacrifice.
To lovers
To motherhood.
To tears
To joy
To hope
To pain.
To struggle
To equality.
To chance
To ambition
To youth
To old age.
To women
And once again I sit
Another last time to contemplate,
The kitchen’s almost bare
The living room hollow echoes
As the kids watch something to distraction.
A cool draught saunters in for a second
Hand in hand with the sounds of the city
And then back to the inside
The plughole gurgling at a deeper depth
Threatening the surface
The tap hasn’t dripped for some minutes
Somewhere an awful song sung in Hungarian
If the original is any better I cannot tell
I’m just not in the mood.
Plastic crackles, the reality where a fireplace would feature
But let’s return from twee
My geansaí grey but I’m not a Yeatsian fisherman.
I sit here a moment in a kitchen that will fade
Realising and those moments in blend almost already gone.
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
A little spot away across the bridge
from where the night before
the party came on loud.
Set merged within the outside table seats,
and a couple to the right – a ripe old age.
When finally they arise and walk away
their every limp and sway a matted mated edge
A testament to a bond grown aged yet strong
as they fade with time’s embrace into my past.
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
That far flung dalliance with Destiny
Forever fettered by my idea of beauty
Instead searching as I do the memories
Trawling all the bars, as Stu said,
All the vacant corners of the heart
Where ridicule and sentiment abide
Torn close because the distance threatens
To ensue a truth as well as any falsehood too
The latter factored in beyond my conscious mind
The former as much as always a surprise.
“And yet your talk of women only…”
Tis true
And this because the void therein was once defined
Inside the mind
Inside the soul
Of youth and sorrow
Inside the pain that brought no pity, and so
I rose a desecrated entity by my own hand
And with the lip and glisten
Kiss and touch
And doubt and anger
Only fear
And with the fear I straddled beauty on a dockside
And somewhere in a moment I found Life where breath no longer reigned
I found shape in a distortion of the romance in which I had failed…
And it is now the very essence of my being.
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
A new path laden with old shadows
Still directing towards the land you dream to go
But it’s different.
The steps of strangers daggered
The footfalls decorated
And yet it’s the swagger, that damn’d swagger
That throws you off this time.
Was it this, that stride interrupted,
Was it? That the dawn bellowed forth its silence in?
Was it this or another vague Dominion
That spelt truth and yet imposing, gently
Deceived you into :
Being a downfall still a dream but essentially All reality?
The boatman laying up his boat to tar
The willow’s tail threaded through the swallow’s
Held high, suspended
The work is underway.
The shore beckons as all shores do to those who know them,
Grew up by them,
Embracing tenderly.
The duck within the grass, behind the tree
Tries reaching-
Trying to bend your will
But you don’t let it.
To the waters and the wild
Being drawn once more
A destiny beheld
If you will let it.
The darkness casts long its net tonight
The Beaver on its heels not yet fully alive
In the bite drop temperature inclining still
A notion breathes life and breeding beats.
The green sold out to cyclic adds its flourish of orange then red
And stepping tip tap to the black then white
The progress towards wherever is a destination
Spelt celestial in the flight taken path across THE satellite
While other routes marked for what is planned
A momentary passage and yet the one of man.
©The Hairy Teacher, March, 2018
The giant drill bit seering the muddied earth
A choir of angels in tow with every twist
The coil resounding the voices aligned
Till the foreman’s call brings silence.
Then the majorettes come-screeching
Whining? Marching?
Tap-dancing a tattoo?
From a whisper to a roar
Though not yet a low flying jet.
Is it Paddy’s day? New York?
Is spontaneous celebration the order of the day?
Surely not! And then-
Then two workmen appear…
Pushing three lockers on wheels
Grim faces hiding, like the shut doors,
What’s really going on inside.
A broader understanding spilt through the cracks
Poured through,
Pored over
But initially, accidentally
I opened up, my brother
Or at least found reason
And now sit-
A yesterpast-
Less vacant
More fulfilled
More enlightened
But less alive.
The numb-drum moments our debauchery
Inclined us to graves -pre-humously-
Inclining us to states debilitating…
Yet invigorating.
For was it not today in the half death
(Not the Petit Mort)
That I did not waver.
I stood profound
And let the criticism wash over me:
Not insulted- but defined.
