Category Archives: ThoughtsandThings
This is not that poem
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
Moving Back Again
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
Love Once More
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
It comes naturally
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.
The Nose Job
Hungarians pride themselves on their numerous inventions but I’m not sure that they should…
Rubiks Cube…madness inducing
Match…pyromaniac
Bike Spokes…eye poker outers
Orrszivo Porszivo…need I say more
Late but early
Late but early
I’m not the night but
I have defined it,
And it has chosen me.
We could never be more
Than mere acquaintances
Nor worse than torrid lovers.
It’s just we didn’t fill Hollywoodic romance
And it’s by this we do define ourselves.
© TheHairyTeacher2016
Through the darkness of the strains of winter
“There’s a flu bug going around,” said often with such terror and, or grim acceptance.
Vaccinations are spoken of and ever since the H1N1 farce more and more people feel compelled to prick themselves as a means to a defence. The problem is, and has always been, viruses are smarter than that, and the mere notion of a pancea is rendered, justifiably, redundant by their very existence. So what can we do to defend ourselves.
Vitamins, vitamins ,vitamins…and so on and on the barrage of fliers, ads, billboards, all designed to make you sick by their very ubiquity! What about the fruit stand, the colourful fruit that paints easy all these grey and miserable days? In my opinion it is still the best place to begin, so instead of allowing pharma to take up all the advertising space, maybe local government should sponsor a drive to advertise local produce during the festive season, if not all year round. If a government claims to really care for a country, then perhaps such initiatives can add more than lip-service to what often turns out to be the debacle we call self-serving politics.
Whether we are speaking about health in terms of the individual, the nation as a whole, or within terms of politics etc. there is one word we are sure to come across: balance. The balance is there when we address diet, good or bad, when we speak about training, exercising, studying, and on the political landscape, everybody knows that what is really needed in order for a country to gain stability is to have a spread across the board of political ideas. When a country is seen to be divided into just two camps, left and right, often times this imbalance is the pull and drag, push and shove mechanism of upheavel, and revolt. There comes a time when a population craves peace and consistency, and oddly enough sometimes dictators seem more likely to achieve at least some of this.
© TheHairyTeacher2016
Paramnesia
Paramnesia
In the days of glorious sunshine that was my youth growing up in Ireland, I was often struck by the ease at which the good things in life came to me. Rather than explore the litany of successes which have made up my life, I would prefer to remark on one thing.
If memory can be made to seem ideal in face of the grimmer facts, can it not also be made to seem horrid where in fact it may have just been average: a balance sufficient to call it life, even living, yet perhaps not enough to ever have it glorified? On a connected note, what of this glorification? Does it find roots in solace for a life badly dealt or does it flourish in the fertile ground of abundant successes? Does anybody question the top dog when a story seems far fetched, and how often does the meeker individual find themselves under scrutiny for even the merest indication that they have, actually, done something interesting?
And so I digress.
Success, yes success. Now what’s that all about?
I remember…but do I really? I thought I did but suddenly the lines begin to blur between my inclusion and my delusion concerning the way things used to be.
Am I being hyperbolaic? Not sure, cos I haven’t looked at the dictionary yet.
Good night and remember, if you can’t remember, remember anyway. We are humans. We have imaginations. Armed with such tools, a person’s whole life can be entertaining.
” I could be bound in a nutshell…”
© TheHairyTeacher2016
The Floating Word
The floating word a chance perhaps a dream.
Something said that made some sense and yet was lost.
It doesn’t matter cos it’s memory serves just that much
To make whatever sense or make more sensible, as it should.
I didn’t utter words to die in memory forlorn soon forgot
But conjured thoughts to words not on the hope that you still lived
But not expecting death around the corner surprised was I and then remorse
© TheHairyTeacher 2016