so there's no more laughing
at an evening fire
no more the crackle of flames
to echo our desire
for summer is on its way
yet all i feel is the cold
sat staring at the dying embers
of a love once known
your reasoning remains certain
and so easily evoked
those moments i recall now
mere epitaphs i wrote
what of that first kiss or
that walk upon your stairs
the warmth of our breath
as i slide through your hair
cast aside as mere memories,
lost shadows in this game
as the ashes burn out
through the endlessness of blame

summer does beckon as you
heed its call to take flight
redefining your season
escaping my darkness to light
alone to search deep inside
and what will I see
complicated and broken lives
but only one truly free
for no mirror will ever conceal
my self inflicted lies
decisions and failures welling up
in these guilty grey eyes
a sentence delivered through
the coldness of silence
yet I will appeal to take solace
in some other summer dress
to mask the responsibilities,
to seek shelter for this shame
it is I that must carry the burden,
bear the endlessness of blame

Somedays that's all i got
And sometimes it's enough
Like a teenage recollection
Of a last picture show
Through a cinematic haze
Of blue nails and red lips
You're still with me here
These are my memories
These are my days
I can't even tell if it's love
But i always seem to reconnect
Just to know that magic dies
Buried deep in glass grey eyes
Yet they see that you're happy
And there is nobody here to say
If i'm really sad or just doing ok
There will be a light, a night
In a white sequin dress
Together we will be
Hours before your wedding day
Maybe i will read my bad poetry
Maybe i'll say, all i needed to say
Or maybe, we'll sit in a silent way
Captured as a series of polaroids
On a screen that's seen better days
Illuminate night as our northern star
I still need to breathe, i need to feel
And i want to still know your mind
I want to  still see the world thru you
For sometimes that's all i got
And somedays that's enough
Somedays that's more than enough

I wake in this city
This city that didn't bear me
This city that didn't raise me
And yet it's this city that i seek to find something of me
Not in the pubs or the clubs or the karaoke bars
Where revelers conspire to dream and drink to the stars
Nor the cafes where poets and artists in a foreign language create.
Pass the market stalls where secondhand books and vinyls are stacked like freight
It is to the quietened streets of the old town I go
Where i long for the walls to speak once more
To reveal their hidden histories
To help fashion some sense of a man
One unknownst to me, my fathers father whose name I share
A fine skilled seamster, thus a tailor by trade
Not arriving to this city for work on fabrics of nylon and silk
But to stitch and sew the flesh of limbs in a paramedic corps
Another pawn of the Great War under King George's command
Driven only by economic necessity from a penal homeland
Not of conscription, politics or some moral conviction at play
For the price of neutrality is one that poverty simply refuses to pay
Returning home to an Ireland of hostility or silence at best
Medals now lying deep in pockets not proudly pinned to chests
Irish heroes don't fight in a British war for a King's crown
No such stories from father to son shall ever pass down
And now, a grainy photograph, three medals for a sons son to take
A dog tag that bears my name, a number and RC to depict a faith
From a man exiled in his home as a forgotten prisoner of war
To honour a legacy i find myself in this city afar
Asking the same questions of him as to me
Is this city the last place he truly felt free?

Christ, it's not like we were really even fighting.
I had teased you, hit a nerve sure, but we'd been there before.
Stop being such a ***** you said, and of course you were right but could i stop?
Could i ****, not without my last card to play and yet that card had been lost
That fateful morning , two weeks last Thursday

And oh how different that  had played out.
Both lying there, still warm from the previous nights glow.
Bodies entwined as i leaned and whispered for the first time that I love you.
But as a lost child of the counter culture, you had just laughed and asked me to *******.
That fateful morning, two weeks last Thursday

So it was there that our dream had died, or mine at least.
And in its place spawned this cold bitter wounded male pride.
Intent on a destruction,  camouflaged as salvation as it reeked it's callous revenge
All for what?, some selfish need to hear those three little words.
That fateful morning, two weeks last Thursday

And now fourteen years later and so much having passed.
Would you recognise me now, would you care, would you just laugh.
At how I've become all that we swore and promised that we never would.
And yet it's me that's left thinking of you, of us and all that was lost.
That fateful morning, two weeks last Thursday

lying here waiting to wake
may unconscious streams return me home
as a gentle flow succumbs to riverbank
meandering drift through memories of yore
aromas of sweetest royal fern consume
my days now passed for this night I long
to wrap me around a reed buntings song
so far from this storm of rattling gates
destined to tear through a fragile facade
reality she rides late on a January gale
entrapping my dreams in her deceitful fog
riverbank night heed a compassionate plea
o let sleep announce that I may finally wake