Gather up, all you roaming and innocent true eyed youths,
the bells that chime the maturing of years will dictate.
And our minds, even in dreaming, are flashing,overloading,constantly ON.
Burning ourselves back towards the sediment,
back towards the eve of light and the horizon’s sweet ascent,
the hope of the bettering of Man (Woman, Child, Subject, Dependent, Enemy, Statistic)
to be played out by actors unsure all over again,
Plot, attempt, market research, unlikely success, unforetold rapid decline
Walk on down that road.

Twenty-Three years of Searching and Bafflement
I still walk on down that road.
The air smelling of leaking chemicals of exported decorative garden plants
the odd fir tree to remind me of a progressive upheaval.
I’ve read about Everything, I’ve sought out Everything; I’ve tried Everything
And yet still unsatisfied.
And yet onward I trot....
Left with the only things I still enjoy doing
Reading, writing about reading and writing about life
listening to music (Both new and the old, same old...cycle ending cycle re-entering brainwaves)
Thinking about ******’
and occasionally enjoying non-self centered ***
(Giving, once in a while, such unexpected joy, and who’d have thought?..)
And always at the back of my head
wondering how if I could get hooked on some supposed poisonous deity
Billfold notes stained ******* or some equally widely condemned non-popular pariah seal
And if I managed not to impoverish myself and become alienated from friends and family
And the moral majority
Then perhaps I could evolve to enjoy even that.
What is pleasure and its pursuit if not some guarantee of routine?
So I continue walking down that road.

Away, away, soon to return another day
Fresher (hardly) enlightened, the same...
and still I cannot recommend to myself
anything else but walking.
For to which valley the wise one goes, who knows, who knows......
Turn left, turn right, only the principles of geography can begin to decide fate.
(Though I would suggest bringing an umbrella, every now and again, just in case....)
To search for others, who would bring a chance of difference, on that self-same route
who share jokes about this one man...
Who was walking down that road.

Are these tears of blundering laughter
or heckles of contempt
that spirit on these haggard few
to rhapsodise our era’s curtain calls?
They who brought us mounting debt and conscientiousness
which seems only to be healed in the appeasing fluorescence
of 24-hour supermarkets and the purgatory
of weekends spent at home?

Such stifling, nervous coughs
are head as responses of
today’s domestic questionnaires
Gung-** reformative advances
and calls to “pull up our socks”
Mixed with the state-sponsored fortune-telling
Rationed out to boys languishing on the dole.
Which All falsely transpires,
intimidatingly revealed as being
About as appealing as vacuum cleaners for the soul
aimed at the resolutely bored to tears.

Despite our fears
the sun will come streaming again
through fresh fir trees
which decorate contemplative, sheltered lanes.
These last, frostbitten years
seek replacement with halcyon days
in order to suspend dogmatic disbelief.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves:
Pessimism is ****.
Even in the most roaring of times
we remained despondent and calculated.

It's a shame how you must have aspired me to become the child you always wanted
in the months and days before  I was born,
before reality had its chance to construct the person I would become.
when the happy news was first heard of a new child in a new world,
who would be brave and cheerful and kind
and above all sporty,
the kind that would make an impression,a born leader and dutiful follower
a proud patron of the family name.
We would have much in common and I would remind you of yourselves
at such an impressionable age
and I would achieve all you had hoped for.

But perhaps this is the great tragedy that parents stumble upon in this constant letdown of a life.

You were lucky that I was an easy child,never keeping you up at night and never causing trouble,
but the fact that I was lazy,introspective,morbid,
cowardly,unat­tentive,unhelpful,bookis­h,obsessive,
uni­nvolving and unsatisfied
made me realise how much I must have let you down.
I sigh too much,I read too much,I'm so full full of sarcasm that I cannot take anything seriously,
I never want to be the focus of attention,I never eat enough,I dont care about trends,
I dont care if people comprehend me.

I must be impossible to love.

Thats why I have decided to never have children.
They could never be what I would expect of them.
I could never love someone who I was ultimately responsible for,
someone who I could indoctrinate into my own idea of happiness.

Hell sometimes can be a comforting thought
When you consider the promise
of some ire of comeuppance
some reasoned placement
of interminable exile
for the ******* who deserve to end up there.
When all is considered,mortal pain working as the ruse
for an endurance of condemnation
(Mothers still wailing in their sleep for closure two generations on)
Mortal oppressors deserve to be confronted by a special kind of fear
It makes sense
The punishment is apt
Guilt has to work both ways.

But that thought is still not a resolution for me
Particularly as the opposite does'nt attract
Given the fact that I've spent the majority of my life
Frightened of Christ.

It has its origins in my own childhood
when I remember back
To when I hurried weary past
the old imposing church
on my way into town
When I was a four-year old believing
If I was'nt quick
The whole-heaving Bulk of it
would tumble flatly
upon my fragile frame
The old road home
eventually winding its way
to my limbo of soothing distractions
that childhood’s orchestra of daydreams
so fleetingly informs.

Senior Infants Religion class did'nt help either
getting to grip with the crucifix and the like
my parents having sheltered me from the harsh realities of martyrdom
and the cold damp mass congregation on empty Sunday mornings
and the scowl of that year's teacher
who had complained that I wrote too much like a spider's web
Giving us throatfuls of original sin and the rhetoric of  Easter Monday
and my childhood innocence
exposed in the opinion spoken aloud
to a classroom of trained apatheticals
that not only did I not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god
but that he never existed either
perhaps history disproves my claim on the latter
but the former is still full of endless possibility.
(And all this before I read anything about what really went on during the Twentieth Century-Dear accomplice,I can already hear your sweetened cackle.)

Yet still faced with that emblem of womanhood’s inheritance,I accepted my first compromise of all too humane sympathies.
Bleeding Mary Immaculate,she who suffers,she who in her suffering
silently invokes that long,unquestionable certainty of life,that jump-lead rattle of conscience
and contemplation,she whose warm moments in stony acceptance of fate’s misfortunes eventually led me down that scented path where all my troubles truly began.

Christ himself continued to present
(however loud the familial chorus
attempted to reprimand my nurtured,
after-school-scepticism)those same
tingles of spinal sensitivity,that same
epidemic-like aversion,years after I had
left that winter playground where children
splashed puddle water at each other
to make reputations,and shouted mispronounced obscenities
as a means to show they had no time whoever wanted to act adorable that day.
(The first chance they were given they realised the bluff-ladder of office mentality.)

I could never really face staring
into the eyes of the owner
of that sacred heart
for more than five seconds
He accused me of far too much
without having any notion
of who exactly I was
As I got older teachers
tried to convince me
that he really was
full of love and understanding
but those portrait-painted deepest-blue eyes
could lead to a war criminal's breakdown.

And I was’nt willing to take
the sack and ashes
for any man.

A Few lines etched where no words give weight.

Good riddance say the veterans
Of a nation gone sour with grief
Like a lemon slice evaporating onto the tongue of the sick.
But when the young yearn for White Nights,
The old claim they are blinding lights to the cold sugary substance
That supplants an easy path.
The bullithole rush of renewal and lonliness and progress thwarted and abandoned,
Inertia seeping through
Into a cold summer's day.

Between the cursing slant of sleek paved roadstrips,
And the burning briars that thresh the border's haunt,
What is picture postcard emerald
Is in that same instance soviet architect gray.

These are the sleepers bereft of the dream
whose twenty-five stories high
or ghost estates
are domes to cast out the howling banshees,those suffrage of the real
to be re-thought as mere props which surround the haloed glowing screen.

So sheen the Motherland glows in untarnished eyes
Familiar solely with glass behemoths parading with their reflections
In grey water-drizzled streets,
Only to be replaced by iridescent rainbows that foster a hope.
A hope that was packaged and sold two decades back
Since it was not worth carrying into the New World.

The water-trough delving where the electric line banishes,connects a spike,
"rejuvenate the breakfast table"-some far-off God reports, Hades still waiting,
Intel-chip Blue, epiphany at the gates.

It was that feeling
Of not wanting to get out of bed
In case you stumbled into
An argument
That you had nothing to do with
But cornered, and seal-eyed
You were used as bait.

But that was a long time ago.

And no-one enters or leaves your room nowadays
Unannounced.

With the sight of the car
Pulling out of the driveway
And cheeks still stinging from saltwater tears
And everything feeling like a bad dream.

Like myself, feeling embarrassed and ashamed
For having thrown up in the bowl they were holding
and afterwards having to look them straight in the eyes.

And then pretending years later that I didn’t think about that anymore.

It hurts still. Even now I feel the same,
But I put on a brave face and share
Whatever jokes I can.
So that we can remain “casual” friends.

I went completely out of my head over you once.

But that was all a long time ago.

There is only this marina and then there is the sea.
Nothing else is.
An apt enough analogy
for a myth dissolving town.

Shaded by storefronts half-expecting someone to arrive,
The hood- stripped wind
Gusts up solitary, empty alleyways
With only stroppy clatter boards to continue the conversation.

NIETZCHE  YOU ****
YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE

I was once so innocent Without You.

Now I can hardly contemplate the light of day
from staring into the abyss for so long.
How can I ever forgive you?
Cynic-master, who taught me how to think for myself
who taught me how to speak with such lucid contempt
Now I can never trust the government
Now I can never have faith in anyone's heavanly aspirations,
The sun having long set on any protests of idealism.

And yet I still find you remarkable Nietzsche
You never fail to make me laugh
at the times when I need it the most.
You're the rebel friend who I can
never introduce to my parents.
Yours is the poster which should adorn every angry teenagers' wall
With quotes highlighting The Will to Power and violent determination.
A hopeful voice in a godless world.
I'm reminded of you in the girl that speaks
or stealing every crucifix in her former convent school
after her friend was expelled.
I'm reminded of you with every protester
who throws a Molotov cocktail at armed police
I'm reminded of you
in eery artist who does'nt follow formality
in every caged bird who continues to sing.

For all your anger
I must thank you Nietzsche
Even if I can never be as happily ignorant as I once was
For wasn't the very crux of modern life challenged by you?
All of Humanity
All the cruelty
All the spit Fullness
All the Hatred
when you threw yourself in front of that horse
being beaten in Turin
and for losing your mind
Just to prove a point.

Regardless of the contrast or depth of the lens, it all depends on where the
light falls.
Streetlights glowing,
Like bedcovers laying,
Over the harbour waters inky as
Freshly-spilled car-crash blood,
Reflecting deep as a thought can penetrate.

A parade of gunfire
Startles silent rage into the frightened round-up locals
Eyes cowering and arms raised like scarecrow’s overhanging,
While in a side-alley doorway
A soldier anxiously caresses
A girl who he will never speak to again
The tequila-resembling sun standing watch
Their sole clandestine companion.

A child is given relieving news,
Having arrived not without frustrated effort
That she no longer has to follow the same life-stifling routine.
Her doctor, after the dizzying business of congratulating her parents,
Looks out his window without witnessing their departure
Until his eyes are cast back to dispersion
Appreciating fresh rain turn a week’s snowfall
Into puddles upon the ground.

The mind resists the heart’s attempt to repress,
We resist our own borders admitting a consistency of strain
Memory indulging in a fleeting spectacle of sin,
The Sickly exterior of the heart’s delight.

Regardless of the contrast or depth of the lens, it all depends on where the
light falls.
Moments throughout our lives repeated in the stock footage of the
mind,washing thoughts matted out of stark exposure
seeding out  a negative frame.

I'm looking for a Neurotic Girl
someone who will break down before I do
someone who's not afraid to cry,as the tea kettle boils,
after telling me about her problems.
Someone I can worry about,and do unselfish things for, and offer some comfort to,
someone who depends on me for a change.
I'm looking for a girl
who isn't too confident in herself,even though she's wonderful,
at least in my eyes.
Someone who hasn't got her entire life sorted out, just yet.
Someone who'll realise that I can be a nice person, behind the facade.

Because these days I'm wandering
from party to party
from pointless
city centre venues
and all-too-familiar and contemptible
small town social haunts
and all I see and hear
are the attention-seeking, the unreachably friendly, the distant
and the involved
All swimming in mediocrity
If you'll pardon the fake sophistication of that last metaphor
And all I'm left to do
is wonder what it would be like
to find someone
who I could be Introspective,
Debauched and Nihilistic with
A nice Neurotic Girl.

But I suppose that would invariably lead
to some sort of responsibility
in my otherwise self-absorbed existence
I would have to pretend that I am a proper kind of person
for the sake of my fragile lover's much needed feeling of security
I would take it upon myself
to go out into the world
to keep a sort of balance for the both of us
spending headache-inducing hours
with people whom I cant stand
while she sits at home
and smokes
in bed.

I'm Tired of people telling me that I should smile in photographs
My resistance has got nothing to do with
An Attitude problem
or my attempt at
Appearing acutely fashionable
This is just the way I look
Most of the time
Shouldn’t what we choose to record
At least strive for Authenticity?
I'm just not interested in selling myself
Into the acceptable family comfort mode
Having my split-second cheery face sink in
Against The kitchen wall's
"calming" comfort scheme
To be doted on by ageing female relatives
and jovially mocked by visiting casual friends
If anything I don't want my past to be
Looked upon at all

Maybe it's the old story
of leaving home and the urge
To re-invent oneself
To Block out the old experiences, the old embarrassments
Freeing yourself to embark on a fresher tirade
of critical self-assessment
To be finally and victoriously
Free from the unsettling confines
of childhood
To engage yourself completely
in the waking,walking,working
Nightmare of maturity, responsibility
and devastating ambition.

The air doesn’t taste so clean anymore.

I can remember being younger and gasping for breath,
the midsummer breeze provided me with plenty,
and I swallowed pintfulls and laughed at the energy it gave
and at the thumping of my heart.
The air was a little milder then.
It was around the same time,
in my childhood
when I remember that it actually snowed for Christmas.
So I almost must have felt the cold,
but temperature does not threaten you
when you are young and your lungs are full.
Not like nowadays,
when the only reason you don't destroy your lungs with smoke
is because you've seen the hospital wards,
heard of loved ones being eaten away because of
a malignant growth,
but that still doesn’t stop you
from taking the odd ****.

It hardly seems to matter anymore,
now that we are all living in denial.
But there was a time in our lives when our lungs were important,
if you didn’t have strong ones you couldn’t keep up with your friends,
and you needed to keep fit if you wanted to be a "soldier" in the "war"
this being before boisterous childish ideals
realised the dull pointlessness
of living in a neutral country,
where you were more likely to die in a car crash,
or by smoking your lungs tar-black.
You always wondered why your mother kept telling you to start
when she could never stop.
Did she not want you to have as much fun as she was having?
Imagine how many extra holidays you could have spent together
had she saved the money instead of spending it on cigarettes
and if your sister had never been born
you could have sailed twice around the world,
gone to Disneyland twice a year
and went skiing in the alps
instead of waiting to grow up in BORING OLD IRELAND,
waiting for school to end and the rain to stop.
Imagine how many years she has wasted,
because each cigarette costs fourteen seconds of your life.

Why does she want to leave you so soon?

Like her own mother, smoking her way to an early grave.

Its funny how you were the one who kept such care of your lungs
and yet it was you who was the first to end up in hospital.
A place where you could see the germs buzzing,
waiting for you as you arrived through the door.
They're going to make you lay in bed for a whole week
and you haven’t even broken your leg.
Yet they're smiling at you now, daft *******.
"I wonder if they'll still be smiling if I never make it out of this mess."

But you have to admit it tastes splendid.
Takes the edge off,
puts things into perspective,
helps the time pass,
and makes you look "interesting."
Nowadays it’s a lot more social anyway.
Presents you with an excellent opportunity
to strike up conversations outside of pubs.
You could meet the love of your life if one day she asks you for a light.
No one really wants to grow old anyway.
******* yourself in the same chair,
your brain unbalanced by the mind-numbing anti-depressants
and the oncoming surge of arthritis.

The mirror always laughs first
Spilling light onto imperfections
Alienated from the image in the dream.
A silent curse,
The accusation must remain to this world unrevoked.
Instead pretence must tissue tear stains,
To sundry up a surface glycerine.

Social man has broken all ties with nature’s earth,
He created machines capable of producing images
So he needn’t deny it.
Social Woman was always more comfortable inside
She expressed no claim of love for the landscape
Found no comfort amongst the soil
No romance laying in the dirt.

But yes, the mirror attacks.
The symptom is always one of weakness,
Of the self not having the power to leave itself alone.
The body distorts the mind at first,
Paving the way gradually for more active decline.
We hold it to ourselves to feel worth, or lack thereof.
You can’t sing the tune effectively, without first trying to think like you’re someone else.
Someone that same mirror fails to recognise.

Keep ahead of the crowd so you’re not held back
Expectations will ruin you more than your fears.
Talent is to others that which they lack
Mystery and purpose are all the mind reveres.