The blood in the bottle usurped
the blood in my veins
I love you I burped
but it was in vain

You're drunk again
why do you cause this pain
it's fuel for my pen
and I cannot abstain

I guess I am weak
with no self control
with a future so bleak
and a shriveled dried soul

It fills the page
can't you see,
it fills your rage
and that's fine with me

Today you left for good
so I bought a new notebook
and a bottle of wormwood
laid out in a small nook

Watch as these pages like feathers
fly off in the wind
lets get back together
so I can do this again

A word derived from the native Hawaiian tongue
used to categorize outsiders.
Translated as no breath.
No life.
No soul.
According to the Hawaiian tradition people spoke with their Ha, their breath of life.
But i was taught at a very young age that i was breathless and had no right to the ground i stood on.
I learned that the words i spoke fell only on deaf ears and that no matter where i went in the place i called home i was an intruder.
And my parents wonder why i dont feel at home anywhere anymore.

Pushed away as an outsider i was made to find my own roads and they were seldom paved.
As an outsider i look in on the crowds and see people who have their Ha ripped from them, children who are taught at a very young age that they are breathless.
Lifeless.
Soulless.
But i speak to them now and say that i have reclaimed my soul, i have found my life, and i tell you that i can speak.  I can speak and i can breathe.

I can breathe again.

O stony grey soil of Monaghan

The laugh from my love you thieved;

You took the gay child of my passion

And gave me your clod-conceived.



You clogged the feet of my boyhood

And I believed that my stumble

Had the poise and stride of Apollo

And his voice my thick tongued mumble.



You told me the plough was immortal!

O green-life conquering plough!

The mandril stained, your coulter blunted

In the smooth lea-field of my brow.



You sang on steaming dunghills

A song of cowards' brood,

You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,

You fed me on swinish food



You flung a ditch on my vision

Of beauty, love and truth.

O stony grey soil of Monaghan

You burgled my bank of youth!



Lost the long hours of pleasure

All the women that love young men.

O can I stilll stroke the monster's back

Or write with unpoisoned pen.



His name in these lonely verses

Or mention the dark fields where

The first gay flight of my lyric

Got caught in a peasant's prayer.



Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-

Wherever I turn I see

In the stony grey soil of Monaghan

Dead loves that were born for me.

I read a vogue magazine once

I wanted to be more mature
I wanted to be a child again

I was bored of how I looked

I was called 'fat' once

I needed more control over myself
I needed someone to look after me

I wanted to deny myself a basic human need

I was in so much pain that I needed more

I lost weight and I couldn't stop
I found something I was good at

I ran out of ways to destroy myself

It feels like my heart is absent and all that is left is this heavy emptiness
It hurts more than any pain that could be inflicted on my external self
Like I'm trapped, enclosed, and the world outside is racing past
But I can't touch it, there's nothing there.
They say time heals all wounds but it does nothing to stop this aching darkness
inside me.

It stopped.
Your mahogany façade now encases
more than the minute intricacies of time,
preserving something besides stale,
wooden air. Abiding now is an essence,
a moment,
an instant that will never
ever, reoccur.
What ghostly hand grasped your swinging
metal heart? Oh towering vision.
The cogs that are inside us continue
but you are dead. For now.
Frozen at 11:09 last Tuesday.




©*Thomas Gabriel