One fleeting chance to catch you between trapezes
Yet my head was bowed, my thoughts immersed
In another dream of another life that i longed to live
A moments lapse careers you to that downward spiral
Through all those safety nets, all those webs we wove
Once so secure borne from our labour, love and toil
Exposed now like a promise of night through a civil dawn
As you fall through each of my declarations of trust
You blow out the candles and knock out the lights
Of celebrations and occasions now shattered like glass

Blackness descending through this never blinking eye
As those moments and time perpetually relive yet resist
The blood still refusing to flow freely through my veins
As i sit and wait for this evening coffee to run cold
That i may embrace the sanctuary of night once more
For I was one that could never dream in the dark
No more than one who could ever make amends
Between those two trapezes that signaled our end

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?

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

They all gather to the deadhouse
Like actors taking to a well trodden stage
Whether from London's' Kings Cross
Or the finery of NYC's Queens borough
Back to the fold all prodigal sons must return
To join with those that could never find a way
From this barren cold land and its insular bitter lies
All united now in a grief of one that has been lost  
All divided by a rivalry, a rumor, some generational feud
The priest commences his weary and over versed tone
As he summons his God, his Jesus and his Litany of Saints
Incense burns as a symbol of the prayer of the faithful rising
Yet rising no further than their hypocrisy descends

And where do you look when even Jesus lets you down
As you turn to wipe that burning tear from your face
One not born from holy water nor from their devils grace

Doors are opened and a captive audience awaits
A procession of mourners to take their turn to the stage
Heads bowed all and one, as hands are extended
In weak and feeble grips amid their mumbled exchanges
"Sorry for your loss" and "taken too soon"
None hesitate too long as they navigate this fallowed room
An occasional recognised face among a community of strangers
A moment of warmth emanating from this ritualistic parade
All gone too soon unlike those memories of years past
Of wanting to get out and get free, promising never to go back
Yet to the last of this line they swear that they remember you well
Whilst retiring to The Old Stand with promise of more stories to tell

Where the whiskey chasers flow like the Guinness on draught
Helping to swallow the lies on how good it is to be back
Rehashing of old platitudes but nothing really said

For no one shall ever speak ill of the dead

And i don't own a piano to blame for my drinking
But there's something about an Irish summer sky
That smiles like Luke Kelly with a tear in his eye
Ballads of clouds float over a burning blue desire
You could travel the world having never got higher  
A slab of Polish cans cobbled from a cities loose change
This place is our kingdom, this place is a cage
Never feeling so trapped, never living so free
As when I set you down at our favored midday tree
Where a charm of magpies promise silver and gold
And us two more, with secrets long since told
Effing and blinding for all that we've missed
Soon to forget how long its been since we've kissed
And i swear to you darling, we'll never see the dark
This here sun, stay true to us beggars of Arthur's Quay Park

our love i feel is an ancient love
from a smaller world of greater ideal
a love so touched by the stars above
never to fall so as to become so real

our love i feel is an ancient love
an unspoken word of a long lost tongue
flies on the wing of an immortalised dove
to transcribe in dreams and nightly song

yet this night is upon, this night is cold
and sleep she refuses my welcome plea
this ancient love a story no longer told
white winged doves carry my angel free
now what is left, what is there of me
bereft of meaning, vanquished by decree
yet i will treasure each harbored memory
consigned to sail our love through history

Someone's taken a serrated blade to
the core of this night
It's moon, shrouded in a widows veil
forms the dimmest of halflight
As the stars all seem to weep its
passing where they fall
And I,
I don't want to sleep with you,
I just want to stay up and talk
As the sounds of the street resound then
fade through this tiny boxroom
The silence filled with comfort as the blue nile
soothe on late night radio

Our view, 
a city landscape towered by the now
idled dockland cranes
Do they dream to escape
to the endless deep blue
like you and I
Or do they cower in the darkness,
longing for morning and
a purpose once more
That dawn jolts as its light reflects
sharply to my eyes from
your stainless blade
But I wake alone, with you lost
to the thoughts and dreams that you are
As the cranes begin to clank
to a meaning they crave,
I cower alone and
accept my fate

After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun

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

And i can't take my mind
From that hairdresser i frequent
Just had her second baby
Right after her father had died
To leave her care for a half brother
That is lost to the angst of teenage pride
Unknown a mother on a drug fuelled ride
Stacey the one to pick pieces as they fall
For she is beautiful, she never cries.
She only ever smiles, she only smiles

To her my coat of colours i do gift
On a hook does it hang
As her life she strips bare
With an ease of fallen discarded hair
Her colours unfurl in humility and grace
Her red is of creation, of a burning fire
Not one of foolish unrepentant desire
Her blue a reality, a living breathing sky
Not the word of a poet, not of you nor of I
Her green is her renewal
Of the fertile lives that she now tends
Jealousy nor envy no means to that end
Yet evening falls, in who will she confide?  
No one to turn to, nowhere to hide
For she is beautiful, she never smiles  
She only ever cries, she only cries

North Atlantic Wind
Rip through this useless flesh
As I stand before you one last time before death
A sacrificial offering in a search for some inner truth
Let your fiercest storm strip away all I possess
Eight hundred years of hated oppression
So as to sell our miserable freedom
For a state sponsored religious repression
For what died the sons of Roisin
For what died the sons of Erin
To an over protected child with a shyness from birth
Anxiety, insecurity, a national depression
North Atlantic Wind
Take me from this Irish disease
Nationalism, Catholicism, Alcoholism buried within
Howl now away it's bitterness
Roar upon me your enlightenment
Let me be relieved and shorn of all these tired excuses
No longer ones of Gods' or chemicals or States of fear
Strip me to my core, and let me see what's finally within
North Atlantic Wind
Answer all it is that I never felt to ask
For it is I and I alone that I now must fatallly see
And to stop my running and hiding from this Irish disease

My North Atlantic Wind
Let this be my end.....

This is where you'll find me now
Sitting in silence at the edge of our world
Alone but for this endless push and pull
Memories of you yearning me back to peace
Regrets spiralling me closer to that precipice

This is where you'll see me now
Further distant than I've been before
Naked save these trappings of life's  success
All so false, for what can ever be achieved?
Before that final bell has tolled

This is where you can reach me now
Forever longing for your faintest touch
Still burdened by these ties that bind
To a role, to a life, to a world so far removed
From the love and warmth that in you I find

So this is where you've left me now
You chose my heart but abandoned my soul
To wait in silence in hope for you once more
To find me, see me, reach me, to call for me
And for when you do, to once again, call me blue.

I shall internalize to the point where i rise
Like a grey misty ash through sullen harbour skies
To descend on these eyes who never danced with ambition
Nor once sought to covet nor hold executive position
Sweeping through parochial house to office building
I consume this room as a deathly prison warden
Where time passes and falls in a desperate eerie sigh
Unable to cry in an endless stare of just getting by

I shall crawl through the past of these city streets
Retracing my footsteps as the years they recoil
The red terraced housing of old Hungry Hill
A young boy in his room sitting there still
Head full of dreams waiting for his moment to shine
Such foolish naivety of a dreamer in his prime
He would never tie his shoelaces anything but straight
Just getting by, the sole manifestation of a solemn fate

I shall leave as a mist to cover these countryside hills
As a wandering soul, a veil rolling down as early dew
Comes upon a house where children asleep in their beds
Let it be them that carry the dreams of lives better led
So that I may finally relent and lay myself down to rest
Not for deaths cold embrace but a warmer peace instead
In a world of all or nothing we have this life of you and I
Where it shall be enough to get by, by just getting by

My girl stands beneath a snow encrusted mountain top

Another place, another world, some others perfect winter paradigm

The morning sun breaking through, lighting her hair, her eyes, her smile,

The cold now invisible, as the warmth of her glow is captured in permanence

A vision of my mind so clear, yet of a time since past, a moment lived but now lost

For now she sleeps so soundly in her bed, in her room, one so unknown to me

Are its walls, cream, white, pink or blue, is it just a room or is it truly a room of you

How can we know so much abstraction and yet know so little of tangible things,

And does anyone ever really know the real you, the real me or is life just too fleeting, too fast

And that’s what I wonder as I lie here, while my body aches and my mind races ill at ease,

Taking my only solace in Angelika and of a time since passed wrapped up in a blanket of snow.

I used to keep score of every teardrop that would flow
Until like some punch drunk boxer you couldn't give no more
Bells they sounded and to corners we returned
Red to red dirt ground, blues retreat to blossom in bloom
As our hazy Mondays blur through to vague Thursdays
What we had in November was lost come September

A galaxy of oceans separate my disappointment from my disappointment in you
Yet for a chance encounter on a lonely Friday night
Our shadows would dance bathed in the crystal moonlight
For magic it weaves through the diamonds of a roadside bar
Our senses unravelled by some mystical cabalistic charm
So why should we ever try to make sense of it all
Seconds out - round two, don't ever stop, don't ever fall

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

casual conversations
evoked then folded
amongst the personal things
stickered and stored
i've so often asked myself
is it possible to fall in love
with every woman
that you ever meet
and if so
how do you let go
and where can you find
a removal van for the mind
for the memories
of all that's left behind
stepping out to start anew
how can i cleanse
in this irish summer rain
with it's tears of a lost love
permeating through
everything i own
records and books
now boxes on a pavement
left signing an old tune
to these photographs of you
of a time
where a photograph
was so much more
than a nine second delay
but something to own
yet like these memories
time too gets overtaken
with no distance left to run
i try to hold as best i can
from the steely approach
of the oncoming removal van

she tells me that she's breathing only that shame again
and that there is nothing i can do to relieve her pain again
she has walked a thousand miles in hand me down shoes
no stretch of roadside can ever quench these travelling blues

i don't know how to feel but yet i pretend to understand
what do i know of her life or this punctuating hard land
bequeathed to her from generations since come and passed
as culture, a sense of identity, a life much too innocent to last

she's reaching out, longing for her own voice to be heard
masquerading empathy i offer all these right and measured words
for with no one to answer to nor no real actions to take
i master in hollow sentiment formed from these feelings i fake

as always i seek the beauty of fragility for only my gain
i play out this butterfly's life as her delicate wings are stung by rain
briefly she flies as her life sparks and dims over fourteen days
by resurrecting my jesus my self satisfaction empowers my ways

so why is it she that carries this shame and i stand left of frame
as a spectator, a commentator, an outsider to the rules of the game
whereas she is the soul of the mythical dancer in the flame
i am the vessel devoid of heart breathing in this cold cold shame

In such need of a distraction
To save me from this attraction
Alter me, misshape me, reintegrate me
Reform or deform me
Any form of chemical reaction
Contraction, extraction or detraction
To allow me escape this endless inaction
And there goes rhymin' simon
From 1973 and before i was born
Somewhere after the crown of thorns
But again before the golden age of ****
So accuse me again that i would overthink
Easy to say, when you've never read Batfink
Now there's a guy too ****** up to live
So much so, left the scene to resurrect as fixative
**** him, let him tell his story and i'll tell mine
And most of time i do that pretty fine
But this ain't poetry just a personal diatribe
My own little sick bucket, a self centered whine
For the purists this rhyming is surely a crime
But hey look at the title, see i'm just killing time
Anything to stop this endless push and pull
The gnawing of the brain, the heart shaped lull
There's nothing so intense as purest attraction
Yet in your absence i flounder to each & every
Distraction

If only you'd take me for a fool
And not take me for granted like you do
I would rather live on in some ignorant bliss
Than taste the reality of this deathly kiss
For this is too easy to understand  
This is too easy to lose ourselves in
If you would only take me for another and not as I am
To lay me down on this cold hard ground
Pick up my pieces in some different form
A brand new me raised from your ideal storm

If only you'd take me for a fool
As fools are the ones who fall in love
Whose words seem to fall from the stars above
Dancing till dawn under cider filled skies
They are the ones that carry life in their eyes
So rescue me from this vagueness that consumes
Our daily routine of me versus you
And yet maybe you do, at night when i dream
Delivering my innocence rebirthed anew
For only a fool could keep returning to you

Just another stone on a broken shore.
No meaning nor purpose just drifting towards home
And what's left of that heart when it's love is forlorn
Is it empty? Is it hollow?
Left lifeless, loveless, no path to lead nor follow

Or does it somehow live on in perpetual silent scream
Breathing on loneliness,
Consumed by regrets and despair
And please, please tell me whatever happens...
Whatever happens when that heart finally just stops.
Is it cast away on a wasteland of rock
Just another stone on someone else's broken shore

the weeks stretched out to months
on a whispers gentle breeze
he hadn't been seen at Tuesday's mart
nor the public house for an evening's 45
most had blamed the drink driving laws
the cosmopolitan killing of simple ways  
yet the rusted gate, the untended fields
told another story not so easy to regale*

for hearts can break in so many ways
to devastating effect or slow debilitating decay
now sitting and staring by my window chair
this television set pleads for repeal of the eighth
unknowing that what is gone can never be
i reach within myself to find next to nothing there
for my mind now fails the memories of yesteryear  
no longer can i recall what Kathleen wore that day
setting sail to end one life so as to start anew
how i feared in truth that she would never return
like those letters i sent shrouded in uneasy pen
lost to the shame of the times as that were then
today, i'm the old man from an older boreen still
facing this death that relieves me of all my pain
my story, my dreams, my life i shall no longer recall
for my stage is set and the curtain it slowly does fall
where i will become so anonymous to even myself
perhaps only when all memory is lost shall i see
golden dreams to return my sweet Kathleen to me

What is a man if not the lightness of night and the darkness of day?
A crush of sullied confusion, a mess of uneasy contradiction
Drven by his own stolen ideas and lifes fractured ideals.
Is this what makes a man?

What is a man if not the dreamers lie and it's devious truth?
In all of its bitter failings and its many crushing defeats
Of private investigations uncovering endless regrets and remorse
Is this what it takes to be a man?

Ssshh..let him be, leave him rest, for tomorrow dawns another day
When all these questions and doubts
Shall be answered by a starlings call or the piercing of a silver bullets heart
Perhaps that's what it shall take to call oneself a man?

Let Our Love

Let our love not be a war
Not played out on battlefields of mindless ****** revenge
Nor one of splendid victories followed so soon by crushing defeat
Not one of heroes and villians for i no longer summon the desire to play my part
Let our love then not be a war
As all wars end in eventual separation and follow an uneasy peace

Let our love not be a game
Not bound by rules nor by instructions to play
Nor possess a Jack of Diamonds to steal your Ace of Hearts away
Not one with winners, losers or cheaters with only ***** tricks to wage
Let our love then not be a game
As all games end in finite time so as only to begin once more

So come now and let our love be art
One of shimmering  colors, daring abstracts and brilliant hues
One formed of sophistacted melody, soulful voice and driving beat
One of perfect prose, eloquent verse and the purest words of a story never since told
Come now then and let our love be art
For its art as our love for all its flaws that shall live and breathe for ever more

On another long *** haul flight,
just thinking about my life.
Or one of them at least,
don't wanna confuse this write.
I get to my late night hotel
and throw my bags on the bed.
So that i can curl up on the floor
and try to sleep once more.

Waking at 3, take to my phone
to stream free **** till i ***.
Throw those same bags on the floor
and somehow sleep on till morn.
Rising in the bed next to the door
unruly, unkempt and disheveled.
Oh New Orleans, how i expected
a promise of so much more.

And back in dear Dublin
at St. Michans' protestant church.
Some **** just gone stole the head
of an ancient Knights Templar.
Mummified by the limestone
or from some methane gas there.
800 years he's been laid to rest,
greeting tourists and locals alike.
2019, taken on a last crusade
by some thieving dublinian scobe.
Sent floating down the manky Liffey
a river that stinks like a vikings robe.
Dublins' archbishop Michael Jackson
tells the papers that he's shocked.
Thats' right, Michael ******* Jackson
how weird and steaming is that.

This story i heard from a
blind boy with a bag on his head.
And he said he wanted to cry
for he so often visited that crypt.
Well i guess i've never been
and had never really planned.
But christ it still makes me sad
another switch I guess just tripped.

But hey, whats it got to do with you
and whats it all got to do with me.
Well me, i'm back on this hotel floor
trying to keep my own head.
And as for you, well you go right on
cry me a river to float me on dreams.
For me, for you and for above all,
that Templar Knight of New Orleans.

A blank page, a broken screen and this my frozen heart.
If I could just hold you, hold you.
Darkness descends and sleep denies those dreams of yesterday
If only, If only I could hold you, just hold you.

Let the **** day break for no moon shines on this sky tonight.
Let the cold winds come, as this bird she takes flight.
Let the world turn to the past, let it not look forward but now look back
If only, for if only so I could just hold you, so I could just hold you

So I turn it up, turn it up, but no more do I truly hear
Trying to wrap it around me, trying in vain to keep you near.
But alas, all in dream and nothing of you remains
Save this sad refrain of if I could just hold you, hold you.

Nothing remains but this song,  this poem, this prayer
Clinging to its desperation, breathing it's desolate solid air
For there is no place so alone as realising who you are
No place so alone as accepting what you are.

If I could just hold you,  hold you
If I could just hold you,  hold you
All in vain nothing but this sad refrain
Yet now if I could just hold you,  if i could just hold you.

Just for one precious night under clear Polish skies.
I'd surrender all my memories reflected forever in her eyes
For her perfect porcelain skin lit by a shimmering bright star
I'd forgo my dreams and desires, have them cast aside and afar
To witness before me the truth of her body laid bare
I'd sacrifice my heart, my soul and all that I remain or care
For to have lived that one night under clear Polish skies
Is to have seen the freedom and beauty of where my own true love lies

How many thoughts go through your head on a simple drive...same road..same time. same life ..days..weeks..months..years.. .engine keeps whirling..wheels keep rolling..thoughts keep forming and releasing..living and dying..in isolation..in connection..all born of something..all disappearing to nothing.... A man came on the radio to Jagger in ‘64 to tell him how white his shirts can be..now they tell me of positivity, mindfulness, the search for self fulfillment..all these years later and what more does it say about my life..what more use than a whiter shirt..i ain't buying..i ain't playing..congratulations. congratulations. .well done..my facebook feed scrolls and scrolls..friends of friends I've never met..never will..new jobs..new rings ..Dubai, Chicago the chance of a lifetime..lives joined together as one. .everlasting love..everlasting happiness ..babies and pets..houses and debt.. congratulations..congratulations..so so happy for you..all good..all good..share and comment..but whose really living today. .whose really sharing the truth..where's the comment..where’s the reality...because it's never enough..it's just not enough.. And yet these thoughts keep coming..this blank road..this busy mind..and now winter is on its way ..cold finally setting in..and I think of you, but put you to the side..not for here..not for now..this is something else..this is I..who am I..never enough ..im just not enough..why oh why..it starts in the womb they say..starts at childhood..over protective parents..over bearing teachers.. fractured and brittle friendships..no freedom..no encouragement..no trust..be good..be safe..be what we want..it's what you'll want too.. but what when you know it's not..always and ever yet do it anyway ..what then..for its not enough..no its not enough. . why have I never known jealously ..nor never once felt envy..is that self worth..is that contentment or is it just more ambivalence..just an ever held lack of ambition..lack of desire.. stop thinking..stop thinking. there's more to life. who'll play left midfield on monday..can't wait..big game..defines the season..means everthing..means nothing ..gotta stop..pull in . parcel motel..collect package for her...quick snap that i got it ..you're great ..thanks a mill..was collecting a record anyway but never said..she doesn't need to know..white lies..little lies..guilty as charged..and she's started to paint ..why..what's she searching for there on that blank canvas.. filling it with a kaliediscope of abstract colours and shades of blues, greens and reds…all smiles..all flowers and perfect sunrises. will it be enough..i hope its enough..keep going..back to the car..pass a student..long hair and glasses under a big umbrella..now is her time..will she seize it..no regrets. nows the chance ...positivity ..mindfullness ..self fulfilment wished upon a perfect stranger but not sought for I ..contradictions .. contradictions ..in everthing I ever say and feel..back to the road..leave the city lights..welcome the falling autumn leaves ..where's the beauty..where's the change..the new..the future . a changing of a season upon us soon.. autumn browns to winter grey.. just the same old..same old.. when was the last time i looked forward to something..**** knows..what was it..**** knows..work is over..why think of it..what do they think of you there . conversations in the canteen..teenage discos..tut tutting all round..a chorus of disapproval..how could they leave their daughters out like that..all agree..all agree..not me..let them live..let them find themselves..let them be enough...let them be all they can be. do I even respect these people..do i even like most of them..how many days..how many years. am i liked there  .am i admired. am i respected…am I even known.. don't be naive..no one dares to care just as i don't of them or there . its all in a game…be nice..be professional . white shirts. pressed suits. Not enough. Never enough...how many minutes have passed..all these thoughts..Nothing decided. Nothing changed. Where's the beauty...where's the light..where's that dream to cling to..same journey..over and over..days and weeks and months and years. the gates of home..the musics final coda ..the last lines of a faded  favourite fantasy..cause love is tough..when enough is not enough

not enough

not enough

not enough

I met you for the first time
Rather unexpectedly
On a Thursday night
An upstairs gig in town
Hadn't been in quite some while
And you, no never before

I arrive before the show
A lone man and concertina
Play a weeping lament
For the lost children of Aran
And the hopes they carried
To the devil of a western sea
It was standing room only
Save a few lonely seats
At occupied and chattering tables
For which i dared not tread
So I slunk to the shadows
To a half wall
Left side of the bar
And watched it all
As another now enters
I swear he's wearing my coat
He's younger but shorter than me
My soul knows that i wear it better
Yet it is he that unifies tables
That I but watch from afar
As introductions are made
Strangers transform
To like minded souls  
No more lonely seats remain
Only lonely half walls
And half sentences of the mind
As once again,
I don't want to be
Who it is
I am left to be
Of who it is
I am meant to be

The show commences
And it does not take long
For the singer to introduce you
Through words and through song
Violet Gibson as Irish as can be
But it is to Rome
In a year long gone
That you go
To leave your mark
And to a fascist dictator
You fired your shot
Grazing Mussolini's' miserable snout
You aimed to ****
But it was not your day
As the crowds howl  
They lead you away
Mad as a box of frogs and old rags
That is what they say
As they expel you back
To dear old blighty
Our old colonial foe
Not ten years since
Your country rose to be free
You find yourself back
Incarcerated in an asylum
For life and for death
A window
A blackbird
A rose garden
All that you are left to possess
For you never get to go free
Unrepentant and unbowed
A violet not a rose
As once again,
You remain steadfastly proud
Of who it is
You were left to be
Who it is
You were meant to be