emotions collide in great crashing waves
as I career from sea to land to bed.
head full of static,
perpetually stuck
between channels.
white noise drenching
my soul in
rich and vibrant grey.

faint images trace across
my faulty mind,
and, for a second,
I catch a glimpse of —
a line must be drawn,
and it is here I must decide,

upon which pillow to lay my head.

I stole your smile.
It used to sit right between your lips, remember?

It tasted like home.
It used to fill my dark mornings, remember?

It looked like love.

It used to tell me why it loved me.
It used to crack your face in two.
It used to show up when I did.
But nowadays, I only ever see it go.

Of all the crimes that I've committed,
there is one I detest the most.
Because where once it sparked a fire
within me, now it's just another ghost.

I know you're hurting, sweetie, and it's breaking my heart. I keep seeing all these horrible things in my sleep and it's scaring me.
I want to tell you so much, but I'm afraid I'll hurt you again - and I cannot do that.

I wanted to **** myself, and I don't know how I'll tell anyone that, let alone my best friend. I prayed for the end; I knew how I was going to do it: and then an angel showed up.

There are moments when it feels like it's better, but sometimes, they hurt the most, because they are so fleeting.
I don't know if it'll ever get better, darling, but sleep tight, you hear?
Sleep...

Don't you go worrying about me, I'll be fine. It's probably just a phase. I'll be fine in a few weeks, or a month, or a year.
Chin up, darling, you're doing great.

scatter my body among the stars

let me float nameless in the sky

so your eyes may never know me

and your mind will be whole and free


but I’ll feel your gaze

burning bright (as always as always)

from your bench in the garden

giving me whatever meaning you decide

oh but for a moment of sweet, foolish fun.

smouldering coals glow bright
with gentle touch.

a moment of young, lovely bliss,

a kiss shared -
a real one,
not the farce of hours prior -
from one who is interested.

conversation spills out,
and with it,
admiration, affinity,
some sense of belonging.

silly things, not heavy,
but light.
float above the damp night grass -
soar amongst the clouds gathering above.

push past the smoking remains of
the fire

up the stairs

laughter, smiles, warm skin

nobody's business but ours

We sat on that old pier,
as the others crab-fished by.
I found my hands beneath me,
in an attempt to keep them dry.

I traced the outline of a mountain range
with my tired, tearful eyes,
and the sun pinned me to the concrete wall,
stripping me of any disguise.

The fresh wounds on my shoulder
still oozed their precious blood,
yet we talked of days still to come
and summers, oh so far ahead.

Yet for a moment I almost believed that
what I’d done had been undone
but you struck me with reality
and my walls came tumbling down.

We looked at each other,
in the wild, unsettling sun,
with the sea-surf sparkling blue
and voices of our distant friends

ringing of the new
and interesting discovery that one crab, no, two,
had broken through the green net -
maybe that was you.

never content:
withholding love out of what?
fear? envy? greed? sadness?

how i long for peace, stability and change...

a constant contradiction. barreling from heart to heart -
never finding ground long enough to lose myself
in someone else’s arms.

feelings stronger after i tear them out.

have to look at them in the air in front of my eyes.
bleeding, dripping their blood on the carpet,
heart beating in my hands.
to be clinically inspected and torn apart
only to discover that this was what i wanted all along.

like a tree, felled to tell its age,
dead, but finally understood.
too late to say,
“ah! look how old it’s branches, how deep its roots, how wonderful it’s shade!”

dead. dead and decomposing on the floor.

will i always glorify love lost over love in front of my eyes?

oh to sink into the earth!
sodden and rancid with rain;
sagging under the weight
of too much
after too long. Drowning,
under more of the same

EVERYWHERE I LOOK, I SEE GHOSTS.

At every tortured bend and darkened hallway, I see you;

And me. And the smiles up against the walls and the laughter jumping through your hair.

I see my insides tied tightly to the spots where we mumbled and fumbled and

took

our

time.

I see shadows of guilt stretched across our history and - like some queer carnival attraction - my Hopelessness cast them.

I feel broken memories catching in my eyes like old, worn hooks.

I taste laughter and love at the back of my throat:

Tickling some hardened part of me :

Making me to and fro’.

And as much as I suffer for the crimes I took joy in,

I know you,

And you suffer for it all the more.

wind whips around the eaves,
whistling by the Velux,
rattling the back gate.

which consequences do I own,
whose hands are inside mine,
what veins belong to me,
and where do they lead?

what if the walls don't hold tonight?
what if they crumble and break?
and I get ****** out -
the contents of my room
shooting through the sky,
burrowing deep into my skin,
piercing the clear, cold night?

_________

It's settling down now,
but you always knew it would.
These things pass, and tomorrow,
you'll collect the detritus scattered on the road.

You sink deep into the pile
of old blankets
and duvet
and wisps of remembrance

You're safe here
at least until tomorrow,
at least until tomorrow,
at least until tomorrow,

I struggle to breathe when I think about my actions.
I struggle to feel what my heart wants to feel.
I plot my own demise and think how best to word it.
Because sometimes my only gift seems to be my absence.

I give by taking away.
And it cuts me.

They wouldn't really mind - not for long anyway.
It's all just a mist, right? A vapour?
But I've got to get up every morning - regardless of my desires - because I'm still too scared to let go.
And if my gift is Absence, then I pray it happens quickly.

I miss Sleep’s gentle touch.
Her kiss against my ever greedy cheek; becoming swamped
in the tide of cover and quilt,
entangling myself in her dreams.


I long for her as each days drag on,
but forget her as I lie
in sweetest, softest sheets,
surrounded by the blackness of my mind.


She has a bitter streak, Sleep, that is.
For she drags me down to icy black depths as I let my anchor loose.
She holds me in writhing hands that
poke, and ****, and bruise.


When my self resurfaces - at the beep of new day.
My soul gasps for air
in the screaming, sweating freedom,
when I break from her night-time snare.

it wouldn’t be like me to
be travelling on yet another
train, across yet another
country to visit friends

you consume my every thought,
burning your image across my mind
and setting my soul on fire.

i feel free by your side -
in your arms, under you,
caught in your embrace.

we will blaze bright
into the night time sky
and though our time is short,
the passion, the feeling, the liberty
will outlast our very selves.

tá brón orm...

I'm sorry,
but, God, there is a sadness on me.

I know you have begun your move on,
and I promise I am happy for you -
but I have more work left in my heart
agus dúnéaltach mór.

go maithe dia dom é!
is peacach mé,
agus tá bás uaim.

le do thoil,
sábháil dom uaim féin.

where i let dust gather
(on the Word that breathes life)
i let myself become another:

broken, and twisted, and strange.
darkness coursing through my veins,
i slipped into a slumber,

into someone else's arms
and someone else's bed,
i crept - seeking what i once had.

now, as the Son rises in my life,
reclaiming what is his,
slaying the darkness again,

i find myself shocked,
by how much I had let the dust cover.

Nighttime sounds different here.
The birds sing.
The bugs hum.
From the other side of town comes the beating of some thumping, bumping drum.

Every night feels the same:
Birds sing,
Bugs hum,
From the other side of town comes the beating of some thumping, bumping drum.

At five o'clock the faithful are woken and told to face North, to a city far away.
While for us, we lie prostrate in our beds and turn towards that great black shadow of routine, broken sleep.

falling in love with a hurricane,
isn't nearly as dramatic as it sounds

dust gathers
on the Word that breathed life
into sun
and moon
and stars

a fumble,
a moan,
two bodies,
a home.

the whispers,
the gasp,
two people,
at last.

a stumble,
a groan,
two endings,
alone.

is mo croí theanga í,
is an t-anam ó t-am dearmadta
gur ní cuimhnigh mé.

tá sé bhriste 's,
neamhiomlán,
ach is breá liom í fos

mar sin,
is mo bhaile í
agus tiocfaidh an lá
nuair tá mo theanga agam

today she is blue
and purple and green
and she wears glitter
beneath her skin

she comes close
only to run away
closer! to run away
again

but i will sit
(as always)
and watch her
dance that dance

(close far close far close far)

and smile
for i’ve yet to see
such beauty matched
anywhere in this world

and for it to come
so close to me

Is fuath liom mo fhoinn
Mar ní thuigim iad nó
Ní feidir liom?

Ba mhaith liom túsa
Agus do thine
Ach tá heagla ormsa.

Where once feelings lay,
Only strange copies remain.
The sense of what should be experienced
Or what is supposed to be felt.

A reflection of the original -
Twisted and distorted -
Not yet beyond recognition,
But increasingly hard to decipher.

Familiarity  - with this place -
Is all that marks its irregularity.
Knowledge that this has been before
Signals it is happening again.

A worrying trend, when abnormality
Becomes the mundane.

Home -
That's where we went on your birthday.
It didn't quite fit though, did it?
Because Home was right in front of me,
and four thousand miles away.

You tried to make it work,
and maybe I had given up,
but now I'm left unfettered,
and floating on til -

Yet home was far away,
and Home had never been closer.

I've been back too long
to miss my home,
but long enough to lose
Home.

blurred bodies, blurred faces, blurred lines
careering wildly from floor to seat to bar.
Can't we just sit quietly -
minding nobody's business but our own -
talking soft
and long -
not caring what goes on out there?

but of course, there are conversations to be had:
"how's you?"
"how's work?"
"how's your dad?"
and specific moves to perform.
It's tightly choreographed - yet we pretend it's teenage chaos.

and in the perfectly controlled mayhem,
I lose sight of you,
but I can't shake your presence:
I can feel you, but I dare not look to confirm.
So I slip into the bodies, the faces, the blur,
and try and lose myself out here.

time I missed a lecture
because I was too sad to breathe

duvet-weight pinned me to the mattress
and dread washed over my head

Lie with me.
It's the only way.
Honestly,
What else must be said?

Lie with me.
Stop this torture in my head.
Only me! —
I've said more than I intend.

Lie with me.
Please, I thought you my friend.
You must see,
Just this once, never again.

I was content being the vessel.

bláthanna ghorma,
spéir dearg,
anam corcra.

midnight cries for help go unheeded,
***** little secrets remain unchecked.
regret, misery, disgust -
at what i have done
and who i have become
(who have i become?)

i’ll admit,
it feels a little like blackmail
when you say the things you say

i know you don’t mean it
but god, it hurts

bhí coinne agam anocht,
chuaigh muid go Lus na Gréine.
bhí sí go hiontach.

labhraimid le chéile,
faoi gach rud agus níos mó.
bhí sí go hiontach.

tá sásta orm.

hell is not hot enough
nor the abyss deep enough
to hide the ugliness of my sin -

so vast, so cruel, so sinister:
by my hand, I bring torment;
by my words, I scramble to justify:

"I- I am sorry,"
"I wish I hadn't,"
"I never meant this."

If it were true you would have never ******* done it,
yet here we are,
again,
as always,
in wreckage,
you selfish, horrible little boy.

stop up ahead so we can catch our breath –

you can see it, billowing up
into an upturned sieve;
bright, cold dripping in, separating
from heavy purple mass.

how many damp backs have we endured?
aching to catch a glimpse of that beyond,
sprawled at the foot of the infinite,
gulping down lungful after lungful of sharp forever-ness.

is it just me or do they get further away?

you remember reaching right up
and tracing the inside of the rim
with your hands?

pin-****** dropped so quietly
onto your face,
lodging under your pores.

i used to think i could hear them,

what sound did they make,
when you could hear them?

have you ever listened to glass on water,
or ice cubes in the dark,
or the space between old friends (no longer speaking),
or a billion lighthouse keepers closing their eyes,
or concrete pipes in the summer,
or God’s name (YHWH),
or that night the dunes caved in and i saw milk in heaven,
or the gap in the second hand,
or Sigur Rós’s fourth studio album (the one where God speaks)?

that’s what they sounded like,
but i don’t believe you can hear them anymore.

soaring peacefully,
far above our heads.

you keen and dive,
move and shake,
you dance.

careful now -
don't let go,
keep the string firm in your grasp

she is strong,
and she pulls hard -
lifting us up from our feet.

o! to be a ribbon,
fluttering in your breeze,
swirling and twirling beneath
your gaze.

o! to feel the tug
of that thin white line,
wrenching us forward,
dragging us on -

tied to the pit of my stomach,
you yank what's left of my insides out

Tangled bodies on a sofa
on the wrong side of town
Telling stories from when we last met -

Too close?
Shared experiences, shared regrets -
Feelings that only we both seem to get.

You move first, pulling my face to yours,
Do we stop? No,
I go down,
On this strange sofa on the wrong side of town.
———————————————————
Shared desire,

Bodies heaving against each other

Bodies looking for souls
Souls in need of bodies
Using each other to feel something again
In a shared pursuit of meaning
———————————————————
Be it cosmic self-harm,
Or existential release,
In this most intimate of mistakes,
I feel strangely at peace.
———————————————————

Doyouthinkyoucansaveme?Fromwho?Me,you,reality?Doyouthinkyouhavefr­eedme?Towhat?Me,you,reality?Don’tyouseeyou’veenslavedme?Withwhat?­..............?

Ethiopian sunrises are very beautiful, it would appear.

I feel like I am always in Addis
but I've yet to have seen it in the daylight.
Arriving in darkness was no different from the norm,
but I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by this morning's offering.

Addis appears to be surrounded by peculiar bunches of mountains
that pile up on top of one another.
The dark blue has slowly been replaced by sky,
then yellow,
then pink,
then grey,
then mountain bunch.

I didn't sleep much on the plane.
From about Greece it felt like an age since I had last seen Irish soil.
Why is that?
What is it about travelling that allows time and space to become so closely tethered to one another? It's been barely twelve hours since
I left Sasha, Mum, and Dad in Dublin but it may as well be a year.
I can only hope that this feeling does not overtake me
come the 28th April.
I don't want to have to desperately cling on to the memories of Kiwoko
as they are eroded by the aeroplane's slipstream.

The mountains are getting clearer now.
Varying hues of blue and grey imposed on the horizon.
Off to the East the sky is burning with morning
through thick, white terminal lattice.

There's an impossible to miss radiance
scorching the jagged edge of this Eastern range,
yet it lingers almost imperceptible from the surrounding sky -
as if everything Eastwards is ablaze.

anois, anois,
it's not that bad

níl sé a lan dona,
ach gearr mé fhein

oh,

you're dead now -

i wasn't ready.

soft lights, warm skin, our moans -
we steal breaths from the space between
our chests

just you, and me, and the fleeting feeling
of freedom or peace or passion
to be each other

"words mean nothing," you hope -
in your anger, bile, and tears.

you've poured out your heart
with paper, and pen, and keyboard, and playlist, and life.

moulding great civilisations and intricate portraits and new lives and companions and loves.

you sew yourself together,
scattered fragments from your terror,
weaving a tapestry to replace your skin.

peel off the layers,
scrape away your pain

patching up wounds with words:
bandages from poems,
dressings from that play.

burn, burn bright as the stars in the sky -
distant and dying and alone.

shine, shine like that light on your desk...

_____________


you edit, and change
constantly revising
the story in your head -

and I think that's okay.

when I was growing up,
our hallway had the most peculiar floor:
not quite carpet,
not quite planks,
but something in between.

like a wicker basket
stretched out over several metres,
or the rope you find
dangling off a dinghy's mooring,

it scratched and screened
at the soles of your feet,
tickling and tormenting
bare toes or
pulling the threads out of
well-meaning pairs of socks.

I hated it, or at least,
I thought I did —
until the day it was replaced by
laminate panels.

fake wood didn't cut it,
neither would expensive pile,
or any scraggly synthetic offering
to do the trick.

our painful, hessian homecoming
was a path to beds, and tables,
and welcoming arms.

it marked a definite departure
from sensible carpets and
suitable floors,
to the place between comforts.

for who would dally in a hallway that hurt?
or who would pause to feel the prickling,
pinching of strange interior decor?

of course, sense prevailed —
wood would come,
wood would stay,

and our peculiar, prickly past,
would become a story for some other day.

Like the mist before dawn,
You exist in my memory
As something seen
But never grasped.

I hunger for change -
for revolution -
for some end to this mundane

life. Seems so common,
so dull and expected and teenage.
I need to taste freedom

from myself, my
peers, my cramped little world.
There are new horizons to be seen,

and new people to meet, and
new memories to be made.
I love what has come before

but I need to believe,
there is more to come.

The more I struggle, the harder it is to break free.
She has me

Pinned. Arms above my head,
Hands clasped -

I don’t know how to pray anymore
Or maybe I just got lazy
Or maybe You stopped listening
Or maybe I stopped wanting

But silence stretches to heaven
From my angry, hellbent mouth,
And my ears are plugged with wax -
I’ve got sirens here on earth.

I can’t escape the weight of You -
Not that I want to, it’s just
That having her on top of me,
Well,

Another breath catches in my throat,
Her hands tighten their grip -

Searing white fingers wrapped around my neck,
Softly uttered moans escape my lips.

was it worth it?
to feel something? just for ten ******* minutes,
to feel something?

i can't look at you, Conchúr,
you repulse me.
every crocodile tear and shark-*******-smile,
with your smug little laugh,
and your meaningless words -

you weave them together,
constructing vast fantasies and empty promises -
how many people have you trapped,
in your wide and selfish net?

oh! but you've always been so good with words.
and may that be the death of you,
because you deserve hell for your sins:
one eternity is not black enough for creatures like you.

lies, lust, pain - that's your bread and butter.
you never were good at much else,
but ****** you are good at hurting
those around you, the ones who care.

she was right to get rid of you,
especially when she did,
because look how far you've come!

when was it... only last night you tried again,
didn't you? you thought no one was looking,
but they all have eyes, and someone will find out.

they'll see your scars (remember to keep it below the belt next time, buddy, okay?),
or they'll see the blood (god, how it gushed after all that dancing - i thought you were a goner),
or they'll find your pathetic little poems,
gathering dust on some forgotten corner of the internet,
where your heart is too bare,
and its blackness is plain to see.

what then? will it be worth it then?
to express something? just to try and put your life in words,
to express something?

"oh look at you, you poor thing,
you've been so hard done by..."

*******.

this is your fault,
and you deserve every last ounce of hurt.

why does it feel this way
when I hear the songs you write

and why does it cut me so
to think of a lifetime of lost nights

by your side
by your side
by your side
bye