They boiled my bones in a crock ***
They hung me up by my two back legs
and left me to dry over bloodied graves.

They put me in the fridge for days then slapped me
on a table made for six and they prayed around me,
thanking me for my sacrifice
I never sacrificed anything.

They caught me and watched me
suffocate between rusty lines of rope, slicing my fragile fins
They put me in a fish tank, while huge eyes tapped at my face
and called me cute, though I could barely take a breath.

They stuffed me in a cage full of other sufferers
taking us out one by one,
skinning our coats for their own.

Just profit.
Just a quick bite.

ANSEO A TÁ TÚ
(YOU ARE HERE )


Spring had come
dressed the farm

in its best green.

Even the sky
wore the latest blue

a sort of shy
eternity.

Birds had been
perfectly positioned

after a great deal of thought
by whoever had put them

there.

Furrows crawled lazily
across the face of a field

glistening with a newness
that the day couldn't

help but be
excited by.

The trees were beside
themselves

madly in love
with time

who had been kind
to them for ages now.

Ballea lay
smiling before him

Even its very name
made his heart dance.

Even the very saying of it
made his soul swoon.

"Anseo a tá tú!"
he says to himself.

The Irish sweetening
each loved syllable.

"You are here!"
he reminds himself

in case one of the birds only
spoke English.

And never was the boy
who had come back

in the shape
of a man

as delighted
as he.


"Anseo a tá tú. . .indeed!"
his ghost smiles to his self.

*


I am wishing that in his dying my father will return  to the little farm in Cork and complete his life cycle by being the ghost of the little boy who adored the earth and sky of his native place. I wanted to hold his hand and bring him here even if only in words. Da...you are here!

I stood in the February snow
the freezing sleet
no boots
no coat
Steam wafting off my fury

My father read the lie
two hundred yards away
and walking toward me

So I owned it
told it
With a snarl
Without a flinch
Both knowing

I held my ground before him
and wore the red of his hand
on my face for a week

Why do you keep on flirting with darkness, slandering the light with something that could never light your way?

Months of sweating
vetting every word written
Shivering over all
that remained hidden

Rocking back and forth
Recognising the demons scream
Asking to be fed more
Inside of empty dreams

Then the words, they spill
from cracked and broken lips
bleeding onto tissue paper
inking stains of fatal trips

Then comes the rush
a verbiage of torrential pain
Crouching on a backlit screen
pockmarked with finger stains

The first spike of adrenaline
fizzes inside a broken mind
The churning end to a journey
that has completely left you blind

Collapsing in upon itself
is the high that's found a low
and when the reader is gone
You wonder where you'll go?

Perhaps you'll find a new pusher
Someone else to feed your pain
Someone that will dig that needle
deep
even deeper into the vein