Fires in ditches and fields with
Newspapers, boxes, and dry grass
As our accessible anthracite;
Once smouldering enough on its own feet
To become its own source is when
The limbs were stripped and introduced;
Torn from trees or salvaged from
The outlying waste - they fed the
Crackle - spitting whispering embers skywards.

As children with little sense, our noise
Was all we could offer to appease
Wayward youth's disorder.
The crippled heat was secondary,
But to watch things burn was valuable;
A ring of lives held tenuous.

One thing I came to know
From the nights we gathered in droves is
That within this life of loose bonds and swells
I soak in the hungry gloam.

Eloquence has little worth in the steaming hearth;
Where the ropes coil and knuckles crack from the strain.
Others set themselves free and pirouette in the stream
Because they don't carry the ballast on their feet;
Their tongue;
Their nerve.

Candy floss and a visit to the arcade:
That's all it took to bring things back an hour
to the moment before a missed step.

Panic, pandemonium, a parallel universe
is what I came to; Landed, rag-dolled on a weather-worn,
rice field imitation rock. What I would give to see myself

From the edge. To see the angles my body chose
while I was away bringing my dearest to my side.
First I collected my sister with a scream that belongs

Only in stories that deal with grief: Guttural.
Come to think of it, that acrid ancestral call didn't belong to me.
I wasn't the one who pricked her from her periwinkles

And guided her over the barnacles to become a silhouette.
It wasn't me who dragged the adrenaline-fueled arms and legs
of an undressed, distressed father from his bed, through the

Haze of his own thoughts: a descent he wont soon forget.
I wasn't there. The things I describe are born of a situation
I have spent fifteen years rebuilding; I'm ashamed to say

I missed it. I never felt the chaotic shift of the wind and was never  
able to expect the worst because I was too enthralled with her face.
It was my sole focus as I lay down.

I watched intently - in slow motion - distortion explode into
her cheeks, tearing her mouth to the seams; scared eyes
enveloping lids and unwavering, taking me all in.  

I have no doubt she remembers the moment as well as i do,
Probably more so, for she experienced the backwash.
She was certainly shown the quickest way down.

I remember that it was beautiful that day:
A real Irish-sunburn peak in Liscannor Bay.
I also remember walking down the garden

To the cliff stenciled on the back of my hand
with the cheerful arrogance only an eight year old
can get away with.

Fleeting, rolling days, weeks,
years of half-memories with
no faces,
but places - parks,
playgrounds, forests, ditches -
in which youthful time was
spent without a thought for
permanence or preservation.
The "best years of your life"
twisted, tarnished, pastel-
smeared to indistinguishable
faces, places, seasons,
feelings, fears, loyalties -
scrunched up and abandoned;
left to seep inside a clockwork mind
teeming with trivial tenterhooks
and patchwork recollections.

Those who've lost, or who've been lost;
The people who have nothing left.
If what that red-brick shell provides

Soothes but one of these sufferers,
It serves a purpose to us all.
A purpose it should not overstep.

Pictures of your tubes and a wooden cross
Engraved is all I know of you.
I wasn't yet a thought when perhaps you wrapped a
Tiny hand 'round a trembling finger to feel a beat,
Or when maybe you cried just enough for everyone
Who kissed your little head.
I sidestepped all of your goings on and the grief
By a few years, but I will always miss you.

I will miss our bond.
You didn't stay long enough to grow into your mannerisms,
But I wonder what we could have shared.
Would you have been funny or serious?
Together or scattered?
Happy?

Somehow you've always been there for me.
You listened when I didn't know anyone else
Would and your flowers became my sanctuary.
Maybe you would kick my *** for
Being so uselessly sentimental,
And maybe you wouldn't.

It gets cold here, but you know that;
I hope you rest easy in your little garden,
Fit for a princess.

Clunky hands tick round
To beckon the rooster's crow --
No crisp morn summoned.

Perhaps sharp teeth sliced
Spilling chunks on moving gears --
Springs once sprung severed.

Though ticks still trundle
Their purpose swings freshly void --
Dense clunks breed gloaming.

With no shredding bay
Ending rapid eye movement --
Endless night transpires.

Weaving to the pulse of a room.
The thick blend of sweat and passion is cast out to the hungry.
As the assault eases there is a moment of calm.
A deep breath before the machine gun fire.
Seconds before everything comes crashing down;
An onslaught you know well.
Heavy hits from limbs, belts, and bones as adrenaline
Allows you to give as good as you get and show that you care;
Show that you do this because you have to;
That the pulse owns all and has full control.
I salute those who can make a room implode;
Those who rip everything from you so you have to face it.
The bruises remind us that we were there
And we share the fallout,
Because we live for that ****.

An hourglass, tightly bound,
fused grain in streaks;
each one taking on a different stain
giving the illusion of a thousand horizons
stacked to make up a body - empty but aching
to be filled by waves.

From knots wound into a headstock
grows an addiction: a need to revive  
the skin left behind between grooves -
skin which serves to soften the break,
but also feed character to the swell -  
granting purpose to decay.

She rambles a bit when she's excited to see us.
We're brought up to speed with her goings on
In the home that was built around her

As fast as her walker will go, we scurry to the front room
Where bread is cooling on the rack, and her excitement brims
To regale us with the morning's itinerary

It's all done to bring us into her world; to make us a part of it.
It's how she holds us close, making sure we're there with her,
As she may not grasp enough to be there with us...

She doesn't hear so well anymore you see,
But she didn't hear that from us as we smile and nod intently;
Just happy to be there, to be a part of it all