Half asleep, driving for hours
with Budweiser bottles,
warm from the heating.
The windows were all down,
we were smoking rollies,
all sharing one lighter because the driver
dropped his in a can of fanta.

Next thing,
the roar of an army of twincams.
VTECs, something insanely beautiful,
and incredibly ridiculous,
a convention of petrol heads—
Gardaí everywhere, searching for tax
and insurance. My God, I was in it.
Hundreds of thousands of them,
all excited like children,
the screaming of a million voices,
no exhaustion in the exhaust fumes.

The hills rose around us, the traffic
packed backwards,
expensive cars all sardined in a roundabout.
How loud can you get it?
Can she sing like a canary?
Can she find herself at the Letterkenny rally?

i am early onset gum disease,
mouthfuls of pink spit lining the ceramic sink.
i am enough to warrant concern but not enough
to change.

i am skin stretched tight as a drum
with a living thing trapped inside,
stretching scars into its elastic prison.

i am ***** evaporating on suburban pavement
and the halo of litter around a garbage bin.

i am the stickiness of salt water drying on skin,
dribbling down and down and down.

i am the sensation of growing too old too quickly, of a rip in the seam of a shirt you once loved, loved, loved.

i am a nobody that is everybody.
i am so crushingly common and so
******* singular and i am the terror you feel
when you think of this.

i am lowercase i and capital I and grammar tables and the volumes of modernist poetry.

i am the twinge you feel when they speak his name
and hers and the ones who are just faces living in the corners of your mind.

i am touched and taken and drowning in liquids turned amber and sweet. i am gluttony and those six other sins which have never seemed so deadly.

i am speaking for myself, and i wonder if others speak for me.

i am nurture given living form. a product, a creature, a many-limbed thing.

i am all repulsion and vile intrigue. i am the
hall of mirrors and body cut in two. i am gemini sighs and red skin flaking free.

i am a half of a whole of a half that is
tired of completion and its worship.

i am a pilot, a lookout on the highest point. i am cracked lenses and falsely tripped alarms. i am the things that frighten then grow dim.

i am twenty and i am nowhere. and i am a living time capsule of things not worth remembering.

coffee rings flood the
rivers on the maps.
the number of lipstick-stained
cigarettes document the miles
under our feet. buttoned shirts
and greasy hair. letting only
the stars tell the time.
the world seemed infinite through
the mirrors. possibilities thrived
in the towering trees and the
deep green of life.
your hand in mine,
where it was always meant to be.

They say James Heron has a daughter now.
He has done for a couple of years. Last time I saw him
we were drunk in the day, and the time before that,
we were eleven.
I spent that last fragment of innocence
sleeping in a thin duvet case,
hoping it would pass as a sleeping bag: it didn't.
Since then I have slept rough in softer places,
and he has been on harder stuff
than I could ever sustain.

They say Faye owns a green grocer's now.
She put green in her hair and became a vegan.
They say she's never bought a McDonald's
and avoids Palm Oil like crowded places.
When she was twelve,
she'd punch me on the arm just to prove
that she could make a mark.
Now, she treads so gently across the ground,
the sprawl of the supermarkets;
imminent in swallowing her whole,
and still she'll go quietly, quietly,
so as not to cause a fuss.

They say Rhys Campbell has a missing father
who left town and changed his gender;
now a mother of two refugee children
and in love for the first time in her life.
Rhys Campbell couldn't get past his tough-man image,
and so his mother lost a son
when regaining her life.
Now ol' Rhys lives in a high-rise
and descends to the pub,
gives into the drug, and batters his wife.
Thought I saw him once
but my eyes were a blur:
I was drinking through my unemployment,
whilst he had given up on work.

They say Amy Thompson lost her wedding ring
and by the time she found it, she had left him.
She fell in love with the idea of the sea,
how it nurtures her
through the breath of a baby.
Now she lives alone and dines out for one,
treating herself after years of divorce
from who she was,
who she had to be,
and the remnants of her teenage self,
hanging limp from a cemetery tree.

They say Jessica Reynolds stays inside,
determined to one day, move things with her mind.
She collects crystals and panflutes,
Tibetan bowls and scented candles;
braiding wallets for the hipster crowds
just to pay her way through art school.
She communes with the dead
as she talked to the flowers, aged eight;
always fairing better in silent conversation,
and those long vigils in the shower,
reciting words she would instantly forget
when shown a human face.

They say Jessica Reynolds is crazy.
They say Jessica Reynolds believes in fairies.
They say Jessica Reynolds is a closet lesbian.

Now I don't know much about anyone,
amongst the faders and my inattention;
my lack of memory for names and accents.
All I can do now is to keep track of the tracks
that I have parted from.
Our common unity;
our communal drum.

I do not love like this
I don't love like this
but I am learning

I burn between kissing you
what I can't have wholly
& somehow I am full
too aware of what I'm doing to be foolish
I rule out sound
birds
birds
you've taken both turns
I am laying
I am left
but am not without

I must front torture to embrace love -
without fire, I cannot burn
I cannot live without that heat
char instead of ink just to write it down

we are singing a song now
quiet
you are asleep & I am dancing in the heaviness of your breathing

this bed is not a nightclub
your knees hurt
& I have never seen anything so beautiful

Stood on the car roof
with a Stanley knife from the milking parlour
cutting down posters
and their vicious screaming.

*******, *******,
the corrugated plastic cuts my hands
and it's raining icy and
hailing mercilessly. I hope
that's the wrath of God on us.
The cable ties take a few
goes of the scissors.

"Vote No" to love —
I've been denied of it
too many times myself.

Have you ever had someone
tell you you weren't good enough?
Or worse,
lie and say it's all down to them?

Let a man kiss his man,
that's his business.
Don't tell your dad that I'm doing this.
Partaking in sociopolitical
vigilantism, with a dairy farmer's
knife and my best friends
and a farm vehicle.

I don't
read the bible. Holy water
means nothing to me.
I won't marry you in a church,
probably. Or at all, because you
don't ******* love me.

Let a woman kiss her woman,
what difference is that to me?
I'm just a leaf in the ******* breeze.
I'm just an acorn fallen from a tree.

My hands bleed.
There's rain and there's tears
and I can't ******* see.
The wind is howling around me
as these posters come down I'm finally free.
All of ye can have love,
**** hatred and all that it gets me.

at least you're hot in your indiscretions
        your hands glued to my cheek bones
          and my mouth met yours i--
                                                loved
                                             the
                                                way
                                             your
                                        hair smelled
                      
i hope i am not too hot
                      to scare you away
and i'm feeling like scalding water vaporizing
        should i gather around your feet and kiss your toes?