I

THE REMARK

She scornfully remarked,
"Ha, Ha, men?.....
They are dogs,
all of them"
and then went on
and said,
"Most of my friends are men"

II

THE QUESTIONS

It was a casual conversation
but left behind nagging questions:

One:
Is woman really liberated?
For if that were so,
she would be free to sow
the seeds for a malice-free life:
A life that is
marked by sobriety
and unshakable fraternity –
A distinguished burden which principally she
can carry gracefully
till we all reach Goshen.

Two:
Has man been always liberated?
You may or may not agree,
I just say what I see.

III

THE VICTIM

Among the countless atrocities
on the vast womankind,
a hoarse, feeble voice thus pines:

Look at him;
He has been trained to ****
and be unflinchingly killed.....

He is:
an oblivious slave to his condition,
.....a victim of unmindful persuasions
by apathetic social conventions....
crippled....plagued...
by inherited apparitions
of our grand forefathers.

He has been brutalized too
on his way from a wobbly boyhood
to a hard-bitten manhood.

IV

SYSTEMIC SCARS

One could write a manuscript.
Instead I cite a sparse list
about how
he has been systematically marred
by the oppressive
socio-economic-political farce:

......of the defense ministry,
or salvation through insurgency...

......of the drug cartel,
or the liquor-tobacco lobby...

......of the boss's fancy,
......of female friendly courts,
...even sports!!!
......of the spousal gripe.....
and most of all...
....through the stereotype hype.

V

DIS-EMPOWERMENT OF MAN

Is man really enfranchised?
I am a man and I vouch otherwise.
........

Bully the other boy
else...
just play with a toy
solitary.....a *****.

You are born with a member,
Now, my goodness,
prove to be better
than your female opposite number;
An impossible task,
for no gender
is exclusively first-class.

Prove your chivalry;
find a nice young lady
or carry some forbidden
infamous label.

Hide your malaise,
pretend to be at ease,
do not brood,
or be doomed
as a sentimental fool.

Always be okay alone
wherever you are
whatever you are...
sickly or strong.

Feel guilty.
After all, all social malady
is solely your responsibility.

You are just the "unfair ***"
...an ugly accumulation
of grossly vile testosterone,
no match for the noble progesterone.

My unfortunate friend, do you see…
That radical crowd....so elite?
That is the "fair-***",
not ye.....not ye.

Apart from a backbreaking childbirth,
most other dangerous or physically stressful work
is a man's traditional berth.

Even the macrocosm
has been a scrooge,
depriving him
from the possibility of motherhood;
...the sensational miracle of natural creation.

Is man really free...?

VI

THE SLOG DOG

But yes,
as my good friend said,
there still remains
a thin little thread
of fragmentary credence,
hanging like a dire dog-collar.

It says:
Man is a two-timing slog-dog;
unfaithful to many
but loyal to love,
wagging the tail
for his lovely suffragette dove.

She can heap
his eating bowl
with puppy-love chow
and he will be forever hers.

Bright windy November
with the slap of cold sun sending frowns
and the absent rain not beating down
choleric substitutes of alcohol withdrawal
and spatial omissions of home fires stoking
empty remembrances of faded potential and
misplaced amorous regret
Haunted by the lingering smell of the souls of
last night's GUINNESS intake staying swell in
the nostrils which is in reality the gulf breeze blowing
gullshit down the river Liffey giver of life.

...And here I am Dublin pillaged and funded
en route to the hour-rate slog
shiny white commerce bleaching out of
windowsills distracting from rooftop
Chiaroscuro  serenading a sky
which old ****** forgotten Sons and Daughters
will die under.

Boots tapping mock-goosestep to the ground
past a girl who speaks on her IPHONE to someone
who presumably not only wants to be seen speaking
to someone on their IPHONE but who also cares enough
to listen as the girl announces to all-and-sundry
human dodging on Bachelors Walk this fateful morn
that "I realised what my problem is Now! People
think i'm saying N when I'm really saying M!"

.....quite an existential crisis you got there, EH DOC?

("This girl's SITUATION belongs in a scenario in the TV show GIRLS which young
Woman Europe-wide have embraced as their spiritual saviour in an era of Consumer
impulse control. By placing the mundane generalities and perceived social failings
interpreted by young American female comediennes as instead representing a means of
self-forgiveness and attempted new-wave soft-core feminist self-celebration young American
actresses are inspiring a new generation of young woman to speak openly in a more in-depth level about everything that usually happens to themselves or some girl they know"-From "The Post-New Male Gaze: Interpreting Critiques of Stereotypically Feminized Pop Culture in Westley Barnes's "Notes on a Rant: The "Took Me Up To Dublin Where It's Famous" Notebook
:2013)

This is the new white noise.

White Irish Male Critiques perceived socially-announced problems of White Irish Female over White Technology on a white morning in a grey city.

A grey city which subliminally stinks of shame and left-over guilt and of spending too much money on tecno-toys and new-improved nullifying debauchery and even rent during a significantly rough stretch of fiscal years. After a lot of years of white nonsense, really.

But this is where I took myself, and this is what happens once you take yourself here and this is where its famous for it.
Dublin,
Once Monto-based FUNDERLAND for the rich and royal turned over-waxie infested tenement slum district and second city of an industrialised economy waiting for the rest of the world to pay its way.
Dublin,
capital of green and squeaky saviours of the third-world who made some money and forgot about everyone else they used to know back home. Mr Poverty, Mr Humbleness, Mr Sense of Catholic Shame.
Until the rents got too high and they had to move home again.
Dublin,
no matters what it achieves, always putting itself down.

But I can adapt.
I've lived in Rathmines and Portobello before living in either was a
really hip decision to make.
I can find somewhere else before its gets gentrified
(after I find some job that's not worth complaining about
or I eventually leap into becoming to middle-class
to complain about it.)
enough that its a headache living there, too many men wearing the same winter
jackets. Too many packed restaurants and your local actually preparing the tables
in the run-up to the Rugby game on Saturday.
The less of all that, the better for me.

I used to day dream about all of the above, honestly, but I
somehow managed to regain my innocence by living through it.

As for the girl who discovered self-realisation on her (through her?) IPHONE?
She'll be alright. If that's how she starts wading through the floodwaters of relating
herself to the world, misunderstood syllables, name-fails and all, this time in twenty
years, she'll be laughing. Don't worry yourselves, she'll adapt with the times.
Sure, Dublin's famous for it.

This pounding silence in my head
The comfort slicing in my soul
The mindless beat keeps pulsing time
Glowing inside, my inner coal

Dead to the core, but moving still
It is my nemesis
I’ll push onward until I find
The answer to this

Inside my mind, you would get lost
The pines and rivers are covered in smog
Something lures you closer, though
This journey’s turned into slog

I drag my feet when I think of how
It chokes me though I know it not
If I don’t think and let it go
It’ll consume my very heart

Who am I anymore, I really do not know
If you ever find me, bring me back
Take the strings of my shattered heart
I know in the end it isn’t black

There may be hope for you, dear
If you don’t let them take you
So when you hear the siren’s call
That’s when the tide pulls through

I’m here watching, just to say
‘I told you so’ as soon as you fall
I wish I had the strength to fight
But they’re taking my strength, my all

If it isn’t too much to ask, I’d beg
Stay away from me
The longer you watch and soak it in
The harder you’ll have at forgetting.

eyes on my skin
hands on my hair

eyes on my words
hands on my thoughts

eyes on my home
hands on my rights

eyes on my fun
hands on my slog

eyes on my past
hands on my fate

eyes on my womb
hands on my kin

Of all vice in the world under discipline
Laziness – a Curse - is like a Saccharin.
Sweet as pipe, sonorous as violin
Wicked as a snake, ill-mannered as Bedouin;
Laziness creeps in secretly body within
And remains there undisturbed and akin.
It is seen when duty or slog does spin
Grinds us till in others found Lenin.
But that is a bad time as made us thin.
Hence precaution must be taken, O Kin!
Laziness, a Bad King, should not reign
Over us from beginning to let out jinn.
Of all vice in the world under discipline
Laziness – a Curse - is like a Saccharin.

they say that love never dies
could never curl and  bawl and cry
love is the purest of all emotions
even turbulent and torrid
it is pure, never horrid

but I'm tired of loving you
or seeing your jaw, you finger, your tooth
and feeling a rush of fear
that i will never escape from this anxious pit of unclear
good intentions and impure thoughts
so i do what i am taught

i slog through the love, the lust
the misplaced affections because i need, i must
be graced with one smile, a small glimpse
even if my feelings you already dismissed

i was going to tell you,  don't you know?
i was going to knock my feelings off their petty throne
i thought that maybe if i let it all out
i would not feel a gout
of excitement for the forbidden feelings

that maybe i could stop pealing
in laughter at the smallest thing
when i thought you weren't looking, as i watched you sing
that i would have the control of my buzzing desire
but now i refuse to fan the fire

my friends still egg me on.
Valentines Day is on Saturday, what could go wrong?
I've found that people are great at giving advice
when it wont affect them even once or twice

but they know that you know off my misplaced affection
you see it now in every inflection
she lied and told you behind my back
and then asked me to cut her some slack
when now that tenuous friendship we once had was broken

and i only ask you to give me a token
of admitting your silence
rings out louder
than any no

The woodpecker wouldn't reveal,
          the secret kept closer to her chest,
but the telegraphic messages
          meant nothing else I gather it thus:
"Don't you give up midway
           slog, till you are fully satisfied,
that you've reached there
        where, what you are searching is found"

In wooden notes, she proclaimed thus,
          goes on pecking making,
the noise louder and louder,
         it's now more and more clear-
that in standards she'd never compromise,
        never would she lower her esteem
even if her sense of urgency sometimes
              creates some discordant notes
       that she accepts as her fault
and keeps her ears perked up for tone and tenor.

He was never my classmate,
Neither was he my schoolmate,
As we have met on OkCupid,
Which is where we got suited.

He soon became my tablemate,
Then got promoted to bedmate,
Ranging from late-night nosh
To some naughty oh-my-gosh.

He was my almost-roommate,
Now, a hopeful housemate,
Since he would visit me daily
And keep me company gaily.

He was frequently my seatmate,
As well as invaluable playmate,
For we traveled places together
And cloyingly wrestled each other.

He has always been my helpmate,
And is presently my best teammate,
As he has cheered me up from afar,
As we chat as if there is no au revoir.

He will one day become my inmate,
Plus my hard-working workmate,
Since we will both have mini-me’s
Forcing us to slog away on our knees.

He is undoubtedly my soulmate,
One who is to become my lifemate,
For he is a romantic yet **** geek,
A keeper with charms all too unique.

I'm a Prisoner Trapped Inside a
Little Rectangular Marvel
Which knows, to six decimal ...'s,
My position on Earth

And the irony is that...
Electronically found,
I feel lost.

Way before we knew about
Jeep *** EssSs...
I lived 300 miles away,
In a little town called
Bettendorf, Iowa.

Few days after last
Christmas.
I made the journey
Back. To the
Former.
Place I existed, survived,
Lived, thrived (albeit briefly)

I took my family with me.
Or, I went with my family.
The four of us in the same vehicle,
Anyhow.
300 miles in December.
There was snow everywhere
Else. Not on the road, thank
You.

You leave bits and pieces of
Yourself in the place that is
The home for your feet, blistered
And toe-stubbing sidewalks and
Your hands grasping frozen Gym-
Door handles on Minus 10 Saturdays
When you bundle up and slog 1.3 miles
To play Dodgeball all Saturday afternoon.
(And returning it's twice as cold and dark is
Edging its fangs over the dim, muted horizon)

You sweat in the summer. Profusely,
Drops of the stuff watering brown
Grass. You bleed in the snow,
Stark red on even pastier
White, though it feels
Painful only in the abstract.
Sometimes numbness is better
Than painness.

You get blisters from raking leaves
In that season that seems
To have gone palavering somewhere
East of here.

These fringes of leavings, like
The tiny toenail clippings you spy
As you use a foreign bathroom, balefully
Eyeballing someone else's Medicine
Cabinet of Curiosities.

So we went to the place
Formerly known as home.

You can travel a linear or
Non-line-like distance back
To the place where you cut
Your teeth on life, and life cut
Its own bicuspids on you, but fading,
Fading,
Only the shimmering
Ephemeral memory of an
Equally diaphanous memory
Of those teethmarks exist.

Or, succinctly put:
The past is dead.
Long live the passed!
(But not the vaporous
Kind)

Still, we pine for the earlier
Times, younger and much,
Much more innocent, gull-
Able, even: When time had
Not yet painted and varnished
Us so much, the years piling on
Our faces deeply and thickly,
Lined canyons of worry criss-
Crossing our brows, the feet
Of those ****** crows nestling
Where our eyes end in points;
The sagging, the
Lowering of once springly,
Spritely flesh. 3 chins.
Since when do I need two
Extra chins?
**** you, Gravity!
**** you to Heck!

We travel back on new
Roads over the great
Old ones that used to be
Concave asphalt trips to
Anywhere and Nowhere
Special, they all were, even
The ones that led to hilarious
Dead ends.

Wow! There used to be a
(Insert memory here)
But hey! Lookit that!
A Yarn Barn. Hmm.

And oh! I lost my
(Insert memory here)
In that very back parking
Lots of Tots? What kinda name
Is that for a Pre-School!
Open on CHRISTMAS? Whaaaat?
My hometown has lost
Its mind.

And then silence, as the
future that passed us by
Reasserts itself so strongly-
It might as well be screaming
At us from useless billboards
Selling crap we don't need.

This place is a foreign
Country to me. I don't know
When it stopped being home
And now, I really don't care.
Let's do this thing, family, this
Familial obligation, and then kick
The stupid dust from this town
Off our tailpipes.
Go, Bettendorf!
Go, Bulldogs!
Go, next-town-over!
Go on with your bad
Selves.
Because, people of these
Towns, in 30, or 25, or 12, or
4 years, you'll blink, and find
That you no longer recognize
The place you can't call
Home any longer.

Barrels of oil painted smooth in acryllic
fill up the cracks with a feeling
spit out the money to feed the machine

Fair if it's toiling kids
draped along spoiled villians
immersed to serve the version of a billionaire's dream

eat the rich

Try me after I've been taught
I could've bought my chain

I would've lost my name

I should've dropped my shame facade
to play the game

We grew the youthful breath of heaven from the clay beneath our bones
imbued and innervated

aided you and drew the oath to play within the zone

circle reverie treasury burdens
bury the feathery,
herding squarely to fame - put on a show

eat the rich
dare me

you and yours invaded
bated breath had sung belated effort, whistle "death has reared it's head
at our expense so grab a sword.
We can war this **** straight out of this ole ditch
and fix whatever ***** gone wrong with it
with grit and sense

and build a fence"

Forget the soil your roots are grown in,
if you want to.

bask in shadow
of the weight of trust and decency
impeding our advances to your winner's table
fabled robin hoods with internets

guess who's deft enough let you know through every filter
left for us we may upset your dinner guests

let em know what's on the menu

eat the rich

let em know

The irony in learning
how to burn the fuel that kills you
after all the warning signs were there
sound familiar? it's a slog

burnin up, they'll crawl around
and find a meal on common ground
try the light show one more time
maybe that'll work

"The serfs are like a herd you see
they can't be riled along without a sermon
Burden them with silks and styles
worry them toward money piles"

Remind them of the fire they've been turning

Analogies aside I must abide by me and mine
but I've still got my eye on anything
...concerning

eat the rich
with discretion I guess.