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Brian Turner Aug 2020
We sidle up the road to the farmhouse on a hill and enter the dark gap that forms a door.
The ‘broken thing’ hangs heavy in my hand.
The floor is bare except for a big pile of metal scrap, the ingredients for the fix.

Two shadows have their backs to us and are deep in conversation.  
Heads are nodded and words are exchanged about the near miss and the loss encountered.

The Fixer enters stage left complete with Macbeth bowl haircut.
Hands fat with muscles he approaches me and grasps the broken thing with a swift tug.

‘Not good, not good, bad job, bad job’.
He is working it out.
His skill is not taught.
This is instinct, blood and sweat.

He disappears for several minutes stage right.
The big pile does not have what he needs.

More conversation goes on about cattle and sheep.
The accents are harsh. We are deep, deep in the country.

The fixer returns.
A flush of oxy-acetylene ignites and suddenly two become one.
A rush of steam comes from the barrel that the patient has come out of.

‘Better than new’, the Fixer says.
‘Better than new’ Dad replies.
‘What’s the damage? ’
’That will be…30’
‘OK 30”

No negotiation here, no debate on price.
This work is understood.
This is graft and money hard earned.
This poem is based on my dad and me going up to a blacksmith in Northern Ireland in the 1980s with broken farm machinery. ***** Finlay is 'the fixer' and his famous phrase 'better than new' has stuck in our family. He could fix anything that you brought him. The scene is set deep in the countryside in Aughnacloy County Tyrone.
Conor Martin Mar 2017
Symphony of Silence throughout the night
Doors and windows latched and locked tight
Sleeping softly as dreams ******
Troubled times when morals where subdued

We’re shoulder to shoulder with the **** or the ***,
Look at themn's with the same eyes, not down the barrel of a gun
The pasts only purpose now, Make the blind clearly see
The mistakes they made with their ******’ corrupt legacy

It’s quiet in the cities cobbled streets, the birds pick at first light
Emerge from their nests, Like our generation glimpses first sight
The new formed world from the rubble of this war
No emblem or flag can heal wounds this vicious or raw
Brick by Brick, The walls of Peace rose to keep in hate
There’s no more guerrillas in the street, Only as heads of State

The Family divided, A Birds clipped wing
This Island, Our home,
Shared together
or
Squandered Alone
The North is quite simply, The most politically and culturally frustrating place to live in, Beyond people feeling so self entitled believing that their culture is better than anyone else's we are cannon fodder to the representatives who regularly pit one side against the other in order to enhance personal and political agenda, Do not read this believing that one side is more or less guilty than the other. Both sides of the co-existing divide are guilty of things beyond the comprehension of the wider population.
I Wrote this in one of my moments of frustration.

— The End —