If I don't make it to tomorrow, the notebook will be in my backpack.

If only we'd known
A dead child was what
The white people needed
To start to care and solve
The problems of the war-torn,
***** Third-World.
We could have drowned one
Years ago in a luxury
Bubble bath and saved all
The inconvenience of
Distracting us from
The Kardashians
And making us uncomfortable
And having to worry about
Whether they will
Take our jobs or
Become our neighbours
And then we would
Have to stumble over
The pronunciation of their
Very foreign names
And worry about their
Very foreign ways
And whether or not our
Train journeys to work
Would be targeted by ISIS,
Or, perhaps, our holiday
Flight to the Mediterranean,
With its simply darling little
Features that are just so
Intimate.
At least it would make a
Tragic story
To discuss over brunch
With the ladies of leisure
While they get off
On the intimate pleasure
Of donating old clothes
(Expensive ones mind you! -
The refugees won't know
They're born) to charity.
If only we'd known.
We'd have been able
To help ourselves sooner
Before it stopped being chic.

The water charges are coming.
Quickly, power-hose the path.
Check the water has stopped running.
Have your final bubble bath.

Don't forget to clean the cars.
Get the grime out of the gutters.
Let the bubbles fill the drains.
Wash the windows and the shutters.

Feed the plants and hide the hose.
It's strictly fruit juice from now on.
Make sure the ice machine goes,
And Billy's water gun is gone.

Turn on the TV, continue your day,
Pray that the Wi-Fi connection's the same.
Watching the news you'll stare in dismay:
An African child in an ad campaign -

"What a lucky ***!" You'll say,
"He's only been charged for his tears today."

When you are a young white boy
You learn that "God" loves everyone
And you should too because
Everybody matters.

Then, you find out by yourself that,
What they actually meant,
Was that "God" treats everyone equally -
Nobody matters.

We are all equally irrelevant.
Just vessels awaiting our white sheets.

Sometime later you learn that,
While nobody matters, it is the loudest
Voices that have the least to say -
Idiots clatter their saucepans during evening discussions.

So as the blue, white, and red shine brightly across the world
While the Eiffel Tower remains silenced by tragedy,
It is the deafening strains of the bandwagon we hear
Struggling to cope with its passengers,

While the repeated explosions of idiots
Continue to clatter their saucepans all over the world
And the Facebook ramblings and Twitter chirps
Of disillusioned folks who didn't ever
Learn that their toys don't matter.
That their race or gender or religion doesn't matter.

Nobody, myself included, seems to grasp
The concept that we are all irrelevant,

Nobody, except those awaiting
Identification and burial,
Those who are comforted
By candles, flowers, and white sheets,
Who are whispering in the wind
The same question that eludes us all:

"Why is the world full of hate and evil men?"

And maybe it is in the acceptance
Of a spiteful "God", the acceptance
Of a mean, angry, vengeful pig of a "God",
A "God" who hates... Or maybe
It is in the asking of that very question:

That whisper in the icy November wind
That burns your hands at football matches
Or sitting outside in restaurants,
That makes them matter a great deal.

dating a writer
is like guessing the weather.
you think you know what you'll get,
but you never do.

you never know
because

she'll create a hero
from your weaknesses

and she'll write a great character,
from every last flaw.

she'll create a thousand plots  
from your worst nightmares.

she'll take every last thing you hate
and create something you'll love.

she'll turn your anger
into confessions of adoration,

and she'll make you,
everything you're not.

but worst of all,
she'll leave you wondering-
is it you she's in love with,
or things she's created from you?

but here's the beauty of it:

if you date a writer,
you'll never die.

He who says escapism cannot solve your problems
has never been a cinephile with depression
who can sit and watch The West Wing in his pants.

In times of clarity, or perhaps
Moments of weakness
(Depending on one's perspective)
My greatest fear, I think,
Is that of dying without achieving
Anything worthy of mention.

The idea of being so ordinary
That your death
(or rather, your life)
Will be rapidly evaporated
from the earth's memory
Like light rain on a molten tarmac afternoon.

But you, at least on a mentally strong day,
Delude yourself with bursts of creativity:
Poetry, film, ideas of grandeur,
All of which persuade you that either
You will not die for a long time,
Or you will someday soon achieve.

This thought is comforting
And all is well.

Until one day you are having
A particularly busy teaching day,
And you rush to the usual spot
To grab a regular taste of Dublin life,
And order your chicken fillet roll:
Lifeblood of an Irish working-man's lunch,
And you eat while you walk -
Both briskly to save time before
Rejoining the rich children.

And the slobbering mouthful of
Delightful chicken baguette
Casts taco sauce from its grasp,
And dribbles down your pubey beard.

You stop and take a finger to it,
Knowing full well that the damage is
Done and that those hairs will grip
To the smell of taco sauce until
The drain tastes their defeat after
A particularly overzealous shower.

And it is in that moment,
With finger and beard stained with
The orange-tinged blood of a chicken fillet roll,
That your ordinariness and worthlessness become apparent
And it destroys you...
Because you always thought taco sauce was spicy.