"Our minds are death traps,"
She said to her son.
"The gun has the power of abomination,
But without that one miniscule thought passing through your head,
The damage never would've been done."

homepage flooded
with poetry written
on topics such as
suicide,
hate,
harm,
loss,
pain
&
death;
we like it
and scroll down
we repost it
keep scrolling
we add it to our collection
and just like that
moments later
words forgotten
moved on
"next poem, please"
as if the poem
existed without
a person in pain
backing it up
as if behind the words
there was no soul
cracking at the seams
as if the poem itself
held more significance
than the (wo)man behind the pen

the least we could do
is acknowledge the existence
of the broken poet
behind the beautifully saddening poem

Fragmented embers of the evening light casting shadows on
the outline of your preferred wanking pants.

Rathmines all blue and black outside
with stern encroaching trees reminding
of your parents
(and what they might be expecting to do now, as opposed
to what you're doing)
encircling empty Doritos packets submissive to
console lights ever glowing
Stacked shores of ruin against life's pursuing

And mocking you in  the corner
The amp that laid echoes to a thousand bands
thought of that never were.
Figurehead of a thousand conversations that led to kisses
never so sweet as those felt and remembered
in this dungeon of worn out ego and instilled fear.

Home to one hundred nights of solitude
sans reprieve or want of care
with the stench of student bachelor
left hanging in the air.

There is only this marina and then there is the sea.
Nothing else is.
An apt enough analogy
for a myth dissolving town.

Shaded by storefronts half-expecting someone to arrive,
The hood- stripped wind
Gusts up solitary, empty alleyways
With only stroppy clatter boards to continue the conversation.

I'm Tired of people telling me that I should smile in photographs
My resistance has got nothing to do with
An Attitude problem
or my attempt at
Appearing acutely fashionable
This is just the way I look
Most of the time
Shouldn’t what we choose to record
At least strive for Authenticity?
I'm just not interested in selling myself
Into the acceptable family comfort mode
Having my split-second cheery face sink in
Against The kitchen wall's
"calming" comfort scheme
To be doted on by ageing female relatives
and jovially mocked by visiting casual friends
If anything I don't want my past to be
Looked upon at all

Maybe it's the old story
of leaving home and the urge
To re-invent oneself
To Block out the old experiences, the old embarrassments
Freeing yourself to embark on a fresher tirade
of critical self-assessment
To be finally and victoriously
Free from the unsettling confines
of childhood
To engage yourself completely
in the waking,walking,working
Nightmare of maturity, responsibility
and devastating ambition.

Fact is,
I can't be around you.
Forming words and/or sentences in your presence leaves me
senseless,
stammering,
stuttering,
defenceless
and petering into arbitrary points and references
facts
figures

And it figures that,
were you single to begin with
(which you are not)
And were I of a similar disposition
(which I am)
That facts would form bonds between the figures most infinite,
and timeless,
and primitive -
A joining of two.

Facts are, it doesn't matter
Because in my mind we've done
Worse and better
Richer, poorer
Sicker and sicker.
In my mind we've ****** to the cusp of boredom with each other's forms,
and figures...

Figures that you'd be inaccessible
Unavailable
No one ever really is, are they?
I know for a fact that you love a girl
Who forms her name from words borrowed elsewhere.
I figure you thought her intriguing once,
Fascinating, maybe.
Perhaps you still do.
Maybe it's an envy
Maybe I'm stepping a line but were you mine
There would be no pretense in name or otherwise
I'd be I
You, you...
...I figure.

To be frank and state a fact,
I've dreamt of you often and carved you from a rib in some form or other,
But the fact is
You're a distraction.
And nothing more.

Go figure.

I am both pilgrim and detective -
A kind of penitent Poirot -
Sifting through muddy reality
In search of a woman - THE woman.

She appears to me from time to time;
Glimpses abound in those around me.
A riddle unsolved, a question unasked;
In love with what I cannot see.

We may even have met already.
Something missed at the time may grow
And consume - a glance, a polite word;
Some hidden gem revealed by time.

Her nature, like her face, eludes me.
Is she some noirish Nemesis,
With omnipresent cigarette haze
And the knell of doom in her heel-clack?

Or the timid nerd of the high school,
Revealed as a radiant beauty
Sans horn-rims, ponytail and books
(On reflection, that's probably me).

Shall we be tragic starstruck lovers,
Cut off in the peak and prime of love
To become a cliché for journalists
And poets immune to irony?

Or perhaps she is all of these things
Arrayed in sublime splendour,
Shifting dreamlike through modes of being
Which illuminate each other.

Besides, I am surely mistaken.
It is a poet's weakness in me:
Reducing his imagined beloved
To convenient literary types.

Just as well: moulds are tedious
No-one worth knowing fits into one
(My apologies to moulded readers -
You are probably happier than I).

Yet, without knowledge, I know her
Even as I search tirelessly.
For I know everything about her
(Save only her identity).

I have all my best ideas
In the shower.
Perhaps I should just stay there
All day long.

After the fifty-seven-trillionth year
of my damnation,
I couldn't even remember
what had been so great
about my neighbour's ox.