Love? Love is a hug
One of those comforting, never-want-to-let-go hugs.
It is curled up into a ball on the fire-side rug.

It is that act of pure kindness on a ******* day.
It is kooky. It is what I’m not. It is difficult to say.
It is spontaneous and fun, warm, wild and perfect –
But not perfect in an everything-is-good kind of way.

It is the perfect blend of up and down
That keeps the fire alive – without blowing it out.
It is a year-round heat that doesn’t create a drought.
It is your smile, which abolishes my frown.

It is a vibrant colour, a sweet taste, a warm and fuzzy feeling.
It brings meaning to life and makes life that extra bit appealing.

A life without love is like trees without the wind,
Like half a heart.
A wave that breaks before it reaches the shore,
A worthless work of art.
Love is the constant reigniting of a spark.

It is something you would give everything for.
The Ultimate Sacrifice.
And all for that swish of hair, a half-smile, the warmth of that fiery hug.
But that definition alone doesn’t suffice.

Love is that glorious, life-lingering kiss.
It is an eruption of goose bumps along my arms, and down my spine.
It is mythical, only for the movies it seemed, until now.
It is that overwhelming feeling of happiness that you’re mine.

It is patience and commitment.
It is the desertion of the irrelevant “seems important” things.
It is the feeling that allows one’s life to feel complete.
It is the feeling like I’m invincible, or have wings.

It is more poetic than a poem, more spellbinding than a song,
Like the sense of satisfaction after a feast.
It is a personal connection a lifetime long.
It’s the light that makes her beautiful when she’s at her least.

It is beautiful eyes. It is beautiful. It is you.
You who makes me feel like I am by the sea
With sand between my toes and the breeze cooling the sun.
Your voice is the ocean that soothes me.

Love is someone just as strange as I am
Someone who enjoys my strange and I enjoy theirs.
It is that burning feeling deep in my soul
That is present anytime you are not.
It is that feeling that somebody cares.

It is that feeling inside, the sudden urge, the sudden need
To stop everything and say adieu,
To climb to the top of the highest point in the world and scream
“I love you!”

As we stare pointlessly at the skies
And sweat as we swallow the stuffy air
The wondering waves don’t realise
That we are even there.
Our bus stop thrones: an empty lair
Where we can safely hide.
While people think there’s nothing there
They still don’t dive inside.

No matter how hard our souls have tried
My good friend Mr. P and I
Have failed and wailed and often sighed
As cold, lonely air dampens eyes.

Sigh. Cry, cry and re-sigh.
Will it be noticed if we die?

We sit upon our bus stop throne
And eternally wait for that bus ride home.

Waiting, staring, waiting,
Possibly debating
To do... nope.... more waiting.
Staring, blankly staring.
Looking, but not seeing
What passersby are wearing.
Not acting but just being
And certainly not caring.
Me and Mr. P
Simply letting life just be,
Simply watching and waiting,
While bus stop lives are living.
We’re not taking or giving,
But sadly staring, crying, waiting.






Movement. Finally he moves!
Uncovering such painful truths
That smash the usual daytime grooves
Of crying, eternal waiting,
Thoughts of dying and hating
Every second spent on a gum-ridden throne –
My secret the inevitable stone
****** into the pools of thought
And now that he knows he ought
To finally end that misery streak
As the traffic soon will meet its peak
And satisfaction he will seek.

Ten years ago this very day
He had such awful dreams
That his only friend was taken away
But a dream twas all it seems.

Now - an announcement of the truth
To put us both at peace.
A time we shared on Earth aloof
And now the pain will cease.

It was all too much - that fateful day
That came ten years ago
And to my friend, Mr. P’s dismay
I walked onto the road
And entered the usual bus
That together we’d usually get:
Dark blood splattered it and thus
Cooled the burning summers sweat.

Not much has changed since then,
We still haven’t gone very far.
We stayed at that stop: the men
Who were hopeless at driving a car.
Eternally we remain
As friends on our bus stop throne
But now, he too, has ended the pain
And we can take the same bus home.

A lot has happened since I wrote last:

The buzz of the university hive,
The blossom of a love, perhaps,
The sunken ship of a recent dive
Resurrected by society maps.

The gallop into some part-time tosh –
The push and heave of a new routine.
Assurance of some Christmas dosh
(About as sure as part-time could mean.)

The stress of snow that assures my fears,
The irritancy of an icy day,
I am now an adult, it appears,
And my childhood life has flown away

To a warmer place on Cayman sands -
A place I know I will never return,
For while I may travel to Cayman lands
My Cayman childhood was left to burn.

It is icy pastures I now graze
And snow that keeps me trapped away
Where temptation begins its seduction phase...
I stick to my decision that day
For now I am happy and the future begins:
My directional debut lies in wait
And a possible partnership to be kings?
A production team? We’ll leave it to fate.

Exams beckon, I’ll deal with them first.

Missing:

Thomas Newlove
Male, 25 years old, 6'5", slim,

Last seen in September with an unknown female.
If found, please return to her:
Victim doesn't learn from his mistakes.

This beach had luscious palms
That restricted the ever-powerful sun.
This beach had golden sand
That provided endless means of fun.
The sea, a beautiful turquoise
That combined with the scorching sand as one.

That burning, yet it doesn’t matter, sand.
Fingers sifted through granules so fine,
That distant tropical land,
With that beach of beauty so divine,
With a sand and sea and sky sublime.
How depressing that it once was mine!

"Turn off the television set"
"Switch off the films in your head"
"Disconnect the internet"
"Put away the books you haven't read"

"Wake up and go outside and see,
And stop all this hiding from the truth -
See the world as how it's meant to be,
Sunbathe in the garden; on the roof."

I think I'd rather live in fantasy
(Even if my eyes melt down my face)
From watching films, to escape reality,
Than wake up to the horrors of this place.

Here lies a calculator, once unstoppable,
Together we solved the world’s problems.
Your black buttons warmed my hands,
While my head was cooled by the solutions you created.
Stress relieving buttons,
How I often mistreated you,
Slamming my fingers into your soul,
Jabbing your rugged terrain.
My intelligence blossomed with you at my side,
But now you have shrivelled up,
Shedding your petals, one equation at a time,
Until you are planted in the grave you resemble.
I etched my name into you
At the start of our glorious friendship-
A sacred bond that would last forever.
Now, at the end, I engrave again.
This time there is no solution.

Im drowning myself in work
To stop drowning thinking of you.
Of course, it doesn't work,
But neither does drowning my sorrows
With dark Cuban ***,
When all I can think about
Is how I used to drown in your eyes.
It's hurricane season
And all I can feel is flooding.

Electricity is in the air.
Life without a care
Or stress heaved upon your feet?
One week.
A blur of late nights, early mornings
Moving, moving, rushing.
Drinking, lots of drinking,
Sleeping and overthinking,
Excitings mixed with borings,
Sweat and cider gushing.
Meeting loads of people,
Different lives and races,
(Forgetting countless faces.)
Continuous lack of sleep will
Bring about more madness!
Eyes and head are burning,
Difficulties with learning.
The blood inside is churning
As you find it hard to learn again.
Nostalgia brings about more sadness
And body's close to death
As you lie, trapped, with blood and pen,
Out of breath.

I awake from my dream of a sundrenched bay
To find I have been swallowed by emerald black,
Emerald white and streams of emerald grey.
Those shadows share goose bumps with my back.
I check my alarm, but the night’s just begun.
The emerald ghosts will have to stay.
Any night is better than a sleepless one
For you’re tormented while you pray.
Hours and hours, yet sleep there’s none
As suffering’s brought out on a tray
Please, soon, the suffering will be done –
An insomniac needs a glimpse of day.
And there it is a glimpse and some
Hope that the Earth might be okay.
God has had his sickening fun,
And now I see that strand of hay,
That thread of hope, that beam of sun.
First a strand and now a ray.
The night fought well, but the day has won
And my room has become a sundrenched bay.
That emerald has been replaced by white
And the thoughtless torment now a pun.
The day at last has replaced the night
As I am moved by the morning sun.

I firmly believe everyone does
Something for a need,
A desire of completion,
Of fulfilment.
I write, hoping the words
Will envelope the hole.

So I spill, I bleed, I fuss,
Pouring out feelings of greed,
Of hurt and frustration,
Of love, contentment -
Plug the emptiness with words
To fix my damaged soul.

Pandemic
I.
Staring at the empty screens
Of all our ineptitudes,
Our demons whetting whistles,
Our joints atrophied.

Staring at the walls –
Surely not the news.
Can’t bear to look at a mirror anymore.
There’s something deeply unpleasant
Growling back.

Or the pub across the street with its
Christmas lights burning,
And the bar dark as the world was at night
Before we killed it with our fire.

II.
A million hours and a million monkeys
With half-baked ideas and reddening eyes
All trying to pen the next dime novel:
Pandemonium or Apocalypse Today,
Praying pulp doesn’t pulp before being read or read about
By the tired eyes and hands counting
Cheddar and pages and hours,
Until we all clock out.

My contribution to a dying ocean of death –
At least that’s what Bo reckoned
(Among many others drowning)
Is a journey through childhood
And wannabe streams of King and ‘cuntry.’

The old post-colonial riddle:
Can we be sorry for what we’ve done?
Endless masks thrown to the ground
Amongst self-respect and science and what
Used to be described as thought and thinking.
At least that’s what we kid ourselves.

Civilisation was never particularly civil.

III.
Start making the tin foil hats –
We won’t be leaving the house anytime soon.
We’ve a television series to finish scribing –
Eight years down and surely eight more to go.
There’s a four-hour silent French movie to watch
And what about your vegan friend –
Who hasn’t finished his journey to salvation yet?

There’s an endless stream of distractions to go:
You’ve read twenty-five books so far –
And it’s just gone July.
There’s an endless stream of desperation
And an endless stream of angst
And an endless stream of nothing
And death is just the beginning
Of
Your
Nothing.

And as the bard rightly charged:
“Here ain’t no place for dolls like you and me.
Everybody’s on a barge
Floating down the endless stream of great TV.”

So among the burning, we find a seat,
Nestle into that newly worn spot on the couch
And pretend we’re not there.

When I am out enjoying life's remit,
And wander into some department store,
I find that I am often cruelly hit
With nauseous scents of which I must endure.

Aromas of the various perfumes
That famous folk oft peddle to the masses
Affect my asthma clogging up the rooms
Until I'm far away and then it passes.

But when a lovely lady passes by -
Perfume mixed with a human factor,
And the scent wafts, floating, past my eye
I have to carry on and play the actor.

For that sweet odour smacks me in the face -
Envelopes my nose and then my heart,
For first it seems to stop and then to race
As brain is tricked by nature's work of art.

My senses dwell on that sweet love's decree
That smell that leaves me in pure ecstasy.

Poetry shouldn't be sipped with a fine wine
on a late Sunday afternoon,
It should be crunched;
Snorted off a ****** late on a Saturday morning,
Because we don't dine when we're content,
But when we desperately crave food.

Poetry should be grimy
like we feel,
Powerful, like we're not,
And stuffed to the brim with sustenance.
And love.
Love is perhaps the most important ingredient.
Love is the difference between someone
who likes pizza and has been to Italy,
And someone who read about them both once
on a takeaway menu, which happened to drop
in through the letterbox.

This isn't poetry. But she ******* is.

When I was a child, on Grafton Street,
My brother and I used to pop bubbles.
We also built great cities and bases,
Arenas of Jenga, where soldiers did battle.

These creations were places of retreat
To escape from childhood pain and troubles.
Now we wear our masks instead of our faces
And herd ourselves onto trains like cattle.

It's hard to pinpoint when the dream truly dies -
The suicide rates will not be televised,
But be assured that your job is distracting
You from your lack of power, hope, and truth.

We live in our own little bubbles of lies,
And now know that life's not as advertised.
You might think that I'm overreacting
Until you have lost all sight of your youth

And all that is left are dogs chasing bones -
Are we anything more than just monkeys with phones
Searching for comfort and love in our loneliness?

I
The morning traffic settles down
When the smell of chips create a haze
By the arts block.
Squawking fills the passageways
And now a familiar face taps
Your weary back
While you are drowned by stomping feet
And despite the try your mind clots;
The name deletes
And you’re left thinking it is Scott,
While all this time his name is Pete.
He didn’t hear it through the stamps
And we sit lakeside by the lamps.

II
Morning: you arise from consciousness
And faint stale smells of beer
From the night on Dublin streets,
A night you won’t repeat, unless
The moon reclaims the lands.

And of course the Paddy’s day parades,
That, one naturally assumes.
Just thinks of all the hands
Raising pints by the spades
In a thousand bright green rooms.

III
You stretched your arms above your head
And yawned at a class you’ve never hated
You dozed, and watched the screen revealing
The thousand boring images
Of which World War II was constituted;
Their burning qualities weren’t appealing -
They stung until the world went black
But the light crept up between your shutters
And you heard the backgrounds snobbish tutters,
Despite meeting them on Grafton Street
Where you exchanged drunken demands.
You awoke and cringed as you were aware
Of the tuft sticking up about your hair,
But instead of a fix-trip, to save your feet,
You covered it with your hands.

IV
You stared up at the flawless skies
That fade behind the Newman block,
Or often watched insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock,
Or watched the fountain-spewing pipes,
And watched the swans watch life’s disguise
While you recalled wild fantasies,
Of walking down a college street
And opening your eyes to receive the world.

And now my eyes have been unfurled
And I feel like a god, a king
For I have seen an infinitely mental,
Infinitely wonderful thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
And treat the worlds like you treat the women
And hopefully both will give you lots!

I am the Protector of the Night,
But I have many names
For I have to pretend a lot.
I make loud noises, chase, and fight,
Play numerous fun, silly games,
But a “boy” I am not.
I sit alone, bathing in the sun,
Waiting for my moment to shine.
My French friend sipping wine
While serving at the bar
Any customer that comes from afar,
Or locals, regulars lacking fun.
I paw the sky as I see “them” come –
Those things that humans often fear.
I see it in their human eyes,
And as they slowly creep near
I jolt up to fight for the sun,
But those shadows struggle to surprise.
They are almost at the bar now,
And I start to attack.
I warn them that I’ll never turn back,
And fight till the end
For my friend.
I paw again and then somehow
He presses a button on the wall,
And the shadows dance away,
And I let him believe that it was he who saved the day.
But I know the truth.
He never understands my call,
But if he did he’d know
That I made those shadows go
By barking, and chasing, and glaring at the roof,
And the floor, and the wall,
And it was that that made them flee.
It wasn’t him but me!
His loyal, selfless friend
That scared the shadows far away.
And I saved him from the horror of it all,
And it made me feel human tall
When I saved him, my friend,
From the darkness of the day.

The day is young and I begrudgingly traipse out of the covers to check my messages.
My seventeen inches of pride lies proudly slumped across the desk - a laptop.
I lovingly push the plug, slowly, but forcefully into the socket.
The switch is turned on.
Now I use my finger to hover around the power button.
I gently rub it before pushing it in.
Electricity surges through it. Lights spring into action and it starts -
Sounds of an engine revving, purring.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes, before moving my fingers lower,
Descending towards the keys,
And place them softly down, sprawled across the keyboard
Before assuming the appropriate position.
Now, a strange thing happens.
Each button slowly starts to rise up,
Inserting and engulfing themselves in my fingers.
They burrow deeply into my fingerprints -
An abyss of identity caressed by technology.
It doesn't stop.
Meanwhile, the plug has detached,
The lights surviving on battery power alone.
It grows hotter.
The cable slithers across the floor,
Slowly working its way up the inner side of my legs.
It wraps itself around my calves and rises up between my thighs.
The chair gets thrown from beneath me across the room
As I forcefully drop to my knees.
Both my fists are now inside the machine,
Swallowed by blackness.
The cable has worked its way around my waist and up to my neck.
It caresses my ear as it tightens, before making its chiselled tips towards  my mouth -
A literal three-pronged attack.
I can only kneel motionless, and gag as it enters my mouth,
And scream silently in horror as it forces my head down,
Dragging me completely inside as I choke on its power source.
Swallowed by blackness -
An abyss of identity ***** by technology,
Standing silently on the desk, seemingly unmoved,
Until it runs out of battery and dies.

The tear duct is a feeble thing
For little girls who dance and sing.
A man is a superior beast
Who swears, fights bears and eats a feast
Of steak! He knows his wants and takes
Those wants and has no fear of snakes,
But now and then those ducts are used,
But not out of choice - they are abused!
For shame those times when man has cried –
One hopes they died or died inside!
Perhaps it's okay and not quite mad
If the duct, per say, was maybe stabbed –
An eyelash broke, or one could choke
On meat! The heat could get a bloke
To force a tear to stain his eye
But no, my friend, no excuses this time
Because, even in a crazy rhyme
Real men, who fight bears and steak dine, cry.

As dreamers we are oft to make-believe,
Escaping the banality of time,
Stories of noble royals that we weave
Into the fabric of this very rhyme:

For we three do descend from kings of old
And queens who conquered all of their domain
And live our royal lives burdened with gold
And bound to royal living we remain.

Royal maidens of Portugal and France
With butlers who they keep in line with whips.
While one insists they entertain with dance
The other one decrees "Let them eat chips!"

I just observe, dream, and write what cannot be
Who says Punto's can't belong to royalty?

Waves beating the rugged rocks of the coast,
Rapidly eroding the soft susceptible sand,
Engulfing homes children have long since deserted,
Drowning a man eternally asleep, and
Neatly knocking down a carefully built wall.
Barrage after barrage attacking weekend achievements,
But it is Monday now and school beckons.
Nobody is here to remember the dead.
Alone, nature watches the sand funeral instead.

The false excitement is over now.
I am at home, without work; without friends.
Trapped in the prison called life,
And dying in the slowest way possible.
****** into solitary confinement,
I am eternally confused.
I should be happy but I am frustrated.
Frustrated at myself for wasting time.
Shackled in chains of boredom,
My routine has changed.
While I welcome the lie-ins I have never welcomed change.
The school holiday is over now,
And again I am unhappy.
It is books that chain me now,
And my teachers, the wardens who harass me.
Life is back to how it should be-
We all hate it, but enjoy the company.

Smoking is terrible for you - we all know that,
But there's nothing quite as **** as a cigarette
With its wafts of smoke curving sensuously up
Like a winding staircase to heaven.

Maybe it's that, that Bacall and Bogie dance
Of noir fog above a lit cigarette,
Or it could be the intimate way
The word "young" is carved out on your slab,

Or the intimate way that the smell lingers
On the clothes of loved ones long after
You're dead and buried.
Nothing makes a guy harder than rigour mortis.

A woman is like a summer's day.
No. A woman is like snow.
No.
A woman is like a woman.
She is not an object standing in the way.
She is not a thing
Placed on this Earth for men
To worship or disrespect
Or idealise or infantise
Or use to project fantasies
Or disappointments.

A woman is simply a woman,
But, when you meet the right one
And you tend to get things
Poetically-done,
Then you often feel the desperate urge
To write down how she makes you feel
And shout about her to the world
And compare her to everything.
Except other women.
They don't like that.

My mother, the Caribbean Sea,
My father, exotic sand,
Amazing that they created me
Out of this tropical land.

Wave after wave caressing the shores,
Giving my father a smile.
Here, my being was put into course-
The soft beach of Seven Mile.

Here, where the soothing sand meets the sea,
The playground of Edward Teach.
This is the place that created me-
A big, fat son of a beach.

I had told her about my pin badges -
It was that kind of intimacy.

I had written poems about her -
It was that kind of intimacy.

She returns with another present,
In fact, more than one,
Despite being a woman scorned -
It was that kind of intimacy.

One, a postcard, to return my gesture,
A memory we shared together -
It was that kind of intimacy.

Two, a pin, she travelled to find,
Searching to fix something that
Was never broken.
To her, this was a failure,
To me, it was
Our kind of intimacy.

And three, a notebook,
Because she knows what I love,
And that words lie deep inside of me,
Screaming to come out.

I write this to her to apologise
For being a fool, and to thank her
For her undying encouragement
And her endless inspiration
And her kind, warm words -
A beautiful friendship married
By the endless embers of
Written words -
Our kind of intimacy.

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.

Some days he wore his teacher's mask,
It was his little trick
To disguise himself from students
When feeling rather sick.

He put it on and just like that
He wore the biggest smile -
He laughed and joked and taught them well,
At least for a little while.

The problem with the teacher's mask
Was that it wouldn't go.
He needed it when feeling down
And that was always so.

He wore it when he'd woken up
On the wrong side of the bed.
He wore it when he wasn't feeling
Quite right in the head.

He wore it when he fell in love
And broke his feeble heart.
He wore it when his friend had died
And his life was torn apart.

He wore it for so very long
He soon forgot his face.
He soon forgot his misery.
He kept it in its place.

He kept it for so very long.
It was a masquerade
So perfect that nobody could
Have seen through the charade.

And then that fateful day arrived:
He wrote that, "If they ask,
When rope is found around my neck,
I wore my teacher's mask."

Apparently the world is my burrito
Or so the philosopher said.
While I'm eating my daily bread
I relive decisions I'd like to veto,
And weep for the girl who'll never dance to my tune,
And pray that life, and my luck, will change some time soon.

It's when you're teetering on the edge of insomnia,
When every pound of your being is exhausted
To the point where you're seeing colours,
Without recognising objects, people,
Kind souls, kindred spirits,
That you soar to the most wonderful place
Of creativity and life-fulfilling happiness,
Or at least if not happiness, then
Contentment or satisfaction.

But, like insomnia, that teetering
Is the fundamental factor -
Because that same day,
In that same continuation of euphoria,
You can be waiting for a train,
And whilst you teeter at the edge
Of the cold station platform walkway,
You can plummet to the depths of depression,
Return to those comforting, suffocating clutches,
And that cry for help is stifled
By the thundering railway carriages,
And all that is left is a ****** stain -
Stained in your mind,
The knowledge that you'll never escape those clutches,
That grasp for the underneaths of railway carriages
Or the cordless bungee of tall buildings,
The comfort of the warm ground below,
And, naturally, a poem,
Flittering away in the gust of the train
Storming through the station
Like your ever-dwindling happiness...

Dead, burnt alive.
Your face crushed by brute metal force,
Smashed, black eyes look like they’re crying,
Innards vomited out on impact- corpses,
****** through your shattered forehead,
Turned to pulp by the asphalts grisly smile.
A curb has never been so twisted.
Teeth and bones show that these were once people,
Instead of just the red tape left behind.
Now you’re stopped by the feeble yellow kind,
Sunshine yellow that scars a grey sky-
Teeth and bones last longer
And teeth and bones are stronger
But not as strong as a boy,
Going faster than control.
All he needed was one hand too far,
And Satins red and black sprayed their clothes,
Igniting more than petrol when it explodes,
Killing you- his life, his love, his car.

Ten word poems - what a load of meaningless ****!

I wake up next to you
And feel the best that I can feel.
You’ll object, but it’s true.
You make me feel that extra bit alive.

Staring deeply, drowning, in your eyes,
Which you insist are grey.
I wish that I could stay
And stare at those big, and beautiful, and blue
Eyes – as clear as water bathing in the beating sun
Or as clear, and blue, and beautiful as the skies.
You make me feel that extra bit alive.

Fingers resting on your skin.
Your body’s warm, but hair’s where I begin,
And slowly start to stroke down to your neck,
And hold your cheek, and give your lips a peck,
And tell you that I love you
To the moon and back.
(It would be further but I’d miss you too much.)
I’d miss your lips, your eyes, and your touch,
And that feeling of invincible I get,
When I wake up next to you and sigh –
You make me feel that extra bit alive.

When I was younger in a different time
I had a habit on a special date,
Or on an occasion, to write a rhyme,
Often enough, because I'm a cheapskate.

So as Christmas swiftly soon descends,
And I've but my heart to claim as loot,
I write this story for a special friend
About a Giant and his Little Boots.

You see, these two made quite an awesome pair -
A lanky lad with lanky giant feet,
He'd often smile as people'd often stare
As he'd walk with Little Boots about the street.

A friendship in college they did form.
The Giant couldn't have asked for more.
His Little Boots could help weather a storm
Or bust a move on the Workman's floor.

Those Little Boots helped through thick and thin.
When he was in his darkest places,
They'd help him smile and let light back in
Or send him gifs or silly faces.

He knew they could take different paths -
Boots, like friends, can tread through the rough,
But nothing could silence the joy or laughs -
The friendship was made of stronger stuff.

And so they lived, as friends, forever,
The Giant and his Little Boots,
Strolling down life's roads together
Making it big time, in cahoots.

I came to the beach today because I've so much love to give.
I came because I've nothing else good to spend time with.
I came because it's healthier than getting drunk on ***** -
Better for your health than watching movies or the news.

I came to the beach to feel the breeze brush across my face,
To watch the foam fizzle and the memories erase.
I came to the beach today to feel completely free
To escape the many wrongs of life and all the tyranny:

To see the sea, you see, is just a free therapy session.
Unfortunately salt doesn't quite cure depression,
But what the hell's a cure going to do to change,
To change a world that's doomed to always stay deranged.

The beach is ever-cloudy and is always filled with stones.
It's cold to the point you cannot even start to feel your bones.
There are too many people to put my mask on to...
Too many people with stupid questions to ask you.

Girls in bikinis , having a swim, who clearly are psychotic,
While I'm just sat here watching, writing, and being neurotic.
I came to the beach today to try to help escape my pain
It didn't work but, hey, at least I did escape the rain.

I came to the beach today to try to look at life anew,
But really, I just came to the beach today because of you.

Today a blackbird gave me inspiration.
It floated casually towards the ledge.
Inches away, only a thin piece of glass between us.
It stared, looked me in the eyes,
Opened my soul with its piercing eyes.
Gouged away until it found some real meaning inside.
Twitched, no, that wasn’t a twitch,
It was a motion, a signal,
A glorious method of communication –
No pigeon could mimic that!
It ushered my eyes towards the beauty of the lake,
And away from its black and grey and blue
And (I’m sure many other coloured) body.
My eyes were dragged from this beautiful, overweight creature
To the forever-moving, forever-living lake,
Then to the fountain.
Six shoots of white water kept the sky where it belongs.
They held it – of course! The sky!
The blackbird had given me light.
The sky was alive, the clouds were rolling,
The sun was breaking through,
And as I re-adjusted my eyes to thank him,
The blackbird leapt from his perch,
Cawed a “you’re welcome”
And soared towards heaven.

The bombs fall over Kiev.
Silence! Snow ashes.
Uncomfortable muzzle as it
Settles on Moscow.

The bombs fall over Kiev.

Clanking, chewing the fat.
Bumbling Boris huffs and puffs
As he fingers his ear and fumbles
His pants out of his mouth crack.

The bombs fall over Kiev.

Babies cry, smothered by fear.
Old Joe struggles to forsake his afternoon nap,
While old “Mac” Donald continues to quack and be a quack.
Fittingly synonymous with a sharp burst of wind.

The bombs fall over Kiev.

And yet the skies are silent.
The West whip out their dic-Boom-Boom-tionaries
And stumble and grumble over the worth of human life.
They danced this dance quite recently,
But there’s always room for cha-cha-cha
And grinding out a lower price.
The clock ticks louder – BOOM, BOOM BOOM,
But only for the powerless.

And the bombs fall over Kiev.

Pow! Bang! Bang! That small, old man
In his big red house plays with his toy soldiers,
And his toy towns,
And doesn’t half throw it all out of the pram.
Butlers and maids scramble
To make sense of the nonsense
And the egg on their faces just for you.
Incoherent ramblings of a paltry rich fool.
And yet that’s the sound of the world flying by,
The sound of the world’s greatest tool:
The grasping hands of paltry rich fools.

And the bombs fall over Kiev.
And Palestine. And Yemen.
And the dinosaurs still make a mean cocktail.
And it’s all so ****** predictable.

Exasperated gasps…
The rest of us just look goggle-eyed,
And hashtag flags, and thoughts and prayers,
And throw our paltry money wondering when
It all became so helpless, and why
We still pay for the merry-go-round
When it’s so completely broken.
We scramble to put back our fallen teeth
And kick our brothers to the curb for shelter
Under a wet, cardboard box –
(If you fold it over it provides more cover from the rain,
But the benefit of boxes, of course,
Is that they can completely fit over your head.
The noise is easier to drown out in the dark.)

And the bombs still fall over Kiev.
In broken hospitals and apartment blocks
And schools and churches
Hearts thunder,
And brave Ukrainians hear the noise
And the silence.

Retaking the same steps,
Searching for meaning,
Searching for something -
Something more in the memories,
Something more in the feelings
That you made me feel.
Hearing the waves by the restaurant,
On the pier.
Feeling the power of the breeze,
And the cold.
This time I don't have your arm,
Your body to keep warm,
And I think that makes it
The coldest it could be.

To some twas a majestic force,
Mysterious and beautiful,
Courageous and never full
From a vast, adventurous feast.
It roamed – a horn upon a horse,
A gallop one could never cull,
It thought itself invincible,
Yet to some it was a beast.

Its orchestra – a masterpiece
Assembled from around the Earth,
But labouring perfections birth
Was a harpist’s absent beat.
The pains of searching now could cease
As landing upon emerald berth,
The unicorn unearthed its serf
As sublimity filled that seat.

The harpist liked her homely scene,
Despite its audience so small.
She’d rather stay than leave it all
And face the unicorns stampede.
And so she suffered wrath obscene:
She was forced to attend the ball,
Waiting centuries for the call
To leave an orchestra based on greed.

In present day the harp is home,
Back to where it is meant to be,
Beauty played independently,
But the unicorn does not mourn,
For now both creatures often roam
To a ball outside of history
And play a peaceful melody:
“The Harpist and the Unicorn.”

A text that demands an answer
And thought.
I see your loving smile,
And that overwhelming friendliness
That you bestow on everyone.
I see that you are one hundred percent crazy
Yet so smart and sensible,
And I love how you can balance them both so well.
I see that you are one of the most fun people I know
And funniest – a day doesn’t pass
Without you making me laugh.
I see that you make me feel warm
(And you know I get cold very easily.)
I see the first time we met:
How I laughed at you for sounding American.
How I felt like I’d known you forever
And had enjoyed every second.
How you didn’t know me
Yet offered me cake.
How could I not fall head over heels?
I see how you always play with your hair
(And was secretly mesmerised by it in every class
Long before I had the courage to kiss you.)
I see how we have so much in common.
I see how you make me feel:
Like I’ve just been hit
By a cooling breeze on a hot summers day.
But if you needed another reason –
If you fail to believe all that was said before
I give you my all and proclaim:
I love your glorious, adorable, wonderfully unique laugh
And I love that you hate that I love it.

Boredom, normal working day,
Normal person, bills to pay,
Sunny skies soon turn to grey -
Fiery explosion.

First a bang and then another.
Building shakes, he ducks for cover
Fear sets in, he starts to quiver –
Salt can cause erosion.

Quickly he begins to stumble
As his world begins to crumble,
Screaming soon becomes a mumble –
Miracle to conjure.

Building cannot help but shake,
Decision of how to die to make.
Fire or concrete which will take
The lifetime of the plunger.

He runs and jumps for all he’s worth,
Screaming like he was at birth
Seeing the toilet of the Earth
And the lifetime of the plunger.

The world, it seems, is crap sometimes.
You’ve just got to hope and pray:
For the poor souls who get the worst
And the hope that on another day
You are not the plunger.

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."

The world needs a hero.
Someone who can steer us
In the right direction.

The world is ******,
Out of luck, divided by factions,
Borders, rules, laws and orders,
Created by selfish *****.
***** politicians.
Men who treat human beings like fractions. Corrupt.
The kind of over-the-top villains you read about in comic books.
Or maybe it came to be by the Almighty all-seeing ****.
Another dastardly, ******* who is as ridiculous as he sounds or the world looks.
Who decides who lives or dies like a dictator murdering for sport or kicks.
He (because it's always a "he") picks which child kicks the bucket
And which rich, white man gets the luck.

The world needs Batman.
Not a bad man with a bad plan
To rid the world of different colours, customs, looks.
We don't need several bland, blonde shades of white.
We need the Dark Knight.
Someone to fight and rid the Joker from his rise.
Someone to take back what was taken, what they took.
Bad jokes everyday that make you choke
On the water that you **** as you watch the morning news.
A fish dangling on the media's hook.
You can't breathe but contradictorily you can't help but be amused
At the crazy things he's said or done.
The media controls our mind, our thoughts.
We've been bought by the capitalist system that we took
To be our salvation.
We need to look forward as one world, one nation
And fix all the massive cracks and little nooks.
And pray that when it's time he doesn't win.
And pray that the Earth doesn't reject it's kin,
By punishing the people who did it wrong.
We need to learn from our perpetual mistake song
And act before the world dies
When big business lies, and the waters rise,
And we continue to drive and live off burgers and meat pies.

We need a hero who can fix the mess
Who looks like Christian Bale or Adam West,
Who can fight for human rights and save the day,
And still have time for dinner by candlelight
With ladies without groping them for kicks
For not all men exclusively think with their *****.
Just the ones with big egos, small brains and smaller ******.

So we need action, we need a plan!
Some way to finally stick it to the Man.
A way to fix environmental disaster,
A way to feed the starving and the masses
Without death and destruction fattening our *****
And eating up the planet on a platter.
We need to find a way to cure disease
And stop the greedy, bring them to their knees
And act to put our collective minds at ease.

So what's my grand suggestion for this plan?
When you vote, you vote with what feels right
Not what's comfortable or written on a t-shirt -
At first it could be difficult and may hurt,
But it's essential for the future to be bright.
Look to the skies at every possible night,
And give the stars and clouds a thorough scan,
And when you find that eerie, striking, stark light
That issues the coming of a dark knight
Make sure you give your vote to Batman.

Time is a curious thing. The old cliché.
Not in a "heavy" Marty McFly way
But how, in one moment, you can pray for it
to grind to a halt.
Perhaps as you pound the asphalt
With your dancing shoes
Gasping, through puddles of ***** and **** and *****
To make the very last Nightlink
Of a heart-breakingly beautiful night out on Dublin streets.
And then another moment be wasting it away,
On writing poems, writing *******, writing the truth,
Or standing on the edge of a very tall library building roof
With the short sharp explosion of brain matter, praying it away
As it mulches on the concrete below.
Head first, to ensure success.
To ensure that for the love of god it isn't slow.
How time must crawl for people who can't move...

Each second dripping as slowly
as the painful near of a near-perfect tap.
Or "faucet" as they call it in America.
But then again we have buildings, pieces of paper, all kinds of crap
older than their whole country so what the hell do they know?
Their policemen shoot unarmed civvies or send them to prison  
as a sort of politically correct racial genocide
(because black privilege gets such lovely jumpsuits and body bags.)
Then again, we let priests ****** children here
and think **** is less upsetting than women's rights.
Time doesn't change how consistently wrong people can be I suppose?
If anything we overcomplicate ourselves.
Just think, if I had been born five hundred years ago
I would have died of pneumonia, or something asthma-related.
Or probably gone blind? My eyesight only is getting worse
(although is that to do with my endless-stream-of-computer-screens?)
I feel like that should be worse but I can't bring myself to decide.
Time seems to ask a lot of questions although maybe that is just
because I'm trying to stretch this poem out as long as it takes
before my twenties are over
and my life is more clear and certain
And I have a steady job that I hate
and I am less of a shambles
and have gotten over the depression
and the alcohol binges alone
and the fear of the future
and the self-doubt
and the loneliness
and the sickening
feeling in the pit
of your gut
when you
realise how
slowly
time is
passing
and you want to die.
Or not. I can never concentrate long enough to care.

Today at the train station

A stranger came up to me

And asked for directions.

I had the sudden urge to give him the wrong ones

Or take him behind the stairwell and

Gut him

And let his family watch as stomach and liver

Flobber out over slipping intestines, or simply

Grab him and throw him onto the train tracks

As the half five train approaches.

It would give people a reason to

Remove their sunglasses,

And possibly even their iPods,

Headphones dangling uncomfortably

As they fumble to save a pointless

(As well as futile) situation.

Maybe they would film it with their phones.

Maybe I'd be famous.

Instead I just sigh and give him the right directions,

Tell him the correct train to travel on,

And slowly smile as he waddles off

And doesn't believe me.

Today I walked to the pier
And I stared into the water
And I wrote and I wrote
I wrote nothings and everythings
And I let some tears out
And I reflected and I laughed a bit
And I had a good old think back
Over everything
Over and over again
And I was afraid that if I stopped writing
I would dive in and swim
Until I couldn't swim anymore
And maybe the water was a much more
Fitting death than a leap
From a tall library window
Or one feet first in front of a train
But I'm about to finish writing
And despite all my failures
And disappointments
There's something faint
Telling me to keep going
And I don't know what's worse:
That I don't know what it is,
Or that I so desperately want it to *******.

‪You're a hot stove from which I got burnt‬
And scars remain,
But they were never wasted,

'Cause although some say I've never learnt,
You don't remember the pain
When it's the best meal you've ever tasted.

Between wild swearing and flailing kicks
A dark dog dreams,
And a tear is shed.
This doesn’t come from puppy-dog eyes,
For they have been aged by the worlds evil,
Scarred by an owner
Who isn’t anybody’s best friend.
Constantly hungry, those black iron bars
Block his only chance of freedom.
If only he could jump.
If only he could fly.
He wouldn’t have to limp on broken legs then,
Or choke on broken ribs,
And he could finally come to food,
For food never comes to him.
Tonight is a special night though,
Tonight he gets some scraps before bed,
And dreams he wasn’t trapped, and had wings instead.