Where buses still elapse with Time
Down straight Dame Street
The Trees are satellites that allow Children to look up
and let the pavement breath.

Earthen Columns that gate the Boombox Clubhouse tint
Flanked by the Yeoman Guards of Hollister
but forget to pay the same compliment
outside of American Apparel
Where Teenagers dream out fantasies
of lamp-lit, flash-shot
worship-worthy objectification
in a converted loft in the real New York
Their headphones spring streams of bright optimism
as they cradle knitted knee-high socks.

Take the curve round Trinity College
and laugh past the rumours
that it may soon float on Dow Jones
and dodge past the charity advertisers
Strutting over campbags of sleeping homeless
to Lemon Cafe for an overpriced Mocha
Which regardless deflates the sheen-covered hollowness
of green-comfy Starbucks

and learn the subtleties of speaking lightly
to dark-jaceketed Blonde girls
Whose eyes seem to sparkle "Yes, we have sipped
on Veuve Clicquot at reserved tables on Graduation nights
at Cafe En Seine"
-"Where Oscar Wilde might have drank"
- "..Had he been alive."

Then speculate on the best Festivals and whose
Films and Books are over-hyped and under-appreciated
and the after-College Gossip on who broke-up or stayed together
or who hooked up even though they shouldn't have
or regretted it

and who's doing a paid internship and who's moving abroad

and afterwards charmingly tease their superficial attitudes
as meanwhile they secretly take photos
to upload on Instagram
and later you'll fake-admonish them
for how they did this behind your back
while you were staring into the lake
in St. Stephen's Green.

When the moon no longer glazed the water
and had receded its contrast to the farthest grass
and you decide to take the last bus home.

Throughout
Caution Glints The Vowels
and Brands them too.

If I were to elicit success's embodiment
And to feel it's enrapture, like sin
It's touch, coarse as salt to the fingertips?
Would it smell like a rose on the wind?

To risk, for a shared surreptitiousness
That very boldness independence empowers,
to instead announce allegiance to the flock of the age
When drinking after hours

Should it matter on the stage...

As a coy rebuttal to loneliness
In prioritizing what you need,
by finding "circuitous" after a dip in the thesaurus
for describing a sentence about trees
("When, obviously, it's actually describing something...far more potent...than any mere tree.")

...what fails to show up on the page?

Such is the world that Art wanders into
All big gestures 'round a clattering din
....but instead, "Success" has meant to me
A home in my arms
And she feels like a world
resting beneath my chin
A thought that cancels out Art's disappointments
...And her breath is a rose on the wind.

We shot the movie
in chrome-based Black and White
Thinking we were '80's hipsters
with a sharp postmodern overbite

And three days later
we were cracking up
in the editing room
over a three-way monologue
on horrible lighting
in midday TV living rooms

Well that was July
and now August is ******* us off
My fashionably long hair is turning mulleted
and I've picked up
an off-season cough

And now you're somewhere in Brooklyn
trying to catch a break
Your hair's been cut
into a schoolboy's bob
and your new friends all
look like fakes

I'd never thought it'd be you
when I'm staring at a screen
it's funny how later in life
we focus
on what we once thought
were inbetweens

Our old friend is working like a robot
trying to make the weekend fit
I guess he supposes it's better
to be lit up just for christmas
than for the constant party graveyard shift

And I guess I'm supposed to believe you
when you tell me
"it's all still pretty fun"
eating beans for breakfast and supper
and spending Saturday nights on your own

But maybe I'm just jealous
there's probably a lot of truth in that
I suppose i'm just getting nostalgic
for the days when I was the only boy
who could make you laugh

The three of us never cut it off too severely
so I'm banking on that long weekend
were we'll meet up in some ex-undergrad hangout
and pretend we're all still best friends

"If we were born five years earlier"
Remember, I used to tell you
"We all won't be so cursed
I guess you were right in saying,
"our lives are going to take on the plot
of Metropolis, but in reverse"

I can't admit to having much to show
for all the pain that's left me here.

Worth as much as the fading of Autumn light,
or the memory of snow

Fleeting, if all consuming, the promise
of cult status
And sensitive, yet determined
(if sleepy) stands the catcher of the
Whims at the auditorium's open door.

...But it doesn't mean as much
as the first kiss of
Teenage lovers
after an ice-cream cone.

You could spend half a lifetime
searching for moments
that look like glossy photographs
And to hear your name whispered
behind your back-wherever you go.

If that sounds luminescent, it still won't solve a problem.

But what is "content"?
How far did I get?

Well...
In my prime
I was a Roadie for Boredoms
...and they were actually pretty nice guys.

The minutes and hours drench and drift
like evaporating mud-rain keening through the sides of my fingers
seamlessly
And my belly is warmed at the beigest radiator's synchronized glow.
"Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own."

Such were the words that glimpsed
at truth, that attempted such sweet
transparent reflection upon
my runaway-from-home boy-adulthood
daydreams.
Whimsy scored without the tears
but also without a grasp at love.

Without a chance of knowing all its disappointments,
co-dependencies and retreats.
Hubris instead flanked like steam rising off morning windows to ward off the cold.

Alone, (a recurring fantasy), I placed myself battle-rigid,
regarding only what was then contemporary
keeping a trench against the adherence of life's timepieces
Allowing only seized elation of thought to cluster and ferment out of
the ruins of the world.
Reporting on all but life's safest discrepancy,
the fear of ageing further,
Everyday.

What active pursuits had I, to locate and chase these memories with?
If memory would challenge my conviction,
these ballbearings, by talking back
to disprove the self-image as being merely selfish?
Will I feign to remember these words, nevermind the images, in fifteen years time?

Perhaps only a spark (an imitation of: Gaslight, Phone Charge, Sun) is ever needed
Chore-empty afternoons spent as if waiting in art galleries
for Rothkos to explode, to echo, to ignite something catastrophic,
Something permanently invigorating, that damages,
that which further longs to fall apart.

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 season is
Memories of kids whipping past
blowing dead leaves on bikewheels
with hoodies hung upwards and
Horror fiend masks.

A ringing of doorbells and delighted
screams rushing forwards
and "Trick or Treat" plunging
like fallen bobbed apples
into concuspiscent ears.

With the Moon bearing high
its dominance of silver contrast
and sandsmoke grimaces
on a clandestine land, ***** for mischief.

All fairytales begin
with a break-up of the family
I'm convinced
All Horror stories
are a crying out
for old friendships to re-emerge
after the gist of mortality
begins to sink in.

And from when I was a teen
most of my friendships, for better or worse,
have centred around attaching my darker thoughts
to something concrete: like a list of favorite author's work
or a poster of Robert Smith on my bedroom wall

claiming knowledge to a world established around my own

The stirring fire to keep on going, after waking up on frostbitten mornings
is not a need to impress with the sense
of my own self-determined
trudging through rain and seeking
lofty self-reward

...But in finding people
to share the walk home with
bounce Cure lyrics back and forth with
and who'll simmer down to a horror film
(without insisting on my recommendation)
at Halloween.