"unsexy" poems
“Oh you’re Irish?” he said.
“Did you learn the language much?” he said.
Honestly, what can I tell him? I was raised in the North - a ****** wasteland for such a naïve question.
Vague memories of fumbled classes where our secret history was ditched just to get straight into the basics (Cad é mar atá tú?)
No – seriously - I was not tied to it – it was anonymous to me at that age.
Forgotten like some distant echo of once visiting Coole House as a child.
Sure, we knew it was “important”, “our national language”, “heritage” etc. and we were warned it was quickly slipping into the drain of Western hegemony.
But it was baffling, unsexy and only the blunt-faced humorless IRA thugs amongst us were in any way keen.
Then it was gone, just like the faded memories of “The Children of Lir” from my primary school.
Looking back I wonder, what was the point?
A half-full measure paying lip service to our identity.
Teachers and headmasters terrified of the grand colonial reveal that the lessons might have hinted at (were they trying to stop us being Provos-in-waiting?).
And all of this against the awful shame of a common tongue that had no foe yet was slowly vanquishing from our shores.
It could have all been so different.
Rather than rushing to get something in our empty skulls, they could have given us a sense of joy, pride & belief in our own culture.
Calling on Yeats, Behan, Heaney and others to drown us in the language of our ancestors.
Telling the stories of old that only the academics & hippies were keeping from us then.
You know, it might kept us all on the same beautifully illuminated page.
We might have been comfortable in our skins and open to others,
not looking deep into our worthlessness and lashing out at them.
Language is being and language is connecting, I’ve learnt.
But that’s not something I got from my secondary school.
June-July 2018
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 6:06 PM UTC
Yeah, I guess you could say that. I seem to be past the hex. I have a job again, one I like. I'm teaching. But I can't help but hear that song from Wizard of Oz play over and over in my head. No. Ha ha. I wish it were that one. No, it's the one that kicks up as they leave the poppy field. "You're outta the woods, you're outta the woods." That song is so hopeful yet undercut by something looming, inevitable, a bigger fall to come.
Sure, I still think of her.
But what I was getting at earlier is that I feel like I'm at this point in my life, this middleplace, where the abstraction of love, the mysticism of the body, all of that ****** fog seems to be clearing. The people around me are plucked white, devoid of any raw, genuine sentiment. They view the body in a way so clinical. I only hear of its limitations or its capacity to bear children.
Peter Pan Syndrome? Maybe. But if the body is reduced to its most rudimentary boundaries and functions and not treated as an instrument of erasure or alchemy, then what's the point?
Yes, she and I talked about kids, but that was always so far away. At this point, I don't know that I want them. Her? That's hard to say. I'll concede that the happiest moments of my life involve her. But, and I see the irony here, on some fundamental, unsexy level, we enabled poor behaviors, addictions. We both suffered from depression and didn't know how to dig each other out.
I never see her in a negative light though. You look surprised. I don't. There she is and there are all other women. She's fifty feet tall in my mind. A femme titan. Whipsmart, funny, kind.
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 12:04 PM UTC
Labotomize these thumbs,
they scroll more than they strum.
I don't mean to be dumb,
but I can't respond back so I hum,
and you won't hear me.
No, you can't see the words that I write.
I'm sure you'd only
be tickled,
If you knew that I think of you all night.
Because I can't sleep, love.
And I can only touch me right,
Yeah, that's right.
Just me, love.
Hope I can keep up with this fight.
And I know you don't really care,
and you haven't got some spare
feelings left to share
and if there are, they're barely there.
So drop the pity,
I'm mad you got to hear me whine.
How unsexy.
I'm supposed to just be doing fine.
I'll compartmentalize,
put it in a box and tie it with twine.
while you're liking every post of mine.
I'll compartmentalize.
While I reread your every line.
Dec 8, 2017
Dec 8, 2017 at 8:08 PM UTC
I'm not the kind of girl guys want to date.
I don't know how to do my hair
make-up, or nails.
I don't even know
how to dress myself
most of the time.
I'm awkward.
Unsexy.
Crazy.
I don't know how to dance
but I know how to throw a football.
I don't know how to cook
but I can make a basket
from the free throw line.
I'd rather go camping
than stay at a resort
I'm always
"one of the guys"
and never
the girl
guys wants to date.
Jul 24, 2012
Jul 24, 2012 at 4:59 PM UTC