A Man Washed Up On The Liffey

On Thanksgiving

A man was pulled from the river

He had floated for days

Today he washed up on the bank

My friend and I

We jumped off our bus to watch

Our voices high pitched and excited

We laughed till the firemen turned the man

His limbs were static

Turned like something inhuman, rigid

We were quiet then

As he was hoisted up

The ambulance did not blare the siren

We walked home then

I tried to empathise but I couldn't

I didn't care, I can't care

My friend talked about the man's family

My family are unimportant

So in my death, they will be thought of

Given sorrows and kindness

If that man had no family

Is he worthless?

All that has changed for me

As I stood with the gawkers and watched

And did not avert my eyes

I learned 

That I am as bad as the rest of you.

Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse

Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse.







Lara was afraid. Her parents had been torn out of the car as they had looked for the keys. They had left her on the balcony and told her to be very quiet. They’d put their fingers on their lips, shushhh. She understood but she was screaming and crying now. It was her birthday, they said they’d go to the toy shop for a present. But the monsters from the television had gotten them. Her mothers face was turned towards Lara, Her Mother got up and walked in a strange way. Lara ran out the front door and into her mothers arms, her Mommy was alive, her Mommy was alive.

He was curled up in a tent. Next to his beautiful girlfriend. Or at least he thought she was beautiful. His parents didn’t, not with her dreadlocks and her veganism. She wanted to save the planet. They’d been camped out on the land for days. They’d left the city when they’d heard about the infection. She’d wanted to go here anyway, he folded his body into hers. He heard a twig snap outside, a deer? Fox? He pulled opened the front of the tent. That’s when the screaming started.

Julia had been married twenty five years. How she hated him now. He was snoring fitfully on the sofa. She walked out into the garden with her gardening tools. “Might as well pull up some vegetables for the stew”. She put on the radio and perched it on the ledge. The infection had reached her town. She stood up and smiled, reaching down she picked up the hedge trimmers and walked towards her sleeping husband.


Celebrity Zombie!

As she lay on her chaise langue, her hand reached out and fingered the crystal glass in which her Bloody Mary was stagnating. Her bodyguard entered, he was tall and dressed in glittery black sequins. “Gaga, the undead have risen”. She took that as her cue to get up and tiptoe over in her white heels, “They will not come for me, for I am their Queen”. Her body guard leant back, puzzled “They don’t care if you’re famous Gaga, they will eat you”. She scoffed at this and tossed her crystal glass into the fire. “Invite them in and we will see”. The body guard shook his head and took a step back, then turning to run towards the door, she heard it slam as he exited. Then heard his screams as he was devoured. She walked over to the door and pulled it open, “Come, come meet your Queen”.

Masochism is An Art

I knife stripe my upper arm. Suddenly it is engulfed in pain. The dewdrops fall on the white carpet. Masking it in my peace. His eyes wander to my arm, he is fascinated, transfixed by the spectacle. I pull at the blade again, across the gash. My back bends and I can hear  the birds, my pain becomes one with the world. I feel connected, solidarity breached by the open expanses beyond. The pleasure melds so readily with the inner struggles I have always faced. I feel reborn every time the steel of the butchers knife connects with my arm. I feel my roots stretch out, I am whole. His hand reaches out and fingers the scars that criss-cross my legs, my back, my neck. My soft, feminine skin marred with the beauty that comes from the knife, the razor blade. Garden tools and kitchen implements became different to me. I see them as methods for new scars, new beauty. They are an extension of my arm, a bringer of pleasure in the pain.

A girl I knew when I was fifteen, saw the scars and her eyes lit up. She was twisted and dark inside. Her emotions were one, That emotion was a longing for self satisfaction. She took a blade and swiped me, uncaring, she did not map my veins like I did. She hurt me and her back arched too. When the blood wouldn’t stop, I would take out my kit and sew. Like a rag doll I would piece myself back together as she watched with grey, eagle eyes. Her black hair, short and jagged. She was beautiful, she smoked her cigarette in its long holder and did not care for the stares she got. Jaws would be broken if people spoke out and they knew from her sharpness. They kept their mouths closed. They watched as she pulled me into a shop by my collar. No words were spoken, quiet flooded the scene. Old women would walk to the other side of the road as we approached. They knew something ungodly was afoot but their vocabulary did not stretch to accommodate such things. She ordered me and I followed her words like religion. “Sit” “Stay”, I did not falter. I knew her for what she was and I knew the consequences for inaction. She would test my endurance, tie me into a ball with rope and then leave me in the wardrobe, go about her business, perhaps go to sleep. She’d punish me with boredom because pain was not an option. I left her and the guilt nearly drove me insane, she did not care. Her plaything was gone but she would find another, someone who would stay indefinitely and sometimes I wonder if they do a better job than me and I wince with the competition for it. I want to compete. I want to see other boys and girls like me and be the best. Break the boundaries of what they can take and rise above.

Now I am alone. I have had new  owners but they are not enough. I don’t respect them because I cannot bring myself too. They are weak, uninventive. They have enough imagination for two rounds with me, maybe three and then they fall into old patterns. “Do what I say or I’ll… I’ll …”. I laugh at them and they hit me and with that they break my focus. I laugh at them and I walk out. Some claim they can master me, then they fail. They want to please me in their dominance, they don’t want to please themselves. I should be their object but instead they cuddle into me at night so I can hear their heartbeat. They tell me they love me. That is not what I want. I want the quiet, cold of anger of them. I want them to teach me how to be pure. I want them to deny me my own needs to fuel their own desires. I don’t want them to love me, tell me I’m beautiful. I want them to use me. But they do not. That is their greatest failing.

Various Poems

Betrayed

Where are you, my betrayer?

Is it the glint in my eye?

My hand gestures at dawn

My demenour in blonde

Are my broken glances

What they noticed?

Ode to my betrayer

You have painted me colourful

Let me be ordinary for once

Show me my solstice quietly

I flick my wrists

Do you not know how to whisper?

Dream quietly and be humble

Or I'll cut my eyelashes off

Break my mind against your castle

My betrayer is a liar

He uses my words against me

Spits at me as I step

There is a horrible thing within

But sometimes he is gracious

Lets pretty men open doors for me

The gruff Sirs turning into flowery Misses

And when the night comes

He uses my voice against me

Makes me scream an octave higher

He chose how I sing

The  notes I hit, he plucked the strings

But if he does not stop

My betrayer will see

How nasty I  am

When I pursue a flawed masculinity

Denim Jeans

I want to see how your bones knit together

I want to name your veins

After greek gods till there are no more

Please, make me scream so loud

The neighbours are horrified

I want to see jealousy as I take you on parade

I long to cover you in blood

I want to see you red and glistening

Let me see your nightmares

So I can be in your dreams

I want to sew our souls together

So we will be one

Then we can take the bastards down with us

I want to feel the rush of pain

As we burst into flames

And tumble forever downward

The March Of Toads

We march like toads

Our fingers glitter with icing

Our worries behind us

The ones I forget I own

My teeth are grazing

On our despicable nature

Your lips are wet

Unpleasant in their anxiety

My lips like two half moons

Are trying to lead us down the path

Where we will not destroy ourselves

We slouch together, tangled

Unimportant limbs are weightless

Meshing and crunching of bones

All of our words have been spoken

So let us not speak at all

Verona

The streets I name Verona

Although they are not fair

The stretch to a leather infinity

Brick by brick, we will rebuild

It houses many a Tybalt

The skin tight jeans of the Juliet

Romeo drinks his sorrows often

I perhaps am Mercutio

I tell tales in my insanity

Tempered under my breath

I see my ending days

And I will go down laughing

Call upon the plague

On all your houses

On all your houses

Ugly Words

You are pathetic
As you fumble with your purse
Clasp a cigarette in shivering hands
You tell me your hardships
As if you were in famine
Constant pain you call it
That’s your life to you
I take a cigarette from the box
The stains on us match
You open your mouth to speak
But instead you groan
Fifty years my senior
No further along than I
But you are the only one
The only one who loves me
So I don’t show my doubt
My disbelief or sorrow
I smile and drink from your flask

Locality

I sit down on the pavement

The sidewalk of chewing gum

Dirty footprints of passers by

The plastic bags floating like tumbleweeds

There is a girl in neon pink

With a child screeching but ignored

The father blows smoke into the carriage

The fun and frolics of young love.

A man paces past me

Bag full of the cheapest cider

Talking incessesently on the phone

So common to my poor rural ears

A poet in a long coat lights a pipe

Grey hair in turbulant freefall

Finds some way into the shelter

His failure evident in every step he takes

Everyone huddles like sheep in the irish way

One girl is nestled away in hiding

The young ones have heard tales of her thievery

The stealing of money,identity,culture and space

The crows swoop past me as I write

Boarded up shop windows, my backdrop

My bus pulls up polka dotted in dust

Some get off, others stream in like cattle

I walk over and hand a man my coins

Masquerading as a child once again

My ticket discarded by my seat

I am approaching my judgement day

As I creep towards my future.

Yahoo

Some kid on Yahoo Answers wanted someone to write a poem for her about Diversity.
This is what I wrote.

Sometimes people are black
And when they're not they're white
Or actually they can also be inbetween
But everyone is an individual
Race is one of those things people think of first
But you can be diverse in gender
Or sexual orientation
I've got a diverse taste in pasta
Diversity also won Britains Got Talent
It was awesome when that kid
Jumped out of that bag
It was like "Holy ****"
Someone put a kid in a bag

Three Poems

For The New Muse

All of you have been the same

If I brought you together

To break out of your own skin

A river of death would begin

But this new one is the worst of all

Life hasn't broken you

But the world has been kind

It has been soft and gentle

Left no cracks and gave you everything

Warm meals, clean clothes, freedom.

Afraid to be judged as you are

But you cannot judge those who've never fallen

Childlike in their optimism so they be

The continual pessimist in me, drawn towards

you moving checkers the wrong way

When I have difficulty looking after myself

How can I make sure your innocence is kept?

The adult world is a stalemate

We can not bend it to our will 

King of Hearts

My heart is broken

Not by love but by choices

It tilts to Gods angle

Coughs up organs and stars

So don't expect a place in it

I live on lust and exhaust fumes

Fifth,sixth and twelfth chances

I like the feeling of sorrow on my breath

I'm a stealer of kisses

Remember my moonlit brush strokes

Across your skin

Maybe that is enough for you?

But maybe more for me?

Feed me and pay me in kisses.

I will leave with madness on my tongue.

Sweets

The matter of urgency

is

Our solitude and lack there of

I asked the boys of the green fields

Vodka bottles tipped near the swings

They answered in lead obscenities

Mixed in with their short sightedness

Plath, Lawrence, Bukowski?

Where are your Gods?

When they left did you paint them in gold?

This matter does not matter

The truth has lied to the poet often

Where are the children who've eaten the corn?

Where is my wolf biting my wooden door?

I will cover you all in blood

Love is such a timid thing in this

Documentary On Venezuela

I do not know you, Little One
But I’ve seen you in the graves
Creeping with my ancestors
Feeding on the beetles on the stones
You call me in the shadows
In the dawn of my indifference
To your plight in the favalas
Little beedy eyes bright in the dark

Saving one
Replaced by another

I can not give you all beds
So I will ignore your plights
And drink my scalding tea
Safe in the knowledge
That I
Will not become one of you