A small collection of poems, with original artwork, is now available to buy here:
https://wordsforghosts.com/book/
All money raised will be donated to Spirit of the Rainbow Heron.
Before / After
For the one I never knew, just how much I would miss you
Yet a new journey from one house to
another;
from scenes of a childhood to the scene of a murder,
the butcher,
of days when I could still dream.
I step onto the train, sit down on the floor,
with my back to the wall facing the toilet stall
door:
in this country we leave each other to search for
spaces that aren’t there.
Those pale blue eyes will never read the notes I was writing
in the margins of the novel I planned to give you
as a spontaneous gift / excuse for acting like a prick.
Thoughts & memories began their attack & so
I abandoned the project, left it to
the future
we knew would still be waiting.
Now, reading those scrawled excuses,
wishing
each letter was a bullet or sword,
piercing the presence of your absence,
I can only see those
last written words pinned to the wall
of the room in which,
for a while we performed the trick
of living.
What Is to be done
now that we have encountered the Enemy
is for us to scream “Tiocfaidh ár lá!”. After
our comrades, strangers & fellow humans are
being butchered, it is our obligation;
it is better,
to rise against,
again
& forever,
to resist the crimes that exist
in such a world as this.
From the river to the sea
We will never cease the struggle to be free
Sorry
“When you know my name / and all of my hideous mistakes.” *
Some apologies have an elegance.
This is not one of them.
There is no begging for forgiveness ,
Only that you – as witness to my prayers of apology- can somehow forgive me.
Again.
*Julien Baker – Rejoice
Every Us
For the one I hardly knew. For you, B
The weight against
my left arm;
the calm;
deliquesce into dreams,
& all other words that can never reach
across the distance between us:
return,
return to me,
don’t
leave, don’t
leave
only empties,
& drained memories
of masochistic anarchy,
& romantic naivety;
the weight no longer against my left arm:
how can I dream of anything without
your human heat beside me,
the scent and sense of you that lingered
for days; the way
each morning I would be made to
force myself to leave
from beneath
the bed sheets & between
transcendent moments of butterfly wing
flickering eyelids unfurling
into the purity of attention
beyond
the iris reflection?
You saw me & didn’t look away:
I thought I saw you until the day you
finally found tranquillity, that day
I remember so vividly, the day
I realised I was blind:
only saw what I wanted to, never
gave the true love you were long overdue.
With your name tattooed into my skin; with
these still-born memories knowing I will never hold you
again
I continue
for every me & every you, for
that short time when nothing else existed
but us.
Words for Ghosts 