NO MANS LAND

 Van Goghs Mother said of Vincent
                          'futureless wanderings'

The trees tremble to capture light
swaying back and forth, shivering
as if the land had a fever. 

Hallucinating life, replicating
a Van Gogh sketched earth
bruised beauty, shellshocked. 
It's not who or what or when
or why did this happen?
you can put away your conspiracy
theories, man and time done this.

This is not a them and us border-
line or a checkpoint charlie poem.
This is no mans land, drive on but
be careful theres roadworks up ahead.NO MANS LAND

 Van Goghs Mother said of Vincent
                          'futureless wanderings'

The trees tremble to capture light
swaying back and forth, shivering
as if the land had a fever. 

Hallucinating life, replicating
a Van Gogh sketched earth
bruised beauty, shellshocked. 
It's not who or what or when
or why did this happen?
you can put away your conspiracy
theories, man and time done this.

This is not a them and us border-
line or a checkpoint charlie poem.
This is no mans land, drive on but
be careful theres roadworks up ahead.

EXISTENTIALIST HUMANITARIANISM

‘ there is but one truly serious philosophical problem

and that is suicide ?’

                       Albert Camus

The alarm went off

vibrating another day.

I see a wheelchair

a piss-pot a bed-rail and hope.

I see beyond this room-

this hell of un-adopted kingdom.

I see a car and a life

without this torment.

I reach down into my source

Again and plant my seeds of hope,

This is my forth year of digging my plot

And I’ve seen nothing grow.

I used up all my money planning a future

But god had no plans for me

I had to make my own tea, cook and clean

unable to walk.  God and the system

Let me down and I was left to dig my own hole.

I see the shoots grow

I throw back the covers and greet the day.

DEBRIS

I love the sound of breaking glass

underneath my wheelchair. Over

Fenced in debris,  living in a ploughed

Up health care.  Reading the paper

Sitting alone eating sausages and mash

On easter Sunday . the only thing that

Rose from the earth is dirt debris and

These spuds.

BEATIFICATION

I woke to to the sound of the 16^th century word

Ringing like an angelus.   Doesn’t it sound like

a word created in the 60s and the beat generation.

I watched images of a pure white stage filled

With men like Kkk men in dresses and funny pointed hats.

I thought it was going to see a rock festival

and a redneck rock star would get on stage

Instead I saw a man in a chair with a dress.

I don’t understand this cardinal law.

I have to live in the law of the land alone

And some elderly man in a dress gets cheered.

Like an image by Francis bacon

This image has been scarred on my mind

By a priest who tried to abuse me

When I was fifteen but he got

A dig in the head and I ran.

I should have said something but

I was ashamed I thought there was

Something wrong with me. I bet

He’s still abusing boys, what about

the families of these people.  What-

ever happened to empathy. 

These families have been ruined by

These people and yet they can still

Practice  and under my law

People go to jail and rock stars get ruined.

No wonder there’s an aggressive atheism

They created it.   I’m down here at the hide

By Lough Neagh hiding.

BAY A

The tree

In the mirror

By the pebble-

Dashed wall

Looks cold

Dark naked

and alone.

A SHIT SONNET

My world is coming down

With poetics and poetic literature

The meanings jump of the shelves

Pound and Eliot and all those

Cold grey words that go right over

Your head and drop like a blitz.

The war years are full of them

But it’s the books in the bogs

That really matters.

All those inward outward words

That find your centre and explode

Like the real ablutions of literature.

CRAIGAVON

The sound of nature and the cars go by

We are in between a city and a town ,

plans for spanish villas in northern Irish weather

and people from all the broken towns

give them hope for a good year dream

a drawn out utopia sketched by pen on paper.

The balancing lakes to balance everything

Heaven to a child from the north, south,

east, or west of troubled dreams.

Bringing with it all those broken dreams

Society’s wasteland beyond society

but the dream comes back to bite you.

Like travellers in an unfenced reservation

just like a trailer parked trash

ok there’s alcoholics at the lakes and junkies

in the flats there’s asbo’s coming out

of the new city pre-fabbed walls

this is like an American dream gone wrong

or a beatnik novel gone right

were all dharma bums on natures road’.