Generation of Men

A Generation of Men

A generation of men, that didn't cry

a generation that weren't allowed to

a generation of strong soldiers

a tough generation

a resilient generation

but those denied and unshed tears

at unchosen lives

at the unchosen losses

and unchosen traumas

would ferment in the hidden places

behind the barbed wire and wall

they would turn into hardened liver

and arteries that could not

contain the blood within

surging under the pressure of denial

of prohibited expression

Vulnerabilities disguised with swagger

and stiff stances, strong enough

to carry the weight of the defences

Hidden tears that would turn into

stiffened shoulders, clenched jaw;

clenched fists

red faced and threatening

railing against the meek and the mild

hawk-nosed and critical

of the trespasses of the child

The child in the mirror

that cannot be seen

that must not be seen

must be hidden behind smokescreens

and the toxic vices

that arise mists in which we can hide

or try

and when we have tried

and when we can no longer hide

we break

and break, but do not speak

we must not speak, we dare not speak

for we are

a generation of men, that didn't break

a generation that weren't allowed to

a generation of strong soldiers

a tough generation

a resilient generation

who will stay that way, until they

stand on the edge of bridges

cocooned in wombs of dope

or dead at the end of taut ropes

Amulets and Charms

I dwelled in the jungle. For a long time I dwelled in the jungle. I had forgotten how I got there, or where I had come from. There were many dangers in the jungle but I had learned to live there. I had set up snares and traps to protect myself from the creatures of the day and creatures of the night, and from the ghosts of the jungle. I had charms and amulets, to ward off the many evil and mischievous spirits. I was in the jungle and the jungle was in me. I knew nothing else. It was intense to dwell in the jungle. There was no time to remember, because in the jungle all your time is spent surviving. 

One day I found a stream

I was worried about predators at the stream, so it was only tentatively that I returned, watching from behind the tangles of vines and trees. There was something compelling about the stream. It looked and felt so different to the jungle, and it contained spirits of its own. 

One day, I began to follow the stream, but then was afraid I had gone too far, and afraid that I wouldn't be able to find my way back to the jungle, the dark jungle where I dwelled, the place that I knew, the spirits that I knew, the encantations that I knew by heart to keep me safe. 

I returned to the jungle. It felt even more dangerous and terrifying than it had before, and I grasped even more firmly to my charms, amulets and incantations. But, the spirits of the stream kept calling to me.

I would return to the stream several times, but I would return to my jungle. But one day the spirits of the stream called to me, and I followed the stream, until the trees changed, and the jungle became a forest. There was more light in the forest. There were still dangers in the forest, but it felt less oppressive, and less intense. I set up camp in the forest for a while, but I felt lost. The jungle had become such a part of me, and my way of living and surviving. I returned to the jungle, but it felt so terrifying, that I soon returned to the forest, by way of the stream. I started to follow the stream regularly, seeing where it led, and when I had followed it far enough, the stream became a river, with other streams converging and merging with it. There was a great power in the river. 

One day, I packed a small, light bag of belongings along with my amulets and charms, and followed the river, and the further that I followed it's course, the more and more light I could see as the trees thinned, and I could hear the birds of the forests all around me. Then, there was something else, a new smell. The air in the jungle was so humid, and the smells were heavy, damp and dense, but now, a different kind of smell came to me that was fresh, almost joyful, and the trees opened up onto a meadow full of wildflowers, and I walked to the end of the meadow, and at it's edge was a beach which bordered a great ocean. I sat on the beach by the ocean, remembering the jungle, remembering the forest, remembering the stream that became a river, that had led me here. The ocean called to me, and told me, that I was the jungle. The great ocean told me that I was also the stream, and I was also the powerful river that led me home, to the great ocean that was myself: my unfettered, uncurtailed, unhemmed in, undiminished, unadulterated, unshamed self. 

The ocean called to me again with crashing waves, and I threw my amulets and charms into it, and they were swallowed up in it, carried into its depths. The depths that were me, that were in me; from where the pebbles had come, that I had used to make them, to keep me safe from harm. It was me all along that had been keeping me safe from harm, in the terrifying jungles of my self. 

I sat with my self by the great ocean, and gave thanks to my self, knowing that I had loved my self all along.

The Ghost of Lack

Lack has haunted me

Like a ghost on my trails

Lurking in the corners of my insecurity

The ghost haunts me, and terrorises me,

But I am fixated by it, and cannot stop myself

Looking for it in every corner

So I carry a little box around with me

A little box of projections and presentations

Like a miniature museum

Of trophies and charms

To remind me of my lack

The things I don't have

The knowledge I don't have

The lifestyle I don't have

The friends I don't have

The lover I don't have

The craic I am not having

The little box, reminds me of who I am

The "I am" that was born from the lack

Left by the separation

When I fled my raw, unadulterated self

Into the arms of protective fictions

About who I am

But these gluey gleaming reminders

Of these fictions, become

Obstacles and diversions

That prevent the return

The return home

To the self that is ours

by birth right

The ghost of lack was maya

An illusion with no substance

But I used substances 

To fill the lack, the void

To protect me against it

To ward it off

And the ghost didn't go away

The ghost became more tangible

It was given body and substance

It became like a twisted guardian angel

An ever present apparition

An apparition that 

If you feed it, it grows

And demands more

But there is no lack

I am not lacking

I am everything I need

Narratives of Need

Maybe we do not need the objects of our needs, but need the need itself, and wrap ourselves up in them. With our needs, we play out dramas, of needs met or not met, and rely on our selves or others to meet those needs, or we blame them for not meeting them. 

Some play out the drama of self sufficiency. Self-sufficiency seems safer, less risky than relying on others. They long for freedom, but create their own prison of needs, and they will stay in that prison, and make it their home, as long as they can fulfil those needs and rely on no one else to meet them. If they then reach a point where they are unable to meet these needs, the myth of their independence evaporates, and they are brought back to the original pain of loss.

Others play out the drama of having needs that are some one else's responsibility to meet. They are well aware of the need they have; the hungers, the cravings, but will not supply themselves with the means to sate those needs, and wander around in the unpredictable forest of people, hoping to discover the world to be adundant, and able to provide. But sometimes the fantasy of the abundant forest, disappears like a mirage, to reveal no oasis, but a barren desert of despair; a land that doesn't care.

Others so revile the idea of needing anything, they will create mansions of adundance, hoarding wealth like a magic charm. They despise the needy, the spongers, the scroungers. They distance themselves from them, and live behind walls and gates, to separate themselves, and to hold back the flood waters of their own deepest darkest fear.

Yet, we don't even need the need. Not the object, not the idols, not the amulets and charms, or the need itself. They are an illusion that we use. They are a suffering, that we often wear like a badge of honour, a badge that reaffirms our identity, and we will continue to persevere dutifully down the road of our particular sufferings. 

However, sometimes people find an object who's power is so great that it consumes them, it swallows up the person whole, gobbles them up and devours them. That is a need of another category. Some people, are so traumatised by life and living, and having been born, and feel so homeless in the world, that they want to lose themselves in the darkness of wombs, or in the ultimate womb of death. 

They need to be swallowed up, because when they are swallowed up, the pain is swallowed up, the loss is swallowed up, the despair is swallowed up, the helplessness is swallowed up, and the terror of vulnerability is swallowed up. 

They give themselves up, and sacrifice themselves on the alter of that God.

Some Gods are monsters. 

Interrogating the Soul

It is easy to slide away from compassionate self-inquiry, and slip into a type of self-analysis that is much more like an interrogation of the soul, and lose the lightness, and perspective, as if demanding something from ourselves that could never come through force, only drawn out under the gaze of love, or teased out by curiosity. The holding space of new, potentially healing words, can become a prison that defines and confines rather than liberates.

You don't even know how you got there. One minute you were on a lovely winding country road, then you ended up on a crazy busy highway, as if the vehicle of your brain went into self-drive and took you away from the places where you could hear the still small voice of your soul, to a place too hectic for healing, and it is now time to take hold of the wheel and guide yourself back to the beauty, back to the place of compassion, and back to love.

Staycation

It is easier to fly away, than to stay. It is so tempting, to not be here. It is easier to fly away from ourselves, with all its thoughts and feelings, to somewhere else where we do not need to pay them any attention, or acknowledge they exist, as if those feelings were annoying children, or children that we pretend aren't even our own. Who's damn kids are these anyway??

So we jet off into the hazy skies of distractions, that we don't even consider to be distractions; just the necessary elements of life that we must tend to: work to be done, children to be looked after, bins to be put out, dinners to be made, laundry to be done, friends to be met, tv shows to be caught up on, purchases to be made, sleep to be slept, holidays to be had.

We fly into the haze, to another place that is not our place, into a vacation that is no holiday at all; like one of those trips, that ends up exhausting and exasperating, as we drag ourselves and our other or others around, ticking off the to-do-list of the successful tourist, with no time to waste, and nothing to be left out, ready for the next social presentation, because we need to make sure that everyone knows we had a good time, when really what we did was a good job. We return home exhausted and get back into it, into the bustle of our lives, the necessary bustle of our lives, the bustle that we complain about but couldn't live without. Afterall, where would we be without it?

Maybe it is time to come home. Come back home. To return, from places that are not our place. To descend from the hazy skies, and the bustle of our lives, and come in to land. To ground ourselves in the ordinary landscape of our souls. A place where we can listen to those fucking annoying kids, and learn to accept them as our own, maybe even love them. A place where the feelings that once felt like terrorists threatening the benevolent order, actually start to sound more like prophetic voices that point to the oppressive tyranny you had been living under all this time. A regime where you couldn't breathe; you could not breathe, and your soul could not stir. Even then, you had the prophet locked up and silenced, her writings burned or redacted, but her words were already in the aether of your mind, and you could not unhear her words, and the ember within you was finding air in them.

That ember glowed, in your darkest places, and it would burn you sometimes when you weren't looking where you were going. You would be on your own, lost in a screen, and a stranger would tap you on the shoulder. The strange feeling, of a feeling. The strange feeling of a true feeling, of a feeling that is yours and only yours, and all of a sudden you are no longer delighted that the sad man, with the horrible story, had the voice of an angel and was picked by the judges, because now it is as if the test has arrived, and those kids are your kids. The kids you denied, disowned and disavowed; that were neglected, because life is so hard and you have been trying to cope, but they do not want to be ignored any longer. They want to be seen, to be known, to find themselves in your gaze and be found acceptable. They are calling you to come home to them.

It is time to come back home. To stay. To fall in love with what is already here, and always was.

Ring of Steel

You have a ring of steel around your heart
but there are forces within you
that are colluding
secretly
covertly
to terrorise you
to disrupt you

shadow feelings
ghostly apparition feelings
armed with the kryptonite
that threatens to weaken your defences

you want to assassinate these feelings
before they get you in the underbelly
leaving you softened and vulnerable

being vulnerable is something you must never show

and you cannot get your hands around
those feelings
to choke the life out of them,
and you cannot muster your strength

being strong is not how you win this war

but all you know is how to be strong
you are concrete, and steel,
fences and razor wire.

yet, the only way you can win this war
is with openness

yet, the only way you can win this war
is with vulnerability

yes, the only way you can win this war

is on bended knee,
with head
leaning in to
hear with humility
the voice of the other
who's voice 
you have sought
for so long to smother

yes, the only way you can win this war
is with love

Family

Blood is thicker than water
He said
Family more loyal than friends
they'll always be around
fuck!...that’s it,
they'll always be around
you can't get fucking rid of them
they are like skin

a skin that holds you in

Like words in a verse
and that's the blessing

and that’s the curse

the curse of
the familiar
the familial
the family

the familiar family

the only one you will know

or at least have to be in

figure out, survive

get out, the other side

there
like furniture
annoying furniture
people furniture
furniture with feelings
and expectations
and moulds
and manipulation
and all those other gifts
we use to make the world
the way we wish it to be

parents wanting children

to be more like their parents

children wanting parents

to be more like children

everyone wanting something

from someone

other than what they

most naturally are

six narcissists in a house

…
sounds like the start of a joke
it kind of was
but not a funny one
not funny at all
rarely funny, or fun
mostly
awkward, at best
frustrating...infuriating
everyone clambering

to meet their needs
or deny their needs
finding voices, burying voices
both choices

as poisonous as the other

tears for lives unlived
tears for choices not made
tears for this

this mess, this shit
angry for this

this, the fire

the fire in which we are forged

the furnace

where only alchemy

can riddle us out

of the bad joke

wiggle us out

beyond the hedge

beyond the confines

beyond the pale

into

this

the

bleak

barren

plains

of

solitary

savage

wildness

outside

of

this

fucking

crazy

zoo

they

call

calamity

…

sorry

I

meant

family

Museum of Forgetting

You say you are always changing

but you are just staying the same

radically the same

a disguised same

distracting yourself

from something

something like difficult feelings

with superficial changes

and flights of fancy

that you call freedom

but,

you are like a kite

on a million strings

trying to be a free spirit

you keep telling the same stories

over and over again

the same story about yourself

as if it were a little white lie

you were desperately

trying to convince

me

and you

of

and all the rest is a coverup

as if you won't let the water settle

long enough to see your own reflection

in case you see a tear in your eye

that you will never be able to wipe away

Secret Sins and Shames

Thoughts like fingers

slip around my brain

as if trying to find a grip

on something

infinitely uncontrollable

like life

trying to find anchor in open sea

like the open sea

between you and me

that is never constant

and never sure

just ordinary and ambiguous

and it scares the fucking shit out of me

and I am longing for dry land

and solidity

under these feet

that are weighed heavily

with secret sins and shames

and ordinary human failures

that I don't allow myself to make

Little Bastards

Difficult feelings

growing inside you

like unwanted children

gestating in the darkness

of you

like little bastards

tormenting you

with their presence

you would have them aborted

rather than birthed

ripped from you

before they can learn

to speak

and form words

and express what you

dread to hear

Please Come Back

Sometimes the stresses you thought were big

are ones you would beg back

now that you are armed with hindsight

and ready to tackle any other problem

than this

any stress other than this

because even problems with solutions

can have a legacy

that never goes away

because these histories

are being written with every yes and every no

and every I don't know

and every maybe

and no-one is outside of the writing of these stories

there are no outsiders

we are fully participating

even if your head is in the sand

where you would like to stay for a little while longer

Time to Go

Remember those days
When it was time
To go
To go home
But you weren't ready
It didn't seem like
the right time
And the
Car-ride home
Was long and heavy
With bitterness
With grief
Sickened by the cruel reality
That time flies
When you're having fun
There's just not enough
Of it
Not enough time
To get one's fill
To get satisfied
To get full to the brim
And
That winter
Seemed like the
longest darkest
Winter ever
And it seemed
Like there would never
Be another circus-tent
Or another moment
You would wish would never end

Little Drunken Moments

Little drunken moments of meaning

appearing like a mist

over a barren field

a haze

offered like a sacred space

for feeling to run abundant

and uninhibited

like the

circle formed around a fire

that spins an intoxicating story

when we allow ourselves

the impossibilities

of freedom, truth and greatness

when we feel like the otherness

that is cut into us like a scar

is more tangible and real than our lives

then the morning comes

and the mist dissipates as we wake

into the more redundant world of sobriety

but wouldn't you rather die free

fighting for something impossible

Take a Deep Breath

Take a deep breath;

Take a deep breath
And
Jump
That's it, 

ok
I can do it afterall
This is the hardest part
This has got to be
The hardest part, just
Take a breath

And

JUMP

I won't know
how it will feel
If it will end in pain
Just break me up
Bust me up
But not kill me

Ah shit
Just take a deep breath
And
jump
for fuck's sake
Jump...jump...jump

...

And in that moment
A vision dawned
That life and death
Were twinned
Joined at the hip

And with lungs filled full
Possessed not by reason
But by the fool
In me
Exhilarated by a possibility

This

The first freshness
I had felt in years
I was here
I was here
And somehow

The longing for an ending
Gave birth to a beginning

And I felt the
Spectre's touch
Slip around me
But not
The touch of loss
Not loss any more
Gentle Nihil, tender Nihil

Nihil

For soul's too sore
For hearts
that once on sleeves
were worn

Before
connective tissues
torn
Before
we tattooed
our souls
with incantations
and vows
that no more pain
would be allowed

And bridges would be burnt
And no more
Lessons would be learnt
Except
Numbness until death
Numbness until death

But then
I felt Nihil's breath
Now 

a subtle whisper
melt
the dark magic
of my vows

And ask
That I have faith
That the ordinary
Will be enough
If I'd just take

a deep breath

And

Jump

May you Resolve to be Unresolved

May you keep a vision alive in your mind
not a burning vision that blinds
but a low lit flame that warms
and draws you toward
and whispers to you
not, of a different you
but of a you,

that can breathe more deeply
that can walk taller, and live fuller
the same you,
that you ought to have loved

from the moment you first fell down
from the moment you first gave up
from the moment you chose the safer option
from the moment you put up that first fence

May you keep a vision alive in your mind
a subtle flame of otherness
that allows you to slip in between the spaces
between the versions of your self

those you love a little more,
those you hate a little more,
those you are more willing to show
those you would like to hide

May you learn to love your mess
May you find the terrorist within,
and begin talks
may you encounter the craziest reflection of yourself
and look back with love, and honesty, and grace

May you learn to cry, and break down
May you learn to stop being strong
May you learn not to have it all together

May you resolve, to be unresolved

Beyond the Bars

Beware of the Watchmen.

If you are thinking of escape,

they are on alert

and will catch you in their gaze.

and convince you that

here is where you belong

sure, it's almost all you have known

Beware of the Watchmen

if you need to get free;

to open the shackles

and learn how to breathe

For beyond the bars

it's uncertain and cruel

To leave this security

Would be the wish of a fool

Beware of the Watchmen

and their cocktail of fixes

for if you try to get past

their barbed wire and ditches

you'll have become so hooked

on their dopamine lines

you'll return like a dog

with tail between thighs

Give me back my screens

Give me back my vice

Give me back my blanket

Give me back my lies

But Sir,

the doors are wide open

and you have the key

You own this prison

You didn't want to be free!

Security Blankets

My inner child has been drinking
Not me
No, not me

Because I have been thinking
That I don't need to be drinking
At least
Not every night of the fucking week

And I have been thinking
About how my body needs a break
Before it breaks
If it hasn't already
Broken, with secret aches
That will reveal themselves
At later dates

And I have been thinking
About how the liquid in the
Glass or tin
Helps me avoid a change within
An acceptance I will not make
Like a ghost feeling
From the death of god
I'm still caught up in its wake
Still alone, for Christ's sake
And holding onto loss
Like it holds me

As if, since God, I've been incomplete
As if, since Love, I've been incomplete

But, it's my inner child that's been drinking
Not me
No, not me

Nausea

From where did this illusion come?
Who fed me this illusion?
Was I force-fed it? Spoon-fed it? Breast-fed it?

Wouldn't we all sell our souls; our desires, in exchange for contentment, safety, security? We'll buy a myth, a story, a fortune cookie from any gypsy on the street, just to be able to have a prediction of the future...to kinda-know what we're in for...kinda-know what the stars hold for us.

We swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and we swallowed it because we begged for it. We begged for the appeasement. Anything to minimise the nausea of the open sea; of freedom, decision and risk. Desiring is such a risky business. Some of us titillate ourselves with wants, appeased but unsatisfied. Wants are the diuretics of the soul. We addict ourselves to wines and spirits, but starve ourselves of the waters we are truly thirsty for. We trade in our desires and the risks inherent in them, passing the responsibility on to someone else or something else.

We, who like to get caught up or swept away. We, who are the flotsam and jetsam in the turbulent river of our circumstances. We, who let it all feel like it is beyond our control. We, the passive pawns push our desires safely beyond our reach. We get to wash our dirty hands of messy, disconcerting desires. Lest we be caught in the act of desiring, and acting on it, and risking getting something close to satisfied. We console ourselves with the idea that life was beyond our control; beyond the realm of our own personal freedom, decision and risk.

Do we pray to a God to change his mind about his working in the world, or is God beyond human persuasion? Like Jesus in Gethsemane, requesting the cup of suffering to be taken away from him. We request it, we plead for it; sweat blood for it in utter desperation, and we suffer the disappointment, suffer the world that does not correspond with our desires.

The Gethsemane of the Disillusionment, when Narcissus is left without an Echo.

Of course, we crave control, as much as we crave the loss of it. Yet, oftentimes it is the fear that wins out, and we retreat to safety in the surrogacy of responsibility. Risking the world against the weight of our desires. Throwing out our voices like Narcissus, hoping desperately for the return, for the correspondence. Here we are, hooked on the idea and the illusion that the world corresponds to our desires.

It doesn't.

Sometimes it does, or seems to, but that is simply a hankering after the illusion of correspondence. That is me reading with desperate eyes and a hungry heart, trying to connect the arbitrary with the intentional. The intention of a God, the intention of fate, being looked after, watched over and provided for. My secret needs, known without the risk and responsibility of communication, and those needs being met. Ah, sweet synchronicity, blessed coincidence, the answer to prayer.

The twenty pound note on the pavement when you are running low on funds at the end of the month. The love of your life coming into your life just when you were feeling so lost and alone. The lost ticket being found just in time for the departure on a long journey. The health of a loved one returning days after the prayers have been said.

But, then there is the falling feeling. There is the nausea. I have felt it before at different times of my life. Each time I had convinced myself that I had developed my sea legs; (and maybe someday I will) the nausea had gone, but what I had really done was I paddled back to dry land. I was flicking my toes in the water, longing for the open sea, but too terrified to go out of my depth: beyond the continental shelf of my control, into the turbulent ocean of my desires.

When the world corresponds, we get to wash our hands of the responsibility for communicating difficult feelings, and we get drugged on the myth once again. We dread the thought of demystifying our desires and the complex little stories we weave around them. Like the partner who never experiences pleasure during sex, yet refuses to communicate what it is that might bring them pleasure. Suffering in silence, the dissatisfaction, the discomfort or even the pain, rather than risk making a request. All to maintain some illusion, to keep us mystified and hidden in a cloud of our own making.

Some are getting by on their own personal superstitions. They roam the streets, with nervous ticks, expecting nothing but hoping for everything, disguising their hopes through the monotony of routine and ritual. They are the magpies looking for treasure. Looking for the coins that have fallen through the hole in God's pocket. Still hooked on the illusion of connectedness, just lowering our expectations little by little, until we are waiting desperately for crumbs of correspondence. Morsels of meaning.

Still out at sea, and still looking for dry land. 

The Kingdom Coming

Between 
I and the I-dea

is stagnant space
sterile solemnity

so fuck the idea
and taste the 
sweet juices

messy and sweating
excreting and pulsating

for now 
there is 
something happening
and 
in that 
groaning interaction
there is

healing
from the 
poisoning

that toxic sanctuary

of the separation 
between

I and the I-dea

so fuck heaven

give me the
kingdom coming