MysterTrees

Laterally lying low and long
With his crown upon the ground,
Was there a witness to hear his song,
Or was he silently found?
Appearing gently laid,
Was he beckoned or was he swayed?

Surrounding him they stand,
Rooted along the trickling creek,
Brethren in soil remanded,
No bite to their bark and no sound to their speak.
Leaves leave whispers riddled in rustle
To the cacophonous sound of nature’s hustle.

His twisted trunk and his timber flesh,
Supported and sprouted his last spore.
Without nutrients to nurture them fresh,
Seasons shall he fair no more.
Nearby lies another fallen friend of the forest,
Were their collapsing crashes chorused?

Heaved from the earth,
Ancestral roots now sowed in sodded soil
Along the shore of the firth.
Amid teeming threats he toils;
A seeded seedling symbolizes hope,
Above the parapet like a peaking periscope.

Arching towards the suns sweet kiss,
Can he see through the verdant canopy?
Between bowing boughs a glimpse for photosynthesis
Means a surging sapling can become a tree.
Will he flounder in a foundation sodden,
Or by a hikers boot be trodden?

Stemming from his thinly stem, his chances slim,
Will he stand where no other has before?
With the upward journey set to begin
Has he been happened upon by a herbivore?
Would he survive the tasting trauma
Brought about by such feeding fauna?

From decaying debris and decomposition
He may grow up to be tall;
A tremendous towering exhibition.
Or, like his father, he might be felled or fall.
Whether he survives is up to weather and time,
All just chance; no reason or rhyme.

Such odds will he have to overcome
And great perils against strive,
So that to the competition he does not succumb.
Will he perish or will he thrive?
Still I dream and still I wonder,
Rooting for him in my slumber.

The Junkie Monkey

Another sleeping bag skeleton crawling through town,
Skins gray, eyes blue but minds brown.
His face pale and gaunt with a past present and future to haunt,
Surviving and biding on the scraps and the shraps;
The subsistence of his miserable existence.
Thin to begin his future’s rapidly narrowing with the memories harrowing
And it’s only the misery that will spoil when he shuffles off his mortal coil.
His daily nitty gritty through the fair city fairly shitty
With the ins and outs of drugged up droughts
And sniffling snouts on whizzed up walkabouts.

We all know the sound of his cup’s shake
Along the path of the purple railed snake,
Ticketless on and off they hop, another head at the stop
Looking for loose change at the Luas machine
With hands glazed in dry blood, he looks at you and says ‘Story bud’.
The pained drone of his diction, all alone in his addiction.
So sickly he should be in hospital
But quickly claiming he just needs ‘a birra money for a hostel’.
Yet he’s clearly under the brown spell
And God help him he’s going through a dry spell
And you know he’s trickin’ so instincts kick in,
Thinking all the while it’s the street wise style
That they’re only trying you to wheedle for another go of that needle.
So automatically you shun, when a thought occurs to stun

When did we start believing needlessly that the needy need less

Never stopping to think and make the link
That maybe it’s not his fault, and our approach we should halt;
When he’s been written off since his first day of school
And we treat the majority like the exception and not the rule.
Yes for some it was a conscious choice
But those fools shouldn’t drown out the others voice,
The ones with stories unmeasured that society quickly severed
And blind eyes turned, emotionally disconnected
Until the true tragedy could be learned, that this boy was neglected
Forgotten, downtrodden, wrapped in barbwire not cotton.
His escape from the pan to the fire was in the mire of getting higher
And his circumstance isn’t just happenstance.
See, he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks so into his arms he laid those bad tracks.
Sprouting up on society’s fringe he packed persistence into the syringe,
Chemical drain of the brain’s resources
As he was strapped into the reigns of heroin’s horses.
Wrapped in the warm fuzz of deceit with belt clenched teeth,
His strength and will are jading and his life force quickly fading.
Now happiness only ever feels like happy-less
And sadness feels like death tormented with each breath.
No hope he has in the opiates
Swapping this misery for that misery, it aint a mystery
That there’s no hope I mean in the dopamine,
Putting problems on the long finger getting longer as they linger.

Now he’s trapped in the inferno and he’s in for no
Soft end zone landing with benzos branding
The brain between the brown and the mundane
His only safety net during this interval
Involves parachuting up on intervalium
Shielding him from the harsh prick of his reality
Only ever feeling the stick and not the carrot of spirituality
See, as a child he missed a trick and it’s such a pity
That he was never told how all this would unfold
He couldn’t see impending destruction without a guiding hand or instruction
Abandon hope all ye who shoot up gear
It ends on rope all ye who commute on fear
Living on the cusp of life and death
With a glimpse of heaven fading fast
And the depths of hell approaching in sails of Hades’ mast
When Satan’s scepters take control of opiate receptors
He feels the rough and tough of the devils dandruff
Muddying the waters of spit on spoon laced with doom
The fatal fate inscriber thread through every inch of his mortal fibre
This infection killing himself and part of society’s fabric with each injection
He may have had rehab using a method we own trying to wean him off with methadone
But to call it rehabilitation would give you pause for hesitation
Those clinics useable as a seedy social network
And it’s inexcusable that we let this work
But forget the offshoots and the root causes cause we’re just tackling symptoms sometimes
Service or disservice, either way it was all in vain when he started haulin’ it back in the vein
With the drive, the goal, the will to survive in a hole despairingly filled
With uphill battles getting harder and harder and harder
And any chance of return or redemption getting farther and farther and farther
So he’ll keep chasing the dragon, despite the distresses and hardships dragging-on

Knowing what we know to be so
Should he be chastised when his whole life he’s been hypnotized
Is it really right ignoring his plight just because we know the error of his ways
His are dark and numbered days
You too would want to escape the tragedy of his lives tape
He just missed the starting gun, when you had been supported, loved and trained to run
Just remember in the bigger picture, you, me and him were all made from the same interstellar dusted mixture
But the junkie monkey’s giggling on his back, so let’s not let our empathy slack
Starving him doesn’t fuel the light nor giving to him end the fight
So it can be change for better, change for worse
Either way it might ease his pain or lighten his curse

Herds of Birds

My eye delightfully follows
The glory of nature’s majesty
A murmuration of swallows
Weaving a telepathic tapestry
With this sighting of chance
I’m delighting in nature’s dance

Opaque against the tinted sky
Looping and swooping as though one
Seamlessly reuniting up high
Then swirling and twirling like water run
As rare as the ivory tusk
They skim their wings along the sky at dusk

Gliding and dividing above the trees
Collective conscience at its finest
Moving and grooving together with such ease
The display of a deity’s divinest
Your soul it will uplift
To witness such a gift

The Banks Are Up You See

They say that after the storm you will never be the same
And he remembers when it started to rain
At first a few drops and then a huge torrent
None consequences he did warrant
He fought tooth and nail to keep things going
But pretty soon in debt he was overflowing

And the banks were closing in
First letters then phone calls did begin
A faceless voice he’d never met
Berated and chased him over some debt

Every Friday evening the telephone rang
So that for the weekend, with worry his head would hang
And at 5 o’clock each Christmas Eve
His festive cheer they would thieve
With a simple call from a known number
To fuck with his head and disturb his spirited slumber

It’s easy to forget when they’re suited pricks
But these are some of their lesser known tactics
Mounting his bill with their interests and thick tax
Piling his green into their bottomless sacks
Then they demand for him to be submissive
All the while ignoring their past behaviour so permissive
When it was them that held his hand
And said we’re partners in this land

Now called in for a meeting
His peace rattled by these bullies mistreating
The smarmy shylock talks so authoritative
It’s difficult to think he’s a human native
“I’m afraid you can’t have children
Not until you pay us back this half a million”

A proposition steeped in audacity
That they could set the opacity
On his futures light
And they think they’ve got that right!?

If you read the terms and conditions
Never did he sign away his loin’s fruitions
But they want their pound of flesh
And by God they seek it fresh

Times I’ve wondered are those clerks to blame
Perhaps not, but I hope upon their soul they bear some shame
Because after all the Nazis were only following orders
And these boys obeyed the greedy money hoarders

Practicing predatory lending, encouraging imprudent spending
Vicious victimization, for the sake of profit optimization
Then seductive securitization, their true aim capital colonization
And you’re telling me an institution filled with minds of intelligence
Can plausibly plead such innocence
Because when the chips are downed
That’s when they come around
Sounds like an organization run by Al Capones
But worse than his, this behaviour our government condones

So looking back, his whole life a calm before the storm
Friends, family and home his daily norm
Lives intertwined with random rendezvous’
Once something they thought they would never lose

Time together for granted taken
Until their earthly foundation was shaken
Their cadence collapsed
The familial rhythm relapsed
Unemployable he was now branded
So from his homeland he disbanded

And how long ‘til it’s on the teabags
His tale from rubble to trouble and riches to rags
The thing that’s really funny
Is he never actually had that much money
It was all just decorated on paper
Now evaporated like water vapour
“Millionaires in bricks and mortar”
But bankrupted in the space of a fiscal quarter

Sexy Sonnet

When like turns to love and want becomes need
Even the angels up above would suffer with greed
The teasing tingle and that magic flutter
Our taste buds mingle and my thoughts they stutter

Closely we stand and neatly we fit
Though never planned, the feelings transmit
Like I a hand and she the glove
Some neural gland tells me its love

Invading my spine was a surging warm rush
Engaging the divine, the endorphins gush
With heartbeats synced and stares interlocked
Our bodies linked and my world she rocked

To my elation,
Sweet, sexual, sedation.

Let’s go Lego

Clickety clack
They click and crack
Brick by brick
Together they stick

I love that distinct sound
When you rummage through the mound
As a kid they had me beguiled
And now an adult they turn me back into a child

From the comfort of your lap
You can build a city or create a map
Arrange an image in a nation
All you need is your imagination

One brick’s a car and two’s a plane
Three bricks a ship and four a crane
You can make things really stupendous
Because the possibilities are truly endless

You can hold the world right in your hand
And your mind they will expand
The term that we go by is AFOL
Which ironically doesn’t sound very playful

Because often I’ll play with a friend
And our piles we must defend
As we trade across the floor in little guilds
Each bargaining for crucial pieces to complete our builds

My favourite are those little 2x4s
I love it when I’ve a pile of them in their scores
Interlocked they form the sturdiest of walls
Their scarcity causing many brawls
And the long ones are deadly grippers
To dislodge those little nippers

In my collection I’ve also got lots of K’nex
But shhhh, don’t tell the boys though, it makes some of them vex
They also don’t care for those knock off Megablocks
Even though there’s one or two in my stocks

But none of that nonsense Duplo
That stuff’s just childish pseudo
And I’m not a big fan of those bespoke pieces
I prefer geometrical masterpieces

And as I try the pieces to sunder
I think to myself ‘wow what a wonder’
Blocks of colour in molded plastic
The simplest idea with effects so fantastic

Still to this day I play with them in bed
And wake in the morning with one stuck to my head
To this boy, one little brick of Lego
Is the only toy I’ll never let go.

Glory Haze

Do you remember that nostalgic haze?
Smoking forty shades over long summer days.

Our only defence against the species midgie
Was the smoke of that expensive-ass squidgy.

The skins numbered three,
A puff for you and a puff for me.

Over the bridge and under the influ-ence,
Ounce for ounce we had more ganj than sense.

Dazed and confused on our bicycle jaunts,
The pit, the hole and the barrel were our favourite haunts.

Seedy and lurid through the parental lens,
But a second home to us good friends.

Inside an industrial wood chipper,
Our only light, the spark of a trusted clipper.

And as we drew from the glowing gauze,
We’d be breaking many laws.

Vandalism, trespassing and substance abuse,
Teenage time put to good use.

Then make our way to the leisure centre,
This is where the new crew enter.

Tulips, waterfalls and rushies,
Sit back with six for seven Dutchies.

Like renegade masters we’d breathe in little fluffy clouds,
And barely see each other through smoke filled shrouds.

Our postures grew slanter,
With each passing giggle and meandering banter.

“What if Jesus was a pterodactyl” you proclaimed,
The laughter from this could not be contained.

Soon we’d crave the munch bunch fix,
Cheesecake, crisps and dolly mix.

Through bloodshot eyes and squinted lid,
We’d navigate the Tesco grid.

From the steps and through the door,
Checking out was the biggest chore.

We’ed munch, scoff and devour,
All in less than a quarter of an hour.

Then time to go home,
And hope with parents you won’t be left alone.

Under a suspicious gaze,
They’ve identified your new found laze.

Desperately trying to be normal,
You foolishly act too formal.

“Mother, Father, to the bathroom I must go”,
Now quick, run to bed and they’ll never know.

Do you remember that nostalgic haze?
It wasn’t just a short term phase.

True You

My eyes welled, my throat choked,
With hopes felled our love croaked.

My hands they shivered to hear the words spoken
My voice it quivered ‘Are we really broken’?

At first it festered, and slowly it grew,
The doubt it pestered, to know the real you.

Seamlessly supported such a sultry shroud you pull,
True you it contorted, a vicious vixen draped in wool.

All that you could say with words untrue,
And twisted lies portray that I wronged you.

False memories endearing, forgetful of your traps,
Longing for that feeling, a cerebral relapse.

Still In my dreams there visits the image you created,
Truest love it elicits, unlike you warped with hatred.

Your intentions always gloved, times never knew,
But it was her that I loved, not you, not you.