Towards An Improved Sense Of Resignation

I left England behind when I started to grow up.
Every so often I used to look back, well beyond
who I used to be, and the more often I looked
the more 'the old country' shrank to nothing.
The past appeared as if it were a false memory
of television shows watched which I could remember
when prompted, but any bonds I attempted to form
through shared activities foundered in circumstances
that outwardly changed so rapidly that no relationship
ever held, or stuck to me, in the way I hoped it would.

It was like life was meant to be both oversold
and highly discouraging. Between the overselling
and the quiet wish to die the conflict was tough.

Now I live in 'backward' Northern Ireland,
and I 'get' the politics here, because late in life
I live deep in the country, and from a distance
I appreciate now how the peace walls in Belfast
protect vital false fronts and one-sided histories
when the alternative would be much worse.

These walls are like the television of my youth,
they stop people who have no real history
or character of their own, in opposition or together,
from dissapearing for having no identity atall.

So that is is why nothing happens here
though a more thorough nothingness
would be much more truthful,
but would not attract as many tourists. 

Numbers

"An idiot is an idiot. 
Two idiots are two idiots. 
Ten thousand idiots are a political party."
- Franz Kafka

Keeping The Punchline To Life

means constantly enriching of the narrative-for good and ill...

Change Always Has It's Limits

It is in the nature of being a catylist
that what you catylise will overtake you
and eventually make you seem redundant. 

Freedom Of Speech?

Why is it that when I hear politicians
bigging themselves up through praise
for the country which they say they run,
when they are covering up how they are puppets 
it always brings me out the tourettes in me?

Perhaps that is the effect of democracy....

Surfaces

I can't be alone in finding that we get between the sheets
to get deep enough to get under each others skin
to realise it friendship, not sex, that we wanted
from the other person in the first place.

Heaven Is Other People?

Ulster folk like nothing more
than making minor complaints
in order to gain a sympathy
which they think they are owed,
whilst saying they live The Gospels.
The Afterlife might be a wonderful place
but many of them might think twice
about eternity if they took stock
of the choices; at one extreme
all needs met/nothing to complain about
at the other plenty of genuine anguish
which is compounded for it being ignored.