Object

Fear made her
fists made her black
slaps made her eyes blue

Something old
he was old
cheap vodka aged

Something new
she was fifteen
a doll-like child

Something blue
eyes like Coventry skies
wild sapphires

Three babies bourn
and she was aged too
worn as an old door handle

Yellow stain in her knickers
when he beat her
outside the school

This is what made her
something
not someone

Dawn at Midnight

In here
it is cold

only the surface is thawed
by radiation
by the touches of certain fingertips
by thoughts of idealised friendship

Inside
at the heart

far from the fake illumination
a diamond is forging from blackness
a coal face that does not yet show
a cold face to a ceaseless Sol

Dreams
and all the

Dawns of each rebirth and re-death
dreams have faltered
dreams have almost stopped
dreams waste even in the midnight sun

What
Is wrong here

Someone from childhood has died
and I can think of nothing but sad living me
and I have no remorse not even as a crocodile
and I can do nothing but watch the Blackpool lights blaze

for
Dawn at midnight

An Ending

A hand reaches out
touches
not touching
feedback wired into the cortex
it feels more than real
high definition vision
each compression of the skin
is exquisite agony or orgasmic ecstasy
no mediocre sensations from heaven
to hell without moving
just a blink of the electronic eye
purgatory is for the poor
reality for the downcast
the masses of the left-behind
just inches away behind the glass
the screen
the firewall
blazes
touches
while the dreamers dream
and night folk mare
the toilless workers reduced to scum
floating along the broken streets
waiting for the light to fail and it all to end
a hand reaches out
touches
nothing
we have passed from this reality
and become a mathematical memory
a fossil
a shadow
just radio voices in he dark cosmos
echoing what we were and could have been

A Prick in the Conscience

Cardboard cut-out boy
2D person
face from a book
black & white
but I never read on
ignorance is bliss
and we’re all mostly happy
to walk on by
our 3D steps clicking on the pavement
and like all the other ‘well rounded people’
I didn’t study the cardboard cut-out
genuine or not
how could I tell
he’s not real
cartoon qualities
thinly painted against the wall
just another 2D thing
I left behind on a Dublin side street
September 2009