Friday 22 August 2014

do you ever long like this


can i hold your hand
can i carry the parts 
that are too heavy
can i talk in the night
when i am afraid
and will you listen
until my mind settles
and asks the sun to rise

will we walk out in the day
knowing the winds we face
can knock us over without
disgrace
can i hold your hand at night
on a beach in October
when your world is dark and cold
and make you tea
before you sleep because you are you
and tired

can i look at you in the morning
as you leave the house
and think of you during the day
when i want
and send you thoughts
of how warm you are 
dressed in old wool and cotton
not needing to fight a world
that has lost its way

do you ever long like this?


Monday 18 August 2014

depression, part 2. hell and heaven

These days if i am not feeling well as described in part one I try to avoid the statement "I am depressed" I remember reading although I can not remember where I read it, that identification with the state of depression might undermine the rest of me that is not a full participant in the depression. Even the idea that "I have depression" is more desirable in that it acknowledges a me beyond the depression that can be mobilized in a search for a more comfortable and comforting solution. Beyond how I name my condition there are ways of looking at depression that see the condition less pathologically. 
Imagine that, the rehabilitation of my worst enemy that comes and takes over my life in unpredictable and soul draining bouts,  would give birth  to a fee paying, or karma yoga type guest that signals the need for and helps with seasonal house-cleaning.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her work places depression as a necessary stage in the grieving process. This work has been around a long time and should be known by people interested in depression and recovery. If you havn't read it. Do. Thomas Moore in a book "Care of the soul" makes interesting observations as to how depression turns a person away from acting on the outside world. This offers an opportunity to go inwards and make or suffer changes to ones inner world. A crisis of the ego or self becomes the growth incentive of the Self. Moreover he challenges the prevalent view that the only acceptable face of wellness is the post war boom of happiness driven by the satisfaction of wants through mass production and consumption. Moore calls for a return to an interior life.
My friend back in Ireland put it this way "some walk to the Altar of Sacrifice, some will be dragged". Thank you Ike for honest and brutal truths.
How much activity in the world would be better left undone. Imagine if Adolph called Heinrich and said  "Heh, let's call off that Polish thing I'm feeling awful fucking depressed today". 
How much of the destructive action carried out by motivated men in the world is motivated by a fear of depression. And more importantly fear of that which lay beneath and beyond despair, legitimate sadness. 
There are worse things than being depressed.
The gates of heaven and the gates of hell differ only in the direction taken by a pilgrim.

Sunday 17 August 2014

Depression a portal to joy.

now is the place where I begin my life. The label I affix to my being now may effect the direction I take from here. For this reason I want to clarify what I am referring to when I speak of depression.
I speak from my experience and not from any theoretical position or professional vantage ground.
Because I am referencing my own experience, in public, on this complex and painful subject I need to qualify where I am coming from,
It is a truth that I have always experienced difficulty fitting snugly into the environment that I encountered from an early age. This itself is problematic because now I speak of the world and me as if these events had a distinct separation and as if they were objectivities. This of course is not true and one of the main problems with the society that I experience is that I am embedded in it.
I have not been clinically diagnosed with any of the multitude of depressions in the DSM. The depression that I speak of is not necessarily one of those diagnosable depressions and may or may not be curable by some chemical intervention, I just never travelled that route.
But there have been times in my life when experienced dire confusion and hopelessness. To feel overwhelmed by a negative vista is a painful experience and I am here to report that there are reliefs,

I am fifty six years of age at this time of writing and am less a victim of those states than I have ever been.

Here I sit waiting for a server to deliver a simple supper of chicken strips, salad and a side of fries. I spent eight hours earlier today at a course for soccer coaches. Cian has signed up to play U 14 this year. And I want to be there. My truck is behaving badly and will go to the shop in the morning. This is something I could allow to ruin my evening but I am not a prophet nor a mechanic, so now I will eat my supper.
That food was really nice. It is clear that this post is going to go on quite a while and will have several instalments so slog on with me if you will....

Happiness; I had a friend explain to me that if I relied on happiness for my well being I would always be at the mercy of events. He quoted Eleanor Roosevelt as saying that "happiness is a
by-product of living life well". I never checked that quote but as with most quotes, who cares who it was that said a thing it should stand or fall on its own. My friend went on to disagree with Eleanor partially. but that will emerge later.
For the purpose of this discussion I am interested in happiness as a state of being that we can assume that depressed people are not. People generally do not go about declaring how happy they are to be depressed or how depressed they are to be happy. It was a bit of a shock to me to find that my unfulfilled longing for happiness was a major factor in the development of my depression.
Friends; I have indicated that I lay claim to a major improvement in my state of being and i need to acknowledge friends as the medication that relieve my distress. I am totally beholden to other people for the improvement in my life. Although i found my friends not in the brightness of successes no they are the people i discovered in the dark shadows of what i perceived as a fall and a failure. When i admit that i  am a loser friends appear to witness my search through the shit of my life to uncover the lost light. The price of hope it seems is to share my despair.

part 2 to come

Wednesday 13 August 2014

half fox video


the need to be half fox

that fox and polishing

if you were to ask me what is a poet I would have to say I don't know. For me, poets are just this side of fairies or leprechauns. Poets; they live surely for if they didn't how could we have poems.
But you see although I write stuff and some of it may be poetry, I am not a poet. I do all sorts of stuff, serious stuff and silly stuff, and the stuff that i do for wages and other stuff i never intended or planned to do, and then also there is the real stupid shit that i do on a regular basis.
In truth some of the stuff I do is really fucked up, so i have to ask myself; Am i a poet making fuck-ups or a fuck-up making poetry. To hell with philosophy.
Today it is raining and I should have been washing windows so that i can pay my rent at the end of the month and here i am instead polishing.
There is a woman that i know and she has something beautiful in her. I met her as she was making coffee and i was about to drink it. So you could say that she was a barista and i was just a guy buying coffee. Inside in that transaction she reminded me of someone else that i met years and years ago. And i thought, she reminds me of such n such but then I realized- no she didn't. She is nothing like such n such, but there you go in spite of that, she reminded of her anyway.
It turns out that this morning, I took out this piece that i've been working now about five years and broke it up and took about five words out of it and scattered the commas, things i don't hardly know what to do with, in different places and now it says things a little differently. And some other bits have changed as well but to talk about those would resurrect philosophy and i need to have my breakfast.
I don't know if this piece is getting closer to a poem or not but this is the stuff i sometimes do when it rains on my intentions.




That need
to be part fox
no mystery to the initiated
is why I like you!

And why I want
to encounter
the fox
of an evening
of damp grass,
foam laden waters.
and wet stones,
here where pansies bloom,
beneath dark trees
and down browns
soft scent
a haven for a fox.

To while as
the gray sun temps
the last line of sky to sleep
and with
winters chill still living
her shawl could
warm flesh to comfort.

But she looks on an ocean
that never ate a tired sun.
And I
still see her carrying
rust in her hair above
bright eyes
watching
smiling
weeping

Tuesday 12 August 2014

break the back of winter

what i would
what i would and would not give
to see the world dressed
in the smile of knowing
on a morning
after rain
or soft snow
her eyes 
perched on pale linen
waiting for dark coffee
and
cool fruit
on warm yellow
edges of bread,
breaking the back 
of winter 
on a promise 

Monday 11 August 2014

Feast of Bridget

Feile Breda*
rain left the ground black
In a fat moist hunger for seed
a sun that tempts the children
to walk home from schooling
takes the bite from the hard earth
inviting roots to delve and drink.

ghosts of folded flowers fill
the still cold space over dead
leaves and grasses yet
to be scraped to a heap,
foddering flesh for blossoms
ghosting this precious evening
Feile Breda
in this land stolen
by them stolen
from the land
your feast deserted  but
tonight your blanket spread
upon a  thorny briar will distill
the spittle of victory  on poisoned threads
bitter venom doubled to a balm
forgiveness Bridget, bless all here
heal our hearts, raped and rapist
as we spill your guts, cleanse us with your tears
.
*Anglicisation of a gaelic term meaning the feast of Bridget
February 1st …(the first day of spring)


Sunday 10 August 2014

stubborn ol bastard me and Leonard

a friend called me a stubborn ol bastard so i wrote a consideration

all my friends are gone and my hair is grey
im achin in the places that i used to play
and im prayin for love
but it's not coming on.(leonard Cohen)

There was a woman in the school.
skull na bra Haira crease tea is a very bad phonetic attempt at the Gaelic name of the Christian Brothers School, Sexton St. Limerick. I attended that school on and off between the ages of 7 and 16. In the earlier years it had a woman teacher. Ban de Bara or Mrs Barry as the queen would have called her if the queen were ever allowed to talk to a person.
She didn't have a class or anything like that but she taught elocution, moving from class to class with the freedom and breasts of a robin. She let us know that our English was contaminated. It was not for us to know that we were contaminated with the remnants of the ancient language that the other fuckers were trying to stuff down our confused throats the  rest of the week. It seemed that her main job was to teach us not to say dis, dat, dese or dose but there was other stuff too. She explained how polite people do, as in they don't talk to each other, they speak to each other and that we should start speaking to each other in the school yard and such or we would all end up as messenger boys for one of the butchers on Parnell St.
A good example of the differences in these tongues of the butcher-shop  and the butchers apron as we called the union-jack is shown in the joke about the little boy that came home from school on his second day at school,
his mother asked
Mikey
wha mamma
did you learn anything at school today
um yeah.... i learnt Johnny Connelly not to call me mammas boy

a polite person would say Leonard and I not me and Leonard
to me Me and Leonard sounds so much more, like we are buddies, like he knows me or at least we did this one thing together, you know, this is my small claim to something and me and Leonard says it, if Leonard was here he would back me up. He is my buddy in this. Hmmm maybe that's it, maybe polite people don't need buddies, or maybe it is not cool to need em.

Words and lyricists have always attracted me and Leonard Cohen's words go beyond words for or from me. he will probably be mentioned many times in my writing as he has carved many phrases that unlocked fragments of my soul. one of my friends said many years ago said that the record store in Limerick, I think it was Savin's , were offering free razor blades with every cohen LP purchased mid-week. The warring city has a wicked sense of humour.
From here on out if i quote or speak of a leonard it is leonard cohen i speak of. My familiarity is based on 40 years of listening and singing along, eating bagels with cream cheese in Montreal where men with ringlets, beards and black coats walk the sidewalks, two 3 and a half hour concerts here in Victoria and the fact that he wears a hat like mine.

I was 55 when a small fall on a ladder shattered my ankle. the medical people called it a pilon fracture and the discussion got round to the percentage of people that end up having a leg amputated. Now there's a thing that could get one to focus.
Recently just over a year later I was out walking with friend and as we walked I took my shoes off and walked in my bare feet.
Looking down rubbing his nose he asked "whatre you doin"
My ankle hurts at times and I find that taking off my shoes especially on uneven ground forces it to go through a wider range of movement.
It hurts some at first but then there is relief. Beyond that there are a whole lot of things that I haven't totally given up on yet that will be limited by how much movement I have in this ankle.
I want to play soccer with my son.
I am/was the father of three boys. Cian is the youngest of these and was born here in Canada.
The other boys are men by now I suppose. There are explanations and reasons and excuses for my actions in my life and all of those will emerge if I write long enough but the short story is that I deserted two sons in the course of my life up to now. The extent of the injuries I perpetrated and suffered in those actions is becoming clearer to me as i grow with Cian.
How does a man recoup the loss or pay the debt of having never kicked a ball with a boy?
Life is full of questions.
For the moment back to the ankle and if the opportunity arises i want to walk on a cliff and a beach with friends and then there is the fact that if i am middle aged now, and I have to live to 112 it is too early to start closing down the shop.
It feels a bit weird to me to be gardening and putting out laundry in public here especially as Mrs Google keeps telling me how many people are looking over the fence.
If someone wants to follow the thread or ask a question in the comments it would be like smiling, waving a hand or saying hi, and i would regard this as a kindness and be encouraged to continue, Mrs Google has placed convenient buttons for these actions on the page but I have yet to figure out how they work. I did see a little pencil thing that brought up a comment box. No it seems the pencil is just for me but if the title of the piece is in orange and you click it a different page will open with a comment box.
sleann lat which roughly translates as health with you....

Saturday 9 August 2014

Memoir. Birth


urbs antiqua fuit studisque asperima belli
It was an ancient city well versed in the arts of war. 

Limerick, Ireland 1958 is of interest to me, as that is when i was born and although i must have been present on the occasion i have  to rely on the account of others to affirm that the woman that i came to ordinarily know as mammy was there. It is said that every person knows his mother but who his father might be, is an act of faith. Although neither of these propositions is an absolute truth, I suppose there is a sliding scale  merit of claim to truth in both of these statements.
So also in this story there will emerge a  picture of a man that i came to know as daddy whether he was there not on the night in question was never related to me. We as in daddy and I never discussed that point.
Who else, if anyone, was there is a matter of speculation or a point of research, but since we cannot because of constraints of time and energy research everything, this point is not of enough interest to me unless i happen to stumble on further information or maybe this blog will prompt comment.
I didn't bother to check the latin in the title of this piece as it stands as a testimony of some truths that i hope willcome into the light later. I know enough to point to the origin of the phrase as a piece lifted from Virgil's Anaeid, although i have a feeling that is misspelt and have no inclination to check that either. Spelling was never my forte.
But into this well versed city the universe placed me and there were two significant others that became known to me as Mammy in an ordinary moment... Mam casually... Maaaaaam from the bathroom or in the dark...or Maamie if i fell down and hurt me knees before I was five or yet to save the life of one of my siblings from me or any other vicious animal thereafter.  and then there was Daddy if you were really stuck and had wrung the last penny or sop of patience out of the eternal well of generosity from which i had sprung.
If you are having issues with the punctuation or construction in this piece or anywhere else on this blog please feel free to comment, criticise or complain in the place thoughtfully supplied by Google for that purpose. It will arise later in the story and is here foreshadowed here, that my teachers spared no efforts over a period of more than ten of of the formative years of my life in their attempts to school my scattered consciousness into a shape were i would be able to present my thinking inside the lines and within the boxes sought and expected by a society committed to reason and logic.
All their powers mental physical emotional and social where applied liberally, without stint, thought of loss or consideration of cost to their own well-being physical emotional or spiritual,  but unfortunately with little success. I sympathize with you and advise that if it should be overly troubling i will not be offended if you avoid this place of butchery.
it may b of  consolation that we now have spell check and you are spared the pain of seeing words like opportunity appearing in all its possible variations in one paragraph, by, that little champion of the spelling bee guy housed in some remote cell in the dungeons of this laptop, in their defence his arrival could not be foreseen by the pedagogues and paedophiles charged with my schooling and education.

Badmeanings

A cold but bright day, the boy and his dad carrying groceries, push up the hill, past the doughnut tree in Nelson, British Columbia. They are headed for the last house on the left at the top of Cedar Street. A late-winter or early-spring hole in February's sock whitens the concrete pavement buckled by frost.
Father following, watching the curve of the boys padded coat, green and blue, listening to the out-breath that pushed each foot forward, downward lifting,
Buried in the small boys breath faint but clear as the smell of rats piss the boys thought, tongue sounds,---fuck.

"Cian"
                    "What"
"What did you just say"
                                "Fuck"

"Um"
"You might not want to use that kind of language"
"Um"
                                                                      "Why"
"The people at daycare may not like it."
                                                                                                    "Why"
"Well some people think that words like fuck are bad words. They might be surprised to hear them coming from a little boy at daycare"

"Dad"
"What"
"Djuo know what I think"
"No.....     what"


"There's no such thing as bad words"      

 "Only bad meanings"


"Fuck"