Love and Squalor

I’m going home soon! It will be glorious to see Becky and Dar and my wee Mammy and Papa. It’s been a long time since I saw my brothers, my nephew, and my doggies. A lot has changed, it’s very odd to leave somewhere and somehow you feel like nothing big should happen when you are gone, nothing should change. But of course it does, that’s not how time works, and sometimes you have to come home to people who have changed, some people who aren’t there anymore to welcome you back. It’s still hard, and going home is always as emotional as it is wonderful now. But right now, in this moment- I’m just excited to step off the boat. To see my Dad pull up in the car, my big bear Papa- hug me; gruffly say ‘good to have you home’ and lift my huge suitcase into the boot like its nothing in a way that says ‘I’m always your daddy’. To hug my wee Ma, lie with my head on her lap in front of the tv, jump into bed beside her when she’s reading. Take Belle for a swim, Snuggle my wee Fyfe, play at silly monsters with him. Hug my Dar- I’ve fucking missed you more than you know, get sushi with Becksters, the beautiful becky, and maybe some beautiful buckfast. Laverys! prowling round Belfast. seeing becky’s kitty cat meow meow! Yeah. Home. It’s always that. It’s home, and I’ve missed it.

When I meet someone, and they tell me they write, paint, or make music, we always have general polite conversation about our respective creative field, and I say I’d love to see their work and they say they’d love to see mine and then, perhaps we head to a bar or part ways. But what I’m thinking, what I’m wishing I could say, is ‘I do too. I write or I paint or I make music because the world terrifies me too and it doesn’t make sense, any of it- does it? don’t worry. I’m as fucking confused as you are but the art helps- doesn’t it? some day maybe you will figure it out, or maybe I will- let’s write and paint and create until something we make becomes the spot on the picture of the world that makes everything somehow fit together. Then we will somehow feel bigger than the world inside our heads and we will know. We will understand the world and we won’t be scared anymore. We won’t need to create anymore and when we meet people at parties and they ask, ‘what do you do?’ we won’t call ourselves writers, artists, musicians. We can say ‘nothing. I do nothing. I figured it out, I’m not scared anymore.’ 

One Cigarette

Not much time for writing these days, although painting has been filling the artsy void. Today, I’m sharing one of my favourite poems. It’s simple, concise, and I find the images of stillness very peaceful. I hope you like it.

No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker’s tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I’ll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss. 

-Edwin Morgan.

On the good days, sometimes I leave the house just to go smile at strangers and pet dogs.

My mum just told me how brave she thinks I am. And I thought to myself, the reason she believes I’m brave are all for things I had no choice in. Be it moving out here, ending relationships, getting different jobs, my hand was forced by the cards life gave me. I’m far from brave. And I got to thinking of how brave I believe she is, for walking again, working, raising all of us, not being afraid to say what she believes in and call bullshit on prejudice and misogyny  and letting us all grow up to be our own different people, being able to let us go. And I thought, she was just being true to herself, making the best she could with what life gave her, and passing that on to us. Her hand was forced just as mine is, but maybe that doesn’t make you any less brave. 

One of the greatest joys of growing up has been seeing my mum as my best friend, my comrade. A fucking kickass mother/wife/feminist/woman who gave her children everything, taught them to run, paint, write, learn. Helped us find our passions and nurtured every single one of them. She is the master of multiple identities and the bravest, most intelligent, funniest and strongest person I’ve ever known. And I start thinking, maybe I am a little brave, I must be, I did learn from the best.

It’s an odd thing, leaving home. Before I left, I negated my doubts by promising myself they would never happen.

1. ‘I will stay in contact with ALL my friends from home.’ In reality, there’s two, maybe three, and those are the best friends I hope to have for all my life.

2. ‘I will come home all the time.’ It’s looking like every six months now.

3. ‘I won’t miss my nephew growing up.’ I haven’t seen him since Christmas, he’s taking in full sentences now. He’s a little boy- last thing I knew he was a baby.

4. ‘This won’t be forever.’ I think it will be. A place changes you, I’m hungry now, I want London and Paris and New York and Berlin- I want to live everywhere, except home.

5. ‘I won’t let the distance ruin my perfect relationship.’ Of course there were other factors, and we made it a year and a half, but it did.

I obviously don’t regret moving away, despite all that-  It’s been wonderful in so many ways, it must have been, as I’d gladly make this city my home even once my university days are over, But it seems so silly now, the promises we make ourselves. I guess if we knew how much would change, we’d never have the balls to go anywhere, do anything.

Sydney Tremayne - A Burial.

I have been searching for a long time now, for the words to remember you by. Every poem I’ve have written for you, who was much to me- seems false. I recently came across this poem by Sydney Tremayne, a little known Scots poet and in it in his words, not mine; that I remember you. For always words be false.

Of one who was much to me,

nothing to anyone else,

I shall have least to say

for silence is not false.

Once when I walked in iron

through dead formalities,

I wished that I need not summon

the barbarous preaching voice.

So simple an act as death

needs to pomp or excuse,

nor any expense of breath

to magnify what is.

The sun shot the red apples,

flies swung on summer air,

the world swam in green ripples

as a slow sea might stir,

There is no more to do

but to turn and go away,

turn and finally go

from one who was much to me,

nothing to anyone else.

Often it must be so

and always words be false.

strange how it is in my nose, rather than in my heart, that I hold you now you are gone. The sense easiest to fool, the weakest, fragilest. silent and blind, as you are now. but somehow strongest, to take me unaware and summon tears from eyes that see nothing and a mind that barely understands. the thin smoke of your life intertwined with mine. this is not a song of loss that I have ever heard, nor one that anyone will understand. But I miss you, my first best friend, the only soul I knew who never hurt me and only loved. Perhaps a life so filled with love is meant only to be brief. Perhaps it was enough for you. I could never write what you meant to me, had I all the talent in the world, your beauty, your life, your death- are thin coils of smoke now, lingering in my nose, but intertwined and intangible. You never were one for words. 

I guess I just wish I could hold you. In the good days, before you were weak, thin. before you faded into smoke.

I love you.

Returning after a long exile,

I see half haunted, gaunt souls-

more suited to the history of my new soil

lined up, shaking, speaking tongues

to the God of fine pharmaceuticals.

I place them in closes, paint their cheeks

but round here nothing changes.

The image crumbles.

Pale as before, they sink into the walls of this town.

By noon the tithe is paid,

the feast is laid.

Cutlery will clink

but here, no white linen tablecloths-

only the slow smash, sweetness, of breaking our own windows.

At forty, your bones hollowed,

and poured into mine-

thick and strong, so much like my father’s.

Fifteen years later,

I cradled your head in my lap,

barefoot in a school blazer,

as a man who smelt of Guinness

and fumbled car keys in rough hands

sobbed unheard apologies.

When they told you, ‘you’ll never walk again’,

they didn’t know the power in those small hollow bones.

They didn’t know that someday you’d run, feather and fly.

I carry you with me always,

the silver bird on my breast.

Blood thickens, and we fly on empty bones.

973 mi.

lookedlikelaughing:

tonight we light a candle in memoriam
of the phone wires and curls that tangled
around our parents’ ankles and the
metal railings that held up their mattress

to the copper vines wrapped around
our infant wrists in February of 1989
when Limbaugh was your dad’s fave

to the relief that their absence has not
stopped our pacing around and over
the coffee table, not even the coasters
can save where our feet have passed

Flesh for bones

I’m sitting here frozen in this bed I made

considering the weight of the bricks I laid now that I’m through

one by one sealed every crack that I could slip

between to find my way back, find my way back home to you.

And I’m burning all my bridges

with these matches I light,

to illuminate my path to what is right.

And even if it’s true what they say-

that you can’t go back home

once you’ve cast it away,

I would still have left tonight

You know, baby, I would be with you if I could

to trade my flesh for your bones

I would, I would, I would, I would, I would

I carry with me on my way

all the ghosts of all the love that I let slip away-

the heavy weight of promises made;

that if I could exonerate I might just lift off today

I chased your memory from my mind,

but every song I write is just a wish to find you near or far-

through all the tears and all the time

that I been running blind, I still ain’t got to where you are.

And even if it’s true what they say

That you can’t go back home

Once you’ve cast it away

I would still have left tonight

You know, baby, I would be with you if I could

To trade my flesh for your bones

I would, I would, I would, I would, I would