Cassandra Voices

Category: Literature

  • BREXIT – A Poem

    Once I had finished it I didn’t understand my own poem,
    so how could you?

    There had been a moment when, possessed by a sort of deftness, I had made choices
    about matters such as line length

    but now all that had left me. I was confused.
    The intriguing question is what path led me
    from that bewilderment to my present mode of address.

    This is something which concerns you, so pay attention!

    In a very true sense it is your curiosity,
    which led me, like an umbilical threadworm,
    out of the labyrinth. And here we both are,
    blinking in the sunlight, a bit traumatised perhaps,
    attracting too many flies for our mutual liking,
    but here nonetheless, in whatever space this is,
    field or piazza, over which I am making this address,
    dear Ariadne.

    ­_                      Never doubt, I will come back for you.
    I see now what separates us is a slowly widening stretch
    of crystalline water. These islands are lovely and puritanical.
    They suit your beauty down to a T.

    I’m sorry, have I made a mistake about your name?
    Is this, strictly speaking, European soil?
    Anyway, I must be off.

    Wait for me!

    Alex Winter practised for many years as a barrister and now works in the field of psychotherapy.

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  • Manus’s Further Misadventures

    Jesinta got back in touch with Manus through the internet. Face-book. He had stuck his name and a photo of himself up, and someone from his distant past had got in touch with him. For Manus it was a timely, and much appreciated contact

    He was down in the dumps living in Dublin. An old man from Belfast. No one knew him.

    He had met a few people but they were all far too straight by far for the likes of Manus. Their smug security inherent in the safe lives they had lived. They hadn’t even tried mind altering illegal drugs or reality revealer’s (as his day would have termed them) like magic mushrooms or acid. Their whole outlook on life seemed to be gleamed from viewing television. They had done straight jobs. Lived straight lives. They had never been on the wrong side of the law, been homeless or squatted houses. They had never been beaten by the police or chased through the streets by thugs while the police looked on. They were straights, who believed the straight view of the world as portrayed on the flat screen. They never thought about it, but if pushed they would say they believed there was a democracy in which they could affect social and economic decisions, and a free press which presented them with all the necessary information to make those decisions.

    Then they would describe druggies as ‘delusional’.

    So it was great to have Jesinta contact him on the net.

    The email said ‘do you remember Ingleston common?’,  then there was the name Jesinta and a telephone number. Manus felt all a-glow thinking about Ingleston common free festival. Just the fact that there had been free festivals.

    It had been the early eighties in England. He had been traveling from Stonehenge with a convoy of around fifty vehicles: cars, vans, flat backed trucks, caravans, buses and motorbikes.

    The police had tried to break the convoy up. It had been during the Thatcher years, and the police were all tooled up and pushing for a ruckus, with the drug-crazed, anarchistic rabble the press had daubed the ‘peace convoy.’

    As a show of strength, police in riot gear lined the bridges going over the motorway. Intent on breaking the convoy they blocked the entrances to the motorway stations thereby denying the convoy fuel. A few inexperienced young bucks broke from the ranks and tried driving in to the service stations as ordinary citizens who had the right to refuel at a motorway station.

    They were captured.

    Then the convoy-led vehicles swerved across the motorway and cut out their engines.

    It was mid-afternoon on one of the busiest motorways in England and if the vehicles of the convoy weren’t going to be allowed to refuel and continue their journey then neither would anyone else.

    The police could trash the vehicles and arrest the people but that motorway was going to remain blocked for at least a day. That would cause disruption to an important trading route, and bring media coverage. The police quickly capitulated, allowing the convoy to refuel and escorted them to a piece of common land just outside Bristol called Ingleston Common.

    A woman called Jesinta had turned up on the site. She was working as a prostitute from a massage parlour in the predominantly West Indian area of London known as Brixton. She had told Manus they were both Virgo monkeys, who could be of use to each other. and brought him home to her boudoir, complete with waterbed, mirrored wall and Turkish light fittings. She gave him the cash for a pound of good Jamaican weed, and set him up in the herb business.

    On the day Prince Charles and Princess Di. married Manus sat with Jesinta and the rest of the girls from the toss shop, who celebrated their day off with champagne and cocaine. They mostly listened too reggae and dub music. Prince Fari boasted about ‘heavy manners … Discipline, discipline, heavy heavy discipline.’

    But Jesinta also had some white man’s music, some American country singer who sang about ‘beat the lady’s of fame at the lady’s own game.’ Manus would always remember the line.

    From his twenties Manus could remember many misadventures. Jesinta had featured in a few. Thinking back to those heady lawless days it seemed like a dream.

    The facebook message from Jesinta seemed like confirmation that his memories were real.

    Manus phoned the number and it was her. He had tried to make contact over the years, but like most of his past she wasn’t easy to trace. And here she was alive and kicking.

    She had got her hands on some cash too. She wanted to send him a ticket to come visit and see how she lived now.

    He was overjoyed at the contact. Some kind of continuity to his life. It seemed he had upped and moved on so many times in his life. Cutting off a little piece of himself each time he moved. Contact with Jesinta was like contact with his amputated self.

    So ‘yea Jesinta,’ he said ‘fly us over to Cyprus.’

    She got annoyed that he couldn’t just up and fly over that day. What was the mater with him had he become an old man? So stuck in his routine that he couldn’t just get up and take off. And he had to admit that he was. He had his five-year-old daughter Shirifa. Her wellbeing was his priority and it wouldn’t be good for her if her da just upped and offed.

    He knew then Cyprus probably wasn’t really such a good idea.

    It had been wonderful the contact with Jesinta. The confirmation that someone else shared the same past experiences but bringing that memory back into flesh and blood reality!?

    Jesinta could be generous and kind-hearted, but she was also a difficult enough human being to be around. She didn’t have any reason to love Manus either. Except in the same way that he loved her, as part of the past, as some sort of passport back to the days of rebellion. Days of virtual no go areas for the police in certain sections of cities all over the British isles. Days when people believed they were going to chant down Babylon. Days of free festivals.

    But that whole counter-culture was dead now. Dead and denied. Like it never really existed.

    Manus had, decades before, loved Jesinta and left her but he had seen her a few times since. The last time he had seen her they hadn’t been lovers for at least five years and he had called round out of the blue after a fight at work.

    She was still on the game advertising herself as a mature woman, and she had a punter call. She asked Manus to be quiet while she went upstairs, but then she was back down in two minutes wrapped in a towel asking him if he would come up stairs and fuck her for a bit and she would give him twenty quid. It was a strange scenario for Manus. Apparently the punter was paying extra to have someone else go first.

    Manus would have done it for free.

    But he’d noticed it then as she’d raised her legs up, her flesh getting flabby and he wondered how long she could keep charging men for the privilege of touching it.

    In the year two thousand and eleven, Manus’s last lover had been the mother of his child and she’d been twenty years his junior. But she had shown him the full, viciousness of unconscious youth in the child custody battle and maybe he was ready for a more mature relationship. Hell he was old himself now. Maybe Jesinta and he could be lovers again. She had been twelve years older than him. He wondered if she could still raise her old legs up. Maybe they could laugh at each other’s ailments and still find some sexual pleasure.

    In any event Manus and his daughter Shirifa flew to Larnaca.

    At first sight Jesinta looked like Maria Sabina the mushroom priestess. Sallow skin and greasy grey long hair, flat against her skull. But her body was plumper. Fast food plump. She moved with the slow effort of age that Manus understood although his own body denied all logic and, in spite of its abuse over the years, had remained fairly healthy. He even still had a full head of black hair. And most of his own teeth.

    When Shirifa went to bed the first night Manus and Jesinta sat with each other. They talked of friends who had died. Biker Spider. Phil the beer. Graham Gaskin. Characters from back in the day.

    And then had little to say to one another.

    Manus was not the wild young brave Jesinta had persuaded back to her reservation and she wasn’t the ass with class persona she had been either. She twirled her once luscious dark, now, lank grey hair between her fingers. There was a residual element of coyness in the gesture. But sex didn’t really seem to be an option.

    She was on some prescription mood enhancers and mostly watched T.V. all day. Manus hated that kinda stuff. As Jesinta had thirty years before. He would rather be crazy and unhappy rather than have sanity and happiness as prescribed by the pharmaceutical and media companies. And whatever they were supposed to be doing for Jesinta wasn’t working. She was intransigent and dogmatic most of the time.

    On one particularly bad day Manus and Shirifa had stayed out as long as they could and, too tired to walk any longer, caught a taxi.

    Then there it was on the floor of the taxi.

    A wallet.

    Bunch of fifties bulging out.

    Manus hadn’t the cash to pay for a fortnight’s alternative accommodation for them but there it was just sitting on the floor of the back seat.

    He thought about it. He picked the wallet up and stuck it in his bag.

    When they got home Jesinta was pissed off. They hadn’t stayed out long enough, or they had stayed out too long. There was no pleasing the woman. Manus asked her if she ever had a good day, and she warned him about another crack like that, and Manus was glad he had picked the cash. He was going to need it.

    He took Shirifa out again on the pretext of getting ice cream. He ditched the wallet in some long grass and pocketed the cash. Six hundred and forty euros.

    He felt sick.

    He didn’t like thieving from individuals. Corporations, companies, banks, governments, he didn’t give a toss about, but individuals…. naw it wasn’t cool.

    He was the sort who would need to talk to someone about it too, but there was no one he could tell. He tried to reassure himself that he could spend it on Shirifa, but it still didn’t feel good. He had a crap feeling in his guts.

    Then Jesinta texted to say the police had called by looking for him. Of course the wallets owner had contacted the taxi firm and the taxi driver had given the last fare’s address. Manus could of course still get away with it. The wallet was ditched and the cash was untraceable but …. no. He just wouldn’t be up to it, and the thought of getting arrested for theft while in charge of his daughter in a foreign country sent shivers down his spine. No. He managed to find the wallet in the long grass where he had thrown it, stuck the cash back inside and brought it down to the cop shop. They said he might be in for a reward. He just raised his eyes and shook his head.

    When he got back to Jesinta’s he felt relief and gratitude for all he had. Shirifa slept safely and soundly and Manus sat beside her. As was his habit he tried to scribble down some semblance of a story around his experience. His story told of an old lover, a free-spirited strong woman he had met at a free festival. A woman who would have despised this ugly caricature of herself trapped in some rut of vicious behaviour. The story went on to the point where Manus brought the wallet down to the cop shop, got back to Jesinta’s and felt grateful for what he had. It went on to have Jesinta wake up to all the treasures she had (not least amongst them being visited by Shirifa and her father) and in so doing Jesinta broke the habit of lashing back at all the vicious blows life had struck her. A habit she had carried on with even when life had stopped dealing her vicious blows.

    Manus left his story (like all his stories an effort to get his point of view across), where Jesinta would find it and read it. And find it and read it she did.

    She never admitted reading it, even denying it when he asked her. But she quoted lines and incidents from the story and did try her best for a half a day or so to behave as though she were with friends. People she could be easy with. People who didn’t want to rob or beat or cheat or dominate or belittle her in any way. People who had a sense of respect and even affection for her.

    They all had breakfast in Jesinta’s room. Brushing Shirifas hair, Jesinta explained to the inquisitive five year old what a September monkey and a March rooster were. But it didn’t last much more than half a day before the drugs wore off, or kicked in, or she just slipped back into some mental rut where she had to fight back even though no one was fighting against her.

    Whatever.

    Shirifa and Manus left Jesinta’s a few days later. They had spent three hundred euros and only had two hundred left. They found a hostel which didn’t charge for Shirifa and only charged Manus seventy for the week. They didn’t eat in cafes any longer, or buy nicknacks, or play the amusement arcades. At the hostel Shirifa met a Romanian boy named Matayo. Manus met a French Canadian woman named Mannon.

    Manus called back on Jesinta before they left. Shirifa didn’t want to. Shirifa at five years old still adored her father, and had been thrilled to meet someone from his world. Daddy’s old friend. And Jesinta had disappointed Shirifa. So Shirifa didn’t call back with him but Jesinta wasn’t the worst. Their was a touch of Miss Haversham about her. The hurt bitter twisted touch.

    Manus tried to kiss her before he left.

    He wanted to be affectionate but the only part of her that seemed to be open to a kiss was her hand. This could have resembled a devotee kissing a priestess or a pupil kissing a teacher. He hoped it wasn’t too much like a peasant kissing the hand of the rich.

    Manus was still an old man from Belfast living in Dublin where no one knew him. Most people that he knew from his youth were now grumpy old ones stuck in their ways. Or dead. The dead ones were easier to love. The living were harder to deal with.

    We rely on contributions to keep Cassandra Voices going.

  • From Psalm 119

    Gimel/Retribue servo tuo

    O do well unto thy servant

    Vincible world, I see blown blossom
    hurled with the crumpled rooks before May’s
    impertinent, spooky breezes; newly-dressed
    branches rattled already before
    counter-prevalent and centrifuge gusts.

    Vincible earth, no stranger to kenosis, then;
    it’s what you do. I can’t arrive at saying it.

    I’m lip-deep in the unsayable, (don’t you know?)
    dealing out, let’s say, deuteranopic cusses
    to a space and time all-too-green, in fact,
    to observe Coverdale’s green observations
    in the bright shadows of Hebrew’s plenty.

    Lip-labour for our vincible domain
    in the light and shadow of opulence.


    He/Legem pone

    Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes

    Prayer’s printed page whitens out of seeing;
    self-divesting, and on the run, leaked
    in a voiced extinction, even as the fire
    among the thorns,
    _                            its bright dereliction
    without self-favour, but spoiling
    immarcescibly into faith’s erasures;
    a pale palimpsest, even Cranmer’s gift.

    My page is blinded. Its tongue is stolen.
    God’s syntax is glass, o! cerulean
    titmouse! It’s entropy’s hard vacancy.
    Don’t be caught,
    _                            songbird iconoclast!
    not in time’s continuum, but before
    untimely Abraham. Good philosopher,
    teach us the way of thy statutes.


    Yodh/Manus tuae fecerunt me

    Thy hands have made me and fashioned me

    It’s the waiting. Waiting for the form
    of a hand, in likeness as the appearance
    of fire, from Ezekiel’s amber chambers.

    There in the nonsense, today, of my roustabout
    apple trees and oak, the willow next door,
    though not the form of a fiery, friendly hand.

    It would all be too easy. There’d be no need
    for Empson’s monstrously clotted language –
    antagonyms of faith in affliction.

    Swelling with the skittery breezes, willow
    is no open hand but clutched then hurling,
    yes, a likeness as the appearance of fire.

    And, monstrously clotted, Ezekiel wavers
    into afflicted speech, and this faithful, fiery hand.

    Sections of Psalm One Hundred and Nineteen have also found a home in Scintilla journal. Poems from An Atheist’s Prayer-Book are forthcoming at Litter. Reviews have appeared at Litter, and at Stride. A PhD, Natural Strange Beatitudes, can be found at www.pearl.plymouth.ac.uk. Jonathan Wooding has spoken at academic conferences in Plymouth, Oxford and York on the poetry of Geoffrey Hill. 

  • Manus in Seomra Spraoi

    Seomra Spraoi was a hub of resistance. The space was located just off the quays close to Dublin’s city centre. It was used to organise campaigns against, Shell oil’s Mayo pipeline, the World Bank and the deportations of non-nationals, among many other worthwhile causes.

    It is hardly surprising Seomra Spraoi was closed down under ‘fire regulations’. It had probably only been allowed to stay open for as long as it did due to a lack of visibility. No one caused trouble, there were no fights and the Gardaí were never called out over loud music late at night, until they were one night.

    When they came over they were not overly-impressed with some of the anti-capitalist and anti-police posters. Perhaps they began to perceive the space as a possible threat. In any event, Seomra was closed down under fire regulations a few days later.

    But that’s just political spiel. Seomra Spraoi was also a social centre. A place where personal stories unfolded.

    *******

    Manus had just finished with a relationship. The woman had moved out and even though he had custody of the child for more than half the week he still felt a yawning gap in his life. Even more so when the child, Shirifa, went to her mothers.

    Mentally, physically, and economically, Manus couldn’t afford the pubs, and while he could pass the time reading and writing, he still craved human contact.

    For Manus, Seomra Spraoi was manna from heaven. A; social club/drop in/resource centre, not-for- profit, non-hierarchical, and run for and by the people who used it. Those were the ideals to which the centre aspired. Of course ideals and humans don’t always get along perfectly together. It’s hard once you’ve invested time and energy into creating and maintaining something to think of it in any other way than as your baby. It may belong to everyone, but it still belongs more to you. Unofficial hierarchies and cliques seem to evolve naturally regardless of ideology. But having said that the centre did its best, and its best was pretty good.

    Sundays had activities specifically catering for kids but it was child-friendly in general.

    Shirifa loved it.  Even when there were no people her own age the older people took an interest in her, made allowances for her and in general showed her the respect we are all due.

    There is an old African saying, ‘it takes a whole village to bring up a young person’, and Seomra Spraoi was as close to a village as could be found anywhere in Dublin. Manus was enjoying bringing her up in the right type of atmosphere. An atmosphere of mutual respect.

    It was in Seomra Spraoi that Shirifa and Manus heard about the protest against the World Bank, and Manus and Shirifa, along with a handful of others, decided to participate.

    ‘We do very well out of it,’ Manus explained to his daughter. ‘It’s  because people in other countries are kept so poor that we are rich.’

    Shirifa nodded her three year old head and looked serious.

    Manus laughed. He wondered about his motivation for attending the protest. There was only a dozen or so people in attendance. Manus wondered about that too. How come there was so few protesting? Did everybody believe the world order was set like concrete and could never be changed? That protest seemed futile. Or did nobody else care that the poorest countries in the world were having to pay the richest countries in the world lots of money, and as a direct consequence thousands of people lived and died with intolerable hardship?

    People’s apathy amounted to criminal negligence. Manus applied uncle Noamy’s example and felt like a German civilian during the Second World War, looking at the smoke coming from chimneys and saying, ‘am I really sure what’s happening in there and even if I was what could I do about it?’

    Manus didn’t feel like he was doing much but he supposed standing in the cold outside a hotel where members of the World Bank were meeting and saying ‘boo’ was better than doing nothing.

    Anyway the protest in Malahide was a day out for Manus and Shirifa.

    After a few hours they headed off for cake and coffee in a café along with two single parent mums and their kids. Manus was a single parent dad and he had to get used to the idea. He had to start looking at other women, or looking for another woman.

    Phrases like, ‘back on the market’, or, ‘on the hunt’, could now be applied to him.

    Mostly he had enjoyed monogamy but he wasn’t cut out for abstinence.

    These women seemed sensitive, intelligent, strong, independent and politically aware lefty types. Manus was pleased to think they existed, and pleased to have their company. He wondered if he would stand a chance with either of them. Either would do, but shouldn’t he have a preference?

    He would have been hard-pressed to decide. He wondered if his need denied him a preference. One of the women appeared more youthful than the other, more impulsive.

    He had vague recollections of other women he had known when he had been younger. Impulsive times.

    Manus wondered what it would be like to live with either of them over a period of years. He had visions of both women wearing completely different faces from the pleasant persona’s they presented at this moment.

    How far away were the faces of anger, resentment  or painful sadness? How long before he would see those faces?

    Manus had made a few quid that morning. It was the first bit of cash he had made in months and he was pleased to have money in his pocket.

    He offered to buy both women their dinners with wine at the café, but they each refused. He didn’t know them that well and they were of a different gender.

    Manus had an easy-come eas- go attitude to money and would have offered to pay for the food and drink regardless. He was pleased to be able to offer and pleased to sit with two adults who brought their kids to protest against the World Bank. But that didn’t take from the fact that he was still a mate-less male and these were two seemingly mate-less females. He wondered if his offer was really him making a play for the women or if he was just being human and wanting to share in his good fortune.

    In any event they had both refused dinner. The single parent mums were younger than him. Everyone was younger than him.

    They all travelled back on the train together. The three lone parents and their three children.

    One of the women told a story about a skeleton that gave one of its bones to make soup, but when the soup wasn’t shared out the skeleton chased the nasty people out and let a poor little boy stay in the house.

    The story kept the kids happy the whole way back.

    Manus couldn’t help comparing the women to Shirifa’s mum Janice.

    Janice was thirty one going on nineteen. She longed for the heady social life of her late teens and early twenties. For Janice things had taken a distinctly downward turn around the year two thousand and one, when she had been twenty-four years old, and met Manus for the first time.

    For Jan the relationship was never meant to be anything more than a cheap thrill for a fleeting moment. The satisfaction of idle and lustful curiosity. But what should have been a passing fling turned into a prolonged nightmare. She felt trapped by her pregnancy too, and her relationship with this man, an older man, someone from another place and another time.

    She had even been unfaithful to him as a ploy to get him to end it. Shagging someone else had always worked before, but not with Manus. He stuck like shit to her shoe. Just to make her suffer she sometimes thought.

    Janice had fought against and in many ways denied the relationship most of the time but for the sake of convenience, and due to economic restrictions, she ended up living in the same space and even sharing the same bed as Manus, for the best part of six years.

    Receiving a bequest of fifteen thousand euro from her grandfather gave her the freedom to re-arrange her life. So Janice and Manus had officially broken up. That is, they no longer lived under the same roof or slept in the same bed, but they still had to deal with each other.

    Throughout the relationship Janice had fluctuated between being churlish and rude to being needy and crying. Sometimes she wanted his emotional support, other times she just wanted him in bed.

    The break up hadn’t changed the nature of the relationship.

    When she needed him or even just wanted him, she had only to ask and he would be over in a flash, panting like a puppy on her porch. Occasionally he might hesitate for a moment, but it seemed so pointless. Why would he lie on his own and deny himself the warmth and pleasure of her body?

    There were a couple of reasons why. After sex she might pat his crutch and say ‘you were always a great shag’. She probably thought she was flattering him, but a part of him would want to quote Billy Holiday, ‘you’ve had the best now why not take the rest, come on, have all of me.’

    But Jan didn’t want the rest and the parts she didn’t want felt lonely and rejected.

    She would never let him stay the night and he would feel like the dog getting put out at the end of the day.

    He would try to rationalize that lots of people would love such a relationship. Sex and then piss off, but for some reason it didn’t always appeal to him.

    Looked at from a certain slant of rationality, Jan was doing everyone a favour breaking out of a relationship she felt trapped in. Manus didn’t always look at it from that particular slant of rationality.

    It’s funny how unrequited love can turn to hate.

    But then life could sometimes be seen as a very funny experience, especially if you are living in the wealthy West.

    And Manus was living in the wealthy West.

    *******

    He brought Shirifa to a protest against deportations. Manus had friends who had been forced out of Ireland. He had felt frustration and anger. He didn’t have that many friends and couldn’t afford to lose any of them. One of his friends was called Addi. They had met in a border town. They both lived in the same housing estate . They both felt very isolated amongst the remnants of die-hard Republicanism, and the alcoholism which seemed to dominate the estate. They met on a regular basis for over a year, never doing much other than smoking African bush weed and talking or listening to music.

    But contacts like this were an oasis of human interaction in his otherwise social desert. Manus felt close to Addi. Then one day Manus got a message on his mobile saying Addi was in prison and asking for help. Manus didn’t know how to help. He never heard from Addi again. Apart from feeling useless and guilty Manus didn’t know what else he could do.

    His friend Okoro was a different story, which ended with Islam Okoro not being allowed back into Ireland, even though he had three kids who were born and living in the country at the time.

    So now the government was having a pre-Christmas round up of Nigerian fathers. They would be deported and their wives and children would follow them back.

    Manus was angry about the loss of his friends and infuriated that the government still used the tactic of separating fathers from their children. If any one for any reason thought they had the right to separate Manus and Shirifa, they were wrong. They had no such right. Manus was sure of that.

    He got himself a bit worked up as he walked down to the protest.

    Shirifa was sleeping in the buggy. He stood outside the immigration office with a dozen others. He was given a placard that read ‘no deportations’.

    He was glad to show some of the people going into the building that not all of the Irish thought it was ok to deport these men.

    Then a racist, a male in his thirties; poor, uneducated and socially deprived, went by and shouted: ‘shouldn’t let the black bastards in in the first place.’

    The words ‘fucken wanker’ erupted out of Manus in a loud and violence-threatening voice.

    It was always impossible dealing with blind ignorance and hatred. Manus had dealt with a lot of it as a child on Belfast’s Ormeau Road. Then it was called sectarianism.

    ‘Taigs out’ would get painted on the walls, and he and others were chased through the streets. Sometimes people were caught and killed stone dead because they were Taigs.

    Manus could never really figure it out. Was it that perpetrators of these types of crime had defects which they tried to compensate for by showing off an ability to hate? Were they acting under the influence of a crowd with a collectively low IQ? Probably a lot of the blame lay with newspapers, clerics, and bosses who told them it was right to have contempt for people even slightly different from themselves.

    As a child Manus could never figure out why people he had never met could hate him. And there would be no chance to talk, to rationalize. These people wanted to stop you talking, stamp out your rationality.

    Manus’s instant and uncontrolled reaction at the racist statement had shocked him by the depth of violence it carried in its tone. By its vicious rage.

    It shocked the racist too, who kept moving for a bit but then decided to come back and stand up for his right to be a loud-mouthed racist.

    ‘Who called me a wanker? are you looking for a fight?’

    Manus followed his breath closely as he took off his shoulder bag full of nappies and wipes, set it gently on the child’s buggy and stepped out to meet his would be assailant.

    ‘You looken for a fight?’, the man repeated.

    Manus felt centred enough, and just tried to keep his eyes on his opponent’s feet and fists. A head butt would also be a danger as they squared up.

    It crossed Manus’s mind as he approached that it might be best to just lash out with a kick. He was glad he wore heavy shoes and if it was going to happen it would be better to get the first blows in. It would end the tension for a start. But how would it look on the camera? Surely they were on CCTV camera?  Maybe Manus could just stand him down. As he drew closer Manus cursed his own stupidity for having brought a blimp of draw with him to the protest. Manus wasn’t the brightest.

    Then he had Shirifa with him and if they arrested Manus what would they do with his daughter?

    Manus squared up to the man. ‘Just leave’ said Manus and luckily for Manus the racist left.

    Pauline stuck a small camera in Manus’s face just as the racist left. She asked Manus how he felt. Manus had felt slightly overwhelmed by the spontaneity and ferocity of his own reaction, but all he could say to Pauline was, ‘I feel too emotional about the whole thing. I just wish they’d stop this shit.’

    He wasn’t even clear what ‘shit’ he was referring to. Racism. Deportations. The main stream press, who’s messages divided people and diverted them from the real issue of the destructive policies and practices of the world’s greedy, wasteful corporations;

    All of the above he supposed.

    *******

    Shirifa woke up hungry and a bit grumpy. After the protest he brought her round to Seomra Spraoi. They boiled rice and ate it with yogurt. Pauline’s daughter played with Shirifa. So did Patrizia. Pauline was about the same age as Manus. Patrizia wasn’t half his age. Both females seemed fit and healthy, and he wondered if either would consider him a potential shag. He seemed more detached about this question than his sexual needs usually allowed. Did detachment come with age?

    Both women seemed worthwhile human beings. Human contact meant a lot to Manus and although he still worshiped sex more than money or any other god, he sometimes preferred it when sexuality took a back seat to a more rounded and fully human interaction.

    Seomra Spraoi was a slightly different social setting to most. Alternative social relations were possible. Manus didn’t feel like he had a need to show sexual interest in any one, nor would he be too offended if no one showed that type of interest in him.

    In truth Manus doubted his ability to go with anyone other than the mother of his child. She was the only one he’d known for six years. He figured he would miss the familiarity and resent the break in intimacies continuity. Maybe he was just scared of the unknown.

    After Seomra Spraoi was shut down under fire regulations Manus felt a terrible sense of loss at the news. He felt isolated again. Where would he go? Where would he bring his daughter?

    With no where else to go Manus called on two people he knew. Unfortunately Seamus from County Clare had returned to smack, while Ghanny from Nigeria had found Christianity again. Manus turned first to alcohol, and then to scribbling.

    Seomra Spraoi would open again, even if it was in another building. It was a place where people could get together and exchange ideas and go some way to creating social norms, maybe even a social revolution that suited themselves rather than their rulers. But that’s just back to political rather than personal spiel.

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  • Demon Cum

    DEMON CUM

    I

    He’s the latest spawn of Hell
    with a lanyard and a notch lapel
    and “there is no alternative,”
    as if nothing has to give,
    a stench of sulfur to intrigue
    some think-tank from the Ivy League.
    Gray-flecked beard and close-cropped hair,
    a ruin that’s beyond repair
    but crying out for management,
    refurbishing, and rising rent,
    but atop primordial slimes,
    an op-ed in The New York Times,
    a view where people look like ants,
    paid by fellowships and grants,
    a Predator drone with mark on lock,
    an unpaid intern on his cock,
    a data-driven genocide,
    a seminar taught on the side,
    a speech into a thousand mics,
    a million viral Facebook likes,
    a sociopath with lots of friends,
    a handshake that never fucking ends,
    a five-star meal, a rail of blow,
    the so-called former status quo.

    II

    The poem is reduced to a statistic
    of lines and syllables, attempted tropes,
    and stresses. Still, you should be realistic—
    you’ll hold off the degenerates with rhyme,
    with Ivy League credentials, and you’ll cope
    in little magazines, marking time
    with versifications of the status quo—
    a plea for dialogue, an early snow
    beatified, a metaphor that’s felt
    in the flipping of a calendar,
    one more year before the ice caps melt.
    It’s either not our fault—or all our fault.
    Shake your head and grip the bannister.
    Head to bed or dress up like John Gault,
    content there’s really nothing you can do.
    content that all real change must start with you.

    III

    Resistance wears a muu-muu now.
    “Yes we can” and “we know how”
    becomes your mother on the line.
    You tell her everything is fine,
    but she knows better. All the fuss
    takes on shades of Oedipus—
    a tired old lady on a stage,
    the slapstick ending of an age.
    Daddy Warbucks, Howard Roark.
    A NASDAQ surge. A high-tech dork.
    A mother-god is on the phone,
    scolding you in monotone.
    A shattered statue, endless sands—
    a poem no one understands
    despite iambic clarity.
    Inside a tent marked “VIP”
    our goddess goes back to her crypt.
    The tripwire, yet again, is tripped.

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  • Stayers’ Hurdle

    His eyes squint as the 6am light reflects off the plastic bags, cans and crisp packets of the Grand Canal. Portobello has never looked so good, as his legs struggle up the incline away from the city. The sound of the water makes him suddenly acutely aware of the thirst in his mouth, the remnants of warm beer long-replaced by an all-encompassing dryness with a sinister chemical edge. His stomach suddenly cramps, and the effort of the walk is now superseded by a fierce clench. Fifty-year-old bus driver shits himself on city bridge – the headline flashes before his fading eyes and a smile cracks out from his parched mouth. But he holds on and continues down towards Rathmines. And as he struggles down the main street past the barracks, the birds high up above the rugby pitch chirp. And he looks at the message scrawled on his hand – ‘Tomorrow the birds will sing’ – the marker still visible along with the minuscule cartoon birds in question. And he knows it to be true, for Dennis O’Kane has never felt this alive.

    Twelve hours earlier, and it’s the 5.15 at Kempton Park. That was the big one. Circled in the Post over his corn flakes, there was some serious value to be had. Those heavy spring showers really fucked up both form book and favourite, and the various weather forecasts he’d seen placed a nice dousing for the greater London area right around 4. Brentford vs Burton would be a good indicator – throw a couple of quid on that, find some dodgy website from the Far East showing it and fire on 50quid on Paco’s Prince once the heavens opened over west London. That would take him right up to 6 o’clock or so, certainly late enough for a few celebratory cans of Lidl’s finest. Premium Pils for a premium Saturday.

    The morning sun bounces off the metallic blue Fiesta outside his window. There was certainly no chance of it moving anytime soon – he’d heard the hippie girl next door come in fairly late last night, and come fairly heavily this morning. Yet another Saturday tradition in Grosvenor Gardens, one of the downsides of this cheaply built 1970s apartment block. The amber shine on the TV nearly stirred something in him, as it always did. Weekends spent punting and pinting in the rain suited him perfectly. Grey days were guilt free for a grey existence. But the sun was far more judgemental. It pierced the trees, emerging from a shadowy blue sky to permeate his ground floor flat and in one swoop of light ask the question – is this it? Is this really it? And the answer for the last ten years had been a yes, an anguished, numbed yes sustained by accumulators and aluminium Ales. An existence that he generally accepted as his destiny, but that stung on those sunny Saturday mornings to the soundtrack of a stranger’s sexual climax.

    He crossed the Rathmines Road, interactions complete for another day. ‘That’s 6.89, do you have a Clubcard?’ ‘he’s in to 7s now, that ok?’ ’any change?’ A couple of old lads smoked angrily outside Grace’s pub, stale smell of Budweiser and farts permeating out the door. He’d given it a go, become a familiar face for a while, but it wasn’t quite him. Sometimes he could sup away in silence or pass a few comments on whatever was on in the corner. But there’d always be some loud cunt who would ruin it. Always had to get the last word in. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing…’ That or bring up the missus. Or the kids. And he’d sit there and stare into his pint, pining for an inexistent memory.

    5.18. The muck flies up past the leathery hooves as they approach the second last, Paco’s Prince beginning his charge to the front. The silver can begins to crumple under the tense grip as the heartbeat quickens. The warm pissy beer momentarily quenches the nervous dryness and the world is a distant back marker to the action. Clears the last in second, but the favourite is leggy as fuck and he knows it. The whip cracks frantically but it’s redundant as Paco’s Prince strides past, gliding over the heavy ground. Chuck a bit of rain down and those fancy English cunt horses don’t stand a chance. Paco’s Prince, descendent of some knacker horse and trained in the non-regal Roscommon storms it at 10s. Get the fuck in. And before the high diminishes the door knocks. What the fuck. Who the fuck. Ah sure g’wan the fuck.

    ‘Yes?’
    Confused. Beautiful, but confused. ‘Simon?’
    ‘Eh sorry?’
    ‘Simon, the Airbnb?’

    She’s not Irish, that much is clear. She’s also definitely not here to see him. Nobody looking like this would be standing here to see him. Come to think of it, nobody would be standing here to see him.

    Victorious euphoria beginning to wear off sharply, as sweat forms on his neck.

    ‘I think you have the wrong door. No Simon or Airbnb here.’

    Mild distress, and he notices the case for the first time. Noticed the wet hair as drips formed on his doorstep. Those spring showers clearly weren’t confined to west London, the change in weather having gone unnoticed by him.

    ‘Is not Airbnb?’
    ‘No’
    I’m very sorry for disturb you.”

    The sadness in her eyes. He’d never seen anything like it. Never been captivated by something so instantly, strongly and painfully.

    ‘No that’s ok. I wasn’t up to much. Where were you looking for anyway?’

    Confusion again, but of a different type. The look of someone without a fucking clue what’s just been said. To be fair, communication had never been his strong point.

    ‘Ahhh – can you say again?’
    ‘Yeah where were you looking for? What address? House number?’ Speaking slower this time – fuck does she think I’m treating her like a retard? Sweat building, ads loudly interrupting in the background.
    ‘Ah yes, yes.’

    She took her phone out. It was always these moments she’d mistype her pin. Had to be on some strange doorstep in some strange town, talking to a stranger who was speaking some completely alien form of English.

    ‘One moment’, as she cleared a comically large raindrop from her screen. A mutual laugh
    ‘Bit wet out there – was sunny and all this morning!’
    ‘Oh yes – oh no! I am too late’
    ‘Sure could be back in an hour – you never know’
    ‘Here – Apartment 3, Grosvenor Halls, Rathmines,’ Their heads briefly touched as she showed him the phone, a 21st century fleeting moment. She smelled like heaven, and he was immediately aware he smelled of Lidl Cans, a chipper and a 50 year-old batchelor with a Heinz-heavy diet.
    ‘Right so I’m 3 Grosvenor Gardens, Halls is the other side of the car park.’

    More confusion.

    ‘C’mon I’ll show you.’

    He stepped across the threshold and pointed her in the right direction.

    She made her way across the potholed courtyard, and he felt a sudden urge to keep the conversation going.

    ‘Holiday is it?’
    ‘Yes yes – holiday!’ as she looked back at him through the rain.
    ‘Well you picked a great place!’ the sarcasm clear even through the linguistic border.

    And as she entered into the building across the way she glanced back at him and laughed – ‘So far so good! Thank you!’

    Door closes and for a few seconds he lingers outside. The tv is still on, horses being paraded for the next race. The horses that have paraded round that living room for the last ten years. Those fucking horses. He sits down, reaches for his can and takes a sip. 1m6f heavy going, grade 3. No clear favourite but fuck all value. Her scent lingers. Fuck all value. How many races has he watched with fuck all value. How much of his life has he spent sitting here. Fuck all value. His head is racing, his heart pumping. ‘What the fuck have you done. What the fuck have you done. Fifty years-old and this is it. Fifty fucking years!’ The remote smashing the wall startles him, as the batteries roll across his cheap, dark green carpet. And before he can stop himself the TV is off, his keys are in his hand and he’s gone.

    The Dodder. It hadn’t been the best choice of route to evaluate his existence, as young life and love buzzed back and forth to Trinity Halls, repealing and appealing. But he’d made it to the Dodder, and now he sat and watched it flow. Briefly he thinks of jumping in. Not as a suicide thing – he’d never really been into that. More just to do something. But sure he’d only end up back in the depot in Donnybrook, only this time a wet miserable cunt. One adjective wasn’t going to change much. And then he thought of her. He wasn’t delusional. She must have been half his age, and if he was a Bohs she was a Barcelona. Short of a seriously dramatic injection of funds that wasn’t going to happen. But still. There was something more. Her eyes had so much life in them, so much expression. She was hardly going to fuck him or anything, but he felt she could help him. He felt she had to help him. And as the rain started to fall again to the rustle of wind and leaves he looked around and realised his thirty minute walk to this bench was the furthest he had walked in months or even years. Rocks parted the water as it surged down from the Dublin Mountains, currents merging together again effortlessly on their race to Ringsend.

    Nature made it look so easy, like it was all part of an inevitable process. And for many years he had assumed life was the same. He’d sat and waited for it to happen. Waited for the girlfriend, the wedding, the kids, the grandkids – the milestones that those around him ticked off as they faded further from his life into their own. Friends from his road, lads from school, his brother, lads in work. ‘I met a bird,’ ‘I’ve been seeing that Sarah wan from round the corner,’ ‘lads got a bitta news – you’ll be needing your suits next summer!’ ‘its a boy!’ ‘Fucking Johnny’s got his girlfriend pregnant.’ It had always seemed so natural to them. Breathe, eat, love, live. And as the group left behind got smaller, the comments started to hurt a bit more. ‘Ah sure you just have to find the right one!’ ‘You’re better off without – they’re a fucking a nightmare.’ ‘How about you Dennis – any birds on the go?’ Like a sprinter on a mountain stage, when the peloton dropped you it hurt more. And there’d been the occasional glimmer, the odd hope of getting back on. A few dates here and there, a couple of the sexual hurdles cleared. But then just as he’d grabbed someone’s wheel the pace was cranked up, until eventually he’d let go. The river flowed on and the rock stood still.

    ‘Its beautiful, no? Is the Doo-Der?’

    Jesus. It was her. What the fuck was she doing in Milltown?

    ‘Yeah yeah, lovely. We say the Do-dder though. Not many tourists come here! You get into the apartment ok?’
    ‘Ah yes yes. Thank you again! You come to the Do-dder a lot? Is a nice walk!’
    ‘Eh yeah.. no not too much no. Actually not for years.’
    ‘And today?’
    ‘Eh.. just felt like a walk. Good to stretch the legs I guess.’

    A silence. Normally a silence was welcome – an escape route back to the sofa. But he’d already traded the sofa in for a wooden bench so he pressed on.

    ‘So what has you in Dublin?’
    ‘Holidays. Its not a normal place for holidays?’
    ‘I guess it is, but Temple Bar or the Guinnes Factory and all that stuff. Not really Rathmines and the River Dodder!’

    She laughed. She didn’t fully understand him, though it was getting easier, but there was something comforting about him. His complete lack of sophistication, his honesty – there was no agenda here. There wasn’t going to be a subtle touch of her shoulder, or some invented shit about Brecht or Voltaire.

    ‘Exactly! Everyone goes there. I don’t come here to see more French people, or Spanish or Americans. I come to see Irish people and the… Dodder.’
    ‘Fair enough – sure Temple Bar’s a fucking shithole and the Guinness Factory is just 15 quid for a pint. And you’d get a better one down the local anyway.’
    ‘Local?’
    ‘Ah sorry – a local pub. One with no tourists.’

    Was it technically a local if you hadn’t been in about four years? The place was rammed, the old lads seeking refuge in the passageway between the jacks and the smoking area as the younger crowd milled around the bar. She returned with two more Guinness. It may have been 4 years, but his memory was spot on about the pint Slatterys did.

    ‘Its got to be creamy, but smooth. Kind of velvety.’
    ‘But how can it be good in one pub and not another pub?’
    ‘It just is, but you can tell by looking at a place. No music, old lads and lots of wood – you’re getting a good pint. Pop music, disco lights and a plastic glass you may as well drink your own shite.’

    He regretted the vulgarity but she loved it.

    ‘Ok, we need to compare it. I need to see.’
    ‘You want to drink shite?’
    ‘No! I want to try Guiness in another pub! To see the difference.’

    Another pub, coming up with one had been a struggle. He couldn’t in all consciousness bring her near Grace’s, couple of the ones down in Donnybrook maybe…

    ‘You know the George Bernard Shaw?’
    ‘The writer?’
    ‘No no, is a pub. My friend lived two years in Ireland. Recommended it me. The same person who recommended me Rathmines!’

    She looked him in the eye, almost conspiratorially. Flashes of decades ago, when a girl got that look in her eye. Annie Kelly in the Bleeding Horse, her hand resting on his leg. He’d almost blown his load. He knew this was different – very little chance of a fumble down Pleasants Place – but the glint was the same. And it was fucking magical.

    ‘Richmond Street’ as she showed him her phone.

    That one. Mad looking place. Hipster, I believe the term is. Suddenly he was incredibly aware of his old corduroy trousers and baggy shirt resting on his belly of many years of neglect.

    ‘Ah yeah. You want to go there? Eh… yeah wouldn’t be my style I guess but yeah. sure go on. Bet you the Guinness is shite though!’

    The wind on the street bit at her cheeks and cleared some of the brown, stouty fuzz from her brain. Maybe this was why they drank so much, because the weather smashed you sober. And suddenly the oddity of her situation forced itself on her. She had been in Dublin for a few hours. She was drunk. She was with a fat, old man. Well not grand-pere old, but 50+. 30 years older maybe? Travelling alone always hinted at some sort of romantic possibility, but this was certainly not one of them. This was not a George Clooney, not the mysterious Irish man her friends had joked about. ‘Oh you’re going alone? Interesting… Are you coming back alone?’ But she was having a great time.

    ‘Look I know I’m probably not who you pictured spending your night here with so if you want to head off or have friends to meet, that’s grand. No need to bring me along.’

    The interruption, the silence the street, the traffic, It had thrown him. What the fuck was he doing here ruining this girl\s night? A sudden urge to run back to his comfort zone, grab a bag of chips, let off the fart he’d been sitting on for about 20 minutes.

    ‘No, no – come on! We have to try this other pint.’ She didn’t want him to go. She didn’t want to default to her people. She didn’t want to wander into Dublin, find people who looked like her. Find people who talked like her, thought like her. Find some guy who fucked like her and ate brunch like her. For this weekend she didn’t want that bullshit, the same lines and conversations. Pills and ruminations on Le Pen, house music and start ups.

    He fucking hated this place. For someone who’d spent 4 years in silence watching horses on a moderately comfortable sofa, this was too much, too quick. He lifted his glass and the plastic threw another few millilitres of brown on his hand. Nothing worse than bad Guinness, but they’d hit a rhythm and he couldn’t change. The conversation had mostly been about her and Dublin. She fielded questions on the former, he was the expert on the latter. Twenty-five-years-old. From Paris. No clue who Neymar was and indeed it had nearly killed the conversation. Intrigued by Irish culture and had planned the trip with an ex. Decided to do it solo, hence in the Bernard Shaw with a fat bus driver.

    The basics had been divulged earlier in round one – name, job and marital status. He was Dennis, she was Chloe. He drove buses, she worked in graphic design. He was single. She was single. The latter had segued into rounds two to six. The ex, The idea of Dublin. The mutual break up that turned out not to be so mutual. The drama of the French. Irish drama. Joyce. Behan. The great tradition of the drunken wordsmith, the tragedy settling at the bottom of the glass while the tomes travelled the world. But as the bell tolls for round 7, she lands the first decisive punch.

    ‘Were you ever married before?’ It was funny how rounds did that. A conversation could be halted mid-stream while beverages were acquired, and a completely new one struck up to herald their return. No warning, no context – each pint was its own snippet and this one Dennis O’Kane had been dreading more and more over the last ten years.

    ‘Eh, no. Never walked the plank, as they say.’
    ‘The plank?’

    Fuck. The whole language thing. Sweat pores opened again, clocking serious overtime of a Saturday.

    ‘It’s an expression… but yeah, never got married’
    ‘Did you ever nearly get married?’

    Ah here. That first punch developed into a sequence. Irish people wouldn’t ask you that. Must be a continental thing. He looked at her, her expectant gaze unaware of any faux-pas having being committed.

    ‘Nah, not really. I mean it depends on what you mean by nearly but.. no.. not even nearly.’ It really didn’t depend on what was meant by nearly.
    ‘Is normal in Ireland?’

    Temporary relief, as she starts talking about declining marriage rates in France. How it’s fairly common these days for people to just co-habit. But he knows its only temporary and it’s time to throw in the towel.

    ‘Ah look, the truth is… I never really had anything serious.’
    ‘Serious?’
    ‘I… never really had what you would call a girlfriend.’
    ‘Ah.. you are gay?’ Says it like she’s solved a fucking puzzle or something.
    ‘Ah jaysus no.. I mean not that its a problem.. but look at me, I hardly look it, do I?’

    She laughs, eschewing her default political correctness.

    ‘Well… no maybe not.’

    He wants to leave. He wants to get up, throw his plastic pint over this crowd of young, happy cunts and retreat back to Rathmines. But she keeps looking at him. An expectant smile that knows he will submit. And suddenly he starts telling his story. A few dates in his late teens / early 20s, the odd ride up to his mid 30s and then nothing. Friends paired off and faded away. Those that remained would focus nights out on setting him up, the mortification of being shoved towards some poor girl in the corner to bore the ear off her for five minutes and apologetically move on.

    ‘Why?’
    ‘Eh.. like I said, just never really found anyone.’
    ‘No.. I ask why, not what. Why did you never ‘find someone?’

    The air quotes. The jugular. Shame turns to anger, but still she smiles. There’s no malice there. There’s purpose.

    ‘I guess… I don’t know. I mean… I’m not exactly George Clooney, am I? I watch football and horses, I drive a bus and my diet is oven chips and pints.’

    Silence. The smile, the stare but silence.

    ‘I was never good at talking to people. Like with a group I was ok, I could contribute. But one-to-one… I don’t know what to say. I never knew what to say. A rake of pints used to help, but even then…’

    He trails off. There’s a lump forming in his throat.

    Silence.

    ‘Like.. if I liked a girl I’d get nervous. I’d… I knew I wasn’t worthy. They’d want someone better.’

    Silence. He’s struggling to keep it together.

    ‘Or I’d start thinking about what my mates would say.’ See them all in the corner laughing. ‘Dennis is after scoring some rotten bird – it was the pressure. I… I… I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
    ‘Dennis…’

    She holds his hand. Relief. It’s over – he can sense it’s over.

    ‘If you do not love yourself, you will not love anybody else. If you do not love yourself, nobody will love you.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You have to love yourself first. Before anything else.’
    ‘This advice would have been nice 20 years ago…’
    ‘Its advice for now. For today. You can start today’
    ‘Yeah… easy to say. Easy for you to say… you have everything going for you. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re… happy.’

    Her smile doesn’t waver. Her glance doesn’t break.

    ‘And so are you. You can be beautiful, you can be happy… young… well ok, maybe not young.’

    They laugh. A badly needed moment of comic relief.

    ‘I’m not beautiful though, and I don’t think I’m happy…’
    ‘Are you happy tonight?’
    ‘Tonight… until about 10 minutes ago!’

    Meant as a joke, and she takes it that way. More laughter. Then silence. A longer silence and she finally looks away, as if she’s calculating something.

    ‘Ok, I know what we do. Tonight we have fun, and tonight we make you feel happy and beautiful. Wait here.’

    His brain is fried. Piecing together the last few hours. Painfully regretting the last few decades. Pondering the next few minutes. Is she coming back? What’s she got planned? Am I getting sucked off here? The pints have definitely gone to the head.

    She comes back and takes his hand. Something is pressed into his palm. Her eyes dart quickly around the smoking area.

    ‘Take this.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Quickly! Take this!’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Ecstasy’

    Drugs and love. Two things he’d never touched. And two things he’d seen consume a fair few mates.

    ‘Ah here, I don’t do that shit. Never have.’
    ‘You don’t go out drinking with young French girls either! Try! It’s not a lot, but you’ll like it. It will help you.’

    She looks up at him, eyes expectant and insistent. He knows this only ends one way.

    ‘Now we can have fun.’

    The thing is so small he barely feels it. If it weren’t for the slight chemical tinge in his throat he wouldn’t be sure he’d taken it. How the fuck does this tiny thing leave fellas on the floor?

    ‘So what’s supposed to be happening to me now?’
    ‘Nothing! It takes time. You’ll know when you know.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it, but I’m not sure its going to do much to a big lad like myself.’

    Forty-five minutes later and he’s standing at the bar by the dance floor. Warmth is rushing through his blood, words rushing out his mouth. The young lads he’s talking to are clearly loving the novelty of it, the novelty of him. but it’s love all the same. He sips his Becks and savours the surge of hops into his dry mouth. The dryness causes the briefest sense of panic and dread, the briefest moment of apothecary awe. How the fuck is something so small so powerful? But the anxiety is washed away as quickly as it arose, as this newly formed brain trust calculate he most likely drove them to school for 6 years.

    ‘I’m telling yiz, I drove that 16 bus for six years. Fucking hated you lot crowding the corridor in your fucking oversized blazers. Never got how yous were able to chat to any women at all looking like extras from a fucking production of Bugsy Malone.’

    ‘Did you know half of us were sneaking on without paying?’

    ‘Of course I fucking knew, You weren’t MI5 lads! Did I care was a different question. Whether Dublin Bus got their hands on your 50p or not was no real concern of mine.’

    ‘The shit we used to get up to on that top floor… smoking joints, getting hand jobs down the back.’
    ‘We saw it all. There was a few lads in the garage who were known for taking a bit too much interest in the cameras if I’m being honest.’

    The conversation goes on, and Dennis is suddenly an observer, surveying the scene in front of him. The scene around him. The crowd is swaying, if not in unison, in generally asynchronous frantic motions to the music. Chloe hovers around making acquaintances but never moving too far away. And at the centre, there he stands. He knows he stands out. He knows there’s nobody like him, not even remotely like him there. He senses and sees the odd looks and comments from the shadows, the disdainful eye of the dickhead behind the bar. But he doesn’t care. He’s aware it’s the chemicals talking, but he doesn’t care.

    Somewhere just off the South Circular Road. He sinks into a dusty sofa while around him people dance. Tiredness is taking over and the offer of ‘top ups’ sensibly declined.  The smell of spliff, so recognisable from so many routes, hangs heavily in the air. Out of the illicit smoke Chloe emerges from the impromptu living room dance floor. She sinks down beside him.

    ‘So?’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So did you have fun? Do you feel happy?’

    Such a simple question, but he takes an age before answering. His brain struggles with the various computations and calculations.

    ‘I had fun. I definitely had fun. Compared to an evening of betting on the horses I had great fucking fun. But happy?…. It’s hard to say. I mean … yeah I was happy for the night, but like, tomorrow this is just a hangover and a memory. Maybe a story. It doesn’t change anything.’

    ‘Yes.. tomorrow you will feel terrible. And probably the day after that too! Maybe even in the next couple of hours.’
    ‘Cheers for that. Feeling much better now’
    ‘Ha well, you will feel terrible maybe. But you will also feel different. You will think and realise that happiness is possible. Life is possible. If you let your brain see it.’
    ‘So take these things every day?’
    ‘No! I think never take them again. But remember that feeling. Remember how you talk to me, to them, to yourself. Remember the difference to how you talk to yourself this morning.’
    ‘It does’t work that way. I mean I’ve gone drinking and been happy. Woke up the next day and felt shit. I know how this works.’
    ‘Dennis, do you like films?’
    ‘Cinema – do you like cinema?’

    She likes these fucking random questions. Suddenly he’s properly fucking wrecked.

    ‘Eh yeah, I guess. I mean, everyone likes films, no? Look, I think I’m going to head. Leave you to it.’
    ‘My favourite film is with Charlie Chaplin. City Lights. It is a silent film, but there are words in it I never forget. The main character finds a man who is by the water. He is going to kill himself. And Charlie Chaplin, the main character, says this line to him.’

    She takes his arm and turns it over. She has a marker in her hand. And then she’s writing.

    He reads it. ‘Tomorrow the Birds will Sing.’

    ‘Tomorrow the birds will sing. Tomorrow can always be a better day than today. But you have to believe it and you have to make it happen. You will still have horrible days, you will still have horrible moments. But if you keep believing this, if you keep thinking of this message, you will be ok. Listen to the birds.’

    She draws two little birds to complement her quote.

    ‘Do you always do this?’
    ‘Do what?’

    She leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

    ‘Goodbye Dennis. Thank you for showing me Dublin and for showing me you.’

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  • Who Needs a Healing?

    In the inner world, time has a way of standing still long enough so you can come to your senses.  Then you can have eyes that see and ears that hear. My Aunt Jewel taught me this more by example than with words. She had no use for words and she wasn’t really my aunt. Mama, a divorcée from Mississippi, had married into Auntie’s Choctaw Indian family one-day shy of my first birthday. At four feet eleven with a heart as big as Texas, I could always count on her for a kind word and a tender voice.  Learning some of the old ways with her taught me that cause and effect can’t always be foretold much less recognized and controlled.

    My earliest memory of Auntie is the first time she took me to her one room church near the Little Cypress Bayou that flows through the Blue Elbow Swamp, eventually entering the Sabine River near I-10 in Orange, Texas.  The church, a tiny clapboard painted white with a piney wood floor and a few benches, was where the beleaguered believers felt they belonged.

    “Who needs a HEALING” screamed Preacher, a red-faced man in black pants and a cheap white, sweat-soaked shirt that encased his gut, revealing a life time of buttery biscuits and sausage gravy.

    “Nancy Ann, I think ya got a fever” Auntie said aloud as her brown hand felt my white face.

    “No mam – I ain’t got no fever!

    “Yes, you do” she whispered as she firmly took me by the arm and guided me to the homemade dais.  Down on my knees I went with the weight of Auntie’s hand on my right shoulder.

    When Preacher caught his breath long enough to notice he had a child to work on, he began crying and wailed, “unless you change and become like this little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  He held up a small bottle of Jerusalem Holy Oil, so all could behold the glorious healing about to occur.  As I looked up at Preacher, heartburn from that morning’s breakfast caused me mistakenly to believe it needed to be healed.

    “Child, do you want to be healed,” he asked while kneeling to better look me in the eye.

    “I think so.”

    The fears that bumped around in my already wizened seven-year-old psyche were very real.   I didn’t have the faith in the old ways like Auntie did.  My pagan mother had taught me to believe in the evil eye and being cursed and such, but not in the hell that Preacher and Auntie did.  To Mama, heaven was a piece of land, a good scotch with a good screw; something that made this life a little easier to bare.  Hell was in between your ears, right here, right now.

    “Child are you ready to confess your sins,” Preacher asked.

    “I think so.”

    “You think so,” he said with a faint smile.

    “Yes Sir.  I think so.”

    “Do you repent of all your sins, so you can be healed?”

    “Y e s . . . sir” slowly slipped from my lips and with that, I was suddenly looking up at the ceiling as Preacher held the back of my head, while making the sign of the cross on my third eye with his oily finger.  Auntie, already filled with the Holy Ghost, was speaking in tongues. My skinny little body began to swoon as it filled with the divine energy.   The room began to swirl, and I fell back on Aunt Jewel who slowly lowered me to the floor.

    “Praise God” she wailed.

    “Praise God” cried the congregants who were no longer quietly singing and humming along with the makeshift band.  Now they were making a loud and glorious music unto the Lord singing I’ll Fly Away as loud as possible:

    When the shadows of this life have gone
    I’ll fly away
    Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly
    I’ll fly away.

    As I lay there on the floor unable to get up and surrounded by all the wonderful beleaguered believers, my heart filled with joy and my nose filled with the scent of the myrrh and sweet-smelling cinnamon used to make the Jerusalem Holy Oil Preacher had used to heal me.  The singing was muffled as if far away,

    I’ll fly away, oh glory
    I’ll fly away in the morning
    When I die, Hallelujah by and by
    I’ll fly away.

    After what felt like an eternity, I was helped to my feet.  Everyone was beaming at me.  Auntie, grinning ear to ear, was hugging me up close and whispering now we got to git ya baptized baby girl.  Now we got to git ya baptized.

    “Yes Lord… I know Lord… Thank you Lord…” Preacher prayed while still on his knees.  His voice just loud enough so everyone could hear he was still conversing with Jesus.

    There was a static electricity in the room.  Every time someone came to hug me, there was a shock.  My hair was sticking out on end the way it does when you pull a sweater over your head in the winter.  But my stomach wasn’t burning anymore, and Auntie was so pleased with me she was promising a Dairy Queen double dip.

    While she was saying her goodbyes, I went outside to stand in the October chill.  It was a clear day with a slight breeze.  Looking up at the sun, I wondered if my heart got healed.  I wondered if a healing was the same as a protection. Mostly, I wondered what if Mama was right?  What if hell really is between your ears, right here, right now?  What then?

  • Sic Transit Gloria

    I learned to drive in a field when I was five, from the same grandfather who taught me how to ride a horse and chew tobacco. At age ten, I took my other grandfather’s El Camino out on Highway 1, the longest road in Louisiana, from church camp all the way to vacation bible school. That spiritual summer, compelled by the power of Christ, I think was the first and last time I truly felt the thrill of being behind the wheel. Once legally licensed, I found myself in a few fender benders, reluctantly dealing with mechanical malfunctions often due to my feminine indifference in the face of minute maintenance. I recall nonchalantly applying mascara in my rear view mirror, moving at about 80 miles an hour, when someone shouted from the next lane, Hey Miss, your car’s on fire! And indeed it was.

    Walking to work one morning, right off Rue Royal in New Orleans’ Vieux Carré, I ran into the Chicken Man, a local voodoo practitioner of some repute. Ebony face smiling out from under his ivory cowboy hat, he stopped to ask me how I was doing, and I answered, I could be better. He offered to help, if somebody put a gris-gris on me. I just shook my head, I don’t know Chicken Man, I’m just sick and tired of my grandma’s old Pontiac breakin’ down on me. You got a mojo for that? 

    He brightened, Pretty Lady, I got a mojo for everything. Come by tomorrow and I’ll have it fixed up.   So I did. At the back of his shop, the cool cat sat, in a candle-lit cloud of incense, amongst a hocus-pocus host of saints and skulls. His pink leather palm presented what looked like any other mojo, a little silk sachet, a kind of bouquet garni, containing some pungent mumbo jumbo botanicals tied up with a cord into a necklace.  I wrinkled my nose, before I caught myself and inquired, with all due respect, Do I have to wear it around my neck all the time or put it under my pillow every night? 

    He shook his head, amusement playing at the corners of his mouth, before suggesting, It‘d be more powerful dangling on that dashboard of yours. 

    What do I owe you, Chicken Man? 

    Averting his eyes, he answered, What you think its worth.  Suddenly sheepish, I gave him the paltry five bucks I had, saying I’d be back with more once the mojo started working, and a week later, I was.

    How’s that old black magic treating you, Gallery Girl?  He knew I sold sub-Saharan sculptures down on the corner and Royal Academy equestrian oil paintings further up the street on Saturdays.

    Well Chicken Man, it’s like this. Wednesday, I was driving up St. Charles on my way to meet a couple of acquaintances, for gin and tonics at Fat Harry’s. And right when I ran that yellow light at Napoleon Avenue, somebody else hit me, seeing red. We spun around, and took out a fire hydrant with us, exploded up like we struck oil, or something. The car is totalled. I just got an insurance check in the mail for thousands of dollars. So I don’t know, you tell me?  He slapped the counter, disgorging a baritone chuckle and said, not without some pride, Yeah, that voodoo is a funny thing, ain’t it? Now that car of yours ain’t gonna break down on you no more.

    Soon I met a Saudi prince who was training in Texas as a NASA astronaut. Before going up in the space shuttle, he spent a weekend in the Big Easy and at a party, took a shine to me. He flew me to Houston and I headed straight for the hotel spa. Four hairy Germans I’d seen on MTV, joined me in the jacuzzi, who turned out to be a band called The Scorpions. They were playing that night. After a massage I met the boys from Deep Purple, by the pool. They invited me on a tour of Southfork Ranch, with the promise of a jigger with JR Ewing on the set of the TV show, Dallas. Alas, I declined, more inclined to stay with my sovereign space cadet, and with no prior training I crash landed the shuttle simulator at Johnson Space Center during something they referred to as, The Hawaiian Scenario.

    Back home, I began to receive boxes by UPS, laden with hand-beaded veils, silk caftans and silver coffee sets, directly from the Arabian Peninsula. The most intriguing object arrived in a velvet presentation case bigger than a shoe box. Nestled within was an extravagant necklace rendered in 24 karat gold, depicting the space shuttle flying over the royal palace at Riyadh, flanked by palm trees and crossed swords, crest of the House of Saud. The Canadian jeweller I worked for weighed the necklace, matching earrings, ring and armful of bracelets, made his calculations, and counted the cash into my hot little hand. He snickered, imitating my Saudi suitor, Desert Flower, sell my love gift to buy a Toyota.

    True, the the transaction afforded a sporty new Japanese import which I drove cross-country to my new home in Haight-Ashbury. There’s an old song about leaving your heart in San Francisco, well that’s where I left my last car. After you go over the Golden Gate Bridge a few times the parking tickets start to slow you down. It was the wild west, and I went to work at Wells Fargo Bank. The South was my stage and the powers-that-be ponied up for a Mustang convertible from which I coached my mostly male confederates to deposit fat checks.

    I left California’s colourful Victorian hilltop houses for Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak, where an outdoor escalator, snaking 800 meters through equatorial territory, exported 80,000 expats in our power suits from well feathered nests, down to towers full of tycoons in the harbour. One day during a typhoon, gliding in gleaming Gucci shoes, I slip on the slippery slope. I flip and finally flop face down. The Prada purse spills open my personal life. My new Nokia cracks and the briefcase breaches the confidentiality agreement upon which my financial future relies. Across the ground I crawl on Armani clad knees to gather a promising career’s required gear. Nearby, Cantonese neighbours watch the other gweilo, (ghost people, foreign devils) march over me with ruthless efficiency, toward their next promotion. When I shuffle in to my office like a wet cat, the Managing Director bellows, Pack your bags, Moneypenny, you’ve been reassigned to Mumbai! 

    My boss at the Bombay Stock Exchange called me the « Secret Weapon », once I commissioned thirty custom-made subcontinental saris. On a tour of the Taj Mahal in an Indian congressman’s propaganda plastered car, we were mobbed by a crowd mistaking me for Sonya Ghandi. She was 20 years my senior and from Lusiana, Italy not Louisiana, USA but how to say that in Hindi? Traffic outside the Taj Hotel was terrifying, with women wretched from profound poverty pressing naked brown babies against tinted windows hoping for a hand out. I went for my wallet, and perhaps to protect me, the chauffeur, from Chennai, activated the child safety lock. If he hit a local, company protocol dictated we speed to Sahar airport to take the first flight exiting Indian airspace. When I did that, the plane set down in the Land of the Rising Sun.

    Taxi drivers in Tokyo wore pristine white gloves. So did subway staff who pushed people, politely sealing them like sardines inside trains, avoiding delay. They bowed deeply during departure, except in the event of a suicide. Seppuku on the tracks is second only to finishing yourself off in Mount Fuji’s forest. On 9/11, I watched a Japanese TV presenter fly two paper planes between his thumb and index fingers in to a tiny origami model of the Twin Towers. Turning off the television, I crumpled my job contract for a fledgling hedge fund. The entire hiring team in New York had died.

    I ride the Red Line from Tallaght to town and something about the announcement Next Stop- Hospital makes me uneasy. It was Monday morning, when I was last on the LUAS, Gaelic for Speed. A gargantuan guy fell asleep, his head heavy on my shoulder, tinny tunes belching from his ear-buds. A teen turned abruptly, his backpack exfoliating my face. I felt faint and rose rapidly toward the doors. Scurrying ahead was a small Muslim in a tightly tied violet headscarf, set on getting out, when without warning, she collapsed into my arms. The scrum scattered, leaving us like lepers in a circle of stares. Uncaring, the train resumed its route to Smithfield, while the corolla of fair freckled souls muttered advice at me. When the doors slid open, I locked her armpits in the crook of my arguably larger limbs, and dragged her to the wet sidewalk. Asking her name, I examined her pupils for dilation. Finding a phone in her plethora of packages I wondered if ABDUL was her husband. Sweating, tears tumbled down her dampening cheeks. Pedestrians paused to diagnose diabetes or epilepsy, and someone called an ambulance as she stammered, I’m pregnant. Her fine boned brown fingers fluttered in mine until the Fire Brigade arrived.

    Before anyone asked, I blurted out, This is Annie, she’s 24, 14 weeks pregnant and she hasn’t eaten today. She’s a social worker for people with disabilities. The medics nodded, like bored horses, installing her inside the ambulance. The doors thumped shut and it sped away, along with that part of me that wanted to take care of her and her baby for the rest of their lives. I could have been a grandmother by now, but I forgot to have kids. Standing there in the wind, I worried about her, and then about me, before closing my coat. Lighting a cigarette, I quickly cut across the square.

    I’m a little uneasy, loitering at bus stops. Secretly, I become that seven-year-old that was nearly snatched by a creep who coaxed me into his Cadillac while waiting for the school bus. With local law enforcement’s « Stranger Danger » lecture fresh in my head, I fled just like Officer Friendly said. I fled as far as I could go on little legs made of marshmallow. Now I’m not bolder but older and yawning under a Dublin donut shop’s awning advertising, Aungier Danger. In relentless rain I rearrange my mane, bonding with a distinguished blonde delighted I’m from across the pond. The boisterous bus whisks us to Wicklow. It’s full of familiar faces further back, but we flock together up front.

    As the miles go by, my mobile Mona Lisa smiles, slipping off shoes, distracted, detaching clip-on earrings, the way women do on long bus rides. We fuss about budgets, discuss what’s distressing, and she’s …undressing. She fidgets a bit with her scarf, her wig, all her self-possessed feminine grace going whirligig, in to a big bag between her feet, like a grinning sheela-na-gig. Her prominent profile petrifies when she presses the pink plastic button to signal her stop, uttering huskily over the clitter clatter in the dusky half light, This is me, and bolts off the bus. Clearly, a chrysalis doesn’t need a Chrysler, because as if by sorcery, only a lone man can be seen in the tail lights, marching on the motorway. I watch through the window, as he grows smaller in the gathering gloom, then look back at the button, but I don’t dare press it. Lunging in the lurching double-decker, I hang on tight to tell the driver in a hoarse whisper, This isn’t me. Briefly he beams, then turns to stare straight ahead, his two shafts of light searching the night. His foot finds the metal gas pedal and we careen down the dark tarmac to a faster moving future.

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  • Double Take

    In 1973, my first time here,
    I’d stood in wonder with my head strained back
    As dizzily I’d tried to see how high
    The buildings had to reach to scrape the sky,
    Then lowered my gaze just like a steeplejack,
    Who staring straight ahead finds nothing sheer.

    Instead now I’m a resident who knows
    To cross Manhattan’s gridded streets it’s best
    When lights are red to zig and when they’re white
    To zag – a kind of crow’s rectangle flight,
    Combining north or south with east or west,
    Allowing chance to lead me by the nose.

    And yet my sights too low do I neglect
    The joys I’m underlooking as I pass?
    Careering too determined and hard-nosed,
    I miss those older buildings juxtaposed,
    With superstructures shaped in steel and glass,
    Where classical and modern intersect;

    Or how the scrapers taper, tilt or lean,
    To strike us with new beautiful contours;
    How topmost floors designed to counteract
    Excessive symmetry are stacked,
    And houses show surprise entablatures –
    So much unless we look remains unseen.

    On top of one apartment block my eye
    Picks out what seems at first some weeds grown wild,
    But they’re well-watered leaves of terrace trees
    Seen peeping over penthouse balconies –
    The rooftop plants you’d tended as a child,
    Still waste their green on earthbound passers-by.

    I can’t be too unworldly or withdraw –
    I live my lower days here down-to earth,
    Look horizontally for safety’s sake –
    But suddenly a higher double take
    Delights still in my love’s New York rebirth.
    I’m staring heavenward again in awe.

    Micheal O’Siadhail is the author of sixteen volumes of poetry. His latest book-length poem The Five Quintets was previously reviewed by Frank Armstrong for Cassandra Voices.

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  • Hello Julian Assange

    It was sunny outside. Manus still felt something akin to minor guilt at lying in bed on a sunny day. Just having the option carried a guilt. He had spent most of his life not having to get up in the morning, not working, living off social security benefits.

     There was a certain amount of guilt involved but it was easy to rationalize away. In a world that accepted the waste of half of its food production each day, and for thousands of kids to die of hunger each night, rationalizing guilt away came easy.

    He would have liked to fight against the injustices of the world but it seemed like a global system with no head to cut off that wouldn’t pop back up immediately. Manus had not spent his life researching and exposing corporate crimes or hacking computers. He wouldn’t know where to begin with research and when it came to computers he was technologically challenged.

    His lifestyle choice to just take drugs and scrounge off the state as much as they would allow had been as proactive a revolutionary stance as he could manage, which the less enlightened members of society failed to understand, instead viewing him as a lazy good-for-nuthen-opportunist-bum, but Manus didn’t hold it against them. ‘There but for fortune’ after all.

    No, regardless of mainstream social exclusion, condemnation and relative poverty for someone living in the privileged sector of the planet, Manus had often enjoyed his choice: to lie in or get up.

    This morning, however, he had allowed himself to be robbed of all enjoyment.

    This morning he was cursed with the knowledge that he had pushed a young woman away from him.

    She liked to keep her options open and he had texted her more or less demanding that she give him a definite date for their next meeting. In a ‘normal relationship’ this might well have been acceptable but this was not a ‘normal relationship’. In fact this was not a ‘relationship’. Avril had insisted from the start. She didn’t want a ‘relationship’. She liked to call round. Once or twice a week. Just for sex. And sex had nothing to do with anything. So Avril said.

    But after a few months, Manus got used to her and when she didn’t call for a week or so he was pushing her for rights he didn’t have.

    It was in the contract. She was younger than him by over two decades. All she wanted was a bit of fun and instead of being grateful he had pushed the last woman who would ever fuck him away. Now there was guilt.

    He didn’t want to get out of bed all day. He was stupid and now he was condemned for his crime. Sentenced for the rest of his life to be alone.

    (It wasn’t really true as his thirteen year old daughter who lived with him seventy-two hours a week every weekend would have been quick to point out. But this was the other ninety-six hours of the week, and he was alone.)

    Ah the suffering and the pain.

    He would lie with it all day. No, that might have been excusable had he been thirty or forty years younger, but he wasn’t and though he was very tempted to visit an old favourite familiar haunt, he was just too old. He knew he didn’t have that many days left to waste, no matter how favoured and familiar an old haunt it might be.

    And he had things to do.

    It was Assange’s birthday for a start. Manus was to meet people at Saint Stephen’s Green at a quarter past one. They were going to deliver a letter to the Australian embassy. Originally they had just talked of making a cake and Manus had thought to hassle a friend or two over to play guitar, and maybe see if they couldn’t get something like a small street party going. But that had been before Avril had ditched him. Since then Manus was lacking the strength or enthusiasm to hassle anyone. Yet again his broken heart had got in the way of political activism, or positive action of any kind.

    Ciaron O’Reilly had instigated the protest.

    Amongst other things Ciaron had taken a hammer in his hands and damaged American war planes that would otherwise kill or harm the poorest people in the world.

    Acting like a responsible citizen had earned Ciaron hard time in high security prisons, and Manus’s respect.

    So perhaps it was for Ciaron, as much as for Julian, that Manus would get out of bed and make his way into town. Manus imagined Julian Assange wouldn’t be overly impressed with their protest. Nobody could be. There would be half a dozen people, a dozen people at the most.

    Most passers-by wouldn’t know who Julian Assange was.

    Against a tsunami of banners and all the technology money can buy, which told people that what Julian Assange was doing just wasn’t important, Manus and a few others would stand with a single banner saying ‘free jullian assange’. The few standing with the banner, if they got noticed at all, would look like weirdo nutters. Manus was going to go, perhaps just to show some solidarity with the weirdo nutters.

    Around 11a.m. George Kirwan called for Manus.

    George was one of them smart ass bastards from a fairly privileged background; a former chairman of a Trinity debating society, who would come up with a nuanced argument against anything you said. Manus was one of those dumb ass fuckers from a fairly unprivileged background, where debating skills ran from shouting to yelling personal threats, to physical violence.

    Manus asked George why he wasn’t going to the protest. George said he didn’t protest anything because he thought it was ineffective. Manus asked if all ‘protest was ineffective’ then should we do nothing? George backtracked saying ‘he very seldom protested and saved his energy for the ones he felt were important, which did not include Assange.’  Furthermore, George wasn’t sure Assange was his political ally since Wikileaks had, ‘not just published, but directly funnelled leaked documents to the Trump campaign first’; George continued: ‘directly dealing with a dime store Hitler was naïve in the extreme and a wrong act’.

    It didn’t ring true for Manus that Assange or Wikileaks would be dealing directly with the Trump campaign, though as usual he hadn’t done much research and couldn’t say with any certainty. George as always was certain: ‘there was a server in Wikileaks communicating with a server in Trump Tower’, George swore it with rather more venom in its delivery than the truth needed. Trinity’s training got lost and George could be as emotive as any uneducated thug when he defended a false position.

    Manus said that since he had started speaking for Assange he had heard all kinds of negative fact and fiction. All of which for Manus sidestepped the main issue.

    Publishing the crimes of the powerful should be applauded, not a punishable offence.

    For none of these other reasons, fact or fiction, would Assange be imprisoned.

    Wikileaks was known all around the globe for telling the truth. It had an effect on the way the world was perceived, with potential to affect how it’s citizens and environment were treated.

    Allowing the Wikileaks founder to be imprisoned would send a clear message ringing around the world. Exposing government and corporate crimes would not be tolerated.

    George lost some of his evangelical zeal against Assange and relented with, ‘their wasn’t enough evidence against him for a conviction, but enough to lose him the support of the left.’

    George spouted on then about some group in America who used to fight legal cases for poor black communists to have the right to preach communism and then they fought for rich white fascists to have the right to preach fascism. Then they decided they didn’t have enough resources to fight for both and decided to just fight for the Commies. Not that he was saying Assange was a fascist.

    How had the so-called left gone along with this crap? How had the most effective exposer of corporate and government crimes been turned into the left’s enemy, or person of no worth, or person they least wanted to defend? The answer was obvious, corporate power had attacked Assange because he exposed their crimes and the corporate media swamped the world with their attack, but it was the left’s acceptance of such obvious diversions and spurious attacks that bothered Manus.

    Manus had a frazzled brain. Too much: drugs, drink, punches to the head. He couldn’t always take in a lot of info and he could retain less. George hadn’t done half as much drugs or drink and had probably never been punched in the head in his life. Manus wasn’t fit for arguing with him.

    The two were friends of a sort. They had both protested against the Dublin Housing Crisis; they had both helped out at a social centre. They helped each other sometimes. For all their differences they had things in common.

    George had brought his three-year-old daughter Paulina. Paulina and Manus had gone through a number of high and low points over the three years of her life. Manus had been a fun distraction one night while both her parents had sneaked off but when Paulina became aware of the dirty trick that had been played on her she screamed all night. It had taken a long time but Paulina was gradually forgiving Manus. She got Manus to flush the toilet for her. Which Manus did again and again and again and again. Paulina was delighted. It was nice for Manus too, to perform a task that seemed a worthwhile and appreciated service.

    Nick phoned and arranged to meet Manus on Saint Stephen’s Green. Like Manus, Nick came from the North. Like Manus, Nick had been called names and spat at a lot when he walked the streets as a youth. They both shared the experience of gangs of loyalist thugs throwing bricks and bottles and chasing them. Manus was a taig in a mostly prod area and could run for one of the taig streets. Nick was actually a prod in a totally prod area but his family would have been the only black family in his whole estate. Loyalists in the North of Ireland were known for their sectarianism, but Nick’s family gave them a chance to prove they were just as racist. Nick developed fighting skills whereas Manus was just a great runner. Manus figured Nick had always tried and usually managed to beat the bastards at their own games. He could fight better, play sports or chess better and stand at the bar and talk bullshit about football better than anybody.

    Nick was over six feet tall and when he let his dreadlocks out of his big hat they came down to the floor.

    Manus and Nick had coffee, sat on the grass on Saint Stephen’s Green. Manus babbled about his own child’s graduation from primary school and how it looked like an American teen movie. And how he felt depressed since he had just pushed that woman away. And how he hoped to get a ‘coffee with Chomsky’ van together which would permanently play Chomsky speeches or Democracy Now! episodes or CounterPunch news, or any alternative to corporate news and views of the world. Everywhere you looked there was a corporate message. One small screen wasn’t going to achieve much, but it just might keep his personal sanity.

    Nick loved the idea. Nick was a cobbler by trade but still hoped to build a studio and record his own music. He had two grown boys up North who visited regularly, but Nick at fifty years of age now lived in Dublin with his new partner and their five year old son Thor.

    Nick babbled about his partner going to some medium who had said Thor was a really old soul. Manus’s mother used to go in for that type of stuff. Nick also went on about how England was still in the World Cup and how Manus, even though he wasn’t into football or nationalism, had to join in the world’s prayer that England couldn’t win the World Cup. The world would never hear the end of it. They still hadn’t shut up about their win in 66.

    At least, thought Manus, Nick didn’t repeat the football being more serious than life or death crap.

    Manus and Nick met May O Byrne at the main gate outside Saint Stephen’s Green. Nick had to go to pick up his kid but Manus introduced them anyway. Telling Nick: ‘come on and meet this one she’s cool.’

    ‘Nick this is May she’s an activist. May this is Nick he’s not stopping today but he’s one of us.’

    Nick went on and May and Manus stood alone.

    May had the petition letter, but said she wasn’t that pleased with it because it quoted Obama. The fact that Obama had been responsible for so many deaths in his time put May off.  Manus shrugged. He didn’t reckon the Australian government would give a shit what the letter said. They were never going to protect Assange. What government in the world was going to thumb its nose at America?

    May was even older than Manus. She said her husband wasn’t well enough to attend. He was eighty-five. Her hubby had been a newscaster in Australia. She said he could see the telexes that came into the news office which never got read. After a while he found it impossible to put on a face that looked like it believed what it was reading and so he lost his job.

    May said there was another Australian coming. A woman called Kate. Manus tried to check himself from his ridiculous notions of finding a partner, long or short term, in Kate. At his age looking for a partner. How long did he think he had left? Still his mind ran on. She would probably have rolls of fat hanging over her pants and a squashed up ugly face. He was shallow.

    She turned up. Fit-looking and highly attractive.  When May went to shake hands Kate insisted on a hug. Manus got a hug too. A bit of much needed physical for Manus. She had been visiting her parents. Catching a flight back at the end of the week.

    Just right for a non-committal shag on a holiday thought Manus.

    Kate said she had emigrated to Australia on her own in the seventies. Had Manus heard that right. Emigrating in the seventies on her own made her around his age. Was that possible? Had he found an attractive woman from his own age group? Could she feel attracted to him?

    Youth went for sexual gratification, age expected accomplishments or at least a place in society. Manus was the least accomplished person in the world, with the lowest place in society.

    He had to stop with the negative self-image. It was that Avril ditchen him thing. It was the getting no nouky. Being the least accomplished person in the world or his place in society didn’t bother him so much when he was getting laid.

    Kate had been shoe-shopping. ‘Well shoes are just so expensive in Australia.’

    Believe in the corporate portrayal of the world or not you still had to live in it.  And despite his own choice, he understood that being a bum was not a popular preference.

    Sid turned up with his bowler hat, scarf, waistcoat and corduroy trousers. A talented singer song writer. Sid and Manus were close enough in years. They talked of Ciaron O Reilly’s unceasing efforts. They both did little bits now and again but Ciaron was full time, twenty-four-seven, year-in year-out. They talked of their kids. Sid’s daughter, born when Sid was in his twenties, was in her forties now. Sid said he had been there when his daughter was a child but he may as well not have been. Sid didn’t drink now but he had been a hard drinker. Manus was coming on fifty before a woman had decided not to abort his kid. Age must have granted him some semblance of sense then, as he had stopped drinking and hard-drugging in order to look after his daughter.

    It had clearly been the better buzz.

    Liam arrived. Almost in his forties, with a twenty-one year old son that he had fought for and gained joint custody over when the child was young. A clean cut man from a stable background. Manus and Liam had put the movie Underground: The Julian Assange Story on in a social centre before Assange’s sixth year in detention. They were useless at getting an audience. They got the usual suspects: June; Sid; Manus; Liam; Dave; and Brian (Brian couldn’t stay though, he was no spring chicken and probably didn’t enjoy the music plus, any talk of computers confused him. He had never used one). There had also been a new face, a Polish girl who actually came to the protest the next week. Liam had remained upbeat and positive. The Polish girl was a new convert. One at a time huh? Even if he was getting laid, getting paid and had a place in society other than lowest, Manus’s optimism couldn’t turn the idea of one person into the possibility of victory. Liam was realistic enough too though. Like Manus he saw no victory possible through their pathetic efforts. And like Manus he didn’t know any other tactics. And while the effort and its lack of effect made them feel useless, not to make the effort made them feel worse.

    Paul arrived. Manus didn’t know much about him. Seen him at a few protests. In his thirties maybe.

    He lived down the country somewhere, but if he was in the capital and something was happening he would go. He looked a solid, stubborn sort that would be good to have beside you in a line against thugs in uniforms.

    Ann arrived. Manus had never met her before. She was writing a piece for a Russian magazine. Younger than Manus by a few decades. In a flouncy dress. Manus’s attention switched. Them flouncy summer dresses always got Manus.

    Sometimes he could be such a letch.

    They walked through the park. Manus asked Sid if he had had much success as a singer-songwriter. Sid said, ‘No. Thank god.’ ‘Why? Did you not want success?’ asked Manus, to which Sid replied ‘my head’s so big already it would have blown up completely. Sure I’d a had to get myself a new hat and everything.’

    Manus understood how difficult it would be to cope with success. And agreed with Sid’s sentiment, but in actuality he could have done with a bit of it.

    They walked through the park and after a wrong turn or two found the embassy.

    Martine was there with his two kids who were both under ten years old. Martine had thought of becoming a priest, but had backed out at the last minute. Thank fuck.

    The letter requesting that the Australian government start looking after Julian Assange’s human rights, signed by two and a half pages of Australians living in England and further afield, was read. Photos were taken. Manus held a banner: ‘free Julian Assange’.

    That was it.

    Martine and his kids went off.  Everyone else decided to go to the park for coffee and tea and small buns with a single letter of the birthday boy’s name on each one. Thirteen buns.

    They had the banner spread out in front of them on the grass.

    Free Julian Assange.

    Kids were still starving to death while half the world’s food production was being destroyed. Ecological and nuclear disaster threatened the planet like never before while the corporations’ need for constant profit kept pushing us all towards said disaster. And Julian Assange was hold up in some room in London, threatened with life imprisonment for publishing the truth.

     And it was a beautiful sunny day in Dublin’s Saint Stephens Green.

    The group talked and exchanged phone numbers. Manus didn’t offer or ask and wasn’t offered or asked for a phone number.

    Sid called to him as though the two should walk off together, but Manus stalled. He wanted to walk with Sid but what was Kate doing?

    Liam was showing Kate where the museum was. Manus went too. Perfect, Liam would walk off and Manus could show her round. It was almost too pat. Walk and talk round a museum with an attractive woman he had met at a protest. Engaging conversation and curiosity glances. They would get some food. Time would pass and she would have to get the last bus back out the country unless she wanted to stay in Dublin for the night.

    As usual his mind ran on fantasies. but his mouth said nuthen.

    Liam hugged her goodbye.

    Manus hugged her goodbye too.

    On their walk through town Liam asked Manus if he would like to write a letter to Julian. Manus kina shrugged his laugh. Manus had spent his life trying to ignore or block out what he thought he could do little about. And now he wanted to write to Julian and say he supported him. Hopefully there were better more effective supporters than Manus.

    Did you know that Cassandra Voices has just published a print annual containing our best articles, stories, poems and photography from 2018? It’s a big book! To find out where you can purchase it, or order it, email admin@cassandravoices.com