Tedium was tip tapping on the pane of Gibbo’s day, the hours slouching into another shite night alone, like the slow but certain, annihilating course of ink on blotting paper. A visit to Tosh in the Head Shop “Happy Daze” on George’s St might just resurrect the dregs, if not by consuming a selection of … Read more
Three Miles South of Carlow Town Walk with me. Don’t speak. Come to the place where the walls and stones Yield their shameful secrets. Listen. Listen. Stand and hear the black earth shifting, As she did then, to deny him his succour, And as she did when he slipped into her inky embrace. Three miles … Read more
For the purpose of perspective, I should like to carry out a short comparative study of two poems treating the subject of the sea. The first poem I should like to focus on is the great sonnet by Charles Baudelaire L’Homme et la Mer, whose composition dates back to 1852. The second poem is a … Read more
I was so tired, Tuesday night. Don’t sleep well when I get that tired. I have obsessive dreams and wake up later than usual. And sleeping in always makes my head hurt. I was clumsy tired, where you bump into things; and getting into bed, I whacked it. The big clunky picture frame hanging over … Read more
Hannah sat deep in thought waiting for the reception room’s red light to turn green indicating she could open the door to Dr. Dysart’s interior space. She was trying to decide what to talk about – the love bombing or green. Green was her favorite color and had been ever since she had learned the … Read more
‘Liberals’ & ‘Death’ Two words that strut confident of their own historical inevitability. Everyone in time meets them, though hopefully not both ringing your door bell the same day, unless your name is Nagasaki or Vietnam; or you’re the first village no-one’s ever heard of successfully abolished from thirty thousand feet by a transgender person … Read more
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics “That’s how you learn. But after you make the same mistake one, or two, or five times, you’ll eventually get it. And then you’ll make new mistakes.” Louis Sachar, The Card Turner (2010) Managing … Read more
Nicholas of Bari Another night fifth in a row unsettled but unfrozen thinking I get it I get it (I don’t, but I have skin and nerves): Whatever sustains someone doing what you do, I mean never mind the privations! that unseen hand, Shoulder cupped, steering towards the leper colony – the Big Bewk saints, the Seenitalls, … Read more
I have always been a creative person. When I was a child I loved to draw and cut paper, my kindergarten teacher was ever so impressed by my straight cutting lines! My grandfather painted in oil and made sculptures out of wood he found in nature. He told me that there is no tree in … Read more
I’ve never needed a reason to write a song. There have never been any conscious considerations of failure or success during the process. If anything, I can say that what I discover through writing is that there are endless landscapes of discovery. This feeling has not changed in the eleven years I’ve been writing and … Read more