My life’s ambition is to write a poem For you to quiver in ecstasy, Transcending the storms that have become For us a weakly reminder That all is not as it should be For a generation to come All out of shape without Any need for eugenics, Or medical scapegoats, As my face takes on … Read more
No picture of the modern world is complete without a Marxist analysis. The fundamental point – even for anyone who is not a fellow traveller – is that a materialist analysis of capitalism’s inherent instability is essentially correct, and now more relevant than ever. The problem has always been around how a post-capitalist society emerges … Read more
In December 1899 Honolulu-based physicians attributed two deaths to bubonic plague, and a local paper duly announced that the ‘scourge of the Orient’ had arrived.[i] Within months a first plague fatality was reported in continental U.S. as Chinese-American Chick Gin (Wing Chung Ging or Wong Chut King depending on the transliteration) succumbed to the disease … Read more
In October 2016, I vacated my room in Dublin and moved to a cottage on the seaside in isolated, rural Louth. The day before I did this I broke up with my girlfriend of eighteen months. Though, in hindsight, the breakup had been coming for a while, it was coincidental, or at least unplanned, for … Read more
The Lamps of the Virgins from Bearers of the Broken Vessel At dawn, weaving through hills, go Daughters of Jerusalem in white, faces illumed by the flames of their lamps. They sing a song about lovers, become a string of dancing lights. At dawn, before babes awakened and bawled to take suckle, their mothers lit … Read more
The Continuing Story of Óglaigh na hÉireann All around the snot-nosed parishes of Ireland small people of both genders, and neither, are flapping open copies of The Sunday O’Duffy getting worried about the continued existence of the Citizen Army, Fenian Brotherhood, Official IRA. We can’t have parties who perspire to government secretly controlled by cabals … Read more
Listening is a powerful skill. It’s one of the most important things you can learn in life. There are many different ways to listen and many different things to listen to, such as music, thoughts, emotions, facts, and opinions. For as long as I can remember I’ve always been trying to listen just that little … Read more
Undeniably, Ireland has produced some of the finest creative writers in the history of the English language. From the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) through to Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who ultimately abandoned English in favour of French, a body of work has expressed a contradictory national character. A recurring theme in Irish … Read more
When I was sixteen I gave up learning the piano. In her report my music teacher (who had terminated my studies) wrote: ‘what an awful shame’. The story is a common one. Young peoples’ lives become filled with music on records, video, in films, on radio and TV, during Saturday nights, in supermarkets, in amusement … Read more
One of the main things I characterize my misspent youth by, is a knack for exploiting the trust my middle-class parents misplaced in me. At seventeen, I was too old to be dragged along with them on what seemed like monthly getaways, but too young to exercise any degree of responsibility or restraint. My folks … Read more