STEALING WORDS

For oft when on my couch I lie,
in vacant or in pensive mood,
I think of stealing Wordsworth's words
but realise that would be rude!

ONE SEVENTY

One seventy
number of our address,
for sixty years our family home
but after a sad passing, for sale,
under offer, sold,
going, going, gone.


Nothing lasts forever,
why did we think it should,
when we knew it never would?

THIS MORNING

This morning I woke up
at 04.44
and then again
at 05.55.


Too neat,
too tidy,
nothing is ever
that perfect,
is it,
can it be,
will it be
that kind of a day?


Only one way to know -
let's go.

FOR BARNEY GREEN

This is one for Barney Green, not a friend, not family,
we'd never met and thanks to a bullet in his old back,
we never will.


He was eighty-seven. The picture in the paper showed
a contented face wearing glasses, and a hand-held pipe
ready to light.


He loved a pint of stout after working hard on the farm.
He loved a football match and cheered Ireland in the World Cup.
He died watching.


This dapper man in a three-piece suit in Loughinisland,
O'Toole's bar, Saturday night, June in 1994,
one of six killed.


A plague on the laughing assassins. Blame it on history,
find excuses to bleach out your sin of cold murder
and sleep in fear.


This is for Barney Green,
may he rest in peace.

THE DEAD BAG FOR LIFE

One minute I'm happy shopping,
the next a moment of dread,
one of the handles comes away
and my "bag for life" is dead.


It was a perfectly happy bag,
even carrying heavy stuff
but alas it suddenly snapped,
enough was enough was enough.


How long is life for a "bag for life",
how long is a piece of string,
how long before the handles of the next bag
decide to give up and go ping?

SCRATCHED RECORD

Back in the olden days, children, records were big, black, round platters that came to life when in contact with a needle called a stylus. The downside was that sometimes the record got scratched and the needle would get stuck and frustrated......


.....not again
.....not again
.....not again
.....not again
.....not again


.....the stylus 
pleads for help

BRING ON THE BOMBS AND BULLETS

Bring on the bombs and bullets,
we've run out of things to say,
bring on stretchers and body bags,
take the dead and wounded away.


Bring on the justification
for massacres and landscapes destroyed,
bring on the spin and the bullshit
to justify the methods deployed.


Bring on the bombs and bullets,
we've run out of things to say,
let's get this war completed,
there's another one on its way.