FOLLOW

So this is it,

You're standing

Upright and staring into the sharp silver glow

Of your future.

The jaws of the abyss pulling you

From behind like a gaping maw,

While you struggle to follow the light.

This is it.

Forward or back?

Falling would be so easy,

But standing feels hard,

And gaining any traction or forward momentum,

Up until now, has been exhausting,

Impossible, exasperating.

So you spin on your heels,

And you teeter on the edge.

Right now, it's so hard for you

To get your head around the fact

That your silver lining has finally begun

To cover your cloud.

Doubts creep in,

Am I worthy?

Can I do it?

Am I capable?

Do I deserve it?

You look down and realise that there's a gap forming,

And ever growing space

Between the burgeoning silver

And that damned gaping maw at your back.

You realise now it’s time to jump.

So you push yourself back on your heels,

You force yourself to stop spinning.

You step back,

You focus on the glint that's in front of you

And you leap,

You launch yourself into the blue,

Without ever looking back.

 You decide that this is your time.

You feel the savage  grasp

of the murky past loose its grip on you,

As you soar across the space between your ‘then’

And your ‘soon to be’.

You land, flat footed in the dusty present,

A road set out before you,

With twists and turns and hills and sign posts,

All laid out at your feet, right there in the glare.

You look back to see the ghost of the past

Still clawing after you,

Left smaller in the wake of you.

You think, 'he's not so scary from way over here'.

So you face forward, head high, chest out, feet itching,

You set your sights on the end of this road you've landed on,

And you set off, trudging into the dusky grey,

And you begin to follow the light.

CITY OF LIGHT

I love this city,

And I have been a part of others.

I have been an affiliate of more successful corporations,

Some teeming urban jungles

Some merely hushed down townships.

I have been a part of the blood that fuels them,

But none have ever added structure to my veins

The way my city does.

My home, my pulse.

This is where my own story has been paced into the pavements,

With my own history bleeding into its concrete cracks.

This city is as much a part of me as my own heart is.

I inhale a mouthful of thick city air

And I cough it back into day,

Where the light bounces off streets filled with metal blood cells,

While the people inside like platelets,

Beep their horns and curse their neighbours.

But still I love this city.

I tip toe through the remnants of the nights’ revelries,

And the bric-a-brac of the forgotten people

Living in the shadows of buildings

That house the more successful.

I negotiate my way through the bump and grind of the mean streets.

The screeching of gulls circling in wait

To pick the bones of someone’s discarded lunch,

Filling the air,

While the wailing of some poor soul

Whose bones are being picked apart

By their own scavengers,

Joins the gull’s savage song 

In a choral fugue, that's carried on the breeze.

But still I love this city.

I love the pulse, and the reverberation.

The rhythm and throb of it.

The warmth and humour.

I love the soul of this city,

The kindness,

The heat of the city lights.

The calm temperament of a people

Who have seen more hardship than most

But would still offer up their last morsel as an act of charity.

I love the fire in the blood of the Irish

And the ferocity of spirit

Contained within this city,

I am smitten by its people 

Who burn with intelligence and wit,

And are fortified by valor and a toughness of spirit. 

There is a palpable tenderness

In the air of this city,

Despite a natural cynicism

And a lean toward begrudgery. 

So I do love this city,

With its bad weather and its bad moods.

With its resilience and its beauty.

With its long and bloody history

And its glistening future. 

Because this is my city, 

And it is where I belong.  

Angel On High

An angel came to me today,

Small and full of memories

A hodgepodge of worn paint,

And yellowed glue

Chipped on her edges

And thick with the scent of my youth.

Imperfect, old, barely there.

You promised her to me

When I was as small as it.

Imperfect, young, barely there.

You said to me, “When I die, you

Can have this angel, and she will always

Look after you, even when I’m not around anymore,

To do it myself.”

It took more than the two years since your death

For her to find her way to me

But today she finally found me.

I’ve placed her somewhere high.

Given her pride of place

Amongst childhood trinkets,

Things that I can’t bring myself to part with

Remnants of my smallness.

Top shelf, where all the best stuff is.

She’s surrounded by gold now,

Real gold.

The gold that grazed your weary flesh

As you breathed your last.

Rested on your pulse as you passed

From one void to the next.

The last of your skin cells,

Still nestled between the

tiny crevices and notches

of your own trinket you couldn’t

bring yourself to part with.

The top shelf,

Where all the best stuff is.

Where my last piece of you is.

Guarded by an angel. 

Valour

I am not your inspiration
I do not utter words to live by
I am not a poster plastered on the
Social media wall
Of an online acquaintance
I am not brave
Or strong
Or even big or tall
I am small
I am meek and mild
And weighted down
With the heaviness of the human condition
I am not what you think I am
But I am weak
Not weak in the sense that
I am powerless
Weak in the sense that
The knees of my bees
Go weak in the presence
Of the sun lit glory of every day
The beauty of being vulnerable
The knowledge that
Under the strain of a million heartaches
I'm still here
Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth
Dont look to me to tell you
How to behave in the shadow of suffering
Dont ask me how to be fearless because I'm full of it
Dont wonder how I fight the good fight
You're already doing it
Know that you're not bigger
Than this world .
Nothing is.
And it will spin and move through the great expanse
Regardless of you
Armed with that knowledge, go and find your peace
Find your reason
Your own path
And walk it
Be your own catalyst for greatness
Dont try to have me galvanize you
Learn how to use your own two feet
And move

Rapture

‘And fire shall rain from the heavens and celestial bodies will merge and collide and a great expansion will happen.’

That was the first lesson I remember from the book. There were others but that was my favourite.

His voice boomed through the speakers in our hatchback. Thickening the close humid air with its resonance. Like a book on tape, but with out stories. This was the word, this was scripture. Our scripture. His word.

There were five of us tightly packed into the car, the weight of the doomed world resting squarely upon us. We packed everything we owned into it the night before.

 I couldn't see why we needed possessions where we were going but he told us we needed to bring them. So we did. So now we were here, on the way to the end of the world with front row tickets and bags to check in at the door.

The world was to be our stage.

We arrived, sweat and sleepiness sticky on our skin. A ranch far away from prying eyes who don't know they are already dead.

He was there to greet us and show us to our places. Radiant he was. Tall and strong and godlike in serenity and poise. Graceful hands handed us each a sippy  cup of juice. In the sky the sun and the moon were visible at once…'celestial bodies will merge'… It was all true.

We drank the juice before the fires came. Before humanity was set ablaze we drank, gulping deeply and gladly and fell to the ground sobbing deep breathy sobs of joy.

We faded into a gritty, ecstatic delirium. This was it. We were going home. Sweet rapture, the time had come!

Soon we would be perched upon the rings of Saturn, hand in hand with God himself, watching the whole world burn.