Boom, Boom, Boom.

De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain

Morning birds
can't hear their chirps
just BOOM//BOOM//BOOM// 
Culchies and Bogtrotters
suit-up silently, socks pulled up
Hardman slam pints
pick up signs
red ink, misspelled words
can't hear the cars' gears change
just OOOooop--OOOOooop--OOOop--
Gardi gotsta gets goin'


Did the government dissolve yet?
No.


It takes indefinite strikes
to kill a cockroach.






"Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven; and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse. It produces two kinds of men in strange perfection: saints and traitors." John Bull's Other Island, Bernard Shaw

Their Attitudes Differ

iii.

You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints

You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions

Please die I said
so I can write about it

After all you are quite
ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs
a head, a reasonable
body, toes & fingers, a few
eccentricities, a few honesties
but not too many, too many
postponements & regrets but

you'll adjust to it, meeting
deadlines and other
 people, pretending to love
the wrong woman some of the
time, listening to your brain
shrink, your diaries
expanding as you grow older,

growing older, of course you'll
die but not yet, you'll outlive
even my distortions of you

and there isn't anything
I want to do about the fact
that you are unhappy & sick

you aren't sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.

yes at first you
go down smooth as
pills, all of me
breathes you in and then it's

a kick in the head, orange
and brutal, sharp jewels
hit and my
hair splinters

the adjectives
fall away from me, no
threads left holding
me, I flake apart
layer by
layer down
quietly to the bone, my skull
unfolds to an astounded flower

regrowing the body, learning
speech again takes
days and longer
each time/ too much of
this is fatal

Margaret Atwood

I Will Wait For You Creeping Silently

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S Eliot   S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse  A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,  Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.  Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo  Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,  Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?       .      .      .      .      .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”       .      .      .      .      .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Sorry Leonard,

Late Night on Barstools

And when we perch
on chairs and speak
how removed are you?
how removed?
and when we speak
and perch on chairs
how removed are you?
how removed?
we sit not side by side
by one in front
of the other
crystalline bricks
line one on top
of the other
you get five words
smacks head
i get two
smacks head
we can't seem to
crack it
concrete in everything
dark stays in

Text Testimonials, Need a Book to Read?

In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaattje

"The first sentence of every novel should be: 

'Trust me, this will take time but there is order here,

very faint, very human.'"

Michael Ondaattje's In the Skin of a Lion unfolds the story, a story that is very similar for most countries, the development of a nation envisioned by the rich yet built with the hands

of the marginalized, the hands of immigrants. Ah! Keep reading, I know this trope is in full swing of repetition..yadda yadda Egyptians using Jews to build pyramids, oh wait you thought aliens did that? Ok so this book takes Giglamesh to the next level! From the beginning of epic tales to the reversal storyline of the Swamp Thing, In the Skin of the Lion is one of the first narratives of many narratives to examine the human condition of the superman mentality set in Canada! Cool right?   

Yes Ondaattje focuses on those national narratives who are not represented, yes he investigates the thought of never returning home and constructing a new identity, yes he examines the move from the wilderness into the industrial city, yes he questions whether tradition is a jail cell where one is stuck with their family for eternity! As well as the search of construction, reconstruction, replaceability, the plague of curiosity, and removability. 

Okay I need to back up, I am little excited about this book because it really reminds me of Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker, oh yeah its got explosives too! And it may be even better. It is about CANADA, the country that everyone seems to always tell shut up, well it has one of the best national narratives. Fuck yeah. Ondaattje's style does change book by book, but this one is filled with this most brilliant prose. And if you are at all thinking that this style of writing may cause aesthetic to trump ethics, don't get your panties in a bunch.

A really scary thought came into my head, after sharing a bunch of childhood stories concerning hilarious moments with bugs, I wondered if the kids who are born in today's world would ever share stories such as these. No, because kids today have forgotten nature, perhaps it may be bold to say, but their concept of the wilderness is of a city, and not of the wild. A professor of mine once asked what color are the trunks of trees. The consensus, brown. Wrong he claimed! Gray. When we were painting with those awesome watercolors in preschool, our teachers told us to paint them brown. But if we really bothered to stand in front of a tree and open our own damn eyes, we would realize the color gray. Patrick, Ondaattje's protagonist, grows up during the 1920's, Canada was just beginning to use technology's first methods of constructing a nation. 

"Patrick gazes on these things which have 

navigated the warm air 

 above the surface of the earth 

and attached themselves to the mesh with a muted thunk...

There will suddenly be order and shape to these nights." 

Patrick is not god, he is just a boy, but it has always been man's dream to be god, and well the only possible way for this to exist, even though yes there is a chance god doesn't exist but then what would that make us? Oh crazy people who write superhero comics, oh wait...

Patrick in a sense is in the making of the superhero mentality, he examines nature to understand himself, but 

"the trouble with ideology, 

Alice, is that it hates the private. 

You must make it human."

So the superhero mentality appears plenty of times through daredevils working on water ducts and a major bridge, catching a nun plummeting to her death midair, and searching for a runaway millionaire, the chaos is interrupted constantly with lines that remind us of the dangers of the superhero mentality... 

"people step in out of sunlight 

and must move slow in darkness". 

The concept of time is creepily illustrated, Patrick is plagued as a boy as to why he must rest at night and work during the day, juxtaposing the workers on major construction sites who work only at night. 


"Night removed the limitations of detail"


Just as all superheroes' avenge villains in the night, the most important question is illuminated. 


Who really is a hero and who is a villain?

There are detectives, aliens, "child murderers" and shadows incapable of separating themselves from humans!

"You must remove her shadow from you".

Just read it. I would love to talk to someone about this book!




**Have you read anything great recently?? Please Share!

Possibilities Never Had An Ending

I am pretty happy to announce that I have been chosen to volunteer for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival!!!! So if you are in Dublin during February 17-27 buy your tickets! For those over the pond I will keep an update on the films that will be shown.

The New Year has greatly confirmed that you can't hate on life, not when it generates hopeful (yes I am using a term I love to hate!) possibilities...


I have some more really great news to share- unrelated to film, so stay tuned for a future post!

Anyways check out the site, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
one special event they are presenting is the viewing of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse... 

The National Concert Hall will be preforming the original score as the film plays! How cool is that?

Two films they have announced that will be showing are The Way and Good Cake, Bad Cake

The Way
Directed by Emilio Estevez, The Way is set along the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.  It tells the moving story of Tom Avery, played by Martin Sheen, an American father who travels to France to reclaim the body of his estranged son who died in a storm at the start of the famous route in the Pyrenees.  Avery cremates his son’s remains, placing them in his backpack, and starts off on the journey his son never made to Santiago

Good Cake, Bad Cake
After U2 conquered the world in the mid 80’s, music executives descended on Dublin in search of the next big thing. A band called Lir was anointed as U2’s most likely successors. Irish filmmaker Shimmy Marcus (Soulboy, Headrush) charts the bands highs and lows in the documentary Good Cake Bad Cake, which will receive its world premiere at the festival. The film will be followed by an unmissable post-screening gig by the band in The Workman’s Club venue in Dublin

Tomorrow night they will be announcing the rest of the films, and there is an event going on at the Tripod so come visit me at Old Harcourt Station Dublin 2, Ireland!!!

Por Que Te Vas

For Cecile :]

New Things

Poem


I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
and clear his throat outside our door.

-Leonard Cohen



DIY: Business Cards! Self Promoting, Self Exploiting!

Infestation of Ghosts

The Dive

2011, Isabel

if i am plummeting

into the dark matter

of my mind

i rather go

head first

spread my toes

and loose my

arms i want

to hold onto 

nothing

and feel nothing

but my skin stretching

molecules crawling and resisting

Twelve For Wilson

Waking light on Moore Street shuddering metal doors
the lady with the fish
slits a head and tosses it back into a box of ice
women pushing childless strollers; tightly tucks in Dunnes and Tesco

un-American tongue captured by cat
no sea in sight, just KM of bridges over single river
heat pumping out of pipes creates a city of divided stench
which onion is less dead?

one more Irish coffee with a side of inflicted pride
in a swarm of eejits and gypsies shakin'
the 2 cents, the 5 cents, "Hey gorgeous, hair extensions?"
delicate rejection, no roots grown in Dublin

Voices In Your Head

Voices in Your Head - Radiolab


Give the link above a listen, its fucking crazy.
It is a short segment about thoughts. To be honest, I love listening to This American Life and Radiolab. It's become the only form of storytelling, other than lectures at the university, that are unattached to flickering images on a screen. For me, twenty minutes listening to the voice of Ira Glass or Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich is a form of relaxation. Yes, sometimes I do not like the topics they talk about but I think the programs have been etched in my brain as the perfect background noise, something that music cannot trigger. My fascination with the public radio shows began when I first started painting. Jamie would put on an episode of This American Life, and we would just sit there and paint, my mood never changed, the way in which I painted did not change. I really mean that it is perfect background noise and not in a droning kind of way, it really gets those voices in your head talking.

and after if you need something to laugh at read this
http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/38034/hearing-voices-2/




*If anyone has a radio show they enjoy that can be found on the web, please share!!

Shhh.

Sleepless

The light flew

like a nettle-sting

into my pupils

in spite of my hands

my eyes closed

but instead of repose

that light moved

within golden shoes

and galloped before

my sight.

my body alive with sleepy ants

my mind alive with phantoms,

I was a restless couple wrestling with myself...




I am not sure who wrote this, it is in the Contemporary Irish Literature: Transforming Tradition...

Burn Old Buildings Down

“she was someone 

who gave things up. 

She was someone who tried 

to give things up and

 failed all the time. 

It was all lies. 

Rose had a hole in her head and 

anything at all 

could come out of it"

Embracing Temporality

Vincent Van Gogh once said, " I wish they would take me as I am."


Fifteen year old me started an essay about isolation with this quote. Fifteen year old me sure didn't deserve an A on that essay. I think I spent a lot of time thinking this quote held an importance. It doesn't. And there is an obvious consequence that comes with caring about who you wish understands you. Perhaps I have spent to much time fixating on the ridiculous feeling of being binded by invisible constraints. I am stuck in Dublin due to a contract that I signed, that I signed so feverishly, with an attitude that I could make no wrong decision. For the past  months a pressure of living presently was consumed by the living state of temporality. Again fixating on the ridiculous conquest that at some point in my life everything would be concrete, a fact that I use to believe and still do believe, was and is unobtainable. How did this anxiety slip through the threshold? I spent today walking to Parnell Street with an urgency to get somewhere, but all I had was a single destination, to just get a few blocks away from my house for some fresh air. As I turned to walk back a homeless meth head hassled me for a cigarette, following me for a block yelling " No ladies, no real ladies exist today" ( perhaps a response to Beyonce as to why there is an overabundance of single ladies existing?). And for a second I cared, I wanted to prove to him I am a lady, that I am substantial, I have a heart that beats and can be kind to others. But for a cigarette I was letting my dignity be questioned by a clearly psychotic weening off of nicotine homeless man. I then realized I had to choose, to either ignore him and keep walking, or turn around and say something. But instead I looked around. I actually froze my own situation to quickly make a calculation of who was around, how many other men, how many other women, if children from the housing renewal projects were leaning over balconies or standing in small crowds in the allies. And even in this moment I had enough time to question why I was calculating, in this moment I was allowing myself to filter my own reaction to this man, determined by my surroundings. So I stopped and faced him, drool dripping from his chapped bloody lips, and quietly said

"Thank you for being such a gentleman".

Wheel of Fortune

Yeah

can't help

but take a ride

on fortune's wheel

yeah

I'll just take it for a spin.