Bound

If I were bound to write
And you were bound to read
Would I tell the truth?
Would I write a story of two futures
That I live together each day
Would I write of the blood and tears
They have taken from me
And of how I’m running away
Would I write of the old, old faces
We’ve both loved and lost on the way
Of places we met and things we did
Just to keep the memories in play
Would I write the story of me
Of days lived and nights cried
Would it shatter your thoughts
Would it make you think
That you never knew me anyway…

Never Saw

Take your hand away
and I’ll sit straight back down
Invisible once again
for all the world to see
Would you know me if you saw me again
Would you open your eyes
If just for five minutes
If only to see
You never saw before

25-5-03

Ink on paper

It’s the ink on paper
that steals hearts
and seals yours to me
It’s the strokes
we stole
one evening
long ago
Pursued through the streets of Dublin.
Who took the predators head
and held it up for all to look?
It’s the flotsam you carry
and the cloth on my nakedness
It’s the ink on paper
and the writing that fades in time.

2003 31-12

1000 miles

I close my eyes
and metal on wood takes me back
The sun is shining
and I’m 1,000 miles away
Before you bled onto me
and a war made us all take sides
When a morning in a ghost town
Brought a beckoning silence
Air floated with possibility long since abandoned
Here the stillness descends upon me
Until I can’t breathe with its weight
You’re all sitting there watching
The air is thick with expectations
You’re sitting there waiting
for my to bestow gratitude deep within you
and I’m running away
I close my eyes
and I’m 1,000 miles away

2003 6-3

Beyond

Could I follow you
on the days when nobody sees
Head held high
no one looks
beyond what they can’t see

Could I search for you
in the hours they pay
hands held open
no one sees
beyond where they look

Could I talk
in the minutes
when you find me
no one sees
beyond what they don’t want to see.

She

She’s not a friend
She’s me,
stuck on repeat
Tied with elastic
Bound up in company
Stronger in places
that the eyes don’t see
She’s warmth over steel
She’s a product of war
that found its way to your arms
that push her away
while she’s keeping you alive.

2003 16-10

Curtains close

It’s dark when the curtains close
Lives and loves once forgotten
ressurect and dance once more
The faces change
But I can see you strong
In disguise or in truth
Would I be wrong
to believe in what I see
Are you hidden
Or too far gone
To reach out and touch

Down and Around

It's like looking through windows in the dark. To see pieces of lives you recognise. Just watching from further away.

I'm watching her sink and I know this is not the end, that she won't come back to her life anytime soon, if at all. I see her in her blackness, struggling for understanding and acceptance and I know that I've never seen anyone understand. I'm hearing him, try to give everything he has, with no idea that he's not seeing what lies within.... and I'm watching them.

To watch them try to cope with someone who feels what they have felt. To know the pain and despair and be able to shed a some light into the darkness. I'm watching them get deep within the hours as they move by. I'm watching them get deep within every action and pain felt within.

Time leads to time and I know it could all go in reverse. To watch a person climb to such heights after feeling such lows and I know I could be left alone once again. In a room with a shell, looking for a way back. It could all go back to nights awake and phone calls at 3am. It could go back to weekends where you save a life so many times you can never count anymore. It could go back to sitting on a shower floor, covered in blood and tears, watching the life flood back in. It could go back to moving out the way, quickly, when they try to hit you for being the only thing from stopping them die. I've never seen such pain and hatred in a persons eyes before. It could be months after and finding all the objects that you've hidden out the way, to stop ideas creeping into darkness through the power of suggestion.

There was a time when I lived with the idea that any time I walked into a room, I might find them dead. Their habit of passing out at inopportune moments, never helped with this.

There was a time when I was a lifeline, a way back from the pain within. Now there is a time when everything I've ever seen is called back up again. This is a time when I'm watching someone else in pain, something that never gets any easier. A time when I want to talk about what I see, to cry for help for them, to cry for understanding, but they are still buried in their own shame. I hope there is a time when they sit where I sit, looking back on it all.