On the luas, again

So I was waiting for the luas. Full circle. Waiting at stop number one near the square and getting off at the red cow where I got on the day before.

I walked to the luas from Jobstown where I woke in a field without really remembering falling asleep. With that light Irish rain tickling me awake and the field around me dappled with diamond dew.

The type or rain that's just one molecule heavier than mist. Falling water that could almost make you forget everything except it's gentle trickle in the ditches and its patter on the dusty leaves.

But I remembered. I remembered all too well the waves of self hatred that washed over me as I slumped into a guilty heap in the shadow of a bramble bush after turning away from that fucked up little kid.

I remembered the day and night before and the huge betrayal that I've been trying to pass off as rakish tomfoolery.

I fucking remembered it at all.

Walking to the square I saw veiny faces car still where I'd left it.

Someone had burnt it out.

I wouldn't have nicked it either. It was a despicable looking thing. The rain hissed as it hit it's scorched still-hot chassis.

Nothing but bones. All black and gnarled. Stripped right down to it's barest elements.

I started thinking about the night before the morning where I couldn't find my Keys.

See, I get panic attacks.

The night before the start of my 'adventure' I had one.

I woke in the middle of the night with a feeling of emptiness in my chest. A lack of movement. A sensation of nothing beating.

I felt for my heart and coulnd't feel it. I thought it was stopping and I was going to die.

So I panicked and as adrenalin kicked in I sweated and got pins and needles and my heart leapt out of my chest.

And I thought 'My last beats! - this is what my last beats feel like!'

Like a fucking sap.

And then I couln't feel my heart again and then the episode repeated itself. Every second packed with an intense will to live and a horrible sense of powerlessness in the face of death.

Until eventually I fucking burped or something.

But.

All along there's this feeling that nothing so far has been enough. That for every second I've lived there's too many wasted, too many lost.

So when I wake in the morning and I'm crowded by the mediocrity of life, all the poxy stupid little things you have to do in other to merely get through the day so you can go home to do it all again the next day sometimes I say fuck this, and that part grows within until it consumes me.

It's an incredibly selfish way to feel.

And then I drink, and do damage. Damage to my life and to those I love and to veiny faced fallen angels and strippers and whores and to the world of online literature.

But it's like, thats the way you should feel, all the time. Like the complete million miles opposite of contentment.

A great man is never content with anything ever until he dies, and even then he should be pissed off. He such rage against that motherfucking dying of the light.

But i'm not a great man. I know this. Not even a good man. A good man would have answered his phone that morning or went straight home when his daughter sent him a text asking for help instead of getting another pint.

But the wierd thing is, the panic attacks are probably because of that. Maybe it's guilt punching holes in my soul so that I'm all fractured inside.

It's a vicious circle.

But fuck it I thought, because the Luas did it's little ding and opened the doors.

I picked up a metro. What a useless and interesting rag.

I snuggled into my seat. I was looking out at my transparent reflection with it's hungover eyes and who lumbers on only the fat girl from the Luas the day before.

She saw me and I saw her and nothing happened.

I was going home.

Everything you say is stupid.

I was talking to an arsehole the other day. And before you say anything. No I wasn't looking in the mirror.

I was in a pub. It was gorgeous and sunny out and and everyone was getting on. It was like a Bulmers ad.

Perfect.

Except for this fucker who's hated me for a long time. The anti-me.

We were standing facing each other among a circle of buddies - buddies but not real mates really, like they like you and that, but it's only because you're actually there, if you got cancer or something they'd never make it to visit you or anything.

Not that I'll visit their dying asses either.

We were having the craic anyways, with our conversation buoyed by the booze we savoured.

But everytime I opened my mouth the anti-me made a face or rolled his eyes. In fact I didn't even have to do anything, my presence seemed enough to disgust him. He looked like he was swallowing an urge to punch me.

And he throw a punch no bother. He was that type. One of those 'I joyrode back in the eighties but still have it so don't look at me wrong or I'll smash your fucking teeth in' wankers.

And thick as fuck too.

So I'm like his kryptonite, because I can spell.

He hadn't seeen me for years. He knew me back when I was a canoeist and ran a youth club for kids - which to him was embarrasingly kissass and goodytwo shoes.

I'm a loser to him because I've never did time for assault.

Well maybe I have but I got off.

Worst of all. He's sorta charismatic. So he has the crowds ear as such. He's a loveable arm-breaking scamp.

There were others there who hadn't seen me for ages too. One of them was a girl I really get on with and she saw what was happening and said that she'd read my blog, a sort of doomed attempt at bigging me up, by mentioning a blog, jaysus help me.

She then asked me how I'd gotten on at some poetry thing. So I answered.

Yer man interuppted me with a snicker but I kept going.

When I stopped talking everyone waited for him to speak.

'You're a poet?'

'Well not really? I write a bit. This and that.'

'Like what.'

'Ah ya know' I said. Getting self conscious.

'Sure who'd want to read what you say. Everything you say is stupid.'

And everyone laughed. And I tried to shout over the laughter with some lame comeback and failed and resorted to just laughing along. But inside I was cringing and angry and beaten.

The night went on. But for me that was it. My good feeling's never recovered from that and I sank into a drunken depression that ended with me sulking off to fall asleep on the luas.

'Everything you say is stupid.'

I think he was right.

In the context of writing anyway. Your thoughts are ridiculous, preposterous, ireelevant wank. Hear me out now.

Irellevant.

There's another important word.

In the context of writing. Everything you have to say is also irrelevant.

Don't ever forget that one peeps.

Actually, in the context of life itself. You are irrelevant.

You're born, you eat, you shit, you die and nobody notices.

That's a metaphor. Eating is all you take in. Shitting is all you dish out for the good of mankind.

As one of my favourite writers Chuck Pahlaniuk says.

'On a long enough timeline everyones survival rate drops to Zero.'

You could take out the word 'everyone's', and insert, 'every human endevour's'

Like, even if you're the most influential man alive - you're forgettable. Like Ozymandias and his ruined statue in the sand.

But there's degrees of irellevancy. Or irrelevantness, or irrellevanticacyness.

So I'd rather be a dead man who tried to write a poem than a dead man who never tried anything. Trying is the main part. Irrelevance is irelevant.

There's a sum back in secondary school maths class that almost made me jump out the window and run for the hills with the freakiness of it. It was something like add x to y and multiply and because of the positioning of the number in the vast infinity of the whole the number would constantly get closer to 1 but never reach 1.

Like, no matter how much crap I actually spew here I'll never fill the internet.

All of life is like that.

Or something.

I need to work on my cohesiveness.

Hooray for Raging.

I'm raging.

My fucking head is wrecked.

And it is fucking great.

I've been taking vitamins for the past few months. Fucking Multibionta. They are loaded with Selenium.

Selenium is what all the holistic little lentil drenched people seek in nuts to make them happy in between eating nettles and massaging each others feet and designing crappy henna tatoos to sell in Georges Street arcade.

But it works man. I was so content for ages. I was a happy little wage slave.

And then I stopped taking them and then I sorta woke up.

All this week I've been going around grinding my teeth and feeling on edge and getting pissed off with everything. Especially little things. But I'm happier like that - like deep down at home with myself happy. I felt more like me. And more like a writer too. More like something was missing. More like nobody fucking gets this shit the way I do. More arrogant and fractured and alone.

Last night was cool. I was lying in bed and the clouds were smashing into each other with thunder and lightning and I was sitting there thinking that's more fucking like it. The more banging and crashing and things clashing the better. I felt put in my place and in awe of this amazing planet.

Clover as well man. This is a clover segue. Clover is rocking it right now. It's clovertastic out there. Go to the park and the smell will hit you like you're eight again and chasing bees with a little jamjar and fork holes in the lid.

The other day I got my kids to lie down on the ground so we could see things the bees way. The clover was as big as a fucking planet and to the scientific mind I suppose it's just a complex. I always thought of them like them coconut sweets from back in the whenwas. Simply a brown ball with white speckles. But they're really like a many headed thing, a puff of arcing trumpets. It's taking me until now at the age of thirty-five to notice that. It was like hanging around with some fellah and you're like 'yeah he plays football' and then you realize your mate is actually the George Best.

My kids probably think I'm mental.

Anyway.

I'm pissed off. I'm raging. It's like my radar is back on again and all the wankers stand out the way Zombies do in the movies. All lurching and uselss and dangerous and 'bwains'. Time to break out the metaphorical sawn-off shotgun and aim for the crowds.

My selenium is down.

My standards are up. Yup yup! As the say in scangerland.

Sianara Teddy Bear

The brilliant poet Mark Madden has given me permission to post his poem that blew me away at the International Bar last Monday.

Read it and weep.

Sianara Teddybear

They let you be their teddybear

Put a chain around your neck

Led you everywhere

Till you died of impacted burgers

On a Graceland toilet

A flurry of prescriptions round you

Addicted to oral and anal pleasures

Like military fraternities everywhere

‘Cos you have to travel really far

To find genital America

They didn’t want no tiger

‘Cos tigers play too rough

No sneering teenage sex-god

Fresh from the clubs

Where the folks are all black

And the songs are all blue

Swaying and panting jungle music

While their daughters peed their pants

The generals wanted your sex

And the pastors in their own way

So they cut your hair

Put you in a uniform

Took your circumcised cock

Gave you a gun instead

And fed you to hollywood

Like all your generation

Refugees from the fifties

Dragged from sixties dancehalls

To south east asian jungles

To kill someone you don’t know

Just ‘cos someone told you to

But there’s no blood

On your hands Teddybear

No slaughter for the Baby King

While fat slow generals

Got obscene on young blood

No glorious martyr’s death

For their Teddybear

In white codpiece suits

With no visible genitalia

Playing huge mafia gigs

With glazed self-absorbed eyes

The nation’s eunuch king

‘Cos all monotheisms

Are ritual abuse cults

Based on sexual ownership

The patriarch god

Owns the sex of men

With their sacrificial foreskins

In Jerusalem, Baghdad

And secular America

And men own women’s sex

Jealously guarding their property

No one owns their own sex

No one possesses their own power

It’s only exercised from above

And the message is

Climb on up the heap

And when the peanut butter burgers

Fatally impacted in your colon

They deified you

A gross and final insult

And one of your record executives

When he heard the news

Said- Hey! Good career move

And in death you became immortal

As pure product

A thousand re-issues

A million porcelain busts

They cut your cock off

Killed you with their vices

And sold your remains

Over and over again

And after all these years

We still have to listen to

These fuzzy-brained little shits

In uniforms or black dresses

Wibbling on about God and Fatherland

As they peddle sexual guilt

And fuck their kids in private

They used you Teddybear

Sacrificed you to a jealous god

And fed you to the masses

With menopausal malice

The generals got their revenge

For all those wet panties

Spoiling their fifties fun

When little girls loved their daddies

And kept their mouths shut

They made you a modern king

Devoid of any power

Subject to the military-industrial complan

Only available for public ritual

Maybe if they nailed you to a tree

In Vietnam in sixty-three

Your corpse wouldn’t smell so bad

Bye Bye Baby King

Sianara Teddybear.

No more Michael Jackson Jokes!

AAAGH! It's only 2.00 and I'm sick of the Michael Jackson jokes.

Fuck off with your fucking recycled 'Michael Jacksons a paedo who's dead and made of plastic joke' that's been sent to you by some other fucking dope who had it sent to him who had it sent to him who had it sent to him, you stupid useless jokeless read it off your phone prick.

That being said though. I wouldn't mind a new one.

Sorry for use of the word prick there. By way of an apology here's Anthea Turner having her head blown off.

Now, that's the trivial shit out of the way. I have to run a course for teens next week. Something that winds history and creative writing together. If anyone has any Ideas I'd be glad to hear em. Like, how do you show a kid how to write fiction which involves local history somehow? I'm a bit stumped, but as usual I'll probably come up with something in the twenty minutes before it starts.

Success for Venom Films

For a lot of 2008 I had the good fortune to cut my screenwriting teeth with the kickass filmmaking team that are Venom films, headed up by Director Ken Wardrop and Producer Andrew Freedman.

I've just heard that Ken's new film will be showcased in the States as part of the Directors Finders Series 2009.

Couldn't have happened to two sounder lads. Congrats and best of luck to them in the US.

Here's more info from Filmbase Ireland.

Photo: Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Martin Cullen TD joins in congratulating the winner of the prestigious award.

The Screen Directors Guild of Ireland, in association with the Directors Guild of America, announce that the winner of the 5th US Distribution Showcase, the Directors Finders Series 2009 is Ken Wardrop with his feature documentary His and Hers.

The acclaimed Irish filmmaker will get the opportunity to showcase his feature at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in LA in August. The showcase will take place in front of an invited audience of American distributors, filmmakers, and key industry personnel, with the aim of securing a US distribution deal for the film.

Selected by an international panel of experts, His and Hers is a beautifully observed and innovative documentary that combines observation and imagination to illustrate a universal love story. The film explores woman’s relationship with man by visiting moments from the lives of 70 female characters. Shot in the hallways, living rooms and kitchens of the Irish Midlands, the story moves sequentially from young to old to deliver a unique and touching insight into sharing life’s journey.

The initiative, conceived by the Directors Guild of America and facilitated by the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland, presents an Irish director with an opportunity to showcase their film and to have direct access to decision makers in the film distribution process in the US. The award spotlights works of fiction, documentary or drama feature submissions from Irish directors who have not secured US distribution for their films.

This year, SDGI will launch Ken Wardrop and his film His and Hers at a special Industry Awards Ceremony on 16th July in Dublin in The Morrison Hotel, to precede the LA Screening Event in August. This event will be will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Martin Cullen TD and will be co-hosted by internationally acclaimed directors Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan.

Supermodels would kill to be this Thin

Dermot Bolger has set up a website which include writngs from his latest Collection External Affair along with work from the anthology Night and Day.

I was chuffed to see that he's uploaded his brilliant and moving poem Neilstown Matadors there which includes the great line I've used for this blogpost title. Follow the lin kand have a look around.

http://www.dermotbolger.com/nightday_day_neilstown.htm

In other news. I'm fucking roasting.

Get the fuck out of the way and make room for the talent

I was at Stephen James Smith's Open Mic last night.

It's not actually called that. It's not actually called anything at all. But now it is because I said so. Because without Stephen it would be shit - he knows everybody, the sickeningly gregarious and connected fucker that he is, and it is to his credit that every act is inventive, fresh, a cut above the ordinary and in love with their art.

I did some stuff early on, and I was thinking 'I would have liked to be on later' until eventually Mark Madden came on and I thought 'Shut you're arrogant hole Colm and make brainspace for this magician'.

Fucking wordsmith doesnt come close. A performance poet who writes stunning political, satirical ascerbic poetry that will floor you. He also left too early and I never got to chat with him but maybe that was a good thing. Let him stay all mystical and shaminic in my mind.

Shamanism. I think music and poetry and all that artistic endevour sorta fills that spiritual void in our lives.

'Duh!' some might of you might say, while 'wipe the bull offa your filthy hyperbolatious mouth' will be screamed by others, or not.

But it's easy to back up my argument with the likes of 'long haired shy guy' (i can't remember his name but will paste it in here along with links to his music in due course) who had this likeable almost reclusive aura until he picked up his guitar and banged out two midblowing songs. And not banged like a kid hitting a toy gong. Banged like some mad low level earthquake of the soul while he grew in stature until he filled the shoes of some musical giant who'd throw Rockall while listening to Johnny Cash.

Honestly, he had people so blown away. He was fucking amazing.

There were loads of Brilliant music acts. I'm even forgetting some.

Know this peeps. Stephen isn't organising a 'people who wouldn't be let play anywhere else' open mic event. It's more an 'all quality all the motherfucking way professionals who still have the decency to play a gig for free' type thing.

Two that stick out for me where Andy Lee (no real web presence unfortunately).

And Enda Reilly who had a kickass tune called Samurai Sword which you can download from his site http://www.endareilly.com/.

Also, Bamboo sessions organiser Aidan Murphy also gave us a few tunes. Check him out here http://www.bamboosessions.com/

Stephen James Smith gave some of his favourite poets an airing as he is known to do. So now Christy Brown and Pat ingolsby - two Dub poets that this here ignoramus had only a small notion of, are now officially on my Radar.

Right, enough blowing other peoples trumpets. I'm off to Google myself and massage my ego.

UPDATE: The top class young guitarist was Markus Carcas http://www.myspace.com/markascarcas

Jobstown

So I was looking at the girl on the ground. She was sort of awake but making bubbly breathing sounds.

And I was just standing there.

Veiny face was walking towards his car which was at the end of the lane.

I caught up with him and laughed.

I was thinking of that 'you can't leave that lying there' joke.

I said you can't just leave her lying there. I said it with my most diplomatic face. My voice carrying the weight of reason but with a delicate pleading quality.

He looked at me in a way that said I had no right to say anything because I was just the same as him.

And in a way that was true.

So I waited til he was getting in the car and shut the door on his head.

A few times.

Enough to make sure he wasn't getting up.

And then mostly because he was still getting up, but also because I wasn't happy with myself and my current situation and the way I had all this to deal with and daughters and a girlfriend at home and a broken whore like a bleeding sore on my conscience now I gave him a kick in the mouth.

I thought about spitting on him but didn't.

I got into the car and reversed towards the girl on the ground.

I got out and knelt down beside her.

She was getting up. She was quite obviously, seriously, fucked up.

Her eyes wouldn't focus. I asked her where she lived and she barely managed to say Jobstown which was mad because I used to live in Jobstown.

Bawnlea Green to be precise. In a house that I burned down when I was eight.

By Accident.

I picked her up and walked her into the car. She didn't know where she was. She was holding on to me and crying into herself.

She sat in the seat and curled up into a shaking sobbing ball. I got in and headed for Tallaght.

Drunk driving is mad. You think it would be hard but it's easier than you think. Even when you're in that state where your words slur and you've brewers droop you can still kinda manage it.

I was pretty proud of myself at one stage but then I woke up just in time to avoid driving straight into a raised roundabout.

The shock of that woke me up a bit.

I arrived in Jobstown and saw that every field I played in as a nipper was now full of apartments.

Boo fucking hoo.

I asked the girl where she lived exactly and she told me and I turned into her estate.

She was fucking out of it. She was scary.

Her face made no sense. At some stage she went from sobbing to crying in that broken female wailing way that made me think of some lost alzheimers fucking patient or something.

I tried to touch her, to calm her down, let her know everything was okay.

And she screamed at the top of her voice and scraped my face.

So I grabbed her and tried to settle her down some more.

And then I think she had me and Veiny Face mixed up because she started attacking me with this rain of slaps and kicks.

And I think i hit her.

And she was bashing me and kicking with her legs and I was leaning over her and she was shouting so much and the door opened and she rushed out and escaped.

And I got out and ran after her and I was like an animal all anger and fear and I chased her and she ran into the estate.

And into a garden and into a porch and she started banging on the door.

And I followed her because I didnt know what she was going to do next day - call the police come to my house and tell on me or what and the door opened.

And she was let in.

She was home. So I got into the garden and crept around the back and over the side gate to break in or something so I could just talk to her and explain and make her understand that it wasn't me.

And then the kitchen light went on and I tapped on the glass.

And the curtain was pulled across and it was a boy.

A little blond fellah of about eleven in a white t-shirt and little Penny's boxers.

And he asked me to just go

And I started to talk through the glass.

And the look on his face told me I'd just broke into his world with some horrible truth.

So I walked away.

And I passed veiney face's car and the doors were open and the wind blew through it and my insides felt just as hollow.

Stephen James Smith breathing down Yeats neck

Yeah it's him again. Stephen James Smith - just back from a slam in Galway he is, and he posted a pic from the night on his facebook. It had a big gap on the left and I just had to fill it - with Yeats, as you do.

Don't forget he's running the cool new open mic in The International Bar, music comedy and poetry. I'll be making an appearance there this Monday.