A Poem - Camden Lock (2008)

The gift you gave me
Was love.

The gift you gave me
Was a recollection of happy times
We shared.

The gift you gave me
Was hope.

The gift you gave me
Was release from nagging torment.

The gift you gave me
Was a breathing space.

The gift you gave me
Was...

A mojito.

Your consideration,
Your care,
Your concerned, caring, pained eyes,
Your tending touch,
Your laughter,

The wonder of you!

Love, love, love!

Looking over the sun-drenched sea of stalls,
Rapt in your oasis,
Wrapped in your bower of hope,
At liberty, the chains of sadness loosed,
By your gifts,
By your sunshine,
Tears welled in my eyes for the joy of you.

How I loved that mojito,
How tears well for you.

Can you not remember
That our love was truth?



(c) Tales of Seamus 2005

A Poem - A Memory (2005)

Every crystal of magic
In the snowflake soft silence of effulgence,
Centered in your love-brimmed eyes.

Our first Noel
With wondrous promise,
Trod soft on warm white blankets
Under starry skies.


But the promise faded:
Magic was denied.



(c) Tales of Seamus 2005

A Poem - Peregrine (i) (2009)

Hoar-gouts of frost-sharp crystal screams
Buffet the crossed wings of the face-barred falcon,
Closed tight over his crown,
Tight against the cruel wind,

The keening world.

Eyes that have seen too far, too fierce, too keen,
Beheld white fire masquerading as inviolate truth Complete,
Feeding from its own flame,

Reflection

Burned, burned, burned,
Are hooded and blind.

No prophecies are scried, no magic glanced;
They are not filled with the white sharp edge of the sun's light
That comes searing in and binds the lidless eye
And coils the fire-mind.
 
The falcon's head lifts, its eyes craving roseate dawn,
Not the black-iced pain of night.
A scream is cast into the maelstrom and torn away
Like a tongue that cannot talk of truce.

Would that a fleet curved wing
And the pained yearning of a fierce heart
Would soon carry a pilgrim, steeped
In the sadness and the madness,
Back to the great Axis of Life.


 (c) Tales of Seamus 2011

A Poem - Lament for Lost Love (2005)

Oh what dread torment is this?
Riven from her that used to kiss
Away my troubles and my fears;
Her warm lips once soothed away my tears.


If I'd been given any choice,
She never would have heard my voice
Unfeeling, cruel and far away
From where my own true sentiments lay.


And I have spoken to her since,
And it seems she will convince
Herself it's better we did part;
She told me that I broke her heart.


With calmer mind but crippled soul
I'm at the diametric pole
And though many months have passed
My heart is broken too at last.


Now sleep is stolen, all is ashes,
There is no solace in the world.
My angel-light in fearful darkness
Tortured as my mind unfurled.


She strove so hard and gave so much,
But so much is all that one can bear,
Her heart and soul were wounded, bleeding.
But mania hid away my share.


I must have seemed so cruelly heartless,
Not gentle, tender, loving, kind.
My soul that loved her deeply,

Locked deep in my wounded mind.


Ah darling, darling! please forgive me!
You were the one that took my heart
And gave it all your shining beauty
And drove away the binding dark.


You gave me that most precious gift,
That I wondered so to feel,
By every facet of your beauty
My wounded troubled heart was healed.


So precious are you to me darling
For every soothing of my heart,
That I should hurt and lose you is
The deepest cut and cruellest dart.


(c) Tales of Seamus 2004 - 2012

A Poem - Sip (2006)

I see you sitting back,
That far and yet focused look in your eyes,
The smoke of a contemplative cigarette,
Floating gentle,
As the gentle sips I take of each one of your 

Sighs.

I see you sitting back,
Desire rushes in,
With its continual butterfly-winged surprise.
I see the sweetest dizzying,
Headiest wine of desire
Born in the narrowing reflection of your eyes.


(c) Tales of Seamus 2001 - 2012

A Poem - All Things Fade Yet Never Wholly Do Depart (2006)

All things fade
In the seasons of the heart.

Love springs verdant, born of joy
And twines us as one part.

But all things fade
And Springtime does depart;
Brave summer's sun shines down
On the summer of brave hearts.

And love's sweet petals bloom
Yet in the end they pall,
For the wind blows keen from 

Clouded skies,
The rain begins to fall.

Yet all things fade,
Mere rain is chilled to sleet;
The heart's heart knows too well the cold,
The seasons are complete.

For love's tumultuous chords rang forth,
Yet in the end all fell,
Our heart beats sound no more as one
Yet ever beat, 'farewell'.

Yes all things fade
Yet never wholly do depart,
For always faint strains of our love
Sound in the quiet heart.

When the heart's heart finding stillness
Finds the inner voices clear,
Hearts sing the songs of happiness,
Hearts sing the songs of tears.


(c) Tales of Seamus 2004 - 2012

A Poem - Seesaw (2010)

The seesaw hangs in the balance,

As an implacable stone gaze looks on,

Pitiless and cold,

Withholding any meaning

From the timid anguished rider

And destroying demon bold.

One slumps leaden in defeat,

The other stamps with dreadful glee;

If they'd meet at my soul's fulcrum

Then they'd both let me be free.

One's thoughts weigh more than oceans,

Dreadful fathoms of despair,

The others ticking, flicking thoughts

Are lighter than the air.

One builds not but holds the oceans,

The other labours night and day,

Turning all that's builded up before

To chaos and dismay.

One can never summon Hope,

The future is a turning knife.

The other's plans are towers

Of gleaming fire and brittle ice.

The seesaw hangs in the balance,

I found you once at the fulcrum

And joy spread, like a wave of sunshine,

Over my life.

But when I returned to the fulcrum,

The stooped crippled wretch

And broker of confusion

Had let out the tide

Through my soul.


(c) Tales of Seamus 2004 - 2012

A Poem - Strange Blue Pill (2012)

Take strange blue pill
To let me will
Or bind my will
To keep me still.

And large white pill
To still my will
I've had my fill
It makes me ill.

With strange blue pill
I can fulfill
My will to still

Gnaw of white pill.

That is my will
I've had my fill
That is my will
Just to be still.


(c) Tales of Seamus 2012

A Short Story - Cupping the Balls (2010)

'Cupping the Balls'

Ernie came back down the metal stairs, making carrying two pints look like a fucked human gyroscope in community care. I'd been thinking about what he'd said and I believed, with all the attributes of drunken certitude, that I'd marshalled my arguments;

'Nah man', by this point my accent and lexicon were mobile, 'Nah man, you're either talkin' shite or just cuppin' ya balls.'

I was satisfied to observe that my point had hit home as a muffled explosion of ginger indignity led to a minor spillage of weak, inexpensive bitter, which, tracing the contours of the glass with due deference to matters far more immutable than the one under discussion, did indeed make its way towards dripping on Ernie's jeans in the vicinity of the aforementioned cuppable spheres.

I looked around the beer garden, it was ball-cupping central.

Once the principal had been established, expressions of the central concept abounded. I took a sip of my Guinness and narrowed my eyes in what I imagined was a knowing manner. It is only fair to myself to say though that I was both aware of this and wryly self-pitying of my action. Sometimes, you are just too aware of certain things, but it didn't matter, I was on song, all the shit was set to one side. In vino veritas, I felt free and that made me feel happy and powerful and savage and wild.

'What the fuck are you talkin' about you pompous squint-eyed tart' rejoinded Ernie, managing to sound both the scornful victim of a laughable injustice and look a flush-cheeked ginger-bollock martyr to his ball-cupping faith at one and the same time. Schrödinger's indignity maybe.

Bloody hell I'd been caning those Guinness rapid.

I decided to elaborate on my new booze-fuelled social insights; 

'You're no better than fucking students, clanning together in great flocks of wankery, each one identical to the next because they cringingly test the waters to gauge what everyone thinks before proffering an timid yet vehement opinion nominally of their own.

'Same deal goes for dress, music, who to like, what to scorn, whatever, you get the idea? They are just cupping each other's balls, making each other feel warm and safe, it's like swaddling clothes. But if we all cupped each other's balls no-one would ever get hurt maybe, but we'd get nowhere fast I tell you.' 

I stopped to breathe, 'What I'm saying is that I like it when people think for themselves and not just cup the old balls whilst enjoying a solid cupping in return. That nonsense will only cause psychic hernias and spiritual floating testicles...'

I had a little laugh, Ernie was smiling from one corner of the mouth too.

'Go on then', he said, 'Tell me how I am supposed to be cupping me fuckin' balls, this I have got to hear.'

I picked up a beermat and twizzled it between my fingers as a rambled on.

'Right, let's break it break it down.' said I, rather tragically miming scratching some record decks to accompany that last sentence. I even made the appropriate noises too. 

I launched in again, 'You, and your particular ball-cupping crew, are dreadful snobbish elitists when it comes to music. This, of course, stems from university.' Fittingly I had assumed a rather donnish air, gone were the expletives, arrived instead were a certain rhythym and cadence of authority. I wonderered how long I could keep it up for.

'Elitists my arse! We just like good music'

'Hold on a sec, hear me out before you see reason' I quipped weakly and felt compelled to have a ball-cupping glance at Ernie but fortunately tipsy smiles all round at this extra-feeble joke. Aren't feeble jokes amongst friends the best kind of social binder? Like sharing sweets in the schoolyard I guess.

I began to open up on this new theory, Ernie said to get on with it. I returned to the main event with renewed and impassioned gusto;

'What is most important is what you all agree not to like' said I, 'basically anything popular in any way shape or form. Haha you utter wankers, in a nutshell that's fucking true. You thereby cull yourself from the happy bland herd so you can stand around in wankery-central beanie hats and ill-favoured ill-fitting corduroy trousers, cupping each others balls gladly, frantically, in fact it's necessary!

And talkin' ball-cupping twaddle about fuckin' pre-historic Indian techno and the Boards of bastard Canada or whatever "approved by being unpopular" cack-twattery you're obliged to be into by the collective will of the Testicular Tribe.

In fact some of that music is really very good, but that's not my point at all.' 

Excited and warming to my theme, the putative don had relapsed into the cheerfully demotic, vulgar language I enjoyed so much, all in the nicest possible way of course.

'So what is your point?' Asked Ernie.

'Ah I dunno, think for yourself, you're missing out on the bigger picture viewed but through a twat darkly, dah di dah, I'm just cupping my own balls here haha.

It's the principle I'm interested in...' I petered out, when was the last time I ate? Ugh!

I had lost my head of steam to Bastardo McBooze; It both giveth, and then taketh away.

I'll have to write all this down sober, I thought, be funny probs.

'Go cup your balls at the bar' said Ernie, lighting a truly mangled roll-up, 'Your round you nob.'


(c) Tales of Seamus 2012

A Poem - Blade (2012)

Weigh the blade with 

A supple wrist,
Find its balance, 

Lilt and list.

The blade is wrought from tempered blends,
In nine white fires nine demons tend.
Nine times in icy depths it's thrust,
Slough off each impure outer crust.

Next white-hot blade takes ringing blows,
That arm an ancient puissance knows.
Love, envy, loss and wisdom-folly,
By these blows blade is made holy.

Anoint the blade with unguent balms,
Enweave the blade with potent charms.
Sing hidden magicks from the air,
Forge runes to fend off mortal cares.

Last stoke the furnace of the heart,
The final forging named 'Thou Art'.
The blade is supple, lithe and hard,
Fix blade to hilt and hilt to guard.

Weigh the blade with

A supple wrist,
Find its balance,

Lilt and list.

White fire, dread cold
proved the blade is true.

You forged the blade

and the blade is you.