Living Room Song

I sit in my living room
Despondent
Wondering about
What it all meant
I have loved, loved, loved,
And now I feel so lost
I’ve built myself back up a few times
But at an ever-increasing cost.

I run my thumb
In small circles
Over my ring and my long finger
I know the thoughts will linger
This time.

I look to the sky
At my lonely astronaut
And why won’t he wave back?
Can’t he see that I’m lost
And completely off-track.
Come back to earth
Even if the cost is astronomical
Honey, I’m hurt
And I need your understanding
But you don’t reach out
You’ve forgotten me
Occupied in your void.

I sit in my room
Staring at my feet
Until everything becomes a blur
Until the seasons turn
Hoping that I just keel over
And over and over

I wanna lift the weight
Of the world.
Off of her burdened shoulders
I want to lift the world
I want to lift the world
I want to lift the world

Reach

It’s getting harder to reach inside my chest
And see exactly what’s going on.
A window to my soul so clear, is now opaque
I don’t even know what it was that made this break

I can’t reach me, I can’t reach you
The way I used to, the way I used to
And I can’t see me, I can see you
Maybe that’s what the blues do

A swirling current of words flows through my head
I used to slow them all down to find out what they meant
But now the words are foreign and I can’t translate
I don’t even know how I’m in this state
But I can’t reach me, and I can’t reach you
I feel so broken, I feel so untrue
Because I can’t reach me, and I can’t reach you
And I don’t know what to do

I’ll blame it on prescription medication
I’ll blame it on pandemic-induced isolation
And sometimes I feel so bereft
How much of me do I have left?

And I can’t reach me, I can’t reach you
The way I want to, the way I want to
And I can’t reach me, I can’t reach you
And I’m trying to push through
A loss so fundamental
That you don’t recognise who remains
A loss so overwhelming
You don’t recognise what remains

Derek Mahon

I thought of Derek Mahon
As I stared through the window pane
Out at Galway or Roscommon
Greyed out by the rain
Derelict houses and pubs with townland names
Dampened smoke caught in a cyclone in the air
And I thought of Derek Mahon
And how no one seemed to care.

I thought of Liam Ó Muirthile
And the weight of all things
I thought of the tolling of the bells
And all the emotion that it brings.
A cavalcade of sorrow, a blackening of the soul
The first time you feel all right,
And the first time that you sing
And then you lay awake all night
You should be mourning

I thought of a friend of mine
As I came upon the town
Dressed up in his finest suit
Sister in a mourning gown.
Did anyone else even care?
Does everything just pass?
Or are we as insignificant
As a blade of Connacht grass?

What could I have said to raise you from the dead?

Tell me what did you learn when you closed your eyes
And they’d said that you’d died?
Was it warm? Was it cold? Was it anything at all?
I need some faith, lord knows that I try
I held you close…you cried and cried
You were fragile and small

Tell me what you see now that you’re gone
Are you feeling okay? Are you alright?
I stare at the night, empty all of the time
Until I see the first sign of dawn
Until the absence of night.
This life is naught but a crime

Tell me what you saw as you faded away
Was I blurry? Was I caught in a haze?
Or did thoughts of me remain?
As a famine seeped you empty, like a drain…
Did you hear me when I asked you to stay?
I hope you’re feeling okay

Tell me what you felt when your body collapsed
Just tell me something about anything
Tell me what I should have said
To raise you from the dead…
The winter has me emaciated and sapped..
Oh, what joy your voice would bring.

Tell me where you’re at, if you’re anywhere near
Is my voice something you can hear?
Do you hear me at all when I cry?
Will you be there when I die?
I want to believe, I try and try
I can only believe my imperfect eyes.

I don’t know if I know love anymore

I met a solipist on the bus and I made her cry

I told her that all of her creations should one day die

And even then God herself shall be struck down

And kiss the unforgiving cold, hard ground

In the end, it doesn’t matter if we leave or stay

Because all of love and all of hate will fade

All of our mothers, and our fathers too

Leave us here, leave us perpetually blue

Your body felt like December

In the changing room
There’s a man, resolute
Says his weight is healthy and sustainable
This awkward groom
Speaks, absolute
Says that bad habits are maintainable
Under the glowing light
Of a pinhole sky
Trundles the procession of a funeral
And then at night
There’s an empty cry
A pain that is all but communal

In the amber dawn
Lies a woman, sun-kissed
Who stares at the waves as they’re breaking.
In leaves of fawn
That mask red wrists
That spite and mock the drugs she’s taking.
In the morning sear
She is pale and cold
And seen from a distance by the lone sentinel
Soon her mother is here
Now, pale and old
The reaction is volatile and chemical.

In a creaky rocking chair
Sits a grandmother, lonely
Who hears a distorted and unsettling whine
She rises and gasps for air
Her expression, stony
As she mourns the creature, small and benign
And alone
She mourns the retriever
And decides then to call her daughter
Holds the phone
And then downs the receiver
As no one cares about the slaughter.