I will consume you
I will devour you whole
My will is unchallengeable
I do not break
I shall not bend

My passion burns hot
It will consume you, you will catch light and ash before daybreak

I am the sea, every ripple is the still before the rogue wave swallows you,
I shall drown you.

I am the end of you, this is a promise.

You will need me, I will crawl inside you and take root,
I am the control.

You know not why you crave me, I am the infection that you desire
Festering inside of you, I will take control.

Your will is my will, your life is mine.

I will consume from the inside out.

It has been said that life is too short to spend in social trenches.

The No-man's land of daily civil warfare.
We want to be liked, we want to be understood, we want to be edgy without offending.
We want approval of the masses, we want to be desired and chased.
Validation.

Validation.

We want the want, the fame, the love, the praise, the opinions and ideas.
The winning side.

We wake up everyday and look out across the social media minefields,

The front line Social Justice Warriors, the Alternative Right guerillas.

The mass armies of the Left and Right.

The Anarchists now sip tea with the Libertarians.

Topic to topic we send our troops to fight over hill over dale!
We try, we pick our battles, we fight on all fronts.
The winning side seems so clear yet the shells never stop.
Dropping alongside, bombs carpet or drone.

We have the thousand yard pseudo thought.

Plant your feet firmly on the ground, we need boots on the air,
We need planes in the sky and ships sending reinforcements.

Modern day field intel from a not so secret spy social network.
Mid level cluster bombs of thought and quick bit pieces of food rations for thought.

Mustard gas conversations that choke the throats of some while others inhale and laugh.

Drone strike incoming, retreat from the view of public, scorched earth policy.

Some wave the white flag out of exhaustion only to go fight another battle on some far away topic.

Neutral ground hard to find, teetering on the edge of a war, always ready to fight.  
The cycle repeats and yet those who have learn’ed now pick and choose when to fight.
They sit on the sidelines and wait for the right time to strike, there may not a way to retreat all the way but there is a way to cause the most effective change in the lease of painless ways.

Life is too short to spend in social trenches, it is too short to jump from battle to battle, it is not worth the energy spent fighting the endless armies day in and day out and let life go by because you get lost in the fog of war.

To quote Douglas Adams “I’d rather be happy than right”.

Strong words that should be said more.

Sometimes
I think I'll stop
writing...
that lasts
a moment or two

until

my thoughts begin to form
into some force that builds
until
it has no place to go
but
down my arm
      through my wrist
          into my fingers and
              out through their ends

into the pen
         flowing from it
            onto the page

in black ink or blue
          in pencil or green marker
               pink crayon or highlighter

onto backs of bills
           old letters or jagged-edged envelopes...

any empty spot looking lonely
            and in need of being stroked

my pen strokes it and coos to it
              giving it life, giving it meaning
                                                       (I hope)
                   making it a page in my book,
                        my scattered book that may

never be bound

do I want it to be?
or
do I want it free, floating, scattered to the wind

like black birds leaving a tree
              shooting out in all directions, writing
                   their book, their black ink making a deep
                       impression in the pale blue sky, cursive writing
                            with frills and dips and curves

watch how they move, how they write it all down
                 in the heavens for all to read like books on a library's
                    shelves holding themselves out, offering their very souls

to the loving hands of all who pass by, bound pages waiting to be freed
                  to fly across our minds like blackbirds across the sky,

writing
                        
a new page there

I have a story to tell
It’s spiritual, poignant
and real

a young man, my son,
Fought a brave battle
No, not on some foreign soil
Right here inside his head
A seizure…

Oh god, what’s happening?
Briefly, I feared he was dead

Waiting…scared…what to do
What to think…
Tests of all sorts…

cancer

A brain tumor
They said

Go home, enjoy Christmas
Then surgery
We’ll open his head

We tried to enjoy the season
With a sword hanging over
Us all
Though each of us
All five…
secretly
wept at times
Knowing it was going
To fall

I wake in this city
This city that didn't bear me
This city that didn't raise me
And yet it's this city that i seek to find something of me
Not in the pubs or the clubs or the karaoke bars
Where revelers conspire to dream and drink to the stars
Nor the cafes where poets and artists in a foreign language create.
Pass the market stalls where secondhand books and vinyls are stacked like freight
It is to the quietened streets of the old town I go
Where i long for the walls to speak once more
To reveal their hidden histories
To help fashion some sense of a man
One unknownst to me, my fathers father whose name I share
A fine skilled seamster, thus a tailor by trade
Not arriving to this city for work on fabrics of nylon and silk
But to stitch and sew the flesh of limbs in a paramedic corps
Another pawn of the Great War under King George's command
Driven only by economic necessity from a penal homeland
Not of conscription, politics or some moral conviction at play
For the price of neutrality is one that poverty simply refuses to pay
Returning home to an Ireland of hostility or silence at best
Medals now lying deep in pockets not proudly pinned to chests
Irish heroes don't fight in a British war for a King's crown
No such stories from father to son shall ever pass down
And now, a grainy photograph, three medals for a sons son to take
A dog tag that bears my name, a number and RC to depict a faith
From a man exiled in his home as a forgotten prisoner of war
To honour a legacy i find myself in this city afar
Asking the same questions of him as to me
Is this city the last place he truly felt free?