Alternative Song For The Severed Head In 'The King Of The Great Clock Tower'
Saddle and ride, I heard a man say, Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea, What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower? All those tragic characters ride But turn from Rosses' crawling tide, The meet's upon the mountain-side. A slow low note and an iron bell.
What brought them there so far from their home. Cuchulain that fought night long with the foam, What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower? Niamh that rode on it; lad and lass That sat so still and played at the chess? What but heroic wantonness? A slow low note and an iron bell.
Aleel, his Countess; Hanrahan That seemed but a wild wenching man; What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower? And all alone comes riding there The King that could make his people stare, Because he had feathers instead of hair. A slow low note and an iron bell.
Sitting in front of the mirror that shows nothing, Tells of nothing, shares nothing. The hair his father once ruffled after his Wednesday afternoon soccer game Lies now on linoleum finished with tours of itinerant footsteps. He's ready. Ready to die for the people like him with dreams like his back home, Suited up to die for men in suits in chairs In offices lined with glass windows that laugh out loud, Men who have no dreams but only agendas.
They read the words but miss out between the lines, As though the struggles of yesterday, Could somehow be wished away, Our reality still reflected the barren wastelands and land mines, And because we had all our limbs, That we were fine.
We weren't.
Psychological trauma is an old friend of ours, He drinks with us at night hours, Sings to us when we are falling asleep, And with every light, there he is around the corner to creep.
The sounds of fireworks and firecrackers brings us back, To that place where the shells once cracked, And bodies became charred in complete black.
I could remember one of the days I was with my brother, We were close because we grew up without a mother, We ran miles and miles without a single smile, Because nothing was hopeful not even for a small while. I thought that death was approaching when the soldiers came in, Their green uniforms and some of them familiar faces, I thought I was going to die. And when you welcome the thought of death, You start to realise how much you have left, And to me that was your grandparents, Because I knew after I go, there's no inheritance, No food, no money, nothing left to keep them alive, And thats why I did my best to survive. Tragic however, my brother didn't make it, We ran and ran but somehow he was still taken, And thats why war is hell, Because even in the sound of life's shattering bells, I can still remember him telling me to run.
"So. Why a robin? " I picture us fighting, my neck hits the back of the leather arm chair. It hurts and you apologise. You are still pretending to get mad whenever I say I love you like you are not willing to hear it. You know I am going far away and whether its university or life we can't work without one of us making the other miserable. And I am still folding our hands to origami swans at 3am wishing for a second more with you. It goes futher than taking the scenic route home, dragging my feet and prolonging the front door, pretending we don't know how this ends. We have the same conversations over and over, you apologising and joking as you think about what you'll turn into//me wondering if I'll even bother to make it that far. One day you might not remember my name, think my face isn't mine because didn't I used to blonde? We are not even perfect on paper. The government wouldn't grant us our bursary because they knew we are too self destructive. My poems for you were pretty when flipped to the ceiling but we think too much, wound ourselves up, and the folds in the pages won't come loose anymore. The words don't sit right. Somewhere on a fence in Carlton sits two robins. And life gets so hard when you realise you can't actually help another adult with their problems, you can only make them a cup of tea. Not coffee. Their brain spins in it's swivel office chair, controls broken. A dictatorship sinking fast. Their heart races - the more coffee you drink the more likely you are to experience anxiety//undiagnosed depression is hard to get rid of, it knows you want to acknowledge it and it waits for you to stumble upon it, it feigns surprises behind a pinewood door, but life doesn't get much better after you notice it. You still want to die and you still think every day about the one in three anorexia sufferers that don't make it. How really you don't know what "making it" is. I found a boy that I imagine smells like fire. He has these crazed pinpoint eyes that are not like yours and I don't know what to think anymore. He is an artistic genius and I want to run from my bad dreams into you and I don't know what to think anymore. I don't think anything is real anymore. I think we hit an iceberg. I think my fingers are caught in the ice, splayed hands grasping still like curved talon ends and I don't think I can get lose but it is cold. Think. Your warm hands on my ribcage holding me on an axis. Pedestal. You told me I don't love you last night and it felt like hot wax cooling in my throat. I can still taste it now. My hands are cold. I'm writing poetry about you again but I don't know if it's for you this time. Yes, there's a difference. I felt something gut wrenching today when I found that the great barrier reef had died. Is dying. It lived for 25 million years and the human race killed it. Like a toxic relationship composed of a bad survival climate and corporate waste, like us killing us. Big red buttons looming closer. I would compare us to the death of the great barrier reef- I don't think we were as beautiful, and we were killed by ourselves not climate change. So I am writing us an obituary before we self implode. I am writing the nights I have not spend crying on the kitchen floor an obituary before they are even over. I don't think I can breathe underwater and the pressures are getting to your head. The colours are fading and the plants aren't breathing anymore. The backs of my eyelids are freezing over. You are the only one who knows about the two robins on a fence somewhere safe. You are the one I tell my nightmares to, the ones where I wake up and I can't breathe without you. The ones that I don't have anymore because now my fingers are inches away from the end of the rabbit hole. I can feel the breeze at my fingertips. We deserved more than a bunch of flowers cellotaped to a lamppost. More than a game of hangman. More than this is how I say happy anniversary. I wish we hadn't killed the great barrier reef. I wish that there had been better ways to say happy anniversary.
Particles never stay in the same place. You were a tin can but now you're a horse, running alone Tethered maybe to a burned up stable But mostly a creature of fire, muscle, sweet speed sweat that Takes pause only to graze from the land.
You are a machine. A machine that runs. A running machine.
And you tried to change, didn't you? Saw a California sunset in a psychedelic silhouette, Grew legs and became a beast of the land.
There was a great plain with mountain frame but Your legs. your eyes. your tail your flies by god If I could tame.
Very few could love you but those that do, Will dehydrate, expire, at the mirage that rises And fades with you from view.
You are a horse running alone and my Body aches to be the stream you drink from, to be the Sunset that gives you solace, if Ever you require some.
You are different now and I am the same shape, Dressed even as I was the day you left.
I want your love for me To be the ruined running ground Beneath sweat soaked feet: Stable, and strong Then impermanent, and weak.
