BUDD-HA

FALSE FACE Put on a false face and pretend To be someone else.  I’ve never Been good at that, I can’t lie. Once I remember dressing up As the joker but now the joke Is on me, I dress down each day And don’t recall my childhood. I was born and one day I’ll die That’s celebration enough. This is my face but It’s not false.

DOWN IS UP Suicide doesn’t want me! Society doesn’t want me! My family doesn’t want me! Care doesn’t want me, am I The only one who cares? Me, without emotion who struggles with depression.   The care system I have live with ends up depressing me more. What am I to do, just depend On me to score?  I put my heart And my soul on the page Let you read me torn. I’m shooting up Too shoot down This is all I know.

A POET’S COUNTRY Looking through, ’a poet’s country’ I found a mental health appointment Card from ten years ago.  That’s how Long ive lived with this problem Of nothingness.  I’m reading things I have read before, digging for hope Just like Kavanagh did in spud drills. I got a letter today from the same people. I don’t know if any help can be got I live in a strange world where nothing Seems to happen.  I’ve tried everything To overcome this but only writing Is the seed of poetry, where things grow.

Sometimes I’m up Sometimes I’m down Sometimes I’m half-left But I’m always right.

BLACK HILLS Looking through old photographs But nothing came to mind, I’m locked in A stalemate a pawn without a crown. I remembered something my father said ‘put your hand into a flame and burn Away the burn’.  I tried to burn the photo- Graphs to burn memory back in and take the sadness from my eyes. I must find a lift to make these days right Even the beautiful game isn’t beautiful Anymore, can you imagine me playing In a wheelchair, I can’t even keep it up.  The stroke has reached down into my very core a place where these words want to come from they are my only hope, ‘ My bright shillings of march’. Way, way up there on those black hills where My father lies.

A BLOG OF IMAGES AND POME'S.... ISINGLASS Reading Elizabeth Bishop, the poems blur Like looking through as she says: ’ isinglass’ Everything becomes translucent, mapped out On the page.  Her rhymes aren’t just rhymes but Fixtures of life, they find their own form. Wow, I wish I could write like that I don’t even have any form but I’m searching For her sequence in the inlets of Donegal At the Fishouses along the Ray River I saw them somewhere before. Going through old poems to find sea shore I hope this poem moves in and out And reflects her sense of belonging I’ll never get the old man and the sea. Not now that I’m here all alone but I can read a master in my own seal-skin.

THE PATH It's strange how dark come's from light on the diamond path it come's from sight.