Love One Another


mother-teresa
Our unheard voices,
silenced in the crumpled lies
daily and soundly trumpeted
by the world of false authorities!
Cities crumble beneath
the weight of their own conceit
and concrete concealments
and governments, but wisps
of foul winds blowing in the deserts
of corruption and covetousness greed.

Are we to submit our precious few years
and the infinite possibilities of life
to a blind obedience to this pile of dust?
We will not! We cannot!
We must live for love, or else we die,
and love requires freedom from all
false restraints, be they societal or
or subjective – it must be unfettered
and at liberty to express the authenticity
of human experience.

We should with deep and soulful
glee pledge our allegiances
to the elegance of nature
and the exquisiteness of tender acts
of mercy and unrestrained love.
Let us, therefore, express unbridled
compassion toward our neighbor.
than mindlessly march, day by day
into the dark void of hate and self-pretenses?

With love and patience, we shall prevail.
.
Let us council with the philosophies of the
woodland creatures before that of immoral
false prophets, and beneath the wings of
of the soaring eagle let us find our truths.
Where injustice reigns, we will struggle
with all our might to unshackle the chains
that bind us to fabricated obedience, and
band together beneath the social hammer
that crushes our capacity to love.

We are made of clay, but not to be lightly
molded into conformed shapes fired in the
blazing ovens of social orthodoxy – but
rather let us emerge as the shining gods
of glory and infinite adoration and peace and love
we were, from Eden, meant to be!

For Better or For Worse: I Am a “Dark” Writer


dark writer

For better or for worse, I am a dark writer.

It isn’t something I wanted to be as I grew up…it is more something that had to be done to give my inner grief a voice so that the pain and suffering did not overwhelm me. The events of my life have consumed me like maggots feasting on the carcass of a dead child. Have you ever wondered why the best of Irish writers are so dark and depressing? It is because they were flayed by mental anguish  They were compelled by lives lived in abject poverty, disease and general disrepair and despair. Bram Stoker, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Frank McCourt, …all suffered from severe moral disintegration, from morbid ideations brought about by the unrelenting ugliness that this so called “good life” thrust upon them.

The French poéts maudits; François Villon, Baudelaire and Rimbaud? These were simple men forced to live their lives outside or against society, awash in the abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, and violence. They all died pitiful, painful deaths. Or how about the Americans? Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Bukowski…each caught up in what life does best…grinding their souls to dust in the absence of any lasting hope until the merciful fist of death grabbed each by the ankle and pulled them under.

You may think I’m just cynical and indulgent…but I tell you, for every ray of sunshine you can conjure, I can show you ten bolts of lightning that rip and destroy. I am glad others have happiness….but I myself was pushed through this veil of insidious despair without my consent, and I’ve learned to navigate life in the absence of hope. And yes, I find some comfort there. It’s what I know.

People are always saying, “try and look on the bright side,” and to them I say, “ Look around you, for fuck’s sake!” There is an ocean of pain, agony, and suffering washing over the majority of the earth’s population…and you think platitudes and sweet rejoinders make a difference when the crows peck the eyes from a dead child who has starved in the Sudan? Or when 20 beautiful innocent children in Sandy Hook have their precious lives snuffed out, or when entire populations are being systematically wiped off the face of the earth for political expediency? Get real. Take off your rose-colored specs and take a deep look around you! Evil flourishes upon a people’s unwillingness to see. They are blinded by their blazing sunshine and forced optimism.

Yes, we live in the same world, but I see the shadows where you see the light. I don’t write this kind of crap because I have something to say…I write it because something which must be said has me to write it. My apologies for the rant…but I get so ill in my gut when people say, “there, there…the world is a beautiful place. Just try harder to be happy.”

The world is obscene and delusional. And it hurts.