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Farset Down in Belfast, it’s the day same as before: the Farset congeals silently between commerce, ships wrestle for space in the dock, commuters tumble over quaint little laneways too narrow for urban-living, yet sweeter for their presence in the secrets they reveal. And somewhere, in a corner, just outside the city, there is a tear, a drop that will not join the river, a tear shed for nature. Let the stones absorb everything. Let the earth swallow as much as it can stomach and know that regurgitation in only a portside away. The city flows on, unknowing. |
Flags Adorn the streets in equal measure with paint-slurred mottoes and creeds invested onto facades and councils, dwelling in a supposed peace to celebrate your identity; is it PC? Do you troop out of duty and love? I wish I had a flag to be proud of. Your cloaked stripes and colours have bled into a sporting philosophy, supporters spitting war paint emblems, recognising each other's blood in the grooves; what does it prove, that your system is mere hoodwink and glove? I wish I had a flag to be proud of. So you label the kerbs with designer spite and tattoo your heart with self-absorbed pride while I look on your belief that you can fly where you want with your hate and swords; fear is just a word that the innocent murmur in their alcoves, but I wish I had a flag to be proud of. |
Folk Museum White chalk settlements: dust really, and from dust, to man, to industry. [The mechanics of living raised these homes.] Technology razed these homes. [It hurts to know you’re alive but God has blessed us with work.] There’s dirt on the ground here, dirt in the bed, dirt sewn into your breath, found under thatched roves in rooms of peat and coal, reconstructed lives of mud and straw: a pig life, a horse life, a cattle life. |
Futurology Is it time to lay the bombs down on this city just like Betjeman’s Slough, time to call the Grim Reaper to come furrow with his golden plough? Time to step to the danse macabre and let Death have his small victory; let History forget these urban arches, there is no shame, but there is no glory. Remove all the dead wood and stone, come clean this mine of all veins: clean out the stench of humanity, a sulphur pit’s hollow gains. When all the gold has been spent when all the fuel has burned, Belfast will be left to wait for salvation to make its turn. |