A Vision of Ireland

It's a mountain, but it feels more like a large hill from this end. It’s not like you have to do any mountain-climbing to reach the top. The cost is two euros a person because it's on a farmer’s land, private property in a way made public. The path going up slopes gently to the top, straight through pastures filled with sheep. The sheep don’t really bother you, but they’ll run if you get too close. Mostly, they simply sit and stare at you, unhappy you’re there but not afraid, as though their glares are saying, “Why are you here? This is our land.” But that land has been shared against their will and the occupants begrudgingly allow passage.

The other side of this mountain is less forgiving. There is no path down, and though the cliff isn’t sheer, it would be a long fall with many ledge-like crevices, mostly rock in nature. The view is that of the ocean. Hidden bays void of anything but saltwater, rock walls, and a fishing boat, only visible because of the elevation. To the left, more ocean. To the right, a stone wall, built years prior, running the length of this stretch of land, down the sloping hill as though it owns it. Behind, Dingle Bay, the houses, the little streets, the boats coming in and going out.

Like a centerpiece to the whole expanse, on the crest stands the tower, solid all the way through, so far as it seems. Built of blackened rock, uneven pieces forming a perfectly cylindrical tower, its presence one of many established to avoid shipwrecks in years past. To its right lies a WWII outpost, cement, clearly of newer making, though now overcome with graffiti and lack of upkeep. Two sentinels of time, these physical markers represent the motion of history, the passing of what is finished and yet the continuance of the same. This is old land with old history, with new history, with the now barely impressed upon it except through the life of the land itself.

[Two lives, colliding intentions]

Two lives, colliding intentions:
One life of the mundane,
One life of inventions.
Always, the sliding
Towards the habits of the insane,
The life I’m deriding.
The search for prevention:
My want will not wane
For the shift in attention.
Tired of the hiding
Amongst ordinary and plain,
I would halt this colliding
If this sudden detention
Of thoughts less than sane
Guaranteed my retention
Of what I’m confiding
I could never feign.
I find myself siding
With my only suspension:
A joyous refrain,
One artistic intention.
The time has been biding;
Now waiting is slain.
Now it’s coinciding,
This tricky convention;
It follows the strain,
Removes apprehension.

[I Lie in the Dark]

I lie in the dark

Wait for the sun

Surrounded by art

Like an unfinished sum

Expansion elusive

The finish unseen

The darkness intrusive

Like an unraveled seam

Allowing reentry

To worlds yet unknown

As I stand here sentry

In a darkened home

The dark is a curse

I cannot explain

The light its reverse

The removal of pain

Spirals

Spiralling:
The downward circles sapping energy,
Extracting wakefulness.
Plummeting:
The circles of slow descent abandoned,
All but forgotten.
Settling:
The stasis of hopelessness weighing down,
Breaking resolve.
Acclimating:
The knowledge of placement accepted,
Resigned to.
Stirring:
The spirals of activation gaining momentum,
Rising faster.
Rocketing:
The circles of slow ascent ignored,
Determined useless.

Something I'm Unaware Of

There was a void deeper than sleep before my eyes. Death. Or so I thought. My body and mind battled, their desires blatantly opposing one another. To give in...to relax. Or to fight...to stay alive. Just in case I die, I love you. You're not going to die. I feel like I am. I haven't been in that place in my mind since I was a child, maybe eleven years old. I didn't think I was going to die then. Maybe because I didn't fully understand death yet. Get her children's Tylenol, she weighs under a hundred pounds. I weigh 101 now. It was important. They couldn't even understand me. The same dream overandoverandover. Every time the same. There was an elevator. The world will end if you don't stop this from happening. I didn't understand death. I hadn't lost anyone yet. A whisper in my mind. Nothing is right. A voice in my head. Everything is wrong. A feeling in my stomach, or maybe in my throat. It's so hard to tell where it is, where I am. WhereamI? Sub-consciousness bleeding into consciousness like a red shirt in the washing machine turning all the whites pink. Unconsciousness on the corners of my baffled brain. A void deeper than sleep. Dark. Empty. A feeling of no control. But what control do I have anyway? Everythingiswrong. A sense of letting go, of never feeling again. But what would I feel anyway? Nothingisright.

Momentary

I momentarily forget the pain my heart is in. How that is possible, I don't know. My tired mind not only forgot why I was sad, but when I remembered, was still not sad in the same sense. Not only was my mind affected by this momentary lapse in attention, but my whole being, my whole body, felt different. The weight that had been on me was gone, though only until I finally lied down in bed. My tired body relaxed after an exhausting night of stressfulness. And as the exhaustion seeped out of my body merely through the relaxation of my muscles, the heaviness seeped back into my bones, ready to destroy me for another day. I remembered what was so sad, even if I couldn't quite feel it yet. My body could feel it even when my heart and mind couldn't. But the heaviness is more than merely a weight on my body, but also on my soul. A connection I made long ago has been severed, by no desire of mine. It's not the same as breaking up or drifting away. That being is no longer here at all. That entity no longer exists. I feel his absence more strongly that I have ever felt anything in my life. I have missed him before while away, but nothing like this. This is the weight of not only a knowledge of his complete and total absence, but a deep understanding of it, a feeling you can't shake, a heaviness ever present with you even when you are thinking of or doing something completely unrelated. It only left momentarily because of my exhaustion. The weight may continue to lift at intervals as time goes on, but it will never truly leave me. I can never be the same person as I used to be, because I will never have him again, and who I was was who I was with him. Now I will be who I am without him. I just don't know who that is yet.

Emptiness

Sometimes emptiness is so heavy it feels like its own substance. As if the hollowness of this absence is a weight your heart could never bear, an oppressive burden you seek to extract. Emptiness is not merely a void; it is far less abstract. There is no emptiness. Where loss leaves a space, it is soon filled with less than favorable emotions. Grief. Sorrow. Loneliness. Guilt. Regret. Longing. Saudade. Each a full, individual feeling, attempting to occupy the same empty space at the same time as each of the others, and no matter how large that space is, it can never hold them all, and every other space in your being is infiltrated by a conglomerate of emotions no one has yet learned how to entirely successfully deal with. No matter how much knowledge or experience we acquire, no matter how much we observe this affect, we will never conquer our fear of emptiness, or rather, our fear of overwhelming amounts of varied intense sentiments