Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.: November 2013

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Dasein

Skiers and golfers miss it

To them it's about the game

Or the process of getting

From one point to another

Always 'doing' something

Like most of us really

But if we could just stop

And refuse for one minute

To participate in distraction

We might experience

What it is to BE

Sunlight through trees

Waves lapping at our feet

The rumble of thunder

Distant mountains glistening

In a world that is

While time takes its toll

Always and already dying
Beautiful beyond words

Happy Face Balloons.

Happy face balloons bob

Under the fan like bad jokes

Flowers make her sneeze

And chocolates give her pimples

All make a mockery of pain

But the bearers mean well

In their non-cancer world

Of condolence and sincerity

This divide is the status quo:

Those with, those without

How can those who have not suffered

Make their sympathy not seem clichéd?

How can those who have suffered

Make their sympathy not seem cloying

The tropes of sickness

Bury her illness deeper

For it is now accepted

Institutionalised, funded

Insured against, majored in

There is the talking to

And the hoping against

Experts, converts, the annoying

Pamphlets and support groups

Oncologists talk like solipsists

About nodes and receptors

Surgeons remonstrate like

Alice In Wonderland Queens

"Off with her breast!"

So they will remove part

Of the woman I love to save her life

She will walk in circles for a while

So they tell me with consoling smiles

But recompense will be

A time disease free

Maybe, maybe...

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

On The Terrace.

The terrace was wide open

Night spreading like tar

Lit by lamps overlooking

The yard pimped with cushions

Red wine and delusion

Had I finished talking?

You were there like a bat

Clinging to the overhang

Inverted like all the best lovers

Stars on your fingers

Excoriating my scalp

Before we had even spoken

Physical touch an explosion

Nooking in the kitchen like kids

Me on acid you pissed

A furtive forgetting of wankers

And the reality they impose

Walls turned to jello

Yellow sun on the rise

Thinking of what could have been

I watched your face shrink

Into the tiniest ball of hate

I have ever seen

No One Reads Poetry.

"No one reads poetry," she said

And, ultimately, I had to agree

It had been ages since I had dipped

Into Yeats, Byron, Plath or Keats.

Yet Lady Gaga and Eminem are viral

Pathological maybe, but they're free.

No need to be dirty and buy a book,

Hold in hand ink-stained paper

Made from chipped and pulped trees.

Just YouTube your favourite poet

Or a dog singing, a cat sparring

Or a frog being fucked by a monkey,

Miley Cyrus twerking, John Holmes jerking,

Drunk teenagers collapsing in their pee.

So there you have it:

Thousands of years of culture

Distilled into two-minute clips

Of people falling over

And animals being funny.

But who am I to criticise these times?

Eat your Happy Meal and keep watching TV.

Abuse this language in marketing campaigns

So that we all end up illiterate and free.

Feed your hope into the mirror of social media,

Let it sell you yourself back as entertainment

And when it no longer entertains

Who are you going to blame?

Despite what YouTube and Facebook

Would distractedly have you believe,

That's what poets have been trying to say all along:

Look at yourselves, don't look at me.