Here are a few words I wrote. Thank you to Sharon Colpman @MakeitWriteLiv
Community and Graham Padden for bringing them to life xx
Not then, not now.
The quare fella who never owned a tie to hang himself with
loved summer.
“You can’t have butterflies without caterpillars.”
Kept himself to himself
Blessed cabbages
Talked to dogs
Religiously brought the milk in.
Institutions, squeaky plimsolls on polished floors, disinfectant, and shit.
Mucked around with his brain.
Said it was diabetes from drinking away Wexford.
He hadn’t touched a drop for years.
Others blamed a mistake of paracetamol, to ease hod carrier’s shoulder.
He vanished like the breeze.
Leaving his reading specs, and an allergic to the world son.
At the wake.
Ill-fitting men in ill-fitting suits.
“Ashes to ashes dust to dust
If God won’t have you the divil must”
A flare-up.
“I didn’t think Catholics agreed with burning,”
“It sets the soul free.”
“Fuck off, that’s the Buddhists,”
True,
pure
grief
is
unspeakable.
It cannot be articulated.
Not then
Not now.
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