Declassified

A number of years ago, there was a short phase where I lived a sleepless peculiar life that was essentially a reaction to some general disgruntlements and vulnerabilities mixed with the specific displeasures of breaking up with my first girlfriend, being so ill that at one point I thought I was going to die, and not being able to go to class as a result of receiving some hate-mail and threats of physical violence from a (very big) guy whose affections I had rebuffed. What I did during this time (apart from learn how to ring church bells) was hang out with a pretty eccentric group (many of whom had been to prison) who recited poetry and got shit-faced a couple of nights a week.

I came across some of the stuff I wrote during this period that seems so novel and unrelated to me now, that I feel like I can declassify some of it without much embarrassment as I feel so detached from the weirdo (/genius) who wrote it.

The first poem I wrote for my fellow-misfits was about my feelings on the break-up and is a poem that makes such little sense it's ridiculous. Much as I would love to put this poem up as I think it's *very* funny, I have too much respect now for the girl in question to risk her reading the poem with even a tincture of offence. But I will tell you that it was called:

"A poetic failure, that lacks insight, creativity and competency/A poem about something that bore a passing resemblance to Love."

It wasn't the only dark free-verse I wrote, but for the moment I'll focus on some of the lighter rhymier stuff I wrote and maybe a few works-in-progress that never actually got progressed. Consider this one:

The Spoils of Woo-er
Open-mouthed and motionless like the patient crocodile.
I strike my pose
And hope she goes for wooden guys who smile.

A toothy grin, A modest plan to catch a young gazelle,
A doe-eyed girl,
For whom I'd nearly take my chance to tell
How much I'd like to kiss her lips, and be kissed back as well,
And play with her
All drunk with mirth - as laughter casts a spell


Ah to gaze into her eyes and find the depth of deepest seas,
To stroke her face
with all grace of early autumn breeze.

And how divine to be held close and breath her soft brown hair
My very soul,
A new born foal made innocent and fair.

Oh now she's coming over, I have too think of something charming...
But before I can, she says, "Young man, your smile is quite disarming.
I'd talk to you from what I see, but not from what I hear:
I've been made wise you womanise and then you disappear!"

Oh no I say, you've got it wrong.
You can't take me to task
This is my plight:
I'm too polite.
I kiss the girls who ask!

But you're nothing like those other girls your friends told you I’ve bitten.
Without a doubt
Please, no, hear me out, with you I'm really smitten.

Just hear this poem that rhymes so well it's sweeter than an...um... orange?
This poetic fruit,
I give to you to... eh

Well, this is why I shouldn't talk.
I turn out sounding heinous,
What I should do,
Is just show you the love I feel between us.

There she goes across the room, and out of my life forever.
Rhyming "heinous" with "love between us"?
That wasn't very clever.

And so ends a typical night and I go home alone.
But I'm at peace because, at least,
It makes a funny poem.

And here's another one I liked:

Branded Insomniac
I slept in last Kentuky-Friday Chicken
Because I was up chocolate TursDaytona night
Kilowatching television over a midnight megabyte.
Some nights I can of coca-cola sleep
And it's not even Worther's Original trying.
So I relax my cell-phone the couch,
Potato the golf-course of my life,
And thin-crusted-pizzabout the modern world sandwich I live.

Here's where it begins to get quite weird folks, so those of you of a tasteful disposition, please navigate away from this page now. I remember writing this on a train... not that that's important:

The Should(e)n'tist

I hate going to the should(e)n'tist.
The extractions are always so sore.
Extractions are bad but fillings are worse;
That dull steady pain when she bores.

In fact I have a few small unpolished and unfinished ones like that. I never got to the bottom of these ones for example:

I'm the itch you cannot scratch,
Squeaky door without a latch
The big white egg you'll never hatch
The hole too big to patch

I'm the pebble in your shoe,
I'm the never-ending queue,
I'm the dirt that sticks to you,
And makes smell like baby-poo.

Thinking of the things I said,
Set a riot in your head,
Made your face turn roaring red
You wish that you were dead.

But I keep talking in your ear,
And where you go I'm always near
Telling you the thing to fear,
Is coming up the rear

I'm the ticking of the clock,
I'm the multicoloured sock
I'm the crowing of the cock
I static-electric shock

Or this little one that was inspired by Oprah:

Spiritual Side (Salad)
Our spiritual side is worth addressing.
The dressing on mine is a Caesar.

This one I neither titled, finished nor ever attempted to recite in public (with bloody good reason as you will see), and in fact is the poetic equivalent of amidst asking you to look at my back acne which you reluctantly agreed to, going that step to far and showing you a wart on my perineum for your opinion. The metaphor is apt in that I am a little disturbed by it, however not enough to go to a professional about it, and can't imagine how it developed in the first place. Good job I'm not shy like that.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Nestles in my hands.
Careful now, I need to cope
With what slippery soap demands I do.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Begs a soft caress,
My tender touch becomes a grope,
Can't grasp the soapiness of you.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Tries to slip away,
And so I now attach a rope
So slippery soap will stay with me.

The shapely bar of slippery soap,
So innocent and pure,
The answer to my prayers I hope,
This slippery soap is sure to be.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Washes away all sin.
No need now for Holy Popes,
A precious trophy-win, I'd say.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Gets smaller every use,
I couldn't bear to kill it so
Perhaps I'll open the noose - some day.

The shapely bar of slippery soap
Then vanished from my scope.
Of the shapely bar of slippery soap
Nothing but the rope remains.

Oh shapely bar of slippery soap
To where could you elope?
Could a bar of slippery soap
Run with antelope on planes?

Or Is the bar of slippery soap
With hippies smoking dope?
Can a bar of slippery soap
Ski down the icy slopes?
The shapely bar of slippery soap
Is living dreams I hope.

It's not that all my poetry was so random or slap-stick and rhymed to within an inch of it's life like that stuff, and so I submit to the jury the following:

Threshold

The moment between awake and asleep
A dream that might come true.

Its eyes as a child begins to weep
A single-knotted shoe.

The breath you take before you speak
"I'm still in love with you."


Rose Garden Promise

Evening Dew's kiss is on my lips.
Silence whispers in Gardens' scented breath.
Touch asks if the sleeping rose is her cheek
And Sadness answers yes.
So promising and so closed
And so beautiful and cold.
Yes.


Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping beauty is the most disarming.
Long breaths receive the world in hazy innocence
And calm heat shapes a womb-like aura
As sacred as silence.
At rest we are all children.

This was how I found her
And with Actaeon's regret brought her world into mine.
Expecting a primal scream, but a far cry from this,
As she wakes
She seeks my embrace.

She welcomes my cold cheek
Like a long-dreamt-of first rain.
I take my place
And find it is I who am born again.

However sometimes I subjected these poor x-cons to some unabashed piss-taking like the following poem in which I chimed a bell once after every time I said the word 'Buddha:'

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha
It meditates all day.
It listens to the universe,
And lives the eight-fold way

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.
Enlightened it knows all,
It knows how many friends I have
And why they never call.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.
It has right thought and speech,
I always keep it with me
To learn what it can teach.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.
It's teachings are of dharma.
So when my credit's running low
I know it's just my karma.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.
It helps me to progress,
It communicates from beyond the stars
By using SMS.

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

My mobile phone is the Buddha
It meditates all day.
It listens to the universe,
And lives the eight-fold way

My mobile phone is the Buddha.

You're probably wondering why the hell I'm still churning this stuff out at you, but I'm thinking I might as well be hung for a sheep as a failed revolution... which leads me to this patriotic little fella done in the couplet style as is is the custom for such odes:

Remembering Emmet

Take a walk in St. Steven's Green
Where Jerome O' Connor's muse is seen
With a tragic hero's flare
And dactyl faeces in his hair.

And see the sorrow in his eyes
Confounded by the passers-by,
His left hand clenching anger's cry
His right hand open, asking, why?

He stands alone so we'll remember
How he stood in that September.
In Green street courthouse charged with treason
Now he’s tried by every season.

He stands defying indignity
As in eighteen-hundred-and-three;
Heaped on then with prejudice
And heaped on now by pigeon's shit.

But somewhere close his blood still flows
And from it seeds of justice grow
And try as you may you will never stem it
So remember.
Remember Robert Emmet.

And for those of you who are utterly utterly bored, I close with a poem which was originally called "Exactly 500 words on the importance of knowing your audience." I mentioned this title to a dear old friend of mine named Erin who suggested that 499 words would be better. I concurred and left out the last one.

499 Words:
On the Importance of Knowing your Audience
Your life is rich.
Everyone around you revels in your tantalising bodilyness.
Not the girl across the table who thinks your boyfriend should be hers,
Or the guy whose smile you ignored, who’s blushing for internal voyeurs.
He is a strange boy, and I'll grant you,
Does have an ill-fitting body and an unattractive haircut -
But his skin is perfectly clear,
Though you, like everyone else here,
Imagine acne on his otherwise featureless face.

If I may digress,
Being an aspiring poet,
He compares you to the feeling of an itchy rectum,
But thinks again recalling that every single one of his previous 19 ass and ass-related metaphors have been ill-received.
Rather if he were granted his wish to discard his annoying ability to hear, see and hypothetically touch and taste you,
By the genie in this microphone,
And could only perceive you through his sense of smell,
His life would be a little more pleasant
because the only remaining evidence of your persistent ignorance
Would be the mysterious yet comforting scent of the perfume you wear. He'll make it rhyme later. Digression aside.

His life is rich.
Everyone around him watches and listens to him as much as they can.
Not the alpha male drinking Bulmers with ice
Or the one fourth in line making sure this Mr. Big knows she's watching.
She ignores him just like you do.
But the difference is,
When she ignores him, he imagines himself wearing nothing but her leather boots and her short black skirt.
His hands on the cold marble counter while the nails of her right hand dig between his shoulder blades to steady herself as she spanks him with a rainbow trout -
Or whichever fish she chooses.
Like I said he is a strange boy,
But despite his peculiarly personal misconceptions about this woman,
The following is unmistakable


Her life is rich,
Everyone around her has something to say about the way she makes them feel,
Not the guy whose "feelings," should remain securely inside his skull,
Because unlike the surrounding epidermis, they are anything but unblemished,
Or those people over there who stole her table and are laughing every time she looks over.
It’s only a table gordon.
They’ve never been here before and are never coming back,
Next week is salsa dancing but that won't last long.
The man in the corner with enough money for one pint who’s making it last all night, might have thought to himself,
Their life is rich,
Everyone around them is jealous of the fun they’re having.
But he didn't. Not tonight.

Like him, we'll stand up and declare the richness in our lives
Or perhaps share a fantasy of richness composed in the midst of the begrudgingly dull.
In the end there's no difference. I have no point to make.
I just wonder if you'll believe me when I stand before the yous, hims, hers, thems and uses, guessing you can tell which is which,
And say my life is ____

Suicide and Parasuicide in Ireland

You all know how I spent the money I made over the last six months (as frugally as a young man of my circumstances and disposition would), but as well as eeking out an existence on the financial fruits of my work, I have also benefited from the facts I have learned in the course of my documentation of cases of parasuicide, which will contribute to a national report of the phenomenon as documented in 2004 that will be published toward the end of this year.

I would like you too to benefit from a few statistics about this very common phenomenon by sharing a few simple statistics with you on the matter which I imagine you will find informative at the least.

Though the term parasuicide does include suicide attempts, it also encompasses any act of self-harm for which an attendance at an Emergency Service (as opposed to a GP) is required, and can include some attempts at self-harm which were prevented by intervention by others. The WHO has divided methods of suicide and self-harm into 22 specific methods (5 of which are different types of overdoses and which collectively made up almost three quarters of suicide attempts in Ireland in 2003).

In Ireland, approximately one in every one hundred people who attend Accident and Emergency Departments are there explicitly because they have deliberately harmed themselves. These people come from deprived areas 4 times more often than affluent areas; present between the hours of 8pm and 4am, half of the time; and are noted to have consumed alcohol 42.6% of the time. In the hospital where I was gathering information on the subject, they had an average over 18 cases a week in 2004.

When people hear the term suicide, they often think of it as a phenomenon affecting young men. And while men have been 4.2 times more likely to die by suicide than women in Ireland in the past five years, placing the statistics of parasuicide next to this figure gives a far more rounded picture of the phenomenon. For every male suicide in 2003 there were approximately 13 male episodes of parasuicide, but for every female suicide there are 76 parasuicide episodes. It is women who are in the majority when it comes to parasuicidal behavior, and they remain in the majority when actual suicide numbers are integrated.

Of the numbers of known hanging and drowning attempts in 2003, 73% of them were made by men and they died 50.5% of the time as a result; and of the 27% who were female, only 25% died as a result. While one or other of drowning or hanging represented the method used in 74.3% of actual suicides in men, it was only chosen by women in 58.6% of cases; with drowning, hanging and drug overdoses being used with almost equal frequency at around 29% each.

Of all parasuicide episodes recorded in 2003, the methods of hanging or drowning were 6.5% of all male cases, and a mere 2.6% of all female cases. The overwhelmingly frequent method in both sexes was overdose, and it represented 64% of male parasuicide cases and almost 80% of female cases (with women representing 57.4% of all parasuicide cases).

From these figures a prima facie reason for the preponderance of males in acts of suicide in Ireland seems to be the methods they more often chose to employ: hanging and drowning. This is coupled with the fact that they are also more likely to succeed with these methods. As I did my research this year I was struck by how often parasuicide patients expressed their relief to be alive after a serious suicide attempt and it is saddening to consider how many young men who died by suicide would have said the same, had they had survived.

Enjoy

For those of you who have seen the episode of the office where they have to figure out how to get the farmer, the goat, the fox, and the grain across the river... unfortunately this will require just as much introduction. But I would like to mention in passing two of Gareth's classic comments on the matter: "Why would a farmer have a fox? A fox is the farmer's greatest enemy." And in response to the answer to his question that the farmer doesn't have a wife to help him as he is gay, "Well he shouldn't be let near animals then..." is such genius that I can't believe that the makers of this puzzle didn't bear it in mind when they came up with the idea that thieves beat up everyone except the police and that Father's karate-chop their daughters when the mother isn't about and the mother does likewise to the sons when the father isn't abouot (presumably as he's busy beating the daughters). Frankly, given what these people do to their own children, I shudder to think what they would do to animals, and i'm not even sure they are farmers... but I digress.

Anyway, it's four in the morning so any typos or general crapness in my writing should be excused for this reason (for previous writing of a similar standard, I bviously have no excuse). Basically the rules are as follows:

To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
To move the people click on them.
To move the raft click on the pole by the river.

Only 2 persons on the raft at a time:
The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother
The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father
The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there
And most importantly...
Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft

I did this in just under 20 minutes after a beer at lunchtime today.

Do it now!

For Fuyu's Sake

cnv00001
Originally uploaded by jbuckley.

Generally if you call my house these days, you will find it lacking a certain Buckley: me. If you are looking for said 'certain Buckley,'(a) I'm sure I already gave you that money, and (b)whichever family member answers the phone will take a message and eventually pass it on to me in the form of stating your probable gender and roughly the week you called. I'm generally 'out' for at least 12 and usually 14 hours of any given day and as a result (though you wouldn't think it to look at my lithe physique) I eat out.

I am writing this blog today for two reasons: (a) Diarmuid sent me this picture of a 'familiar personage' in the place I eat out in most often and it's a good excuse to post it; and (b) I invited a friend of mine here yesterday, informing him that they happily continue their lunch menu until 5.30 and you can get a good meal for a tenner or so. His response shook me hard. I was informed that his food budget for a week is €35. I reflected on the matter and decided that mine was probably about €100 or more (include booze-money and this figure becomes positively disconcerting). Over a year, this amounts to over 4 full time weeks of work in salary terms in the difference. I always thought that I ate out mostly because of work but now it appears I work mostly to eat out.

Figures like that are a little stingy I don't mind telling you. As I collect myself in defiance of these startling statistics, I think the best I can come up with is: "Well at least I don't smoke... and I can quit whenever I want."

... But the truth is, I know I can't. While there's breath in my lungs and soy sauce in my veins, there will always be one more Bento Box that I promise is my last.

Minimumload

Minimumload
Originally uploaded by jbuckley.

In honour of Max's comment, here's a little more toilet humour - which only seems to be funny because its authors were so deadly serious.

The picture was recently taken by the lovely Tess, and depicts the door of a toilet on a train (I shit you not) we took to Galway.

Who on earth (or trains) calls them 'solids' by the way?