Dave Lordan

Side by side

Hope

Hope, ya ould mutt, I hear yer in bits.
I heard somebody stomped on yer throat an all ya can do now is grunt.
I heard six drunk jocks set ya on fire while ya were goofin.
Ya ould trout! Ya look like ya were washed up in an oilspill.
There’s only a seepin raw hole in yer face
instead uv a nose since yer septum fell out. Yer still snortin though.
Yuv more tracks than the DART. Yuv every disease known tuh rats.
Ya got herpes, shingles an worms. Ya got flyswarms, maggots an lice. Cockroaches
crawlin all over ya groupthink Tiocfaidh ár lá.
St Vincin De Paul wud rejeck ya. Yud have Augustine out on the lock.
St Francis’d turn away yodellin.
This time it ain’t jus a scare ya might really be dyin.
Even the French seem tuh have banned ya, blottin yer puss with the law.
Yemen is bleedin from multiple wounds tuh revive ya.
Mosly, here in zombied Ireland, I can’t even see ya, yer such a famished fuckin wraith.
Ya flicker in an out uv the view, accept no particular shape, like steam from a pipe or a
   backalley splodge that can’t be washed off.
I know ya wanna give up. I know yer only hope may be tuh dissolve, become a puddle or a
   rock, sit it out for a new geological era.
I know yuv ten millin ex-loves tuh attend tuh in wrecks uv the deep, coffin-ships an u-
   boats an steamships o seaweed an flutin bones for ya.
I know yuv a hundurd millin virgin spouses pushin up slums an high-tech factories from
   underneath the battlefields.
Tis tuh the dead we can never repay yud mos jusly return, who rose an were crushed for
   yer dreamin, the manygod that manytimes gave ya generation. But I ain’t ready tuh let ya
   go jus yet.
So get up. Get up. I said GET THE FUCK UP! And c’mere and give us a hug and give us a peck
   on the cheek and give us a drag on yer spliff.
I know how beat up an used up an ugly ya are and yer only visible when I ain’t right-
   minded.
But tis senses that matter, tis vision an touch.
I cudden do either if I cudden with you.
I cudden love nothin if I cudden love you.