Reflections on Shannon, a poem

national | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Thursday September 22, 2005 11:48 by Thomas Byrne - Poets against the War Ireland

***

Reflections on Shannon

Silence
A minute’s silence
A three-minute silence
Silent silent bloody silence
Silence in the courtyard
Silence in the street
Silence at the warport
Silence at the embasssies
Silence in the parliaments
Silence in the offices
Silence in the factories
Silence from the journalists

What the fuck is silence?

Is it a prayer?
Is it womb?
Is it a ticket?
Is it an art-form?
Is it an emporer?

I ask you again
What the fuck is silence;
And who has ever heard
The dead requesting it?

***

I am confused
I have been to a meeting
Now I'm feeling murderous, suicidal
suicidally murderous
murderously suicidal

What do I mean 'I feel'?
What do I mean 'I'?

Fuck off with your questions I'm cranky
I'm sick of myself
and I'm sick of humanity
I'd blow the earth up if I could
I'd dig down to the core of the world and explode.

What if the 'I'' could be shattered
What if the me could be burning daggers in an instant
flying in all directions
Where would I plant the me?
Where would I set the me off ?

The thought occurs
that according to the orthodox view
the universe is the result of an explosion
is that explosion ongoing

Time
space
matter
stretching
bending
colliding
flying apart
all created by
all existing in
the explosion at the origin

so ourselves
and all we do
is part of the explosion
since the big bang isn't over
and things are flying apart

and if there is a god
as in a creator
as even Stephen Hawking
seems at times to be suggesting
then she was a bomber
Perhaps he was a suicide bomber?

this neurosis is quickening
one mad thought follows another
what if
I mean the formulas do suggest
everything is possible
everything is happening
that in the infinity of universes
nothing whatsoever is avoidable
and all is redeemed
so there is no death
only every possible action
every possible combination
shapes and sizes
arrangements and re-arrangements
heads where your feet should be
balls at the end of your fingers
necks stretched thin as wires
little fingers fatter
like in a hall of mirrors going on forever

Somewhere else I am my own happy mother
Rosa Luxembourg is still alive
There is no Guernica
No-one has ever heard of the Swastika
Somewhere else all the smashed eggs are being put back together again
all the broken children are being remade
The drunks have stopped drinking and taken up yoga
The boys have stopped crashing their cars
foxes escape unhurt from their traps
and the snow is no longer spotted with blood

so its all good
fun just experiment
so what
if
going by these rules of engagement
I were to blow myself up

would that make me a God
What kind of universe would my explosion make?

***

Dublin
ATGWU Hall Middle Abbey Street
7.30 pm
Friday Dec 3rd 2004

Can I be happy if others suffer?
Can I be true if the world is a lie?
Can I be good if I allow evil to rule over me?

What is my life worth if life is worth less than nothing?
What is my death to the deaths of thousands?
What is one bull in a stampede?

Is it only by offering my death
that I can prove I am alive
Is it by stopping sensation
I can prove that I feel

Love is the proof of the objective existence of others

***

His Daddy says
eight of ten every black people are scumbags
His Dad says
People in them countries they can't look after theirselves
His Daddy says
Hangin's too good for them Iraqi cunts
Can he love his Daddy?
Should he?

***

Shalom Doctor Faisal
Shalom Shalom

Slide One

boy nine years old
Has one arm
One leg
One eye
Black scabs
Blood black as oil
Thick stitches

Smashed genitals
Smashed genitals


Slide two

Girl seven
no arms
no legs
shaved head
scorched eyebrows
smiling at the camera
died a half an hour later

Slide three

Street in ruins
crater pocked
after cluster bomb
heaps of concrete
mangled wire
steaming limbs
unexploded ordnance
bright orange
looks so innocent
shaped like a baby's rattle
or some other kind of toy

Slide four

In background
hospital
with collapsed roof
in foreground
four male doctors

Two of them now dead
one sniped at
one exploded

We knew the American snipers
were getting bored
when they started shooting
at stray dogs

Every morning the medical staff went on to the streets to collect limbs and try to piece together the bodies of the victims of the overnight bombing

We had no food or medical supplies because of the siege. We had to use the same equipment over and over again same needles same bandages. We had to amputate children's limbs without anaesthetic. In the end the doctors had to eat the hospitals supply of sugar to stay alive. Finally the hospital was bombed

My father's house has been raided four times. My father is an old man. There are two teenage girls in the house. My nieces. My brother and his beautiful wife were killed in the first bombing, last April. The girls are very frightened of the soldiers. They are very disturbed. You can imagine what they have seen and heard. The last time three marines broke in. They were very loud, profane. They forced my father onto the ground and one of them put their boot on his head. They made the two girls come down from their room and watched them humiliate my father. Of course they were frightened and crying but they were also angry and they shouted in Arabic at the soldiers but one of them pointed his rifle right at them and threatened them and said many horrible things that I am not going to repeat here in front of a civilized audience. Maybe he thought they would not understand but they both have fluent English. We are very educated people in my Country. So the marines made the girls watch while they took out there genitals and pissed on my father.

***

Lately I have taken to standing for the national anthem.
I usen't to
I usen't to because it only shamed me to think
how we drove one set of bastards out the front-door
and let another set of bastards sneak
in the back door
and it was depressing to see on a Friday night
at half past twelve
how the proud young men and women
of the Flying columns
had devolved
to the pot bellied dribbling drunks
who would drive the Brits out of Belfast
with their thumbnails
at closing time
and who seemed to have lost all memory of how to fight
except against each other
all idea of how to stand up for themselves
except in songs and imagination
And of course the tune is shite
and the lyrics are naff
Soldiers of Destiny me arse
But now I stand
because however warped
the song is still a memory
of how we we we
drove the invaders out
of most of our Island
how a small penniless country
full of (supposedly) ignorant and superstitious savages
defeated the army
of the most powerful nation on earth
and how did we do it?
By all means necessary
we boycotted their personnel and institutions
we sniped them
we bombed them
we ambushed their convoys
we burned them from their barracks
we kidnapped them
and we executed them
and generally we made it impossible
for them to rule
by all means necessary

***

In Shannon airport
every day
by the hour
military aeroplanes touch down
Their giant snouts
hide bloody teeth
their giant wings
are dripping blood
their giant engines
run on blood
their giant bellies
full of soldiers
soldiers arms and soldiers legs and soldiers eyes
and soldiers genitals
soldiers genitals

***

The glory covered dead have set up camp below in Shannon
Twenty four hours a day they are watching
and they won't go away
till its over and done

All of the empire breakers
All the signatories and the proclaimers
The wild geese and the pirates and the smugglers
Emmett and Tone and Grainne Mhaol
The commie Countess and the two hard Jimmy’s
Bobby Sand’s and all the Ulster martyrs
The poets and the fighters
Mangan and Davis and Shelley
Dan Breen and Liam Mellows and Tom Barry
screeching through the gore-stacks
screeching through the mangled limbs
the heat popped eyes
the shard spilled guts
the sear blackened stumps
the excoriated testicles

piled as high as wings can fly
on the runways
at Shannon airport
blocking up arrivals
and departures at
shannon airport

The Guards
who mind the fence at Shannon airport
are deaf and dumb
blind and numb
and only doing their job
only doing what they are paid for
and cannot see the carnage
cannot hear the wailing

The FBI the CIA the special branch
that line the approach roads
to Shannon airports
got more cameras then Hollywood
got more microphones than Abbey Road
but still are deaf and blind
numb and dumb

But even though I'm sitting in my living room in Dublin
I can close my eyes and see them
I can close my ears to hear them
Wailing wailing wailing
SHAME SHAME SHAME

***

Fuck the la-dee-da
fuck you and fuck me and fuck I
Fuck the spirit
Fuck the allegory
Fuck elective affinity
Fuck the subject
Fuck the object
Fuck neutrality
Fuck Buddha
Fuck the shamrock
Fuck the leafy love-banks
Fuck the holy trinity
Fuck the oaks and the yew trees
Fuck the visionary sheep
Fuck County Meath
Fuck Homer
Fuck the canon
Fuck Judges
Fuck competitions
Fuck the bursary
Fuck the cheese and wine reception
Fuck poetry
Fuck the higher power
Let me make this situation clear
There is a mass murder ongoing in Iraq
invasion occupation expropriation
The country we live in is
aiding and abetting
aiding and abetting mass murder
By allowing our airport to be used to transport
The cluster bombers
machine gunners
Rocket launchers
Torturers
Child killers
Rapists
Shoot on sighters
Hit and runners
Who are committing this mass murder
Do I think I can heckle you into doing something about it?
Do I think just by telling you what you already know
it will shame you into doing something about it?
Does all this shouting and flag waving make me feel any better?
What am I going to do about it?

***

This is the state
of the suicide
the suicidal state
Of life forgot
the state
Of life not lived
the state
Of life denied

Keep your mouth shut
Your hands clean
Your hands to yourself
Your eyes dry

Jesus was a suicide
Jesus chose his own death
Jesus killed himself
died so that you might live
the churches where the Christians go
to be cannibals and vampires
eating flesh and drinking blood
monuments to suicide
and the priests and nuns
are agents a universal suicide

The Irish revolution
that drove the British out
The one that silly anthem is about
began with the Easter Rising
an act of conscious martyrdom
a blood sacrifice
an act of suicide
Connolly and Pearse
McDonagh and Macbride
Ceannt and Plunkett MacDiarmuida
All suicides

The deformed states
Northern Ireland
and the Free State
founded on an act of suicide
a signature that was was suicide
for what did General Michael Collins say
after he had signed the Anglo Irish Treaty
only
I have signed my own death warrant

***

Why should I wait around for people who don't give a shit
People who can lounge around
in front of the soaps
while all this murder is going on in front of them

You tell me I’ve got to be patient
that the world won't change overnight
that we've got to spread out
into the schools and the colleges
the offices and the factories
deepen the roots of the movement
which will take time
which won't be easy

but people are dying this instant
because mass murder is easy
because mass murder takes no time atall
so hanging about waiting for the 'revolution'
just means being passive if you ask me
passive in the face of evil

I mean c'mon
why don't you cop on
to yourself
the idea that all the lager boys
in their Celtic jerseys and their pot bellies
and all the dolly girls
with their tattoos and their dyed hair
and all the play-station monkeys
and all the reality TV zombies
and all the all the all the
mass produced gobshites
with nothing on their mind
but who they're going to vote for in Eurostar
and the latest in mobile accessories

are going to rise up and liberate humanity
is laughable
its a sick joke
and it gives you
and your lot
an excuse to do nothing direct to intervene
in the war machine
I mean why knock the snout off an F-16
with an ax
when Mr and Mrs Chav
are going to save the world
soon

I mean fine you can organise your marches
so all the straights and the straight ups
all the left leaning lawyers and the liberal teachers and the do-gooders
in the NGO's
can fool themselves into
thinking they're doing something
about the war

You can all walk up and down the street
shaking your boring placards
shouting your repetitive slogans
handing out your worthy leaflets
selling your rev-rev-rev-ol-ut-ion-ary 'news-papers'
but it's not going to get you anywhere
it's not going to stop the war

People who are ready to take direct action
People who are prepared
to be beaten up by the cops
to be arrested
to go to jail
to be hung drawn and slandered in the Phoenix and the Indo
to make all kinds of sacrifices
we don't have to make excuses for our actions
to people who aren't prepared to make any sacrifices atall
we don't have to answer to your imaginary masses
we'll do just what we feel like doing ok
we'll tear down the fence
we'll break police lines
we'll block up the runway
and you are not going to stop us
no matter
what you say

I am looking for a way to dismiss
this line of argument
and the rat part of me wants to
throw acid in her eyes
metaphorically
tell her she's ultra-left
she's infantilely disordered
she's only a sixteen year old
anarkid on pills at a gig
who's so hyped up on MDA
or whatever the bastards put
into pills these days
she can't even stop to draw breath
between spouting all this bravura crap
she's a middle class dreamer
with an en suite bedroom
inclusive of bidet
in her Donnybrook home
and what would she know about struggle
and who is she to judge
the lives of working people


and the Trotskyist pedagogue in me
the Marxist catechist
that scheming little know all in specs and goatee
wants to lecture her
on how the consciousness of the masses
remains low
because of their lack
of self-organisation
and of the insignificant ammount of class struggle in recent times

see the workers just don't know who they are
can't remember what they were
have no idea what they are capable of

and yes they are passive
but not because they're agin us
but because they are too busy
workin
and tryin to forget about work
to be reading Chomsky
or out gathering firewood
for the 24 hour peace camp

like when a man comes homes after ten hours
driving a Taxi
around the puke stained streets
of Dublin or Cork City
or eight hours operating a Kango drill
on a building site
or eight hours standing around Roches or Penneys
all day like a total knob doing 'security'
or when a woman
finishes sweeping out the holiday homes
cleaning the pub toilets
stacking the supermarket shelves
keying the tills
is it any surprise
he and she are too tired and distracted
for politics

like have you ever wondered why
most activists are young
why so many are students
do you think its because young people
are smarter better more moral
or just because they have more time
less worries

c'mon
cop on
to yourself

so many people are dealing with the everyday traumas
the ordinary catastrophes
of working class lives
the addictions
the accidents
The abuses buried deep
inside
perhaps many years ago
and festering ever since
and blooming
into mental illnesses
depression
anxiety
panic attacks

I tell you every house
has something up
every street could fill
a health farm with its woes

and then there's the simple fatigue
that follows from spending your life
being exploited and used
and the sinister voices
telling you
you are worthless
you're good for nothing
but cleaning toilets
laying bricks
pulling pints
and what would
a thick eejit like you
know about anything

which is why we hold the peaceful marches
the candlelit vigils
the soft and woolly stuff
so people can take that first easy step
and first steps are important
all journeys start out with first steps

you can't just leap over reality
you have to work with people as they are
not as you might wish them to be

no matter how dedicated you and your buddies are
no matter what sacrifice ye are prepared to make
no matter how spectaculo ye're actions

a small minority of activists
cannot force the world
to bend to their will

and historically
the wild plots hatched by super-activists
saintly types
with a cold fire in their bellies
and a stone in their hearts
and pure in their dedication
detaching themselves
from the wider movement
have backfired rather badly
have blown up in their face
literally

ask the Baader Meinhof
ask the Brigada Rosa
ask the INLA

and if she's serious
these are the kind of organisations
she should be studying
because if you want to worry the Irish state into
withdrawing landing permission from the American Military
You're not going to do it
by tearing down a few metres of fence
or by saying the rosary
or by setting off colouredy smoke-bombs
or subvertising
or guerrilla graffiti

It would have to be full scale
military actions
properly planned and co-ordinated
bombings
snipings
military assaults
mortar attacks
maybe a shower of rockets
landed right into the middle of a crowd of marines
while they're stretching their legs
sucking on the butts of their Camels
in Shannon airport

would she
and her
skateboarding
hoody wearing
pale-faced
friends in the
Blocca Nero be up for all that ?
Would anybody in this sick green land
be up for all that?
Is there even a dozen
punks hangin around
hardcore enough for all that?

just as I feel
i have adequately explained
why my people
are allowing their country be used
-the country their ancestors won
by force of arms from an empire-
as a staging post in a genocide
and why she should allow them to allow it
I feel again the sting of shame
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME

so I take her number
her e-mail
her website address
being curious
titillated
and wanting to know
exactly
how serious
she is

***

I am sick of marching
marching up and down O Connell street Nassau Street Kildare Street
marching to the Dail
marching to the embassies
marching from Shannon town
three miles out
to Shannon warport
then marching back

The left foot
the right
the left foot
the right
the left foot
the right
the left foot knows where the right foot is going
the left foot knows what the right foot is doing
the left foot
the right mouth has learned
teeth have learned
foot has learned
toes and hands and tongue have learned
how to march
how to shout

BERTY BERTY BUSH'S MAN
BLOOD BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS

GEORGE BUSH IS
DE NUMBER ONE TERRORIST

HEH HEH USA
HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?

sick of speeches and slogans
sick of shaking my left fist at fences
sick of the passionate screeching at helicopters
sick of the onlookers,
the bystanders,
the gawkers
straining on the footpaths
of staring at row upon row of indolent overfed coppers

tired of our understanding
tired of our patience
tired of our patiently explaining
in the back-rooms and the basements and the union halls
tired of the meaningless signatures
and of the statements that are lost to wind tormented corners
tired of train station lobbies and of indifferent passengers
tired of the threadbare edges of homemade banners
tired of the waste of paper at park gates and pier-endings
and of the footprints sealing leaflets to footpaths
outside gigs and cinemas and all kinds of public gatherings

These days
These sick and void days
These null and tired days
of poisoned life and murder's reign
when I close my eyes
I am always a sniper sniping
from the window of a burnt out building
I am the last stand in the last burning building
and when at night,
in solitude and silence,
when at night my heart speaks,
my autonomous heart,
It speaks of a solo run
it speaks of a spectacular ending
it speaks of being the nucleus
the spark
the trigger
detonator
that sets off the hell
which is all that I owe
all that I own
and all that is mine
for unloosing