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When We Stood Out on the Hillside
Poems 2020-2022
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When I write a poem I think I'm really wishing I could sing.
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—Emily Berry
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Contents
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Flow Down
I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer
Millisle
When We Stood Out on the Hillside
Our Repetitions
Sickness
Waking up From a Bad Dream
Wishing I Was Back on a Train in the Former Yugoslavia
Path Persistence
Training to Be a Chemist Like Primo Levi Told Me To
Standing in the Rocks Outside a Fisherman’s Hut in Coleraine in July Listening to Transformer by Lou Reed
Feeling, Wanting to Leave
I Did Hate You
Thinking About Change During COVID
A 12-bar Blues Called Out in the Orient, Written During the US Withdrawal of Afghanistan
Sitting on the Bank of a River in Carryduff at 6 in the Morning
On Trying to Convert My Thoughts Into Poems
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Flow Down
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My head collapsed into my hands,
I was consumed by shapes.
I forgot it all.
In the blackness
I fell and fell,
Losing all perspective,
Tumbling
Through opals and purples.
Did I ever come back?
The bodies and phantoms
I seen there,
Did they ever come back?
No Anticlea there to greet me,
Only the waves crashing
Against the bow
Of that great, big clipper ship.
I basked in the sands of the shore.
As the sails soared past
I tried to convince myself
I'd seen something
Somewhere—anywhere—
In the mist.
It would've been nice
To be convinced of something,
And "if not now, when?"
—it didn't last, time ended.
I came to, pulling my head
From the Jordan.
Gasping for air,
I stared dully across the room
At the lava lamp on the dresser.
I did not know its name.
I had forgotten it all.
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I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer
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I never dreamed you'd leave in summer.
My world screamed
And I never saw from you any emotion.
You disappeared and I never saw you again.
You were with me every day,
With your scarf that I never wanted
Wrapped around my neck,
Growing tighter every day.
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Millisle
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Leaving me on the carpet floor
Of a 70s bungalow
Amongst the wooden frames
And gauche wallpaper,
What was I supposed to do?
I went through the CDs
And let myself age, grow tired,
Then pass over to the other side.
It was hours until you were back.
I had seen you, had dreams of you,
And I had died in your arms.
It didn't matter that you came back.
In the morning,
Things were warm,
And we were on the cusp
Of something.
On that drive home
I asked if I could put something on.
You said it was the theme
To Lesser Spotted Ulster.
Such a funny thing
To call a Lou Reed song.
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When We Stood Out on the Hillside
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We spoke in the study room
About the three of us heading out,
And I,
Who would do anything
And say anything,
Suggest you come pick us up
And take us for a drive.
We nodded and laughed and smiled,
One-upping each other,
Confirming the date and the time.
You actually came to get us.
Picking me up from my house
We drove through the half-light
And rolled a joint in the car.
We stood out in that car park,
Ambers all around us,
And smoked.
Shadows darted between the trees
And low mist aggregated.
I sat in the back seat again
And the woods closed in.
We played music,
Let it drain us;
Rogue in darkness.
We did whatever we wanted
Didn't we?
I got wasted beyond belief,
Sinking beneath the chair,
And as I fell out of the car
My eyes were ready
For more of the same,
But the woods were gone,
The sky was open and dark.
Horizon touched horizon.
We were up on the hillside,
Our car on the side of the road
And the bright lights of the city
Sung below us.
I felt burning in my chest
And excitement beyond
Anything—
I felt the glow in my eyes
And I was speechless in awe
Of the magnificent world.
Who was I?
Where was I going?
So small and so mammoth
In front of the precipice:
The quiet, astral earth.
We got back in the car
And you drove us home.
The rest of the memory is dark:
We listened to Love is a Laserquest
And I drifted beyond.
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Our Repetitions
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She says, "You can't repeat the past."
I say, "You can't? What do you mean you can't?
Of course you can."
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– Bob Dylan, Summer Days
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We had missed each other,
We were ill-starred,
Always dancing with someone else.
Our eyes met, your letters cold:
You said,
I had waited and waited
And waited.
I followed you to the station
With a suitcase in my hand.
I had my book,
I had my shoes,
I wrote you poems to say.
But you disappeared from that room
That night,
The past inside the present.
Leaving me to wonder why,
Always going through these things
Twice.
The birds they sang
At the break of day
And I was standing in the doorway
Again— bitter and coarse and spiteful,
The epiphany raw
In my mind:
We had missed each other? No,
You had missed me.
I was never dancing with anyone else.
I got into the car,
Rain soaked my clothes,
Tears burned my eyes,
And I drove as far as I could.
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Sickness
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I lay in that bed
with Blonde on Blonde playing,
my mind crippled and cracked.
I had let myself slip
black panic.
—Over my head
a painting of a homely cottage,
every shape and colour
screaming.
I would never leave this room again.
it had been weeks since
things had splintered.
while I wasn't looking
it had damaged me.
time
spun in ellipse.
—Leaving the house
supervised.
walking through dusk
with my earphones in.
delusions clinging to me
beneath the wet street lamps,
welling up over what I'd lost.
—To the doctor:
"nothing feels real"
on the way home
I was in the backseat
leaning on the glass.
the rhythm of the car
pounding through my head,
closing my eyes.
—Amongst the sheets, again.
a fist-sized speaker
bringing me back, again.
letting me reach
into moments
for a little while.
"sooner or later, one of us must know"
—Snow knocked against the kitchen window
and I stepped outside.
breathing, I knew
it wouldn't last forever,
and it didn't.
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Waking up From a Bad Dream
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Taking time to dissolve the dreams.
Judas over and over.
Rain dripping from my new suit,
Tears welling in old sutures.
Regrets that are no longer regrets,
Because they didn't happen.
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Wishing I Was Back on a Train in the Former Yugoslavia
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The tedium of
Working late at night.
The stalling, the starring,
I'm blurred:
It seeps into me.
Rapeseed fields flow past.
Yellow mist
Glowing through two sheets of glass.
As the sound of the tracks
Grows louder,
I listen to Pale Blue Eyes.
Mountains glide over mountains.
I let my head get too heavy.
Conductors are running the asylum.
Things I write down
Won't make sense in the morning.
I'm bound, I'm set free.
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Path Persistence
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On that bus in London in the darkness,
Through a world of ambient evening light,
Full of drink, a pint glass
In my jacket pocket.
Solaced by dark, watery windows
That you can't really see out of.
And Carrie and Lowell.
Piercings of fresh life, like nothing else.
The freedom to be so incredibly sad.
Letting your legs carry
Your black cloud
Through the streets and lanes.
It was the same week I listened
To In the Aeroplane.
Every song I heard then persisted,
Becoming a part of everything else.
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Training to Be a Chemist Like Primo Levi Told Me To
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I loved it.
Working with everything around me.
Living my dream
As I tried to create magic
With Primo on my shoulder.
Gazing into the most normal things.
And then finding myself in Spoons,
Every moment flowing through my mind.
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Standing in the Rocks Outside a Fisherman’s Hut in Coleraine in July, Listening to Transformer by Lou Reed
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I rose from my bed on the stone floor
And stood out amongst the rocks
And the crashing waves.
I listened to something off Transformer
And I smoked a cigarette
And as the sun came up
And I stood beneath the towering world
The light struck me
And my neverending madness,
Having survived another night
With smoke in my lungs
And a house full of tiny gods.
When will I live like this again?
With the help of so many friendly deaths
And screaming idiots.
You and I would eventually make it home,
Living to tell the tale again and again.
The pinnacle of our final days.
Instead,
I was swept up in the waves
And missed the train home.
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Feeling, Wanting to Leave
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It was February
And I decided to move
The piano out of the back room.
I can still see it:
Spirits above me
Bearing down with that
Verdant glimmer.
The dark, wooden desk
And the warm, incandescent glow
Of that box room.
As I stepped out of the window
Into that alleyway,
A gulf between two stone walls,
Wings cracked from me,
Going from this land
To that.
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I Did Hate You
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When I am honest
I did hate you.
It frothed from my mouth,
It dripped onto my shirt,
And it clung to me like smoke.
But now,
Instead of burying it
In my drawers
And in the pages of my books,
I want to be free of my hatred.
I do not care anymore.
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Thinking About Change During COVID
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By the time this is over
I will be a completely new person.
My face will be unrecognisable.
The things that I understand now,
The awe that I feel,
The wide ocean
Has unfolded in front of me.
I don't recognise yesterday.
I doubt I'll recognise tomorrow.
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A 12-bar Blues Called Out in the Orient, Written During the US Withdrawal of Afghanistan
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I grew up in the hills,
I lived out in the dirt.
I grew up in the hills,
I lived out in the dirt.
Then the bullets started flying,
And I haven't stopped running since.
Seven dead kids on an August morn,
The invaders are investigating.
Seven kids dead on an August morn,
The invaders are investigating.
They'll just say it didn't happen.
Me? I've just given up asking.
Twenty years we've been living like this,
We've thrown our shoes and our stones.
Twenty years we've been living like this,
We've thrown our shoes and our stones.
My great grandfather was a politician,
And we were burnt out of our homes.
I got a house made of rubble,
And a flag upon the mast.
I got a house made of rubble,
I got a flag upon the mast.
I got lithium in my bones girl,
I got shale as my caste.
One day I'll walk out of here,
A bag of coins on my belt.
One day I'll walk on out of here,
A bag of coins on my belt.
My heart so awesomely ossified,
Even the sirens couldn't melt.
This morning my brother and sister died,
They never had time to be born.
This morning my brother and sister died,
They never had time to be born.
Perhaps I'll go back out in the dirt,
And wait until the world is gone.
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Sitting on the Bank of a River in Carryduff at 6 in the Morning
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I sat on the bank of the Grand Canal in the summer of 1955 and let the water lap idly on the shores of my mind. My purpose in life was to have no purpose.
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– Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems, Author's Note
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I sat amongst the grass
After a long night
In the summertime
And watched the sun come up,
Lifting the light over
The valley.
So dumbly drunk:
"I will stay here
As long as I can."
Later,
Like a Tang poet,
I tried to write two poems
Describing myself as a
Bengal tiger hiding in the
Tall grass,
But they couldn't capture it.
They said nothing of the birds I heard
Or the ducks I saw swimming,
My friends still drinking on the bank
Across the river.
And when things were quiet enough,
Once cities began to float in the air,
Kavanagh spoke to me and said:
My purpose in life was to have no purpose.
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On Trying to Convert My Thoughts Into Poems
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Fair play to you
Killarney's lakes are so blue
And the architecture
I'm taking in with my mind
So fine
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– Van Morrison, Fair Play
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Lying in the darkness
As I faded out,
You said fair play,
Floating along that river,
Along the language not spoken.
The things in your head,
If you gave them words,
Would turn into bone,
Losing their gossamer form.
To measure is to change.
To think is rebirth.
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Written between February 2020 and July 2022.
