It’s letter writing today in verse. This really hit a synchronous chord with me and also allowed me to express some inner anger.

An Open Letter to the Powers that Be

 

Dear Minister for Health, Simon Harris

Sligo-Leitrim TDs, and

Just for good measure

All the board members of the Sligo HSE

 

Because, you see, we are failing with our kids

And I really want this one I know to fail

Where she is trying to succeed, because

Suicide Awareness is all very well

 

But the rubber hits the road with resources.

And there is sweet eff-all psych  inpatient care

For our kids, and not a whole lot out in

The community either, given staff attrition

 

And I am not talking about locking them up

In the bin, just  having a safe bed, without

Her mum having to sit bolt upright all night on the ward

Because she needs to be watched round the clock

 

As much as she did when she was a toddler

With the knives, scissors, razors, stones thrown

Away, because you would be surprised

How inventive a cutter can be.

 

And her mum should not have to refuse to leave

Camp out on the A&E floor, because she can’t

Keep her daughter safe 24/7 and there is no one else

At home to watch over her baby girl

 

Who is teenage now and, like Persephone,

Gone down a great septic, psychiatric plughole.

If one day, she succeeds where we want her to fail,

To die by her own hand, instead to live her precious life

 

May I assure you, it is all on us

Who did not care enough to hire the staff,

To make the beds, to find the money

To find the heart and the will

 

For us and you, our government to stop

Treating kids as optional extras, left luggage,

Disposable as nappies bought in bulk

And left to non-biodegrade on landfill.

 

And the bonus poem…it has been that kind of day. Epistopilary poetry might be my thing.

Commemoration

 

This is a letter I will never send

 

That one March day your drama dazzled me…

Having cheated death, I felt more alive

with you than anyone before or since.

Which fact you profess something like shock

that I would/could/should love you of all

planetary people. If I tied you

to a chair and asked you repeatedly

it would be all name, rank and serial

memory denied.  Now there’s a mind fuck

for you, you son of a gun on the run.

It’s become your signature MO

a bit, this come and go, hasn’t it?

 

Except that day we faced off in rainbow’s glow

midst boneyard’s history. And family

seemed to give their blessing and nod assent

that we two, despite how seemingly oddly

paired, were meant. Some ancestral matchmaker

fitted us up. A celestial spit

and handshake to plight our troth. That’s how it felt,

being caught in a timeless claw, fairy

glamour, spun around, turned inside out, without

so much as a kiss. But that day you were

the anti-Scheherazade with Semtex

laying your life in my lap, where I hold

 

it, undetonated. If I licked your

heart, would it explode? Would I become some

more collateral damage? Are you the

hardman/softman gone all hardman again?

Is it guilt or shame? Or hideout from  blame?

Does everything now have to be denied?

Me, yourself, family – all for one

authorised version of your history?

If I tied you to that chair to make you

listen you would only say you never

lied.  I get it. I really, really do.

To survive you rationalised. It’s true.

 

This is a letter I will never send.

 

But that day, that glorious, pot of gold

in the graveyard day, best day of my life

it seemed to me that given your full

and frank confession, that the barred door swung

open. That with a newfound freedom

that comes with love, history would end.

This is a letter I will never send.

But I need to document it beyond

your flat denial, trapped in your very

own mesmerising story. So, carry on!

Go and feed the neighbour’s cat fully armed,

you son of gun always on the run.

 

Hope that works out for you! That you never

had the courage to pillow talk, caress,

kiss me. I am the woman you let get

away. And scarred my soul forever more.

 

This is the letter I will never send.