| Aine MacAodha |
The Parting Clouds When dark clouds hold festivals spanning forty years or more the sun always managed a few seconds of what could be. My North’s turbulent past cannot be painted over in a half hearted splash of colour, obliterating the unspoken grief endured. Totems on gavel walls play the part of aesthetics and understanding cultures of the peoples who live here. Peace, by the politics of talk has anchored itself on the dialogue of it’s leaders, prepared to listen, now. November 2007 |
| Copyright 2007 Red Pulp Underground |
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Red Pulp Underground
Often in times of deep meditation walking through the Tyrone hills I’ll stand at a fence and ease my eyes out over the sperrin mountain range. The fields so lush and full of fertility the hum of agricultural goings on, the views take me by surprise. I think of the ‘starvation’ that swallowed my ancestors, an image that stings the air still. Spirits roam these hills covered in mass graves or deep in lanes were they fell. Starved of food, food, that was packed in ships bound for England to feed the chosen few. whilst the poor here, ordered to eat only potatoes! died of structured starvation. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go hungry to be tortured by the power of it to watch your child fade and die. See a race almost wiped out, a race who tilled that same fertile land. Who is culpable? What of the mass exodus was there trickery involved?. Greedy land owners offering ships bound for new lands where, land, food and pay was promised. Thousands died on the rough seas. Others settled, always loving their spiritual home. Who will acknowledge this crime against the Irish nation, a nation who’s scars are plain to see, even to the present day. Healing will begin only, when we look into the past, were shadows linger and questions hang in the air. Dark Rosaleen still awaits an apology. ('Dark Rosaleen, refers to an Irish poem translated by poet Clarence Mangan during the famine years") October 2007 |
| Old Societies Rain takes on a silver sheen thundering past the window encouraging the worm to rise. Already the blackbird furrows with his yellow beak, knowing what lies beneath. I think of pre-historic societies leaving their stamps on the land, in Stone circles, Megalithic tombs, Standing stones and raths, I imagine they were signposts pointing the safest way ahead to the nearest village, gathering points perhaps. Their own creations dotted about the landscape, I feel a certain kinship with them, them who came before. The worm, I wonder what it’s aura holds, what has it come upon whilst pushing clay, slipping into worlds unseen. I wish the rain to cease the blackbird to scarper and the worm to live another day. October 2007 |
Endings The teens have called time, on life before it’s even begun. Slavery of a sort hangs in the air they starve themselves in a time of fruition convince themselves that they’re too ugly to go out trapped by their own demons visual demons, who scrape at their youthful bodies drilling thin, thin, thin, from the magazines on news stands from the plasma screen in their bedrooms, they don’t believe in flaws the odd spot, scar, ruddy skin eye slightly bigger than the other they have bought into perfection. Captive also to drugs that alter their minds for some, there’s no way back. They’ve called time on life before it’s even begun. October 2007 |