Masjid Maryam Mosque, in Ballybrit, County Galway following a vandal attack last month

To The Boys Who Carried Out The Ballybrit Mosque Attack

You wish you could waddle
up the Monivea Road like Lord Haw Haw
wearing a scar the length of your jaw
you got fighting communists
but cut yourself shaving once
and didn’t like it.

In the absence of a girl who’ll let
you between her legs
you’d love to invade Russia or Iran
but can’t afford the air fare
so instead smashed some glass.

All you want is a part-time job
in the local concentration camp
but there isn’t one around here
yet, so instead you broke a window
and heroically chucked some books out it.

You once thought of reading a book
to find out why you’re where you are
instead spend the hiatus between
wanks listening to the voices
in the videos on your phone tell you
whose fault your life is.

You needed to be someone
so wrecked a guy’s framed family photographs,
fled sniggering up the hill,
still no one.

Kevin Higgins

Pic: Galway Bay Fm

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31 thoughts on “Friday Prayer

  1. Spaghetti Hoop

    I can’t bear to read that poem but that’s awful about the attack. Freedom to worship and all that.

      1. Spaghetti Hoop

        In fairness garrett, all I read was ‘vandal attack’. If it was some small incident like a window then that’s even more of a reason not to pen a poem.

      2. Brother Barnabas

        except it wasn’t “one window broken by kids”, was it, garrett?

        “CHURCH and public representatives have joined in the condemnation of the break-in and vandalising of a mosque in Galway city over the weekend.
        Damage – estimated to be in the region of €2,000 – was caused in the attack on the mosque at Ballybrit in the early hours of Monday morning last.
        Several windows were broken, locks were smashed and furniture was damaged in an act of vandalism similar to one that occurred there in July of 2017.
        One of the difficulties for investigating Gardaí is that the vandals also stole the hard-drive containing the footage from CCTV cameras in place at the centre of worship for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
        Gardaí are understood to be investigating the possibility of what are described as a ‘far right’ group having some involvement in the incident – the fact that the CCTV hard-drive was taken is an indication of a degree of planning that went into the attack, Gardaí believe.
        Earlier this week Waterford native, Imam Ibrahim Noonan, one of the driving forces behind the construction of the Mosque at Ballybrit, indicated that he had received warnings of a possible attack on the building and of threats to himself.”

          1. Brother Barnabas

            read it again, this time imagining it’s written about roy hodgson’s tenure at liverpool

          2. Bertie Theodore Alphege Blenkinsop

            If only Gerrard could miss a penalty on purpose to get rid of this too

  2. T Re(n)d Setter (B9Com From No)

    positive. uplifting and life-affirming

    restored my faith in humanity anyway

  3. garrett

    My first reaction was that this was the Worst poem ever, then I read more of Higgin’s work.

  4. Shane Duffy

    There’s not an incident that happens these days where a poet won’t try and make use out of it for personal gain by virtue signalling. Real poets take time over their poems.

  5. Brother Barnabas

    hate to be the contrary voice, but I liked this a lot – and have liked most of KH’s poetry posted here

    I’d be a fair bit more refined culturally and artistically than most of you lizards, so that likely explains that

    1. T Re(n)d Setter(B9Com From No)

      hahaha I didn’t mind it either – I mean compared to his usual stuff

    2. The Old Boy

      I’m with the Brother on this one – though I’m sure I couldn’t possibly comment on our relative levels of cultural and artistic sophistication – I usually enjoy Mr Higgins’ poems. It’s not Betjeman or Larkin, but then these are frequent, topical pieces of new writing presented to us for free on Broadsheet, rather than the distillation of a genius’s life’s work that some people seem to expect.

      1. Brother Barnabas

        thank you, old boy

        and, with that most eminent endorsement, THAT.SETTLES.THAT, as they say

  6. Senbob

    Most Islamic countries consider the Ahmadis to be heretics and are often attacked and presecuted in both Sunni and Shiite countries.

    1. Royal M

      That’s unfortunately true, which makes it even sadder to see Galwegian juveniles copying the the behaviour of extremist Sunnis and Shias

  7. Joe

    the vandals who did that wouldn’t have a clue about communism nor would be have any care for fighting it. just young lads up to no good.

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