President Michael D Higgins (centre) presents Roderic O’Gorman, Minister for Children, Disability Equality and Integration, his seal of office watched by Taoiseach, Micheál Martin at Dublin Castle last June
Kevin writes:
A new poem inspired by President Michael D signing the Mother and Baby Homes secrecy bill. Apart from the bit about the fourth world war, which hasn’t happened yet, it’s more or less a true story.
Presidential
When you finish reading this poem,
you’ll remember only
the Black Forest Gateaux
I bought you once.
I had no option but to vote for
that tax on women’s shoes
but greatly admired the fight you put up against it;
have kept all the press cuttings,
especially those that took care not to mention me.
As you, me, and the mirror know
I’ve always been a great
pro-choice advocate;
that’s why I spent thirty years
never mentioning the issue.
When I stop talking
all you’ll remember is
the Black Forest Gateaux
I bought you once.
When I signed this bill to keep
what we did to the children secret,
you, me, and my bodyguards know
how vehemently I’m against it.
Trick is: what to remember
and what not,
because of a Black Forest Gateaux
I ordered you once.
The history books are littered with
shit I voted for but was against
in the restaurant afterwards,
as I eyed the Black Forest Gateaux
and thought of you.
And as I explain at length in my book
‘The Art of Statecraft’,
when the Fourth World War descends
and the division bell rings,
I’ll have no alternative but to leap up –
with nothing in my heart but peace –
and, at best, abstain.
As you’re vapourised
you’ll remember nothing
but the Black Forest Gateaux
I fed you once.
In a mix of poetry and prose, Kevin Higgins takes a darkly humorous approach to finding himself designated one of the “vulnerable” during the year in which plague again stalked the Earth.
He also, as is his way, finds time to drop acerbic comment on the heads of the ungood and the ungreat, and to comment in a fairly unrestrained fashion on world affairs.
This is the ideal Christmas or Birthday present for Irish Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan and for those who, when the time comes, hope to be invited to Kevin’s funeral. It is also the perfect gift for the posh liberal in your life.
The book will be launched by Somatic therapist Aisling Richmond and writer and critic Tomás Mac Siomóin. The MC for the evening will be poet Rachel Coventry.
Join the meeting here (Meeting ID: 738 901 3549) at 6.30pm, Friday, December 4
Soon to be demolished site of the Oasis nightclub, Salthill, Galway
Kevin Higgins writes:
This is poem is from my 2005 debut collection The Boy With No Face. In it I take a comic look at my mostly unsuccessful attempts at wooing the opposite gender in nightclubs such as The Oasis in Salthill, which is now to be demolished. For the most part, the ladies in question very wisely ran away.
Letter to a Friend about Girls
(after Philip Larkin)
What losers we were when it came to girls.
‘Pull up to my bumper baby, drive it in between’
played soundtrack to the wet dreams
of small, inconsequential fellas, the likes of us.
And we’re talking small on an almost monumental scale.
In duffel coats and awful glasses
we shuffled around the edges of other people’s parties
all through the eighties,
gawking down in the general direction
of our stupid, stupid shoes.
If charisma could be distilled,
ours would have been measured
in somewhat less than millilitres.
So small, we barely existed.
On the rare occasions when opportunity
—the tastiest variety—put herself there
to be availed of and there was nothing for it
but to press the advantage all the way home,
we either failed to spot the most obvious signals
—our radar were useless at picking incoming aircraft up—
or else managed to inexplicably miss.
She grinned through the worst jokes
and was clearly prepared to overlook that duffel coat,
but the score on the board stubbornly somehow stayed zero.
The goal could be yawning wide open
and still the ball would either trickle
pathetically wide or go sailing miles over.
And just what exactly were we supposed to say
as another cut-price night at The Oasis declined
(with no bachelor flat to which she might be lured back)?
“Let’s explore the universe with my last fifty pence piece.
If I empty my pockets perhaps I could stretch as far as a kebab.”
I am currently studying Creative Writing at NUIG. Recently we had an assignment for which I wrote a poem tackling the sudden onslaught of ex-punks turning to right-wing politics.
Anyways, only this morning did I see the headline saying that now John Lydon of the Sex Pistols has endorsed Trump, so I like to think my poem has suddenly become quite topical. Although I did in fact dedicate it to Tony Parsons of NME fame…
Punk Song
for Tony Parson and the Aged Punk
Don’t stab his eye, just leave it alone,
why make such a big deal of it all?
The kids are too radical, the kids can’t make change,
revolution was so much simpler in the seventies.
Leave out rioting for the trees and the grass
I’ll rock out about this rising carbon tax,
just forget about any slow rising tides
and you know Boris really ain’t so bad.
London’s calling in too many artsy types
who loved this stunting European hole,
too many fell in love with something they shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with,
Jesus there’s just anarchy in the UK.
Someone needs to disarm these crazy ladies
with their wet ass body parts,
when did music get so crude and graphic,
where did all the poetry go?
Fuck those bloody fucking sops,
those big ol’ drifts of snowflakes,
offended by everything we used to say
when there was a good fight to fight.
Three chords was all we needed
to make an absolutely tone deaf song,
now when I rock I’ve Facebook on my lap,
“Thatcher was actually pretty Punk you know”
Kevin Higgins has responded to criticism of his poem posted yesterday to mark the 5th anniversary of the Carrickmines fire.
Kevin writes:
I grew up mostly, from the age of seven, in the Rahoon/Newcastle area of Galway City. We moved here in 1974, and I have lived back here since 2004. This area has been notorious for its anti-traveller racism, much of it stoked by local politicians. The area has even added the word “Rahoonery” to the language.
I know the voice of the anti-traveller racist, which I channel for satirical purposes in my poem ‘After The Barbecue’, intimately. I am happy that this poem has provoked outrage; I think the idea that a tasteful poem should be written about such an event is itself a disgrace.
There was nothing tasteful about what happened and certainly nothing tasteful about the anti-traveller protests of those Carrickmines residents.
The Irish poetry world is awash with tasteful poets. I do not aspire to be part of that tradition. Mine is the tradition of Brecht and Swift, neither of whom, despite their very varying politics, gave any consideration to what crying liberals and closet racists considered tasteful.
In this sense, though I don’t take pseudonymous comments on the internet very seriously, I embrace the distaste of some of the commenters on this poem. I am delighted that I have succeeded in exposing the fact that they appear to be far more exercised by a poem than they were about the deaths of these travellers, and the racism of local residents.
Let them get up an online petition against this poem; I couldn’t care less. If anyone has a serious critique of this poem, let them write an article about it and publish it somewhere.
I stopped believing in anything when I was 12 years old
And started deconstructing everything that I was ever told
I thought that when I got there, wherever there may be
That it would give me a good head start on the rest of humanity
Who I figured would eventually reach the same conclusions
That society is essentially based upon delusions
But by the time my 13th birthday had almost reached an end
I couldn’t help but notice an all-pervading trend
That my friends, or those I had then, just thought that I was mad
And dismissed my eccentricities as a passing teenage fad
But the days turned in to weeks & months, and months turned in to years
And I grew more alienated and distracted from my peers
As I peered in to the rabbit-hole of internet conspiracies
Where totalitarian control and governmental heresies
Have planned to implement an almost incremental coup
And the worst part is they’ll make you think they’re doing it for you.
And it was hard to talk about those things without just sounding strange
Or like the last known living outpost of the mentally deranged
Just to mention 9/11 to the blissfully naïve
Or to talk about the moon-landing to those who still believe
That not only was it possible, back in 1969
To simply live-stream the event to millions at a time
When we had yet to figure out how to put wheels on a suitcase
From more than two hundred and twenty thousand miles away in space
But it was also plausible to trust the deep regime
Who some say silenced Dr. King for his right to have a dream
Or who framed Lee Harvey Oswald for the death of J.F.K.
And ran Project M.K. Ultra alongside the C.I.A.
And they’ve a right to those beliefs, of course, though I still stand accused
Of not quite sharing their directives, their perspectives, or their views
As in; I’d sooner trust a lioness to mind my pet gazelle
Than I’d trust most politicians with the basic truth to tell.
But I don’t think I need a tin-foil hat for questioning the news
Or for suggesting that the planet’s population is abused
By a power that’s invested in the privilege of the few
Who’ve devoured and digested all we used to see as true
‘Cause there was a time I’m sure when that was simply common sense
Though now to call it common likely causes some offence
Or it’s proof I must be Sensist to the Ignorance-Is-Bliss-
Society for the Prevention of the Right to Still Exist.
But I spent years of being martyr hoping one day I might live
‘Til I learned some people take from you no matter what you give
And though I spoke to crowds of thousands from all corners of this land
I went home to the post-office with my pauper’s cap in hand
While the wolves in woollen sweaters saw their right to use the arts
For the profit to their pockets and to better play the parts
Of the token wooden soldiers as they marched us to the flames
Of another rigged agenda in these power-ridden games.
But I lost my faith in who I was and everything I did
And the only thing that saved me was the time spent with my kid
And in the presence of his innocence he taught me to begin
To see the greatest war that’s ever waged is always fought within
And the choices that we’re faced with aren’t just if we live or die
But to turn and face the truth or to learn to love the lie.
So I turned my back on politics, and came to the position
Where I couldn’t trust the government or trust the opposition
Or the media, the unions, or society at large
Or those unelected NGOs who feign to be in charge
Who claim the enemy is everywhere around us at all times
Through our mandatory masks that confound us and contrive
To dehumanise our faces and to propagate the fear
As they seek to track and trace us while to me it just appears
That this civil degradation has been planned and thus designed
With our social isolation and conditioning in mind.
And you can call me a conspiracist but I think that term is fraught
With the dangers of dismissing all kinds of critical thought
And to shut down conversations with a label that denies
The way to validation through this labyrinth of lies
But if I wear a mask in shops just to show the staff respect
That doesn’t mean I can’t see through the wilful mass neglect
Of our elderly in care homes, who are leaving life in fear
By believing politicians who are trying to sound sincere
While they’re quoting things like Mean Girls just to take the utter piss
Or the psychological impact at the heart of all of this.
But I don’t need for recognition, or to pick and choose a side
‘Cause my primary ambitions are to see through the divides
That are carefully and consciously and constantly imposed
By a nefarious agenda that’s increasingly exposed
And to try to make the world a small bit better for my son
and for the sake of all the future generations yet to come.
The Oireachtas Golf Society’s dinner, which took place last Wednesday at the Station House Hotel (above) in Clifden, County Galway, was attended by a host of senior politicians and notable public figures.
Who Runs Ireland?
Not the Deliveroo riders named Tariq and Omar
who Gemma O’Doherty is terrified will try to marry her.
Nor the taxi drivers from Togo John Waters fears will
make him go around the place wearing a veil.
Not the Hutch Kinehan wet squad The Sunday World keeps
telling you are coming to ruffle your dahlias.
Nor the puppets of George Soros
Jim Corr knows, from his research, are trying to put
a brown paper bag over his head.
But the Supreme Court Justices,
the Banking Federation chief executive,
the Ministers past and present,
the journalists who are meant to ask them questions.
These are the people who sign off on your life.
They go by the secret name ‘Oireachtas Golf Society’.
And for the sake of what Saturday’s Irish Times calls stability,
you must allow such people eat in peace:
the French onion soup, the seared king scallops,
and a selection of ice creams,
all from the one big bowl.
And if they wish to have a sex party afterwards,
to slither across each other, pink as piglets;
such eventualities are covered
in the terms and conditions
of the Oireachtas Golf Society.
For the sake of what The Sunday Independent calls
the national interest, such people must be let gobble
who and what they will.
Former US president George W Bush (left) and daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres at an American football game last year
Poet Kevin Higgins writes:
it seems time I shared this which was provoked by Ellen’s friendship with George W. Bush…
The Continuing Confessions of A Daytime Talk Show Host
My catalogue of pals stretches beyond Bush,
Trump, and the Emperor Bokassa’s personal crocodile.
For I am everywhere, and always have been:
helped Claus Von Bulow rewrite his Tinder profile
the day they switched his wife off;
had the Cleveland Torso Murderer judge
my show’s inaugural belly dancing competition
which, it being 1938,
was only available on radio, but, hey,
I’m always up for a challenge;
celebrated John Gotti’s twenty fifth
successive acquittal by gifting him
a diamond crusted
knuckle-duster, and paying
Annie Leibovitz
to photograph him wearing it;
and, yes, tried to hire
the Zodiac Killer as my show’s
resident astrologer
but Letterman got there first.
.
People misunderstand.
It’s my job to talk
to the guy who tied
Sacco and Venzetti to the chair,
like two sad salamis,
so I can ask him which
has been his favourite
fry up so far.
The fact I shared a table
and chicken skewers
with Vlad the Impaler
at a mutual friend’s wedding
and found him
a delightful conversationalist
is no criticism on my part
of those he had boiled
in his giant copper cauldron,
or hammered giant
wooden spikes
through.
I’ll be friends with anybody
as long as they’re somebody.
Peter Tatchell (second left) with Green Party members at the Dublin Pride 2018, including new Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration. Roderic O’Gorman (left)
Poet Kevin Higgins writes:
I am dedicating to all those on the far Catholic right in Ireland who are currently busy smearing Peter Tatchell. In this poem the statue of the Virgin Mary at Knock speaks their darkest fantasies.
What The Virgin At Knock Would Say If She Could Speak
We need to get back
to when confirmed bachelors
found their own kind through holes in cubicles
during untelevised All Ireland Finals.
To when there were no government funded
lesbians on display in public parks,
or self-confessed sodomites in the Senate.
To when there was no obscene use for
Vaseline, or sexual intercourse in Headford.
To when no one put Coke bottles
where they weren’t supposed to go.
And there were no automatic
washing machines for women to sit on
when Rock Hudson was unavailable.
To when the Irish people stood
at the end of lanes waiting
for nothing to happen,
which it mostly did.
To when young ones who forgot to cross
their legs at the crucial moment could be put
steam ironing curtains for the golf club, sheets
and pillowcases for your mother’s B&B;
still be safely there eight o’clock
in the evening having hot flushes
the hottest day of that century
to which we must get back.
