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    Poetry: Damien Leech

Damien Leech was born in Derry and lived in Donegal as a child. When I was four I moved to Navan with my family. My parents seperated when I was about 12 which had a very profound affect on me. I went to Scoil Mhuire Primary School in Navan after which I went to St Patrick's Classical School. Then I went to Bordeaux, France to Study French.

I then returned to Ireland to begin studying journalism in Griffith College Dublin. I graduated in 1999 with a BA in Journalism and Media Communications. Since then I have worked at many different things while also freelancing as a journalist. I found it very difficult to get full time work in journalism for some reason. I also teach English as a foreign language and am in the process of writing a novel.



 

The New Murder

By Damien Leech (24th January 2006)

I went through 10 years of hell on Earth,
Couldn't get steady work,
Lost partner after partner,
Girl after girl,
I had no money.

I got a little paranoid,
They chased me up a road,
I wanted to get away,
I swam up the River Boyne that night,
Trying to get away.

I got out of hospital,
And I tried again,
I couldn't get a steady job again,
I lost my girl again,
I tried to go to a solicitor,
They put me back in hospital just before my birthday.

On Special occasions I get hurt,
Birthdays, Christmases and Valentines again and again.

I got out of hospital for a while one day that summer,
I felt trapped and saw no future,
I almost stepped out in front of a bus in the middle of summer,
I saw no future.

I thought of the weapons inspector Mr Kelly,
He took his own life,
He like me saw no future.

I thought of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay,
Some of them want to end their life,
They see no way out.

It's the new murder,
Lock them up or make them take their own lives,
Its a complex game,
But the abusers always like to bury their sins with those they abused.





The Death of My Grandfather

By Damien Leech (26th January 2006)

Summer in France,
Mass outside in a beautiful garden surrounded with flowers in bloom,
Ice pops by the pool,
Football games beside our tent on warm grass,
Competitive tennis in the heat of the sun.

At night we fell asleep to the sound of crickets,
We wondered what the English girls next door were doing tomorrow.

Our grandfather had to return to The States,
We started our farewell journey to the airport,
Driving along that motorway in an old orange camper van,
Myself, my brother, my father and my grandfather,
There was the silence of sadness,
"I have to go now. Are you going to be ok?"
A powerful wind at the airport and he was gone.

A few months later,
I was woken in the middle of the night,
"Tom is dead."
There were tears in my father's eyes,
Being young and not really understanding death,
I turned over and went back to sleep.

We went to the graveyard in a black limousine,
And that's when I realised he wasn't coming back,
He was gone,
The dam of sadness broke,
And our family broke with it.



The Ballyshannon Festival.

By Damien Leech (26th January 2006)

Drinking lots of beer at the Ballyshannon Festival,
We found our tent dodging camp fires among hundreds in the middle of the night,
We hadn't scored and did a bit of structural damage.

Woke up next day with hangovers from hell,
Crawled out of our tent onto the grass,
The guys next door were drinking tea,
"Jesus Christ boys, it looks like your UN Outpost took a direct hit last
night."




Wrong and Right

By Damien Leech 23rd Jan 2006

Wrong is wrong and right is right,
At all times in all sorts of crimes,
That includes bribes.

"A Man for All Seasons",
He had his reasons.



Greedy Fowl

By Damien Leech (23rd January 2006)

Some parents these days,
Are like greedy fowl,
They are so busy sunning themselves,
That they smother their offspring under them.



Lies

By Damien Leech (23rd January 2006)

Lie more and more to cover it up,
So he'll become a very lonely pup.

I looked up 'to lie' in the English Dictionary,
It says: 'To make intentionally false statement',
I looked it up in French,
It said 'Mentir'
Anyway, fuck it, more beer.



A Winnie Nightmare

By Damien Leech (23rd Jan. 2006)

Winnie couldn't get a job,
So he didn't have money,
To buy honey,
So his wife left him.

She married someone with lots of honey money,
No money, no honey, no funny, no wife.

Winnie lost his self respect,
It wasn't hard to detect,
He lost his self esteem,
He thought he was having a bad dream.

Winnie got very sad,
He stopped going out with the lads,
They had lots of money to buy honey,
Winnie didn't think it was funny.

They offered him some of their honey money,
Winnie was to embarrassed to accept,
Walked home alone every night and wept,
Stayed in bed all day long with a broken heart,
From Mrs Winnie he had been taken apart.



Lonely Leprechauns

By Damien Leech (23rd Jan 2006)

The leprechaun was looking for his pot of gold,
Where it was he wasn't told,
They kept moving it on him,
And he went crazy,
Mrs Leprechaun got fed up and left him.

So the leprechaun went to the pub every night,
Got drunk and would sometimes fight,
It just wasn't right,
His gold he wanted which shone so bright.



Statistics

By Damien Leech (23rd January 2006)

They say men in relationships live longer,
It makes them stronger.

I better not make any long term plans so!



A Bad Dream about 'The Snow Queen'

By Damien Leech (23rd Jan. 2006)

The Snow Queen got Kay at 16,
Because an evil magician wanted between,
Gerda was not allowed to see him,
And the puzzle was never solved by magic,
A fairytale twisted,
Oh so tragic.




Terrorist Teddybears

By Damien Leech (23rd Jan 2006)

How do you make a teddybear into a terrorist?

Don't give him hugs.

How do you make a teddybear into a very bad terrorist?

Don't give him hugs and make him watch other teddybears getting lots of hugs.
He'll become a very angry teddybear.



Raging Bulls

By Damien Leech (20th January 2006)

Sanctions were imposed,
Well before any of it started,
They were interested in Irish innocence.

Why?

I'm like Iraq,
Because of a quack,
There's no way back.

Why were sanctions incurred?
They had their life,
Is that a reason to be perturbed?
Is that a reason to be disturbed?
They had their life.
What are they expecting?
Jesus?
I'm not Jesus.

The World Wide Attack Matrix,
They had their girl put on me a hex,
The New American Century,
What's your hurry?

What are you trying to bury?



Stress

By damien leech (Summer 2005)

Stress, Stress, stress, stress,
I need a woman in a red dress.



Old woman in Venice station

Written by Damien Leech (Italy 2002)

Old woman in Venice train station,
Your are old, tired, tired but lived,
Your thin grey wiry hair,
And wrinkled face a thousand past emotions.

Five large bags on your trolley,
With a little black dog on top,
You are so terribly old and bent with age,
You put your face in your hands,
What are you trying to forget?

What happened to you?
Are you waiting for your son?
Did they take your house?
Why there on that bench in this windy station waiting, waiting,
With sadness as your companion?



THE DOG

By Damien Leech - 5/5/02

A dog is born a silly little pup,
He licks everything and everyone,
And runs a wobbly walk of joy and happiness,
Little tale of fur sticking in the air.

Then that dog grows big,
Cruel boys kick it when it comes to say hello,
And that dog does not understand,
licks his bruises and looks with confused eyes.

Then those men kick it more,
He stops to lick people's hands,
But now growls at the world,
And one day he bites a child,
And that dog is shot in the head and he knows not why.



Psychiatric Jail in June

By Damien Leech (14 June 2005)

Trapped, troubled souls,
Stuck in this comfortable jail,
My family put me in,
Because I stood up to them,
It was my birthday yesterday.



Psychiatric Hospital Dublin

By Damien Leech (June 2005)

The nurse wheels her trolley of drugs,
In honour of Molly Malone,
"Take one. It will make you sleepy."



The Bee

Written by Damien Leech

In May or June the bee appears,
He drifts timidly, quietly and lazily from flower to flower,
Not quite sure why he's there,
Plants just beginning to bloom in the crisp spring air,
As the sun climbs up the sky.

Days get longer,
Birds sing louder in their Morning chatter,
In France crickets start their nightly ricket,
Chairs are moved outside,
And beer glasses begin to tinkle as the evenings draw longer.

Dogs twitch their ears and flick their tales,
Letting him know his presence is not desired,
They are afterall sleeping in the heat of the sun on the warm dust,
He stays well away from cats,
Summer goes on and his friends appear,
More and more busily they work assured of their place as nature's
messengers,
Buzzing flower to flower on they go,
And where he sleeps? - Nobody knows.

A few sent spiraling to the ground with damaged wings,
As builders brush them away - wary of their sting,
When they approached their refreshments,
They are looking for sweet things.

Sometimes people step on the striped little creatures after a crash
landing,
And when he's hurt and angry he gives them something to remember him by,
Bumble bee brothers can pack a punch too,
When forced to sting, weakened and sometimes die.

Some have a short summer,
They dry up and disappear behind a window pane,
Having given up trying to escape,
They had fallen for the scent of sugar.

Then the sun dips a little in the sky,
The days shorten a little as night comes sooner,
He begins to get tired,
His friends a little weary too.

Children don't like them but find them interesting,
As they land on their ice-cream cones late in the evening,
And they call out to a parent who flicks him away saying:

'Stay away he's angry because the summer is over.'

8/4/03



CONSTRUCTION

(By Damien Leech 9th Jan 2006)

The bricks were carefully placed,
Poetry and Shakespeare,
Maths and science,
Sports coaching and religious teaching,
And trips to Knock,
French and Latin,
History and geography,
Hollywood movies and bedtime stories,
2 month holidays on the beach in France,
Trips to see space rockets in Houston, Texas,
Chris De Burgh, Tolkien and C.S Lewis,
Stars Wars and Ghostbusters.

What does he want the most now?
A good wife.
A man needs his wife like a baby needs his mother,
The girls were carefully briefed.

Make him trust you,
Then when you are in his air space,
Fly into the structure and his heart,
Land those planes as hard as you can,
And do as much damage as possible,
And hopefully the structure will crumble and he'll have a breakdown.
If he calls you, don't call him back and hopefully he'll get paranoid,
He should come crashing down like Othello.

Why on Earth would you do such a thing?
An Irish heart and mind is a precious thing,
What about all those years of building?
Because we have to give him the treatment he needs,
We can't give him the treatment unless he breaks down,
So we can go to work,
You have to crack and break the bone to reset it in the right way,
And women are the way to his heart,
The sweeter the relationship the more venomous the sting has to be,
The more he opens up the more we can hurt him.

Is that not like teasing a child with his favourite toy?



Lacanau - Ocean, France

By Damien Leech (9th Jan 2006)

Drinking beer on the Boulevard,
Can taste the salt in the summer wind coming in off the Atlantic,
The sound of huge breakers crashing onto the beach in the night.



Leprechauns

By Damien Leech (9th Jan 2006)

My little brother and I,
Went looking for leprechauns in a field,
In the Arran Islands,
After ten pints of Guinness.

We didn't find any,
So we went back to the B&B.



Star Wars

By Damien Leech (9th Jan 2006)

"Join the Dark Side."

No

"Then die by ECT."



Frodo Territory

By Damien Leech (9th Jan 2006)

He had left her out to the airport that Christmas,
She seemed to be acting strangely,
He wondered why.

Christmas phonecalls.
"Sorry, she's not in."
"I can't talk."

She flew back for the turn of the Millennium,
To be with her boyfriend,
"Why didn't you answer my calls",
"Don't be paranoid."

They broke up.

A short while later he found out,
That she had had a threesome behind his back that Christmas,
She had set it up on The Web.

He had driven to Dublin Airport as a child,
In his Uncle Johnny's Mercedes,
His Grandfather, Uncles and Aunts,
Were flying in for Christmas,
From Detroit and Houston, Texas,
With toys from America,
There were Christmas carols and warm fires.
And the love and warmth of a family all around,
Santa was on his way that night.

Why would she turn those childhood memories upside down?

The mortal wound had been administered,
It took two or three years,
For the poison to reach his heart and mind,
The structure had stayed standing,
But the lights were dimming,
It was most painful at night,
When he lay in bed alone thinking where she could be.

Later, he drove back alone from Donegal one evening,
He looked up and saw crucifixes in the sky,
Two jetliners had criss-crossed,
He wondered where they were going in that blue sky,
The darkness was closing in.

Later that year,
Travelling home from Dublin for his birthday,
The poison had reached his heart now,
And he couldn't go on,
Dark clouds had covered up the sun,
And the rain was pouring down from the heavens,
It was the saddest birthday he ever had.

It rained more in Ireland that summer,
Than it did in one hundred years.

It seemed like God and the Angels were crying.



Scoil Mhuire

By Damien Leech (10th Jan 2006)

Walking to school on frosty mornings,
Trying not to slip on the ice,
When it was really cold,
We'd pray that the heating pipes would burst,
And the radio man would announce that the school was closed,
And we could stay in bed.

Reading A First Confession,
And writing essays and dreaded maths,
Long division and fractions,
Saved by the bell and out for lunch.

Playing football with a tennis ball,
The Gypsies would steal the ball,
And negotiations would start.

The seasons would change,
The ice melted away,
Confessions, Easter Sunday Mass and Easter Eggs.

Park the bike by the Garda Station so it didn't get stolen,
Not long to the Alter Boys Tour,
Where were we going?,
That surprise was top secret.

It was hot now,
Summer sports day comes along,
Egg and spoon races and 100 metre sprints,
The smell of freshly cut grass in the sun.

Not long till the summer holidays and days by the sea.



Walter Mitty's Submarine

By Damien Leech (10th Jan 2006)

"Captain, we need a date for Saturday night",
"Ok, send that girl we met the other night a text".

"She didn't reply",
"Ok send her an email."

"She didn't reply",

"God damn it,
Maybe the texts and emails aren't being sent,
Send out a ping and check our depth with the sonar."

"We sent out the signal but we didn't get a ping Sir",

"Ok, our systems must not be working,
The messages are obviously not being received,
The enemy must be jamming our communication systems,
Open up tube doors 2 and 4 and take out the nearest sub."


All material © Damien Leech 2006

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