Don’t Google it. Google is/are Complicit

Our resident poet and great friend of Promises Project, Stephen Murray is a multi-award winning poet from the West of Ireland. His critically acclaimed debut collection ‘House of Bees‘ was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry and chronicles his experiences growing up in the Erin Pizzey’s historic refuge for battered wives in West London and later on a children’s home. His second collection ‘On Corkscrew Hill’ was released in 2013 also by Salmon Poetry.

He has performed his work at some of the world’s most iconic poetry venues and has been published in journals across Ireland, Britain and the USA. He collaborated with us on a remarkable piece for our film Loved by Ghosts and is also director of Inspireland bringing creative writing to secondary schools and colleges across Ireland and Britain.

Here, in the only way a true wordsmith can, Stephen writes from the depths of a full on fever, and as it later transpires – from his eventual hospitalisation…

"Hallelujah to the morning rain, summer is coming."

Stephen Murray

They Look Like They’ve Broken Out Prison

There they are, the first two daffodils of spring, against the cracked grey plaster of our driveway wall. The one we meant to paint years ago. They look like they’ve broken out prison.  

One of them is standing upright, its trumpet reaching up, praising the sun, the other one is bent in the middle, doubled over at the stem, its trumpet barely, but not quite, touching the ground, swaying from left to right, singing glorious, twisty daffodil jazz to the dancing  stones. 

Hallelujah to the morning rain, summer is coming.

I Have a Fever

I have a fever. That’s the truth. It is not a metaphor. Day four of the flu from hell. Took myself to the doctors two days ago, thinking I was having a heart attack. Chronic chest pains, that moved around to my back for two days. I think I slept about four hours in two days. Couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t breathe, speak, laugh, cry.

I was on the verge of calling an ambulance.

End-of-Life Cancer Painkillers

Then  I found some of my dead Dad’s end-of-life cancer painkillers, and bang! Slept for 14 hours. Had a dream with Hugh Grant in it, and a very important plan, that I was essential to, before I for it.

Woke up today, and with the muscular pain gone, behind it is the mother of all infections. I’m delirious, and not right in the head at the best of times. 

It’s been hard to find a reason to write, sleep, think, laugh, love, do anything at all.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

Keep moving, stop thinking, get on with your shit. Keep the flow, the buzz, momentum. A rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling stone gathers mo… 

Don’t pay attention to social media. Stay away from the news, while you’re sick, but you can’t, can you? 

Because that big, sticky, sleazy orange sex-case bastard across the pond has rolled into the Oval Office gathering every last piece of shit that the gutter spat back, and the dicks are running the world. 

I need help. I need to binge on something wholesome, porridge, Bambi, David Attenborough, Morgan Freeman, Murder she Wrote.

It is so tough to find the motivation to get on with life, then act as if children (the same age as my own) are not being blown to bits in the palms of our hands, on devices that, most likely, are complicit with the ethnic supremacist regimes that are blowing those very children to bits.

Orwellian Nightmare

It’s an Orwellian nightmare, a dystopian omelette that has mixed in a bit of 1984, V for Vendetta, Back to the Future II, Shrek Forever After, Harold Pinter’s poem “American Football” and eggs. 

Talking of which, did you know that in Back to Future 2, where (in an alternative version of the future) Marty’s bully, Biff, has become president. Well, the character, Biff, was actually based on Donald Trump. Google it, it’s true.

Actually don’t Google it. Google is/are complicit.

Big Maniacal Genocide Cannons

Still, this HAS to be a simulation. 

It is as if we have woken from a dream into a world where the clowns are in charge. They have forgotten they are clowns, and they are angry because all the children are laughing at them. Oh, and they have guns, big maniacal genocide cannons, and they have lots of them. The clowns have opened fire on the children.

"What is art? I’ll tell you what it is, it is the mirror we hold up to our human condition and bear witness to ourselves."

Stephen Murray

Misogyny and Homophobia

In other news, just this week, a supervising teacher in an all-boys secondary schools I was invited to speak at, complained about my workshop. I was booked to go in there for two days. At the end of day one, a strapping, handsome, bearded deputy principle with a bullet proof suit and tie  called me into his office, and, I quote (and shit you not), asked me to deliver my workshops the next day, “without the all that stuff about misogyny and homophobia”.

For somebody whose critically acclaimed debut poetry collection was about a childhood spent in Woman’s Aid shelters, foster care and children’s homes, it is like asking Tracy K Smith to give a workshop, but not talk about race.

Poetry Workshop

These people are custodians of our children’s education! JUST DO A POETRY WORKSHOP???? WTF is that? What is art? I’ll tell you what it is, it is the mirror we hold up to our human condition and bear witness to ourselves.

These people are supposed to be those who teach our young men how to be the best versions of themselves, minus of course, all of that stuff about misogyny and homophobia

I gave them the choice of doing the workshop they booked, complete with all that stuff about homophobia and misogyny, cultural narratives on masculinity, and vulnerability or not to come in at all.

I didn’t go back. Hopefully, my absence will hold up a mirror to them. 

I Miss Twitter

I hate saying it, but I miss Twitter. I miss seeing it all every day. What’s out there. The devils in all their dirt. The seediness, the carnage, the murder, the heartbreak,  and the anger. It’s my own little bit of protest against all the baddies, and it is easier than quitting Google.

Not that Elon (Adolf Twitler) Musk will notice. I saw recently that the NASA astrophysicists commandeering the Mars Rover 2, have drawn a giant dick on the surface of Mars. This is true. Elon Musk will feel right at home when gets there. One small dick for a man, one giant dick drawing for mankind. I find it comforting to know that dick drawings are carving our path to the stars.

It is so easy to get weighed down by all the nasties – the Tate Brothers, the Trumps, Kermit ‘the Peterson’ Frog, Israel, the far-right, (Tory) Starmer and all that, but then you a glimpse of light, like the Palestinian/Israeli film ‘No Other Land’, winning best documentary at the Oscars.

Then you watch it, and it holds the right kind of mirror up to us, and you realise that it’s all too easy get frozen in the headlights of the dicks that rule the world, but we shouldn’t give them a pinch of our angst.

Don’t mind who other people are. Be you.

Ouch! That was a stinger. There goes my chest again. Ambulance time. 

Get this finished first.

"A Jew and a Palestinian working together to do the right thing, in a land that will kill you for it."

Stephen Murray

No Other Land

Be more like those two boys in the West Bank, in ‘No Other Land’. A Jew and a Palestinian working together to do the right thing, in a land that will kill you for it.

There they are, like daffodils breaking out of prison, reaching towards the sun, Singing their golden jazz to the dancing stones. Giving praise to the rain.

There is only two of those daffodils today, but spring is here. 

Give it a few weeks.

Soon, they will be everywhere.

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