Archive for the ‘Features’ Category
The minute I’m appointed Minister
for Justice, Broadcasting, and Espionage,
I’ll send forth a decree
making it criminal, and punishable
by being made sit forever
on a bus that never leaves
Kinnegad, to make any further mention of
Miriam O’Callaghan.
It will be an offence
to download any part of Miriam O’Callaghan
from the internet.
Furthermore, any computers or
smart-phones found to contain pictures
of Miriam O’Callaghan
will be broken up
by care-in-the-community
lunatics with specially made
hammers my Department will
provide them with.
The Armed Response Unit will begin
raiding houses known to contain back issues
of the RTE Guide disfigured
with her image.
It will be a crime even
for you to read this poem,
or, technically, for me to have written it.
If reading this poem in the printed version
be sure and eat the paper it’s written on
and that all of it has passed successfully
through your digestive system
bcfore you’re arrested.
KEVIN HIGGINS
It is written that the traditional,
wind-blown, mongrel
who herded us of old
would be traded in
for the one who calls himself
Lion; is in the gym
every a.m. by six, furiously
admiring his pelt
of pure gold.
That a man whose political base
was two elderly brothers who both ate
their excessively buttered spuds
off the same cracked plate
to save on the washing up;
would make way for a guy
who eats his artisanal
cauliflower and pickles
off a bespoke slate
his assistant happily carries
everywhere on his behalf.
And when the word was made reality
the people and their gods
saw it was progress to be rid
of a rural accent best suited
to pub chat about the match
between Galway and Mayo
and before this progress
we bowed and gave thanks.
Far better that next time the person in charge
is forced to broadcast from his (or her) life boat
to tell us that, sadly, we’re all dead,
it be done by one who in the womb
was already solving complex accountancy conundrums;
whose first words were “team of management consultants”
when, about half an hour ago,
he emerged to general applause.
KEVIN HIGGINS
after Bertolt Brecht
You clean collared columnists
should first help us fix the basic roof-over-head
dilemma, before penning your next sermon.
You shower, who preach careful now
and always know your own exact bank balance,
what is this mature democracy towards which you sweat?
Without a door I can safely lock behind me
to keep your pity at bay, civilisation
doesn’t even begin.
First bring those of us who get by on Supermacs
each our own mahogany table and a big, silver knife
with which to cut the turkey and ham into manageable slices
(with a vegetarian option for those so afflicted)
and answer us this:
What put the diamonds in your owner’s wife’s ears?
Or the Prince Albert ring in her boyfriend’s willy?
The fact you’re in there polishing phrases
and we’re out here in the undemocratic rain
which everyone – from the Primate of the Church of Ireland
to the Council for the Women of Consequence – agrees
must never be allowed land on you,
this is what keeps pinning diamonds
to your owner’s wife’s sad little lobes,
and puts the ring that winks up at her
in her boyfriend’s knob.
KEVIN HIGGINS
SURVIVORS DEMAND IMMEDIATE ACTION BY TAOISEACH
CMABS demanded in 2014 that the Government needed to form an “inquiry of modules” where each individual Mother and Baby home was examined in relation to the aging survivors, as a matter of urgency and furthermore that an immediate Acknowledge, Apology and Redress was offered to the different groups of elderly survivors after each module.
CMABS again demands that the Government and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar immediately offer: an Acknowledgment of the horror of the Mother and Baby homes, an official Apology to the survivor community and, an interim Redress payment to the elderly and dying survivor community before any more of us die.
Paul Redmond (Chairperson of CMABS) said:
“This is yet another delaying tactic by the Government to deny survivors truth and justice. The current inquiry is already too limited and excludes many survivors and this delay will now enure that thousands more survivors are denied justice by death.”
Clodagh Malone of Beyond Adoption Ireland said:
“This is utterly shameful. Our community are heartbroken and devastated. Tears are flowing.”
Derek Leinster of the Bethany Home Survivors group ’98 said:
“Living survivors must always take priority over inquiries and reports. We need an immediate and final result for the handful of elderly Bethany survivors who are left alive. There are 227 names on the Bethany Memorial in Mount Jerome cemetery and this Government have now added more names of victims to that Memorial by this disgusting delaying tactic.