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.
This poem follows a gathering of solidarity in Galway on Monday night, after a mosque was attacked and vandalised.