There we are walking along the post-storm streets of Dublin,the streets my mother walked years before, I light a candle with thought, without belief, in St Theresa's, Clarendon Street. A candle for her and all those gone before us marked (some would say scarred) with the sign of faith.Our loved ones. Out again, there's a coolness in the air, a calmness, a warmth in the sky and I think out of that/the blue, 'Lapus Lazuli.' I say it out loud, Lapis Lazuli, It feels like two nice marbles rolling an alliterating joy in my mouth up to my brain. I'm not 100% sure what exactly it is, a precious/semi precious gemstone? A title for a new poetry magazine? I know nothing of the double L. We wander in to The National Library, I like the carved wooden breasts on the fireplace, perhaps you are not supposed to touch, but I do, then we wander down to the Yeats exhibition and there out of another blue, a lump, a block, a real piece of 'Lapus Lazuli' in all it's glory. New to me, spookily co-incidental in a darkened room touching on Yeats' fascination with the occult. Then I learn something. A tour guide explains that the Yeats family wanted a quiet funeral for Willy, but his fame would not allow it, so they packed his body off to a rented tomb in France but forgot/omitted to pay the rent and his coffin was turfed out amongst the hoi polloi francaise.

Then war broke out and WB's coffin could not be returned to be buried in Drumcliffe 'til hostilities had ended. By then who knew which coffin was which? There are major doubts that Yeats is buried under bare Ben Bulben's head at all! If not him then qui? And if qui is not il then ou est William? Mon Dieu, quelle question!

Being good enough, is rarely the criterion.

Oh, Jesus, what can I say. It's been so long. I'm used to FB, or worse, twitter, the Haiku of social media. Here (Blogland) you can breathe, luxuriate in space and freedom. So much water under the bridge. You can never step into the same river twice. I think you can but you won't be the same person. What has there been since I last stepped into this river? Death, my mum and my mother in law, my nephew, and ridiculously amongst such gravity, but yet perhaps not quite so ridiculous, my dog. Ostricisation by virtually every poet and poetry outlet in the whole of Ireland. Hell hath no fury like the fury held for a whistleblower. Ill health, depression, drink, writing, surviving, living, yearning,hoping, enduring, fading if not quite yet failing. I should post a pic of my dinner,or a cat wearing a hat, this is no place for hurt. The mag I co-edit is possibly/probably the best in Ireland, the most neglected, reviled.How dare a non-university (un)educated prole try to enter our hallowed hall? Where will it end, if we let them in? Poetry may be (should be) truth, but truth stands no chance against lies and deception. I think we'll call PB 'The Mag they Couldn't Hang'. If we survive. PB7 is due soon. It's wonderful. Not that anyone will admit it. My second collection, 'The Death of Poetry' is , somewhat ironically, a lifeline. It won't be liked, no doubt it will be shot down like REd Kite in the wrong place, or worse, totally ignored, because it won't be their story, it may contradict their lies, but it will be my truth. Somebody recently mentioned (and like all (occasional) ego maniacs I thought it pertained to me and even if it didn't I could see how it (mistakenly could), 'blank white flags' Well TDOP will be (please God, it will 'be') many things, but white flags, it won't. I'm envisaging poems more along the lines of Red rags to bulls(hit).Watch out for it! We are all dying, we are dying from the day we are born, it is not the result that matters, but how we played the game. Except it isn't a game, that's where the elite go wrong. This is it, this is serious, this is real.