Why I'm different

I write with broken pen
in Moleskin pads.
I always have and
prob’ly always will.
People stare at Me and laugh
Because books me than more
to me than man
- because I sit over pints With
trees cut short In tender youth
So I can dream on pulp And
stain my life with ink.

Hold to Oden

Another school left in the past,
Another boy without a class.
One more midnight train ride,
Onemore night my mother cried
Herself to sleep only to be awoken
By the sight of me cold soaked
(and a small bit shaken.)

And if I think of my old school Pencey
An English teacher gone back to whence he
Came a swanky apartment on the upper west side
Then the night I left an how I cried,
I wonder what could only be if I made through the year
If there’s one thing certain,
One thing clear.
I know I wouldn’t be here.

The world and I

If the world and i were one
i'd tip my cap to the desert sand
i would scorch my skin beneath the sun
if the world and i were one.

If i could be the sea and sky
id babble blow and hypnotise
id ebb and flow and soar so high
if i could be the sea and sky

if i were the star above
i would not shine for bliss or love
or for the ones without the latter
if i were the star above.

When i think of endless possibility
that now lays crushed in front of me
the world, the star, the sky and sea
seem far too big for only me.

To show you what you mean to me
to him, to her, and everyone
i'd plunge my cap in freezing sea
if the world and i were one.

To each his own, To us our town.

Dublin Town
I have walked the streets
Where young men died in vain
I have climbed the great Dublin hills
And looked down on everyone.
Seen a city still striving towards the light
- People still dying to make ends meet.
Where to this day your paper reads
A world of class division. Yet still
Between the smokestacks and canals
No Right Rose Tree ever
Bade her beauty bloom.


A Song Can Do So Much
Now lost to concrete dim
There rings a song in times gone grim.
A song of faith for doubtful dreamers
Dreading darkness, drinking doubles
Lost in life’s complexities.
Gone the days of beauty bare
Nor path, nor light to lead us there
Gone the nights of wanton lust
Buried deep without a care.
Now on this never ending path
A group of dreamers stand
Their dreams long worn, near gone
The darkness cut by a singer’s song.

Pilgrimage Most Holy
Pilgrimage most holy
For the spirits least divine,
We smoke the grass and drink the mud
And take our chips with wine.

So take a glass and raise it high
Lets make a toast a cheer
- to us, to them, and festivals my dear






A Dream for the Future
I want to be shot in the nip
And be buried in a bowler hat
With my brazen head to heaven
And my bollocks to himself.

I want to ride the sunshine
And felate the passing cars,
To rape the star-crossed lovers
And whistle like the wind.

I want to be a winner and
wear medals on my toes,
to be the morning golden
and the amber hue of stars

I wish I was an icecap
Or a grain of desert sand
I want to salt the sea
To grow the wheat.

To swim to fly and pollinate.

I want to be your saviour
Then wind the world again
I want to save mankind
And wind the world again.

He Sings by Night

He Sings by Night

We have walked the streets
Where young men died in vain
And climbed the great Dublin hills
To look down on everyone.
Seen a city still striving toward the light,
People still dying to make ends meet.
Where to this day your paper reads
A world of class division. Yet still
From the mountains to the sea
No Right Rose Tree
Dare bask in summer sun.


When he reached the cemetery the sun had long since hidden her true guise and was hanging stationary behind a clump of greying clouds. The ground was damp underfoot and there was an uneasy threat of rain in the dark summer sky. It was early in the afternoon but the heavy atmosphere made it feel like late evening and as John picked his way through the carefully decorated graves it was all he could do to fight off his yearning to sleep and dream. The sight from the hilltop always gave him an enormous sense of humility, he could follow the winding roads down to the nearest houses, small and country like, then further still into the great maze of side streets and disbarred bordellos that had come to be known by the greater populace as a Fair City. The sea could be seen in the distance through the thickening smog, the small villages and the harbours where true Dublin had emigrated years before. He was whistling a song to himself that he had heard years before on a Summer’s day by the baths, the tune was engraved in his mind but the words forever seemed to escape him.
Of all the graves on the hillside this had been the best kept through the years, no groundsman; be he public or private dared to lay a hand upon her. She truly was the envy of the mourners who came to lay flowers on her neighbours for her marigolds always grew higher, there scent lingered longer into summer, her headstone needed not to be polished daily to retain its shine in the dead of Winter and the roses that lay with her in the silence of night were fresher than a sunrise.
John went about his daily lot with pride as usual. He wiped dust invisible to the naked eye from the marble Virgin that watched over him. With a certain amount of effort he stooped low and replaced the store-bought roses left by some other visitor of the night with his own home-grown lilies . With his old cap upon her brow he rested his aching back upon the side of the Virgin and packing his pipe gazed over his kingdom from the smokestacks to the pier and to the ethereal figure of Howth now concealed by fog.
With his daily duty done he packed up his bits and bobs in a threadbare haversack leaving behind only a small flask for her to take her sup and headed down the winding road to the countryesque cottages and his bus to take him back into the smoke.

When he got off the bus near Trinity the cloud cover split and he watched in awe as sweet design shone through, reflecting the toothy smile of the college girls and dimming the pouting children into obscurity. From the gates looking out on Temple Bar he took a right and headed down Pearse Street, passed the old cinema and the Police station, he ducked into a small shop under the railway line and took a seat in what was more like the living room of someone’s own home, a true relic of what was. The genial old man behind the counter nodded in recognition and said something quietly to his wife who went into the back store, or the kitchen as most would call it, and came back with a brown paper bag from the top of which one could see the patched up heels of two newly repaired shoes, John paid the cobbler and thanked his wife and was on his way once more. He started back to towards Grafton Street with the sun on his back; he stopped on Doyle’s corner and arched his neck skyward, not a cloud. The morning’s haze had been lost somewhere among the graves and the thatched roofs. Being that the sun was shining as the weather not altogether unpleasant he decided to treat himself and turned on his heels, he was back passed the cobbler and waiting on a train to take him to Dun Laoghaire before the sun had a chance to warm his face.
Stepping off the old Kingstown line and greeting the cool air with pleasure he smiled to himself and drank deep the smell of the tide. He packed his pipe once more and was greeted with a lit match before he realised the ticket inspector was waiting patiently for him to procure some proof of payment. The ticket inspector was not old, he was not young either; he was middling. But the trouble with someone in such a job as a railway worker is that one can never be quite sure when middling ends and ageing begins. In either case he was more than polite in lighting John’s pipe and retaining a certain sense of business in waiting for a ticket so as not to make the elderly gentleman feel rushed.
From the station he strolled down by the boat clubs and watched the rich cavorting through iron bars, he did not spend long for they all seemed too sprightly and gay for his liking. He toyed with the notion of taking a walk on the pier but decided against it as everybody was out on the pier today and he didn’t quite feel like meeting everyone again, they had had a falling out some years ago and it was best left that way now. No what he wanted was simplicity, a newspaper and a pint of plain. He walked up by the shopping centre on the way to his old haunting ground but on seeing the church thought it best to prolong his simple pleasure and say a little prayer.
The heady smell of incense hung heavy in the air and like the clouds on the hill filled him with uneasiness. There was a mass just starting. His throat was dry and he did not feel like staying for the mass so he lit a candle and said his little prayer in the pews then skulked out into the heat once more.
His feet took him up to the main street then left and towards the watering hole where in his youth he was frequent. He nipped into a corner shop and bought the Irish Times then in through the side entrance and down to the lounge of Sheehan’s, he propped up the bar in the corner where he was so accustomed and unfurled his paper, he nodded to the bar man and waited for his drink. It had been the same for years. With his pint and his paper now firmly in hand he at once felt better in himself and although the news was as awful as ever and although the pint was the worst porter one could buy in Dun Laoghaire he felt a whole lot better for it. Without realising it the time had slipped away and he had been sitting reading the paper for nigh-on 4 hours. He drank three pints and two shorts. He packed his pipe and asked for matches at the bar, put on his old caipin and was on his way once more.
He took a stroll down the promenade and left the lights of the city on his back, heading for the secluded headland by the baths. The drink had taken its toll on him and he found it hard to remember the tune he had been whistling earlier on in the day. It took him a little over half an hour to reach the bench he had seen in the distance. From behind it was nothing but a solid boulder but carved from out the front was a beautiful marble bench looking out over the bay. The bench was big enough for two or three but John sat alone.
The evening was quiet. The baths deserted. The little light that came from the street lamps did nothing to light the bench, or the surrounding area. And there in darkness sat a man with naught but the stars for company and the tide to keep time. And by night he sang.

I’ll take you home again Kathleen
Across the ocean wild and wide
To where your heart has ever been
Since first you were my bonnie bride

Thus Sat Two Men

Cudos Hugo



There sat two men upon a ledge
Who cast their dreams
with skipping stones
Across the rolling tide
While casting eyes along the ledge
And over rolling hills
To where once their sat a man
In dreamers eyes and
built the world again.
With each hop of Dutch-flat rock
They smiled and knew the other
They spent three hours maybe more
And saw the sun salute the day
Thus sat two men in Sandycove
One evening late in May

An Irish Girl

From out a brown-haired Irish girl
- real Irish with that Irish look
Now lost to concrete dim
There rings a song in times gone grim.
A song of faith for doubtful dreamers
Dreading darkness, drinking doubles
Lost in life’s complexities.
Gone the days of beauty bare
Nor path, nor light to lead us there
Gone the nights of wanton lust
Buried deep without a care.
Now on this never ending path
A group of dreamers stand
Their dreams long worn, near gone
The darkness cut by a singer’s song.

Untitled Verse

I wanna be shot in the nip
and buried in a bowler hat
with my brazen head to heaven
and my bollocks to himself

I wanna ride the sunshine
and felate the passing cars
to rape the star-crossed lovers
but still whistle like the wind

I wanna drink until my legs come off
then smoke ten thousand ciggarrettes
I wanna see the lover cry and
bathe in their regrets

I want to be your saviour
Then wind the world again
I want to save mankind
and wind the world again.
And wind the world again

Debasing Days

My war paint runs like dogs in heat
and stains a thousand bathroom floors
while yobs downstairs down bright-blue drinks
and make mock their place on earth.
All Ive ever owned is locked upstairs
but your messy make-up streaks
tell us all it's time to leave
which seems to me to be the
way my nights all end these days.

'Cause we don't like eardrums bursting at the seams,
libations for the sake of drunkenness
- because I hold my self in high esteem
But hide behind a mask so cool it's frozen solid.
Because I prefer a quiet pint with paper
Or just because we were born too late
to these debasing days

An Irish Summer

Half-tans skulk in shadows
As flaking skin snows the air
And then men with whippy vans
And the life guards on the strand
Thank Christ it’s come again.
Tomorrow will be agony
But today was made for lovers,
both As red as one another
both too blind to care
But oh for those few hours
When everyone was young,
We hang arms nonchalantly
From cars with ice-cold air,
We don the shorts, the shirts
Come off we are as pasty
As the next man who
Drove ten miles to see the beach
- And its only fifteen degrees.
For once we are content.
For once we won’t complain.
Give us sand by the bucket-load
And sangidges wrapped in foil,
Give us a lack of modesty and
Care free fun that comes
But once a year.
I think we miss the point
And get things slightly skewed
For after all we’re not
Designed to sun.

On Leaving

While leaving looking back upon thee
I pause to ponder what thee meant.
Were you just a short, sweet spree?
Or forever will you stay with me.

Such companions I have never found
Than Those that walk these hallowed grounds
And such a feeling never felt

By king, nor calf nor mighty Celt
Could ever hold a candle to
the life I knew with you.

I am an Ancient Soul

An Ancient Soul I am.

Keys were heavy as I approached the house
I held them in my hand, poised, ready to attack
Each step closer my heart would pound.
One beat the louder one step the safer.
Trace-talks like tides inside as i
Ran my story through and polished details.

Then I was in the porch. Life going
On as normal outside my addled brain.
One. Two. Three. Deep breaths and
A slap for colour if I felt worse for wear.
I’d hold the key and hover for a moment,
Just to line it up and the smell of gum
And vodka would travel like smog that
Everyone ignored until it affected each in turn.
‘Y’alright ma?’ It was 10 o’clock.
‘How was the film?’

But now they think me old enough
- an ancient soul as some might say
And the scolding subsides to be
Replaced by empty threats of hunger
And stories of olden days.
So now I work and win the bread,
And take my sup in private.
An ancient soul I am.

I know when I am old and
My hand will hurt to pour my
Amber-lover, born-deceiver
Will be my gift in parting
But if perchance my faith eludes me
I will brave the pain, make it short
And drift away innocuous.

Good evening all my friends of old
I'm glad to find you well.
Please pull a chair and pour a drink
and listen while i list
The common ways I've come to know
for man to lose the mind.

To the bottle where the sun is sought
but all too seldom found.
To the pipe that burns a milky white
in a land where man's forgot.

To the whore who lives
a life so empty
or to a life of
pure monotony.

To the shining lights
of soulless cities
and a lucid leather-bound
prophet in disguise.

They read like gospel
when we're young
When the world is but
a playground to enchant.

But now the ticks have
caught the tocks.
The moon has raped night,
and the withered walk alone
into everlasting light.

Listen now and listen well,
I'll say this only once.
I lost my mind to nothing then,
now there i seek it once again.

In a deed undone
and words ne'er heard.
In a city unseen and life half-lived.

On the plains where mans forgot,
amidst the bottles and the fog,
my search for something ever-lasting
has become a prophet's blessing.

A Hero Dies Tonight

T’was the night before Christmas, or the morning after maybe mid-June for all its worth. My memory no longer serves me, it comes and goes with sobriety. I am master of nothing but my mind. Time and place is unimportant, the details even more-so. You need not concern yourself with my comings and goings, ignore me in life and shun me death.
I was born in to a broken home – an unlit tenement. I was a chain smoker by twelve and a n amorous alcoholic before I had blown out sixteen. I spent my eighteenth birthday under lock and key and twenty-first with the fairies. I was and to this day remain alone in my world of dreams, where I am Judge, Juror and Executioner.
The night it all began, be it Christmas Eve or the twelfth of Never I was in the pub with a family i never truly belonged to - a tradition if ever I knew one. And as you very well know alcohol, “That liquor sweet and most divine”, loosens tongues and hardens nerves. One thing led to another. Dreaming demons of the past arose from out the drunken haze and i was left alone. Here. Darkened underpass.
My so-called story maybe one of many moons, it may be life on repeat. My memories are borrowed and reek of pity like the overcoat that conceals the hollow shell of a body I call my own.
Bodies are weak and deceiving a mere compendium of muscles and bones could never do justice to the soul trapped therein. My body is as old and feeble as the next drunken louts but my mind powerful. I live in my mind. In here I can be whatever I want; I am the behemoth of the booming transport trade, the savior of the soulless subway stations. I am a Herculean hero whose incomprehensible histrionics save the world daily.
I shall not spend eternity in a pauper’s grave with worms as my chambermaids where they gnaw my already mangled frame. My death will not be one of desperation and hopelessness like so many I have seen before. It will be one of martyrdom and people will celebrate my life as the great redeemer of humanity long after I am gone.
The divil may be dead but tonight i rise from out the shadows of my heroes, i laugh at the crowd clawing at my feet. I join the martyrs, and i am free. Tonight in the infinite darkness a desolate tube station a hero dies. In his own words, by his own hand. It is my will. It is done.

Insomnia's Dreaming

I saw him first by Joyce's tower. He stood alone watching the waves crash and foam over the rocks. Now an then his gaze would lift, he looked back at the tower arching his neck – trying to see what great men had passed before him. Then in a swift roll of his neck he watched on forever at the fast disappearing horizon – concealed by fog.
That was long ago though. Now i see him as he is. Not the miraculous dreamer or struggling writer but as the shallow, shell of a man he is. A dreamer through and through. I wrote a story for him. Not about him as such but about all the dreamers in this world who drink and smoke their talent away. I find it easier to write from point of view, i feel like a spy. I get my rocks off below the radar where no one will care if i fail or fly.

Insomnia's Dreaming.

When i was younger i was far from normal, perhaps i am worse off now. The world has changed, is changing and will constantly change. The lies will flow and the Devil will tempt – such is the way. I do not fear the changes as some do. I know not when or how they may come about but i dream of them day in and day out. I dream of the places i may one day hold, the hands i may shake and the faces i most certainly will forget.
My world of dreams does not disappear when the cock crows and the suits scurry to the station, my world of dreams is not held captive in a sleeping cell. It can be found in dirty side-streets (if you care to look). It is the disbarred bordello and the teenage-mother's toothy smile. It may not be a pretty world to live in, but beauty can be found where ever seldom sought, the bottles and the brawls hold more to me than man. I worry about man. Nine to five, straight and narrow – The Suits. The suits serve only to hide the man and leave the rest of us on the back burner waiting for dole-day.
This harsh mechanized world of today has no place for the meek. “The meek shall inherit the world”, thats what they say isn't it? All the part-time preachers who cling to their faith like a mothers teat. They dream too. They dream of Heaven and Hell, long white robes and flowing beards, they dream of halos and puffy clouds soft enough to put a baby to sleep yet sturdy enough to hold humanity. But these are all dreams. Dreams based on a silvery sliver of hope shining through the clouds and making way for the birds and the bees, the men and women of God's own creation and the lovers enshrined in lust in the new and everlasting forever-night.
My dreams are not powerful, they will not inspire. They will not gather a following of billions. My dreams serve only to entertain, if no one but myself. I dream during the day. I dream of Joyce and Behan. I watch the night fade slowly to the day. I watch the moon rise and the stars fall, the ocean alight in a beauteous glow of hope. They say that the dreams of millions are what make the moon shine, the stars rise and the night what it is.
I dream for the millions, on the hour every hour. I dream of nights I'll never know and the places I'll never see.
They don't see me how i am – the suits that is. They see a madman, a lunatic. My dreams terrify and my dreams deceive. I made a conscious decision long ago to do as i please, dreams included. When i am not dreaming i read. I read Behan and Yeats, Joyce and O'Connor, Kerouac, Kafka, Poe and Vonnegut. Each time i read i am born anew. They spurn my dreams and burn the candle. I don the mask and i belong. I am the lonesome traveler, i am a spastic in time. I am everyman. They inspire me, they come to me when i am alone and hopeless and i take whatever piece i may read and i turn it upside, inside, downside out. Each time i am a different character, each time i act it out differently. Each time i am new. And then i am no longer the stranger to himself, i am no longer a mind warped by the paranoid tendencies of an insomniac. I am and shall always remain; a dreamer who dreams his life away.
After nights stacked high with sleepless-dreams the sun will come. It will banish the fairer moon and conceal the horizon once more. And just as the moon before her she will jolt my weary mind and shake my writing hand. The time for change is coming and i can feel it. The meek have had their chance now the dreamer must step to the plate. As of yet my circumstances are unchanging, i have neither the time nor the effort to break a rut but i dream. I dream of life's odd coincidences, the whistle of a train or a crisp clean shirt. I dream of these and those, this, that, then and there. I dream of keys clicking and toes tapping. I dream of the future and the lovers we have laid to rest. I dream to wake the moon. But most of all i dream for the sake of dreaming. I dream to escape reality.

My Life as a Heretic

It was long ago – longer now than it seems. It started with a smokeless cigarette lost in the eden of a foggy night. Ignorance is bliss, or so people say – ignorant people who know nothing else. The same people who say life is hard and you can only reap what you sew. There are liars in this world who may try and force this belief on you, but life? Life is easy and complete. Life is nothing more than an adaptation of randomicity in which the randomers are begotten by strangers, the believers by the non-believers and the truth by a lie so thick and solid shit couldn't stir it.

A smokeless cigarette hung out of the slack jawed mouth of the believer as he hit me with roll after roll of quarters, he bought my poetry and he sang me songs. He slept near enough that i could feel him stir in the night – yet far enough to allow him another cliché of the modern world. - looking back to find humour in depression, beauty in disaster and love in times of loneliness. Time heals all apparently.

My story – if it can so be called is not one of regrets and one on which time's healing hand has yet to caress. Timeless clichés be the plot, liars and thieves the personages – one of those stories in which nothing happens but casual observations on the modern world. One of those tales that despite the nothings and the nevers, the neithers, nors and ne'er do wells serves to captivate and intrigue. It is the all apilicable story of life and love in the Foggy Dew.

it is the never ending circle of lies forever circling, here, there and everywhere – floating and dreaming.

We slept side by side and the smoke filled by lungs as unuttered threats span around my head. I heard him stir in the night and i felt him shudder with storm-sounds making the air reverberate. The Believer had fallen from the Grace of God and landed on the cardboaard beside me. As my story is one of nothing, his was one of everything-lost. A story of riches and women, chalets an champagne, openings, closings, and regenerations. He had had it all, seen it too. He had the picture-perfect wife, two kids, the postcard villa in Spain, everything money could buy – solid gold dancing girls, puple orange juice and a soft spot for space-tourism. But alas ignorance became his downfall. So often is it hard for two emotions to co-exist, so often had he turned a blind-eye, pretended not to see the signs and so as the ignorance grew so too did the love diminish.

The now loveless Believer, believed not in his family. He traded his children's names for another glass of brandy. He forgot his wife's face. Too many parties had left in a state of numbness from which he could not easily escape. Blinded to the problems, hiding eyes from hacking coughs.

His wife is on a hospital bed. He watches her life-blood drip daily, slowly fade away. The believer unshaven and a mess is anywhere but by her side. So he returns once more to his core belief, the redeeming effects of money. Love comes in the form of flowers, and he sends all the health and happiness he can in a mug of random sea tea.

All in vain. She dies alone, he weeps alone.

The Believer stirs again beside me, in his hands grasped is a cigarette packet empty. A poem penned and a picture footed is all I see. A gathering of some sort, people mourning, and in the distance a huddled shell of a man – flameless cigarette ablaze. The poem read.

As i looked out across the bay,

not a thing did my eyes delight to see.

A lone red rose on her bare graveside

and the stump of an old oak tree.

Dressed in black they mourned and wept,

while beneath the earth my angel slept

golden sun glowing

raindrop tears flowing.

I watch undisturbed – unknowing.

While the believer boasts a host of characters, my tale is mine and mine alone. I am the be all and end all of my world. These people come and go, they give me pieces, the half-truths of belief. And yet they flock to me – the forgotten generations of loneliness searching for something new and unseen. I am the man you see, the man you humiliate with shrapnel in a paper cup – don't look at him children. I wear my coat of darkness to keep elements from my back, i wear this hood and cap so you don't see me staring back. I have been too often avoided, too often have children been shielded from my life, but to what avail? Join me in Eden wont you? If I'm lucky you may bounce a coin my way, no nod of recognition. I am here, I have arrived. Your generous donations get squandered, squandered on the casual neccesity of cans.

He is better than me though, belief can do so much for a man. He is one step up on the proverbial ladder. He knows you people from another life, of summer sun and strawberry girls. He knows your customs, your witty anecdotes yet you refuse him. On passing you dip your hat, you cross the road or simply play the fool. Ignorance is bliss.

The Believer is gone now. To where, who knows? Perhaps he found his Rushmore, or another dancing-girl. When I awoke he was gone. He comes to me now and then, in dreams. He tells me not to fear the world, tells me his story over and over. I still feel his presence even now that he is so long gone, i see him in a laughing child, or the young mother struggling to smile. And so i keep one now, just in case, one cigarette forever flamess awaits him on his triumphant return to the life of a randomer.

And when we are reunited, we will live together in our Random City. We will await newcomers to our world and we will show them the how-tos and the whos, we will mould them. The kind and the gentle will be the new Believer and the bitter and violent will take my place when I am gone. These will be the new peoples of The City, they will be awash with new-birth lost in a mug of random sea tea. They will be beautiful and they will be ours.

They will join our forces and as i drift into death they will live. We wish you well and ask you kindly to wipe your feet – this is something new and never-experienced. This is our life, in its truest form – where the lovers are begotten by the rapists, the flames begotten by blooded and the lies begotten by stone-solid belief.

The Morning After an Adventure of Kinds

I awoke with a jolt and glittery scarf,
Haunted by memories of never-dones.
- memories of walking Aideen and Fiona to talbot street.

I'm still unsure who they were
but they had something to do with Roy
- the bells fall silent.

To the Night

To the Night

Here's to half-truths and whole lies,
to cans, mixers and drunken slander.
Here's to the tone deaf and colour blind
- to long nights and bloodshot eyes.

Here's to the star and the moons,
To fondling, fellatio and far off fun.
Here's to the nights we all forgot
and a memory unmissed.

To heart-aches and tooth-aches,
Hangovers - hungover hair of the dog.
To whiskey drenched cigarettes
and long walks in the rain.

Here's to the nights we never knew
(that beat the sun hands down)
When dreams are hard to come by
and impossible to rhyme.

Heres to the night and hoping.

Flame Boy

I was reading some Edward Lear earlier and thought I'd give this whole limerick malarky a shot.................so.............

Flame Boy

There once was a boy named James
Who's face was engulfed in flames.
Doctors knew not the cause for
this most fatal of flaws.
what a terrible shame for poor James.

Well he grew so terribly tired of fire
when the consequences were downright dire
so he went out in the rain, to end all his pain
and extinguish the long burning fire.

- But what did he see beneath all his hair?
He was ugly it just wasn't fair.
So drop a tear and sigh a prayer
for Flame Boy's long forgotten flare.