Trust Me Not

I was born demanding. Wanting food, wanting attention. Those desires are still with me. Instinctual, connected, and animal impulses. Almost uncontrollable.

I was born anxious. So bothered that I cried out into the darkness and light. You could say I was mistrusting.

As I experienced being provided with food and attention on a predictable basis, I calmed down. Came to take them for granted. I stopped being concerned.

As I developed, I didn’t even ask myself ‘Can I rely on my parents providing food, and at least some people giving me attention?’

I came to believe I was living in a world where there were some things I could trust. Certain people were trustworthy.

It was a long time before I heard the word ‘trust’ and came to use it.

I had a home to live in. I was provided with clothes and shoes. I was even introduced to people outside the family. I learned to call some of them friends. Those who paid me no attention were passers-by. As my critical faculties developed, I experienced the distinction between friends, acquaintances, and people who ignored me.

Eventually I had a rude awakening. I realised there were people who didn’t love me — and people who didn’t like me — and people who were my enemies.

Sometimes I got it right. Other times I was shocked. There were people I felt and thought I knew were trustworthy. I experienced disappointment, surprise and shock. There were even some people who pretended to be friends. They undermined and hurt me, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes deliberately.

I couldn’t rely on myself being able to predict accurately what others were like, and how they would behave at different times and in different situations. They had their own way of living, their own character, values, desires, hopes and fears.

Who could I trust? For how long could I trust them? Under what pressures could I trust them? Who would stick by me through thick and thin?

I learned that everyone had their limits. I realised that I had my limits. Experienced that every human is an individual, and in particular circumstances is untrustworthy. Certainly I can’t trust anyone to not let me down.

Like the weather, every individual is ultimately unpredictable. I am almost entirely ignorant of their deepest desires and plans. I have come to withhold total trust from every individual, every power, leader, institution, political party, technology, and climate.

I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my mental health (it has abandoned me many times). I don’t trust what I write. I’ve developed the habit of recognising what I write as no more than an approximation of what I mean.

I delete words, phrases and paragraphs more frequently than I delete people. I have dropped people out of my life deliberately. I imagine I’ll continue doing that until the end.

For me, trust is a five-letter word. It is handy as a conversation starter. Sometimes it’s a pleasant word around which to reflect.

So, am I a Cynic, Sceptic or Realist?

I confess that I wouldn’t advise you to put all your trust in me. (Not sure Louis my dog trusts me. My cat Puma certainly doesn’t.) I am fallible. I don’t deserve your absolute trust. I’m not worth it.

I am an unbeliever, an ordinary human being.

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Composed specially for Un-Conference CongRegation 2026
https://congregation.ie/

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Walking

May you walk into your future
with a flower by your side.

May you step on stones of life
with joy within your shoes.

As a heron stands in the rushing river
may you weave your web with care

Between branches of your tale,
there is mystery round your corner

in the maze that is to come.
As you taste fragrance from the breeze,

may the wisdom in your heart
breathe beyond your deep blue sky

“Let all those with a foul mouth wash their teeth”

On the other side of a mountain on its way to greet you is a foul mouth. It’s always worth carrying a toothbrush. You never know who might need it.

Soulmate of my heart

smile of my desire
peeping into existence –
winter ice melting

those wild eyes delight
the sun alive in a dream
one red rose flowers

let a fragile kiss
wake the ice swelling river
fire into embers

ache for willing touch –
electricity charges,
bursting into bloom

quest of the hunter –
the ram and the ewe mating
ravishing summer

Sharp and Wild

When you move forward into discomfort,

into an uncertain future,

into the danger

of new learning,

you are condemning yourself

to change.

Time to go back

It’s time to go back to the studio

return the microphone

leave the stage

before it is too late 

and the sun dissolves,

the dark turns the key 

in the cell of sleep.


By the side of the sound 

fluttering traces, glimmers of illumination

on a sandy shore, parallel to the light

to which sea turtles run.

Signals that the evolution of cells 

requires the survival of a fresh program

within each radio impulse.


Let another station follow the end of this episode.

Let the chrysalis crack open 

so earthworms may turn into music 

and melody explode.

Let there be flight,

transparent colour,

for the fullness of time,

in the flicker of an eagle’s eye.

in the bite of a death adder

as if

a fragment of static 

is about to cross the synapse of suspended wires. 

Again, back to the studio. 

2025

A year of fire and brimstone, 

a reckoning with massacres, starvations, vindictive assaults 

on hopes and dreams.

It’s been “disappointing ” to see infants lose their parents – and grandparents crippled with the pain of grief

in ruins, rubble, and relics of the quiet life they wanted more than anything. 

Blue skies & clean water

blooming flowers and fruiting trees 

fresh streams and songbirds’ lilt

the melody of playgrounds

symphony of toddlers

climbing and seesawing 

as the prayers for peace went on and on.

No resurrection 

nothing rising from the dead

but carrion over Gaza

and wolves in the Donbas,

wildfires breathe, droughts parch, 

as glaciers melt

and natural disasters are too many to remember.  

– The outside world a cesspool.

 

The inside world 

of dampened fire

of dribbling lines

a thirsty year of tablets 

for teeth, 

for a dug out cyst

a year for seventeen syllables

a year for words

a year for causes.

Is there any way back?

Any way out?

Any way beyond?

Is there nothing but now?

A year of finding a second home

among smiles & bowing necks. 

the quiet glances

– the way a swallow flies 

or a heron glides.. 

 

Goodbye to all those wet days

all those days of cloud

all the days of weather

Not knowing is the lane to wisdom 

not knowing’s the adventure 

not knowing’s the way. 

2025 Year of Knowing too well

– and Not Knowing.