Portadown Way
They’ve taken away the street signs and door numbers,
but they’ve left the curtains.
.
The back doors where open when I got there,
someone else had been in before me.
What had they made of it all?
These now empty rooms.
Is it better to know or not to know?
Knowing feels like an intrusion,
like I should have knocked the front door and waited for someone to let me in,
like I shouldn’t be sneaking around,
like I’m an unwanted reminder of how things used to be.
.
Walking through the house I can still picture where everything was,
but it felt bigger then,
the walls have been closing in.
.
How long does a house need to be empty till it’s no longer your house?
Will it still be your house when the windows are all smashed,
and the walls are all tagged,
and the roof is caving in?
Will it still be your house when the excavators finally tear it down,
will the rubble be yours?
.
This too is now the past.
Just a memory.
Mixed into the rest.
.
I doubt any of this means anything to anyone but me and you,
and I think it’s better that way.
.
Dream Interlude
JHQ has always found it’s way into my dreams.
.
When I used to dream about JHQ I would dream of going back,
the gates being opened up,
and the people being returned to their homes.
Or what was left of them.
Clearing paths through the undergrowth,
carving out a new life.
Wandering the once familiar streets,
now occupied again, but still abandoned.
Weeds still cracking the concrete.
.
Now I’ve been back these dreams are nightmares.
I’m being chased,
the fences are impenetrable,
the guards are closing in on me,
the streets have all changed.
There is no way back into 2 For Far Way…
.
Wrexham Walk
NOTHING YET
.
Bodmin Walk
This time, curtains were drawn,
and doors were closed.
.
After a while these houses all begin to feel the same.
Why should one feel different to another,
because I’ve been here before?
Because I know you,
and you lived here for a time?
All of these houses were lived in.
All of these rooms …
SOMETHING ELSE HERE
.
Walking through the house I couldn’t still picture where everything was,
but it felt bigger then,
the walls have been closing in.
.
I was expecting something different,
where was the writing on the walls?
Where were the wild cats mewing in the empty rooms,
the bats folded into the dark corners?
There were no mice hiding in drawers, or weasels hunting the mice hiding in drawers.
Brown owls weren’t sweeping in and out again.
Weeds and grass still hadn’t sprang up through the floorboards,
doors weren’t banging in the breeze, the curtains weren’t ragged or fluttering in broken windows.
It was just me,
in this not-quite abandoned enough house.
Emptier than it was desolate.
.
The signs of any life are hard to find.
It’s easier to notice the damage of 10 empty years,
than the wear of 59 full ones.
It makes more sense to credit the scuffs on the walls to vandals
than to you, or you, or you.
.
To confront a buried past you must be prepared to dig,
returning again and again to the same matter.
To scatter it like one scatters earth,
to turn it over as one turns over soil.
.
Maisy’s Birthday
NOTHING YET
Pembroke Drive/Forfar Way
NOTHING YET
The Fence
In reality, I never made it back.
I had almost convinced myself it was,
but this was not 2 Forfar Way.
This was another house, on another street.
These were rooms I had never seen before,
Identical but for the smallest details.
.
In the end 2 Forfar Way was beyond my reach.
.
If I had tried harder I could have made it.
I could have burrowed my way under the wire,
mole-like and invisible,
occasionally poking breathing holes through the soil until I arrived in my back garden.
I could have spent months secretly digging,
disposing of the dirt discreetly,
3 tunnels, Tom Dick and Harry,
each taking me to places from my past.
I could have chanced it all and climbed the fence,
spurred on by desperation,
hoping the guards were distracted enough not to notice me,
or too driven to get in to care.
I could have come back in the night,
armed with wire-cutters,
silently moving through the pitch black streets along the familiar route home.
.
But this was as close as I got.
As far as I could go.
.
What was stopping me from going in?
The fence?
In places near 7 feet tall, rigid metal and barbed wire.
Other times flimsy and torn to pieces
Occasionally non existent –
only signs stopping you from crossing the threshold.
Or was it Fear?
Fear of getting caught,
Fear of getting fined,
Fear of getting my footage deleted.
Of a hunter at the edge of camp mistaking me for a deer and shooting me.
Of a wild dog attacking me.
Of stumbling upon a deranged homeless person.
Of finding a dead body.
Of digging up memories I had already mourned.
.
What does it matter that this wasn’t my home?
That the secrets these walls kept weren’t mine.
That that bedroom wasn’t where I slept…
MORE OF THIS
.
The Forest
I wish I had started this film years later.
When JHQ hasn’t been called JHQ in decades.
And nobody remembers what it used to be.
When I could peacefully walk through the fields, and forest, and ponds, and rivers.
.
The future of JHQ is uncertain.
The last I heard the plan was to tear it down.
To rewild the land.
Conor McBride 