Just read More Tales About Life, Love & Death by Paul Marauder, a collection of poems and flash fiction dedicated to the struggle of the Palestinian people and their suffering in Gaza.
The writing is potent, visceral and personal, often in the first-person, and also deals with addiction, alienation, relationships, and the demons that assault the vulnerable and the sensitive. It is about much more than ‘the ordinary pain of being alive’, to quote Baudelaire.
There is a poignant and wry little story which despite being about a robbery actually relieves much of the surrounding titles. A squad of Na Fianna Éireann rob a bus driver to finance new shirts and clothes they need to march in the Belfast Easter Sunday parade. Our young callow hero imagines the admiration and love there would follow were he to die for Ireland, the girls that would pine after his memory. But in a moment of bathos he goes to watch ‘Top of the Pops’ (which is, of course, English) and is mesmerised and astonished by David Bowie (who is, of course, English) singing ‘Starman’ and he thinks about becoming a pop star instead of a martyr. Or—unsaid—that that would be easier. The author, in real life, actually went on to discover liberation in punk music and was a guitarist with the punk band The Parasites who featured in the seminal 1978 film Shell Shock Rock about the music scene in Belfast.
Marauder’s style is highly original—and raw to the point of painful and sad—and you can see the influence of Bokowski and Shane McGowan. (In an interview with the Andersonstown News he also says that Bobby Sands’ writing has inspired him.)
I loved his poem ‘Thank Gawd’ about personal disillusionment when the writer declares the notion of God as a ‘gawd damn’ waste of time and himself as part of one great universe:
There is no need to surrender our will to a celestial dictator
So God I bid you safe journey back into the space you came out of off
The empty space between the ears
where mankind imagined you into its DNA
You can hitch a ride on the next cosmic ray coming your way
Don’t forget to pack your capriciousness your misogyny your
Mythology into your space case for your journey to where nothing
Exists
So you’ll feel right at home
The next cosmic ray is due soon so make sure you’re on it
His powerful poem ‘Dust & Blood’ is about those poor people of this earth in Gaza being crushed into dust by the butcher of humankind, Israel, supported by all those western hypocrites who along with Israel are the epitome of evil:
But all that we can pull
alive from the rubble are painful
Emotions
Raw & vengeful
That fill our hearts with
Anguish
&
Despair
And
A hatred
for those
Evil
Bloodthirsty
Murdering
Zionist butchers
that will never ever disappear
It is a hatred
That will consume us
Forever
Marauder has quite a unique voice making powerful statements about life and love but, crucially, the violence in our midst, exploiting our weakness and apparent helplessness, out to destroy a nation, a people, and all their children…