Taken from the “Citizen Ship” blog. Belfast 2013. Nos 25. This wee poem appeared originally on my own Citizen Ship blog in 2013. I’m trying to work with the very “otherness” of the squat, industrial label of “Prod”. As un-seeing a term as “Taig”. Reducing the individual to the grey shape of a wood louse, a slater, walkingacross your kitchen floor. (Albeit wearing a sash. Don’t all “Prods” wear sashes and think the same way?) Ah now . . .
Prod.
I think it’s about time
We allowed ourselves
To come from here.
From Ireland.
Prod.
That’s just a label.
Irish Prod, is just another.
Undercover Brit.
Such hate, such hate.
It bites, it bit me, it bates.
It still bites, deeply.
It shakes, insults and rattles me.
The sad end of my funny bone.
An empty shaker, with no sound.
Taig.
What’s a Taig?
Catholic.
What’s a Catholic?
Automatic Irish?
Saint Patrick’s patriot robots?
Crossing, lifting the water,
Counting beads, tying knots?
Killing for the cause,
The fox in the bushes.
Anymore?
A little place just outside
Compassion.
Bread.
Where’s the bread of forgiveness?
Cut me off a slice.
Blown apart and spread around.
This love.
Shove a buttered piece of it
Into my hands.
It’s my land too.
For where is my land
If not here?
For only you?
Jewish people
Have a word for it.
The outsider, the other
The down there.
The not as good as.
As good as us.
Goy.
Go on, catch the bus . . .
Prod is as Goy
As it gets.
To me, Prod has
All the dull, inaccurate
Metallic impact
And imprisonment,
Of a street drain cover,
Imbedded in cobble stones.
It lets you look in.
You can see and hear
That there is something there.
But you will never connect
With such rubbish
As a Prod, a Goy.
The Prod and the Goy
Are one and the same.
To the Irish,
Those good Catholic Irish
Who like to use this name
Amongst their own.
Prod . . . the avoidance
Of seeing humanity in the eyes
Of your enemy.
Am I still your enemy?
Am I still only your Prod?
Your Goy?
Such simple labels,
Definitions, tickets
To the lazy turnstiles
Of division.
Which team are you on?
And who will win the cup?
We rush in to see the game
With our family and friends,
Our mates.
The same bacon on narrow plates.
Only to end up
At one end or the other
Like pigs,
Smothered in the shit
And the branding, the pride
And all the illusions of belonging.
The Prod, the Goy and the Taig.
Each, its own dumb thump
To the brain.
Dull, dumb cracker
To the skull, the intelligence.
Moronic and short of words.
Short of something that would
Feed us.
Nurture this unlit, unique flame.
Re-kindle the kindling, kindly.
Still damp from all our tears
Of un-belonging.
Prod, Goy, Taig.
Chink, Wop, Spic.
Kike, Brit, Nigger.
Black, Boy, Lundy, Tout.
Check these words out.
Short, like slaps to the face.
Dead prayers of hate.
Tied to a living wonder tree.
Engulfed by the fresh ash
Of an angry volcano.
All the same words.
The un-doing of the other.
Different shaped railings
Designed and fixed.
To keep us out,
Keep us down,
And keep us apart.
By Randall Stephen Hall ©
Citizen Ship Belfast 2013. Nos 25.
And there was I thinking, all this time, that I was the other.
Northern Catholic, lesser, outisder.
You say you are other too?
Then let us search together, you and I, for that otherland where we both belong.
Otherland, what a lovely and perfect word.
I agree Virginia. “Otherland”. One person’s “otherland” is “another’s
“comfy sofa land”. Ta Ta.
Thanks Maryjo. There is no monopoly for being an outsider in your own country just through the most contrary, random, roulette like, result for a male sperm to end up as a male/female catholic or protestant human, through utter chance, fate or the stars, to be living on the “otherland” we now call Ireland (north or south).
Labels, labels, labels. Mental constructs. Only real through collective consensus or internally for the individual.
Am I mistaken to feel that the terms “Prod or Taig” or two sides of the one coin?
Go raibh maith agat. Peace . . .
Stiofán
“For Mary Jo and Virginia. “OTHERLAND”.
Oh for the map to Otherland. Yes, let us search together.
Thanks once again.