Poem: For my Best Friend on her Wedding Day

A poem for a friend's wedding day long past but well remembered. Both of them are the sort who will joyfully and consciously grow old together, falling deeper in love every day.  Such a life blessing exists for those who truly value it and themselves, therefore hope springs eternal.

For My Best Friend On Her Wedding Day

There is no shame in luxury,

or laziness,

or sloth,

when time to practise them is wise,

and benefits you both.

We work and slave and struggle

so to keep our basic things,

for we deserve everything,

all riches owned by kings.

Yet we don’t deserve a scrap of bread,

nor the right for it to sing.

We will eat when others starve,

and live, while others die.

The honest are sent to the chopping block

while we escape, and lie.

There is no earning,

no reward,

no deserving what we make.

There’s no difference between what we give,

and what we really take.

Struggle has no meaning

other than that to survive.

And in the act of struggling,

I forget just how to live.

Struggle is for status,

and status is for fools.

In my life’s Swiss Army knife,

it’s the stupidest of tools.

So every action that you take

make conscious,

and with love.

Evil is not in the vice,

but intemperance thereof.

New Poem: Growing Up

Growing Up
by A.R. Carter

When my demons fall

I weep with relief,

excised of the gangrene

of youthful bad permission,

my conscience leaden with deep-six freedom

from the lonely, poisonous things

that I summoned long ago

out of curiosity, and a strong constitution,
thinking myself immortal.

Now, death has swept by too often,
I have felt her wings too close;
then she takes another,
and I count in thankfulness
my hard and merciless virtues.

The moral stanch of silence 

stops my heart’s bleeding.

Silence here is warm and full of sun-dust,

rippled only by the trains' insistent schedule.

My silence is like the smell of bread,

simple and richer than Solomon.

Incensed by peace, 

the beasts of boredom

shriek at my nothing affluence

pleading for a fresh finite vein

to bite into and suckle.

But for sanity’s sake,

my bitter cold breastplate has no time

for whines and bipolar tears.

And my own smug nothing cries, 

empty within

trading compassion for sanity,

a profit-loss deal negating all sin

which my badly glued heart 

cannot fathom.

Without compassion,

and new emptiness,

the creations of youth are gone.

The child of my music can’t return

though it must,

with my heart in hand;

ears set against the buzz

of the fens of mediocrity,

stubbornly punting

across the Styx of my tears

to shores 

of transcendent change.

Glencoe, Western Highlands

Introspection

Solitude, music, writing, art, reason, and nature are joys which are undervalued by the unwise.  These virtues and pleasures of the intellect do not inflict upon me the insufferable patriarchy of civilization, with the worthless proving ground of its roles, its idiotic superstitions, its power plays, and its inevitable soul-killing violence. 

Every time I lie alone with a heart and a body aching for the short-lived pleasures of love, I remember the price I had to pay for it as a woman, and when my reason returns, am glad for the hours upon hours of pleasure I derive from interests and hobbies that only I, exclusively, am present to judge.  When I lie upon my favorite chair in hours of contemplation, nobody judges me, and when I sing off-key, nobody judges me; when I choose to compose lines of poetry which are ridiculous, nobody is there to scoff, and when I draw silly things, only the paper knows how deliciously I have wasted my time. 

The one and only redemption of all that suffering I carry with me is a beautiful child I can raise to be her own woman, and if there is anything on this earth that can redeem the burden, judgment, and secondary motives of men, that would be a child whose presence and spirit are a joy.

As for all other suffering, I drop that burden with more willingness than the worst and most selfish woman you can imagine.  No man is worth sacrifice, and nobody will dare to require me to prove myself ever again.  It is a profound waste of time far better spent on meaningless joys and creative pleasures that madden the halls of power and their worshipful followers.  If any man steps within my boundaries to extricate a pound of flesh and to tax my happiness again for his own sake, he will find his hook slung into a pond of leeches and serpents, and his fate upon crawling out and unwisely pressing the matter will be of his own making.  Now, it is not about what I can give, but what I can be given.  Since I do not have a face that can launch the war of Troy, or a shower of gifts and infinite expressions of generosity, I am accepting of my solitude as a permanent situation.

With the perspective of age and observation, I find that solitude is a greater pleasure than any desire for inclusion, for all inclusion brings me into a game, and I have no time for games when I could be creating worlds of beauty in my joyously idle mind.  

I could be asked why I have not spent time in better service to humanity, but I ask humanity, what better way to show the world that none of us are obligated to be anything other than happy.  This example is my service to humanity, and I am satisfied with it.  

Poem: The Derry Cat Lady

Waterside cat lady don't give a shit.  She says what she wants.

Derry Cat Lady

by A. Carter

Fuck sake, piss off! yees wains and brats,
I'd ruller hauve me fickle cats.
Though furry and a mingin’ lot,
they love me, tho I'm auld and fat.

Hairy Gerry and big orange Bill
to-geller lap me kitchen swill,
and peaceful like, they're gnawin' bones,
but here's you wee shites a-throwin' stones.

And if I get my hands on you,
I'll teach a hard learned thing or two,
wi’ the Waterside witch's curse
of Ulster's Red Hand on your arse.

The boy who hurts a living thing
pays dear to wear the Devil's ring,
and does his work with idle hands
on guns and in the marching bands.

So quick! before you sell your soul,
a cretin bored and on the dole,
show kindness tae a simple cat,
and give his small wee head a pat,

lest ye be forever 

a fuckin twat.

Outhere Music on SoundCloud

I have had the pleasure of discovering an early music label out of Brussels called Outhere music, and they currently have a massive discography sampler on SoundCloud that is an absolute pleasure.

As much as I love the recordings of the Dowland Consort and the incredible sounds of the Early Music Consort founded by David Munrow in London, continental recordings of early music from France and Italy utterly captivate me as well.  This selection of music will keep me happy as a writer for a considerable period of time, so I'll share it here as well.  The label's genres vary from early medieval, to renaissance, to baroque, to romantic, and even a little jazz, concentrating mostly on baroque and Italian Renaissance.

Poem: The Smell of Ireland

Con Durham, a man full of talent, gentleness and love.

I met and played trad music with him in Daingean ui Chuis.

RIP, angel of music.

The Smell of Ireland

by A.R. Carter

When I first landed there, I noticed the smell;

an odd acrid tang, not unpleasant at all.

New to that place I wondered about it,

and after years couldn’t recall

what life’s like without it.

It’s turf-grates and oak,

Bord na Mona’s thick smoke,

vinegar, sausage and chips.

Dettol and paint, and on feet of a saint

beeswax sweet, and the spice of incense.

The harbour’s rotten hemp rope,

and the lavender soap

on old ladies sitting at mass.

The cough of the bus

with a tourist-full truss

wearing too much cologne

as they pass.

St. James’s Gate stinks of burnt barley malt

with relief found in Howth and its air full of salt.

Botanical treasures await in Glasnevin,

the breath of woodbine heaves its own special heaven.

Steaming tarmac, gooey and black,

is mixed in with cow-pats and green.

Mussels in sand, and the smell of a land

of stone walls and fresh Carraghín.

Silage and stink on February dirt,

blackberries rotten on vines;

bacon and eggs with rich soda bread,

the deep quiet stands of white pines.

Black tar on canvas of curraghs tied down,

the trawlers’ old engine oil,

damp woolen jumpers of men worked to the bone

that smell of tobacco and toil.

The smell of a nation, the dirt-smell of spud,

crimped on the coastline by seaweed and mud.

I didn’t hear jays or the mockingbird’s song,

and when all was right, a piece was still wrong.

Nights caught me off as I gazed on the thickets.

They were velvety deep, with no chirping of crickets.

I imagined them all, and then I recalled,

wood stoves on a morning’s cold hickory pall,

fried country ham on the first day of autumn,

cinnamon, walnut, molasses and pumpkin,

sumac and honeysuckle on a deep summer evening,

cornbread, and Lysol, and homemade fried chicken.

Mom’s cotton quilts kept in old cedar chests,

the whirr of cicadas, the razzing of locusts,

and peeking through snow,

the first purple spring crocus.

Then I remembered what I loved about home.

So I’d think of Nashville,

and pick up the phone.

New Poem- Johnny Blue

This is a poem about the Southerners in the US Civil War like the Tennessee regiments who fought on the Union side, of whom were many, and their ranks were silent by necessity but many in number.  

Johnny Blue

The men in gray embrace their lies,

The Union army holds what’s true,

but beware the most the unknown prize

fought for by Johnny men in blue.

They hold most dear a precious fight

oppressed in silence through and through,

and keep thus hid ferocious light

fought for by Johnny men in blue.

Around them they see every day

rags and slavery’s suffering true,

thus propaganda’s feet of clay

are smashed to bits by Johnny Blue.

His eyes are fire, his nostrils flare,

to lay six deep the gray mens’ crew,

of all good fighting men, he’ll dare

not to aim high, brave Johnny Blue.

Accuse the South of rebel heart

no quarter given through and through,

but rebels in their ranks are smart,

cutthroats at night, dark Johnny Blue.

When blue boys are on the north train

avert your eyes, they’ll stare you through;

the Grays have God, we have Mark Twain,

Hell’s flames won’t touch good Johnny Blue.

The Paladin's Lament

The Last Crusader, by Karl Friedrich Lessing

The Paladin's Lament

by A.R. Carter, 2011

The swirl of vengeful desert dust

and moral rage long simmering

dulls the sound of angel's wing

and hides my hope's light glimmering.

In righteous roar of red-tinged mist,

all peace of mind is gone and lost.

If challenge in this life were fair,

not vigil by Saracen's lair,

if I had just normal struggles made,

not bashing demons on my blade,

the gnashing in my soul would stop

and simple joys from heaven drop.

I deftly face the Devil's knife

slicing weakness from my life,

but facing monsters miles wide

with no-one's army by my side

is getting old quite hard and fast;

time's mortal strength will not long last.

If worldly needs did not exist

I'd retire to a hermit's nest,

but a quiet breaking heart at noon

makes sinful midnight hand creep in

delivering me so I may rest,

tears falling after on my breast.

It waits to cherish, love, adore,

if just my pride were not at war.

Alone I fall asleep at night,

alone I wake in morning light.

IRA: a poem

I am publishing this poem in celebration of the courage of justice in Northern Ireland to finally arrest Gerry Adams for ordering the cruel and heartless murder and disappearing of widow and mother of 10 Jean McConville.  Rot in prison, Gerry, and then in hell when it's your time to be pulled to the underworld by dark and sticky things when your body utters its last ragged breath.

And to Bobby Sands: sorry you're late for dinner; looks like Gerry got your portion, again.  But take it as a compliment if he tries the poo and blanket approach, even though judging by his Twitter I really don't think he'd be capable of skipping breakfast.  You should have known that murder does not attain political objectives, and you should have known this not only before starving yourself to death, but before you ever joined the IRA.  Civil rights was John Hume's job and he did a billion times more useful work than the IRA ever did.

To justice upon Gerry Adams.  As for you, Bobby Sands, don't be late for dinner again, you fucking numpty.  Maybe you'll come back in your next life as the world's greatest food critic.  In the meantime, I hope some eejit leaves a bucket of KFC on your grave.  It was all for naught.

Slainte mhaith.

------

I.R.A.
by A.R. Carter

Vomit forth your evil,

let it rot into the earth,

for all you’ve sown is suffering

from dull day of your birth.

Your nation’s children would despise

their language and their song,

you twist and spout its hard reprise

in worship of the strong.

You won’t try to let them fly

on wings you never had,

but give them stone in anger thrown

and going slowly mad.

Vice becomes the price you take

for freedom at all cost,

political objective's snake

that bites the frightened lost.

A fist that strikes a shuttered mouth

in raining silent room,

a false idealistic light

brings darkness to the gloom.

And in the belly of the Earth

you sit like worm of old,

waiting for your nation’s birth

in bitterness and cold.

A heart of wild angry child

in mounting hate inflames,

assigning not an equal hand

but throwing only blame.

And you would claim to be the same

as Fianna bright and strong.

Rhetoric nods to valour’s gods,

but you’re dark Crom all along.

Cu Chulainn and the Morrigan

On this Bealtaine day, I will publish a bit of my Celtic poetry.  This one describes the dichotomy of hero CuChulainn versus the goddess known as the Morrigan.

Morrigan is the dark goddess of prophecy, who foretells death, and as such, she holds her position of power in a permanent fairy twilight of immortality and foreknowledge.  Immortality and foreknowledge does nothing to truly advance the virtues of courage, curiosity, and integrity that put all of us mortals truly at risk.  Yet without those risks, there is not life...only twilight and faery shallowness.

In the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Cu Chulainn in his last dying breath scorns Morrigan's self-righteous desire to always be right.  The point is not death, the point is not heroism; the point is life.  Every painful moment of it matters, as does every joy; every moment of cowardice, every moment of courage, every failure, every victory.

Cu Chulainn by John Darren Sutton

Cu Chulainn and the Morrigan

By A.R. Carter

Cu Chulainn and the Morrigan

begs the question, "Who has won?"

For she had been right all along,

the hero's life would end its song,

yet being right is dull, blase,

than risking all for star to blaze.

On bloody shoulder, raven judge,

mocked his errors to begrudge,

but mortal life ends with his laugh

at righteous dullard's living death.

The lie of prophecy stands clear

before the joke of hero's jeer,

and hooded coward, raging bitch,

claims power as the wise old witch,

her cants and spells a hollow stage

to rants of machinating mage,

yet though Cu Chulainn's bones may rot

his courage did what she hath not.

Begrudger's eyes, they judge and scheme;

but scorn gives mine

Cu Chulainn's gleam.

The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments

If any of you have seen my ethnomusicology profile, you know that this puts me in my happy place. Now I have to go listen to the wonderful David Munrow and the Early Music Consort.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27205752

Article on David Munrow

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/9285826/David-Munrow-Tragic-genius-who-brought-early-music-to-the-masses.html

I want to play all of these.  All at the same time.  On Game of Thrones.  A hurdy gurdy would definitely be my weapon of choice.

This is David Munrow and the Early Music Consort's interpretation of the music of the medieval Trouveres, a class of poet minstrel who travelled throughout the courts of Europe to sing songs of love and romance from the 12th to 14th centuries.  Before then most music was sung in cathedrals in motet or chant, but the Trouveres brought a high class of minstrelsy to the continent that was first to become even more ornate during the Renaissance and develop into the Classical tradition at its height.

And here are the Early Music Consort's grandiose Renaissance Dances.

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Ode to Fundamentalism

Just to keep everything equal on all fronts, here's my opinion of fundamentalism.  

It's about as low as that of the occult.

Ode To Fundamentalism

By A.R. Carter

What makes you think

that your genes are so free

to birth nineteen brats

from a great clown car gee!

You're paving this earth

with more and more monkeys,

obligation religion

making armies of flunkies.

You've not one single care

for this world’s refuge shrinking,

manufacturing humans

without even once thinking;

in your church lady dresses

and cellars of food,

with planned Armageddon

the plight of your brood.

It’s enough to make women like me

fume and glower

that people like you

have so much voting power.

And as your thin voices 

raise high in church song,

the nihilist in me 

declares, “Bring it on!”

Elect fools to office 

and nuke the whole world,

bring on the Four Horsemen,

God’s great plan unfurled;

crusade for your oil 

without conscience or pardon

to warm us all up 

with black hydrocarbons.

And to think! I once had 

to look for acceptance

from people like you

just to earn a rank pittance,

And maybe you’ll know 

why I want my big tush

to get off of the planet 

of Mr. George Bush.

When it all ends 

I’m on Alpha Centauri,

with moonberry wine 

and Venusian ditty,

with the trees growing back

with the lakes flowing clean,

with rust overtaking

the last human machine.

On the Occult

And now we have a poem about the occult, and my opinion of it.  Namely, that anyone who practices it out of the ego desire for power is destined to be an utter clown, and possibly a danger to themselves and those around them.

If you know an occultist who is over 40 and still practicing it, they have a) remained in a petulant twilight of teenage rebellion, relishing the false authority that age in the occult community can denote, b) opened a shop and made loads of money on the desires of others to delude themselves, or c) actually gained some wisdom out of it and keep it to themselves as a result, humbly enjoying its manifestation as creativity and personal productivity, as a private conversation between themselves and their higher will.

This poem is about a pathetic woman who managed to combine both the occult and schizophrena with tragic side effects on her children brought on by sickening narcissism.  Even though she ended up being a harassment and liability to me for years afterward, I only slammed up against a corner of her insanity, in comparison to the desolation she visited upon her child through the horrendous associates she had in satanism.  However, I had the good fortune of pressuring her paranoia so badly that her stupidity consumed her business, and she eventually shut down, sparing a neighborhood of further incarnations of her schizophrenic deviancy.  Which was good, because she was selling poisons to college students and I had the misfortune of talking down the parents of one who was institutionalized as a result.

Perhaps I should have given them leave to do what they had come to her shop to do.  But that would have been a moment of moral ambiguity that my own conscience would have forbidden.  And that moment is nearly 17 years gone at this stage.  This is but an echo of an epic battle of wills.

Silly rabbit.  
A poem by A. R. Carter


You gutter-snipe of snide articulation,
gesticulating your magickal manipulation,
raise your demons!  I dare you still;
your blind behest for my false arrest
did well to cement my will.

You burned away the chaff of me,
the favor of an enemy,
cauterizing weakness with your hate.
“Magickal War” you called it.
A mere scuffle to define reality,
shooting blanks of faulty salty hearsay.

And red light glowed as I awoke
morning after morning,
a favor granted by ancient friends
to give old souls fair warning.
So I raised the fell nidstang,
and cheerfully the church-bells rang,
in witness to your burning.

Addict, pervert, scum alike,
their wallets all ran dry,
the good folks left your patch of earth,
with no more than a sigh.
Paranoia left you naked
in concrete exposure
as you dined on insanity
and shat disgraced foreclosure.

And years beyond the ugly sound
of your indigent haranguing,
I fell asleep to shameless singing
and surfed tornadoes in my dreams,
that gently raised me up
to drink vintage wise in mockery
of sour-graped chicanery
from my very own grail cup.
The serpent crushed into the ground,
with friends and favors all around,
I hold feasts in their honor.

So Set has cause to sing the blues
of thwarted and disparaged ruse,
For I stole away your ruby shoes
and tossed them in my closet.
No lie on earth can take me down
I mulched the garbage you had sown,
and now the sun shines on me warm,
meaningless in all but form.

Silly rabbit!  Magic is for tricks.

Ode to a Panniculus

I wrote this poem back in January to encapsulate my feelings about being fat.  It is now April, and I have severely curtailed my intake to 1 1/2 meals a day and almost no carbohydrates.  As a result I have dropped about 25 pounds so far and gone down a full 2 dress sizes.  However I still have at least another 4 to conquer, but I am probably more ardent in my determination now.  The front of me is melting like that dude's face in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

ODE TO A PANNICULUS

Bloober Blob the blubber slob
is a slapping slab of flapping flab,
a ridiculous panniculus,
a sloppy slag of blubbing blab.

She's the vampire on the front of me,
so big that I can't hope to see
my feet.  This shit has got to end.
No happy ending to this trend.

I have decided now forthwith
she will not have a single pith
of politically correct petition.
I will kill her of my own volition.

With diet, hate, and exercise,
I'll stomp her crying bold chokehold,
and break each finger I pry off,
not mine, but her face I will stuff
with fists of workouts, and not food
I will beat this weepy bitch up good.

Yes I did oncely believe
I must accept and let her live,
but if I let Bloober Blob just lie,
this bitch will make me up and die.
My joy and health are nearly wrecks,
and cockblocks? Pray tell, what is sex?

I'm sick and tired of self-acceptance,
As trying to ignore her is relentless.
Bloober Blobs are vampire guts
petitioning a too-kind putz
to fill the cruelty of life with food
and lie to me, and say it's good,
till there's no skin left to put it in,
and gobbles up my insulin.

It's not my job to preach to you
and if you're fat it's because you're kind,
too kind, and let her croon to you
till you have nothing left to do
but feed that bitch and let her cry
while life ends up a passerby.
If you feed your vampire that is fine.
I'm just saying that I'm murdering mine.

The Beginning

Let's see.  Where to start.

The real problem here is I have acres and acres of written material I need to sort out, and quite a lot of it is poetry.   I'm figuring if I publish a poem a day, perhaps I will eventually catch up with my own productivity.  And as the name of the blog suggests, by no means be under the impression that any of this will be beautiful and sublime.  I am a specialist in very cheeky humor and poetry.  As a matter of fact, I am at my most vicious as a poet, although I have my sublime moments.  Poetry is therapy.

Let's see.  Let's begin with a poem about some fickle hipsters I knew who dropped me like a bag of dog turds when I stopped being cool.  Namely, whenever life actually happened and I had emotions about it.


BLIND HIPSTER FENCE

My comment's deleted: persona not wanted;
worship yourself, and take kindness for granted.
Once I was cool, then was touched by the tragic,
suffering through, without practicing magic.
Friends become fifty then twenty then one,
when fair weather broke and I just wasn't fun.
You floated back in, but the damage was done.
I remembered like a cynical soul-damaged son.

In freaktown you are a shabby chic star,
a base mediocrity with a guitar.
I knew I'd eventually go home to the South.
In Nashville, we spit the lukewarm from our mouth.
I might seem like a jerk, when put to the test,
but you'll admit I was doing what Nashville does best.
Scenesters and hipsters, drug addled vectors,
self-immolated from middle class sectors,
don't be surprised that I figured you out
as quick and as hard as a Music Row scout.

So pardon me while I do not give a fuck,
most humans are selfish, and jerks, and they suck,
But even they know to be kind out of sense,
while you sit and drink coffee
on Blind Hipster Fence.

---

There, entry one.  That should do for a creative beginning.

The End, lol.

Well, it's finished.  7 years in Ireland and a year of recovery in Nashville, that is.

The physical symptoms, (chronic fatigue and inflammation), of the massive political fracas I ended up engaging in at the tail end of my adventure there, are pretty much healed. I'm finally about to venture forth with a healed life and a winning, albeit much more badass, attitude.  It's been a long time coming, however.

(Story disclaimer 1: Most people in Ireland are really nice, wonderful people, hardworking, middle class, conscientious.  It's just that they're spectacularly bullied by scumbags, and have to keep their heads down to stay invisible to them, and if you stand up to them like I did, what almost happened to me will definitely happen to them.  I was much safer in my misadventures, because no IRA wants to answer to Uncle Sam for any unfortunate event falling on an American national, and a loud one at that.)

(Story disclaimer 2: (To UK and Irish readers, mostly.) Just because I am self-critical and openly admit personal faults, does not mean that you have the license to disparage or humiliate me openly.  It is part of my humor and mine only.  Irish people admit no faults and pretend to be perfect, because genuine self-critical humility ends up in precisely this: people thinking they have a license to walk all over you.  I'd like to remind anyone who wants to be rude and humiliating that the only person allowed to criticize myself is myself, anyone who does not have only polite questions can GTFO my general vicinity, and I have more than enough self-criticism for one person to handle.  Anyone opening their gob to humiliate me thinking my honesty is their license, gets a busted lip, or at worst, deleted.)

Let's just begin, shall we?

I started this blog 7 years ago.  I started it and didn't keep it up, for very good reason: something stopped me from making my thoughts public online, but ended up sallying forth with the battle on facebook.  I couldn't put my finger on why I didn't start the blog, but this time in 2007, I was about to rub a pile of political terrorists the wrong way...a pile of political terrorists who already knew who I was, was sweating about it, and determined to weasel their way into my world for information as quickly as possible.  Which they did: through a man I dated, a man I was friends with but kicked out of my house, a false FBI profile on facebook, several social media infiltrators in Donegal and a very, very vicious alcoholic ex.

I play/played traditional Irish music, and enjoyed a life of wonderful guitar picking, some paid, some unpaid.  My love for ethnomusicology is a nonprofessional joy, and I am an avid folkie aficionado.  When I involved myself in the Irish folk tradition in the United States, political fundraisers of criminal background knew who I was.  When I played gigs around them, I peripherally knew what they were doing, although my life always has been about the music.  I didn't take much into account, and disregarded politics which seemed a bit too radical for my tastes.  I was a musician, after all.

Oops.

My marriage to an Irish man went south because he targeted me, while in the US on a work visa, for US citizenship and for assets.  His conscience over that melted his willingness to consummate the marriage like anti-Viagara (as well as my continual harping on him as to wanting to know why), so I figured that, although separation was inevitable, I could salvage his status as a father by having him temporarily take care of our child, to help me get professionally established in Ireland.  This was so I could be the majority custodial parent while he could still see her, because he otherwise had no chance if he had been sent packing and I had stayed in the US.

Double. Oops.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE! Also, compassion and sympathy for someone who targeted me for married citizenship is a bad idea.  

(Nowadays I am pretty low on compassion for those who see me as a potential resource.  As in, I have none, and will establish that understanding the second I sniff an arrangement which is neither mutual, nor on the bargaining table at the outset.  Too bad this one virtue is the virtue that would have dictated I deserved to keep hold of the finances I lost in this misadventuring adventure, and sublime victory against a wall of failure called "Alison living in Ireland".)

Well, the arrangement sounded like a reasonable idea anyhow, but what is easily executed by the functional working middle class in the US, is another story entirely in dealing with working class estate Irish men, used to their mothers basically being mute alien maidservants who wash their drawers till they're 40.

He began slowly crawling into a bottle on arrival, and for all I tried to get myself established with a good job in Dublin so I could take full responsibility of my daughter, as per our agreement, I had a good job for a while but the man succeeded in giving me repeat parental heart attacks instead, and a prescription for anxiety.  It came to a head in June 2008, when my mother got cancer (luckily it was taken care of at Vanderbilt hospital) and he realized that I wanted to go home and take my daughter with me.  Shortly after he got wind of my mother's health, I was slammed with a UK prohibited steps order and a joint custody order, forcing me to stay in Ireland, and worse, ordering me to regularly hand her over to his degenerating and progressively filthy care, even with me commuting and staying at his house and cleaning it from top to bottom every 2 to 3 weeks.  That was it, I had it.

I finally couldn't take the worry or the commute any more, and moved closer, into Donegal- a Sinn Fein county without a very good economy.  But I saw what was going on and finally drew the line; when I moved closer he flew off the deep end and went into an alcoholic stupor, and right after I moved into a nice little house, I promptly took her off him with no quarter.  After a couple months of no deal and refusing to hand her over at all, the social workers in Derry, wanting him to retain welfare benefits, coaxed, cajoled, and convinced me to hand her over with stipulations that she would be supervised by his family.

They actually explained to me that they wanted me to hand my child over to an alcoholic so he could keep his welfare.

...Yeah, that had me wondering what the hell their priorities were too, but I had court orders to comply with.

At some stage he had been calling the Scumbag Defense Forces: Sinn Fein.  This was in early 2008; they had come knocking on his door after I yelled at one of theirs, after my paperwork had been riffled through and they found out what was in my US bank accounts.  This was thanks to a squirrelly little bastard named Robbie Danaher, who died in Listowel sometime in early 2012.  Apparently, Danaher's family was in TD (Senator) Martin Ferris's county Kerry cadre, and Martin Ferris is a former Boston gun runner who was in cahoots with infamous gangster Whitey Bulger, both of whom were Noraid top men in US IRA fundraising.  If you don't know what Noraid is, Noraid's main objective, was 1) buying and smuggling weaponry for the IRA from the USA, and 2) sheltering IRA bombers and snipers who came to the US to hide out from UK justice. These "on the runs" are now after 25, 30 years, naturalized US citizens bagging your groceries in Middle America somewhere; only a few of them were ever extradited.

I'm one of a few who did their research after things started going REALLY BAD for me.  I had slammed the door in the face of the people who were not happy I was there to begin with.  It seriously did not occur to me how dangerous a place I was in as a result of that slamming, until I began digging and investigating after I ran for my life in September 2011.

Right after I moved to Donegal in 2008, I was friended on facebook by an FBI badge who was obviously not the FBI, but me being gullible I played right along.  This was how Sinn Fein monitored my private life.  My ex also found out from the Shinners that I had my own money; needless to say he hid his seething hatred well, but decided probably right then to sell me out, because they seemed far too informed on details of my past which were bad information, and would have come from only one source: my ex.

They got information about me off of him that was pure gold: 24 years ago I made some mad money in college as a goth pro-dom.  I wasn't a prostitute, and I never had sex with anyone; it was ACTING in a plastic suit and heels which nowadays would look on me like a gravity-sodden grizzly bear in a bikini.  And worse, I was bad at it; it was a laugh at the expense of men who had nothing better to do with their money.  I got bored with it in 1993 and left my college fiance in 1994 because I couldn't put up with his lifestyle, and went on to be Suzie Normal, or so I thought.  Needless to say I didn't expect something as lame as that to come bite me in the ass 24 years later.

They couldn't find me on any websites or anything, because I had quit that silliness before the Internets even existed.  But that didn't matter: they gleefully put it in every human social circle where I lived, and it explains how horribly I was treated from that point onward, as if it were something they could hold over me like a sword of Damocles.  I sussed it immediately when a woman who was supposed to be my closest friend in Letterkenny started inquiring about details of it literally out of the blue...when I had told nothing to no one, and I mean NO ONE.  Only my ex had known.  I answered that some people live that lifestyle, but it doesn't facilitate good relationships.  But when shit stinks up a network of babbling Irish mouths, you can bet I smelled it.

The IRA will destroy you on all fronts, so it's better to air out all your dirt at once and then poop on their doorstep in full view, which is tactically what I ended up doing much later on.  It's pretty easy to become Drama Queen Shameless when the dirt on you held by a criminal organization is that spectacularly lame.  But in Ireland they felt they then had the moral advantage in trying to take my child off of me with that info, and could spin it any way they thought necessary.

The IRA doesn't do anything without having a gigantic bogus moral reason to do so in order to sell the idea.

This was war.  But I had no idea it had been declared.

So, they hid behind friendly faces, who got chummy with me in Donegal when I moved closer to supervise and take major custody of my daughter, in the face of a redheaded woman named Matilda Crumlish.  She was a knacker, but so sharply well dressed that I had no idea what kind of criminal underground had me in its sights.  Meanwhile, they slowly targeted me for fraud, encouraged me to open a business that I easily sank about 100 grand into total to get up and running, then proudly and happily ran for 2 years trying to give my daughter a legacy in Ireland, ...then they sank the rest of my assets in a Ponzi scheme called ETIC Solutions, Ltd.  A slick investment company with offices in Ballybofey and Londonderry.

But not after they tried to off me twice, once on Halloween 2010 with a gigantic amount of diazepam put in my coffee and my body weight deflecting, and the other...the day after Christmas, 2010, with an invitation to a fictional wedding that I refused, due to flu and snow.  I would have ended up with a bullet in my head in a bog somewhere under Mount Errigal, and me being a bog body for archaeologists 2000 years from now wondering if the local druids had made a sacrifice.

Osama Bin Laden, prepare your diddly-hole.

That was it.  Gloves were off and I turned into an investigative beast, and also a double viciously protective parent.  Which was necessary there.  No wonder Irish women are...well...Irish women.

Sinn Fein's main criticism of me was my apparently alien American cultural determination to be a working, income earning parent with the cooperation of a very well behaved child, instead of a stay at home mom enduring the bullshit of a scummy helpmeet, as the patriarchy of Irish culture would dictate and I flagrantly disregarded.  Lesson learned: I CANNOT coexist in a patriarchy, most especially a mafia papist hoedown barely two decades out of third world agricultural status.  I had no support.  The fact I ran a small business for the short time I had for it to be a money pit, is a massive achievement considering the evil those bastards were putting in the Hibernian rumor mill.

If you'd like to get an inkling as to how much I pissed off Sinn Fein/IRA, just read this press release from their favorite lawyers in Belfast.  This was in defense of their freebird CEO of their financial fraud scheme who apparently is on the lam on a semi permanent basis.  Probably having to do with a certain 1998 peace agreement requiring a blind eye to Sinn Fein/IRA's gangster financial dealings.

(Thanks Bill Clinton)

But it also includes veiled warnings to the British government and a personal warning to me ("Our own intensive investigations", lol).  I ignored it because the IRA are jackasses.  It cost me a lot, but the fight was worth it:

https://madden-finucane.com/2011/03/21/press-release-9/

Creepy to say the least.  They knew exactly who I was.  Yes I was scared.

After I was bilked of over 65 grand, I hauled ass with maximum prejudice, reported the scheme to the media, and caused a media firestorm, which bilked the main Sinn Fein investors out of the remaining 6 million sterling in fraud assets by forcing 2 governments to quickly confiscate them for redistribution,

...I'm going to stop right there.  Yes, as a matter of fact, I spectacularly assfucked the IRA out of 6 million pounds sterling holdings in a Ponzi scheme, being about 10-11 million dollars or thereabouts, by using the media, being unafraid to use my real name and squelching their window for fast and quiet asset liquidation.  I was on TV and everything in a gigantic media shitstorm.

Now, you have to admit, Americans are pretty fucking awesome at doing this kind of shit.

Google "Alison Carter Francois de Dietrich" to get all the outlets who picked it up and ran the story.

There were quiet raids and very quiet bank inquiries in the two weeks between the CEO fleeing the country and me squawking...giving the big boys a little time to start liquidating...but only a little.  This in turn lit a fire under 2 national governments to snatch up ALL the remaining assets of ETIC solutions Ltd. immediately, for redistribution to the investors.

A lot of people were first trying to blame investors for trying to hide criminal assets, and I kept shooting them down in radio interviews.  Oh I was having none of that bullshit; these assets were specifically targeted, being those of the gullible, hardworking, and honest.  People had gotten second mortgages to invest with this company.  (The ones at the TOP were the criminals, and the bank accounts these assets went to were in the Balkans, which, by the way, is the only place left where the IRA can squirrel away money, with Russia being the only place left where they can buy guns.)  The rest, salesmen, reps, everyone, were chumps.  I made sure as far as was in my power that these people were blamelessly going to get their money back, with the remaining assets in the UK and Ireland that did not get funneled to Balkan banks.  And thanks to my interviews with the BBC and Irish Times, hopefully they did with little inquiry.

But after that, I was The Enemy.  I then spent the next 3 years enduring a sheer and utter political hellstorm to get myself and my daughter back to the United States, including being threatened out of my business by spotty punks on IRA orders, and taking refuge with an ex who enjoyed every minute of 2 months of his opportunity to engage in abuse.  This ended with a pretty vicious beating, then a spate of homelessness to establish a view by UK authorities to financial need, getting family assistance, liquidating US property on the downlow ASAP, continuing hiding US land assets from Sinn Fein's view, sitting useless in a rowhouse in a Loyalist estate for 18 months where I could at least be left alone and protected by the surrounding Protestant community, and waiting for a court date while Sinn Fein repeatedly called the US Consulate and told them I was a prostitute, drug dealer, and child abuser, respectively, and who told the Consulate that I had criminal assets.

"Bullshit Mountain" does not even BEGIN to describe the amount of failure here.

All of which were patent lies.  I inherited it from a dead great granny who owned a sizable portion of DeLand, Florida during the 1920s and 30s.  Now that I'm "out" about having a job as a fellow land holder along with 8 other family members, and that my land income places me firmly in the independent middle class, as well as "out" about being a silly goth in college and an unrepentant freethinker, the moral claims of Sinn Fein are vaporized.  (As if the IRA's political wing had an actual moral platform.) Especially since my philosophy may be that of an avid freethinker, but my personal life is nothing but overtly conservative.

All in all I lost more than half my total worth with the rest just land, and dirt doesn't buy groceries, so it's time to find a job pretty soon.  My losses totaled over 200 grand counting loss of assets, loss of business, and being delayed in Belfast for nearly 2 years, but oh, how spectacularly I had my revenge.

I continue to be angry that the State Department listened to them, and had allowed them to pressure the US government into forcing us to stay in Northern Ireland until a court case was decided.  If I had been bundled away on a flight with kiddo, there would have been no desire on Britain's part to continue covering the costs of my ex's barrister considering his physical state of lightning-rapid alcoholic degeneration, Hague convention notwithstanding.  We had the paperwork in the US in order for passports early on, and I had full custody of my daughter in the US.  There was no reason for them not to be issued...but they still made us stay there and it cost me upward of 50 grand, sitting scared to death waiting for some Shinner from the adjoining Ardoyne estate to brick my windows or kill me.  But fortunately, I was too politically nuclear for them to be that stupid.

They waited until the custody court case hearing.

And my ex's barrister was ruthless.  By the time the so-called cross examination was finished, which was a thinly veiled IRA interrogation thanks to powersharing, giving those bastards the opportunity to abuse people in courtrooms as they saw fit, I was hallucinating for 3 days, sleepless for 2 nights and throwing up constantly.

Now when shit's done to you that results in that, you can understand how I felt.  Fortunately, I'm one of those who will run into battle in warp spasm mode swinging for Sparta, rather than throw myself off a cliff.

Also, fortunately, I am from Nashville.  That's when I called Bob Corker, who independently hauled ass thanks to his position as vice chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Thanks to Corker throwing it down with both Sinn Fein and the State Department, the Shinners shut the hell up, and the Crown awarded full custody to me and leave to return to the US with my daughter without further incident.

Not that I needed Britain to award me custody.  I already had it in the US.  All the passport paperwork was in order.  But the State Department was actually intimidated by Sinn Fein's insistence, when they are in truth nothing but ruthless gangsters, fraudsters, and scumbags.  Of course this cowtowing to foreign scum resulted in Benghazi as well, and I am a casualty of the weak-kneed, capitulating policy at that time which led to it.

Thanks Hillary.  I may be a major liberal, an atheist, a freethinker and a faithful Democrat, but bitch, I am glad you are out of a job.

And to think, I voted for them.  Well, Bill anyhow.  Twice.

I also learned how bipartisanship works when lives are at stake.  I may vehemently disagree with Corker's Senate voting record but we definitely need Republicans determining foreign policy, even if I personally think they can GTFO domestic policy and womens rights.

After we were given the green light and passports, I packed out my personal belongings on a one way shipment back home to Tennessee, and kiddo and I took the most wonderful 3 week vacation in England.

What a difference.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

Kind people.  Decent people.  I didn't sniff any secondary motives, people were SO NICE.  When you've been putting up with vicious, begrudging Irish censure and combative abuse for six years, the difference between England and Ireland can bring you to tears.

So first we bugged out at first light on the 20th of June to Liverpool on a ferry with no fanfare and 2 cases, stayed in Liverpool, saw the Beatles museum, shopped, and it began to finally dawn on me that there were no fenian eyes on me and nobody could park at the top of the street to see where we were going.  It was like a new lease on life.  Then we stayed a week enjoying the hell out of Blackpool, doing the touristy rubbish, then off to Cardiff to Doctor Who and Torchwood and the Cardiff Bay water taxi, then off to Butlins Minehead for a week of making kiddo's life awesome, then Manchester, flight out, and the pleasure of the cheapest transatlantic airfare on Earth being England to Orlando for promotional Disney stuff.

So I took kiddo to Disney World too.  She got all the awesomeness in one summer; from a miserable twilight of constant bullshit in Northern Ireland, to cream teas in England, the Beatles, Blackpool fun fairs, Doctor Who, A Butlins holiday, an Orlando holiday full of Disney, and finally coming back to Nashville exhausted and excited to start a new life free of an alcoholic, abusive pile of jerk ex and the criminal scumbags he sold me out to.

I win.

But I won with a new skill set of wisdom, and a new ability to see things much more closely, and since I came home, I discovered BBC Sherlock (4 years after it first aired) and immersed myself in Sherlock fandom.  Because, for one reason: to survive, I had to become Sherlock, deduce the enemy's next move, draw out their fire to prove myself a target, set stages, and fight dirty.

I was Sherlock, and in many ways, still am.  And I fuckin' love it.  I am profoundly miffed with the fact that it isn't a proper TV series, but I can deal; between a bit of fiction here, a bit of writing there, and familiarizing myself with Jeremy Brett's series from the 80s, I can watch, giggle, and think, "I did that."

Because after 3 attempts on my life during the worst of my troubles, (1 from an ex back in 1995 who was after my assets...I tell ya, money and romance DO NOT MIX!) and being clueless in astoundingly dangerous surrounds at times, I can deduce that bitches, I may have my obvious faults, but I am flawless in my results nonetheless.

And the fight is never over.
--

*** Comments are disabled on this post, because I love words of encouragement, but any Shinner would not be able to resist spewing forth a pile of pointless threats on finding it, as well as continuing with a tiresome onslaught of bullshit.  I am behind a wall of Uncle Sam now, and their avenues of harassment are utterly exhausted at this stage. ***