The ghost of myself is haunting my life

Category: hero

The Poems of Baz McCarthy

These are a selection of some of Baz McCarthy’s poems. Most poems were written in and around Bristol.  He doesn’t like writing at home, he says he needs the flurry of people rushing or sitting around, doing or saying pointless things to fill in their lives…

He’s always been a massive people-watcher and eavesdropper, so if you see some bloke furiously scribbling into his Moleskine on the table next to you…

Completely irreverent and lacking any formal training or respect for anyone who has, he writes from the gut and the heart and performs his poetry in the same powerful, yet carefree manner!

This year, 2023, he’s performed aplenty, around Bristol, in places such as El Rincon, The Bristol Fringe, Coffee#1, Eldon House, Fat Goat @ Jafra and Grain Barge and the poems get honed by audience reactions (shout-out to the many lovely, enthusiastic, patient and welcoming people who suffer at my poetic hands!).

Also, some these poems may well have changed by now and even grown into bigger and better poems, although I’m not saying bigger is always better!

The last mountain

With no emotion
because I see it every day
“You probably have 6 months to live”

Well, it’s different for me
I don’t see this everyday

I’m tough as old boots
I’m sure I’ll be fine
I will fight to the end

I’m going to climb a mountain
Maybe for the last time
Or maybe I won’t last

I’ve lost a lot of weight
But I’m going to get it back
When my chemo is over, I will bulk up
I will go to the gym
I will do all the things
That I am supposed to do
to bulk up
to get bigger

Big enough
to climb the mountain
Although
I’m already
Climbing a mountain
which is about as big as it can be

The biggest mountain I’ve ever climbed
Maybe this
is my last mountain

Maybe I won’t reach the top
But I’m going to fucking try
because I’m tough as old boots
And I don’t give up
And I’m not going away

I will climb

My last mountain

Was he really a hero if he didn’t save her life?

‘Heroic self-sacrifice’
He heard screams
He jumped in
Without hesitation
He drowned
She lived

Did he just swap
a life for a life?

Or did he change the world?
Touching so many hearts
Changing so many lives
Changing the world
One self-sacrifice
at a time

If he hadn’t jumped in
If he hadn’t in that moment
She may have drowned
He would have lived

The world would have carried on
The same
No hearts touched
No lives changed

A boy jumped into the Thames to save a woman and drowned (she was saved by someone else).Read the rest

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