Author: Paul O'Mahony

When I lived in a black hole, no light escaped.
Light-bearing tones
were sucked in by the gravity
of waning density.

My black hole never filled,
there was always room
for matters to collapse inward,
growing melancholy.

As pain sank in,
like nails driven into the palms of Christ,
you saw my face
lighten for a camera.

Scientists used to have a theory of general misery.
They said my black hole would collapse
and, just as Dante emerged from his dark wood,
I would regain my fire,

and become a star reborn.

Which is more unpleasant

an Americano without body

a meal without taste

an apple rotten to the core

a woman who’s never cried

a man afraid to try

a child you can’t distract

a secret smashed to smithereens

a dream turned sour

a faith unfounded

howls of slaughtered daisies

weeping willows in drought

the last gasp of an olive tree

a whale beached on barnacles

the last dodo dying in chains

an island of plastic reproducing

a dog that will not walk

a cat that cannot purr

an elephant on crutches

fifteen years of carbuncles

sixteen decades in a black hole

seventeen centuries without a change in the weather.

What is it like to be a man?
the painter asked.

Is it the stubble that grows on your face?
Is it the underpants and trousers you wear to work,
the brogues you pull over your socks,
the wombless life you live.

What is it like to resemble a man?
the painter asked.

To talk like a man,
to eat like one of the lads,
to have male blood in your veins,
and the wombless way you walk.

What is it like to feel a man?
the painter asked.

To feel grown up,
to shut your mouth when entranced,
to be silent when dismayed,
to keep secrets from your best friend,
and mature in an eggless, wombless existence,

the painter asked.

If all our mothers disappeared from Earth

If our young women never again gave birth

There’d be no more elephants born

No afterbirth to consume

No eggs to hatch

No more pups, kittens, cubs, kids, calves, colts, fillies, foals, porcupettes, lambs, duckling, keets, cygnets, poults, pufflings, goslings, eaglets, efts, tadpoles, codling, smolts, spats, spiderlings, wrigglers, chicks, hatchlings, joeys, toadlets, snakelets, antlings, leverets, kits, eyases,  shoats, farrow, ephyrae, squeakers, pinkies, nymphs, elvers, squabs, hoglets, wormlets, fawns, fingerlings,

Bacteria