Author: Paul O'Mahony

I'm Paul O'Mahony - living in Cork - Father - Poet - member of Toastmasters International - Business storytelling consultant - Podcaster - Blogger - Foodie - Loves to connect with people. . linkedin.com/in/paulhomahony

Flight

Blue shoes in pink

pink carriages in blue.

A clasp of silver buckle

reflects the sliver of light

that reaches into the cabin

bound for Lanzarote.

Geese… I hope she doesn’t need the potty

and hasn’t wet my lap. 

Fighting Through the Tough Times — Life as a Visual Storyteller

My experience of making a living as a creative can be summed up in two sentences. It’s brutal. It’s fulfilling. Most of the time, I can’t see beyond the brutality. Life is a relentless struggle to find work and pay the bills that leaves me sliced open and bloodied. I’m nothing more than a crimson stain mashed into […]

via Fighting Through the Tough Times — Life as a Visual Storyteller

First Thoughts

 

We play on each other’s stages

to music we can’t hear,

sound out an echo

into a strange new background.

 

We meet each other in the familiar

and miss one another in the weather,

speak in diverse tongues

of pictures we’ll never complete.

 

We sound alike on the street,

on the top floor of the bus.

At the hairdresser we are all blown dry

and we all shed skin.

 

That’s where the story ends,

the adventure begins. The day starts

with the mass rising from sleep.

The joints connecting again.

I Love Women



I love women

I admire women
I am jealous of women

I am enriched by women
I have been saved by women

I love the shape of women
… the flaws of women

I am infuriated by women
I love cooking for women

I am irritated by women
I despair of women

I am tickled by women
I write for women

Women have made me a man.

Oscar Wilde ‘The Ballad Of Reading Gaol’ on UK National Poetry Day [31 minutes]

wilde-ballad-beerbohm

For years I’ve wanted to read “The Ballad of Reading Gaol“.

On National Poetry Day in UK (6 October 2016) –  I did it.

 

Live-streaming poetry by Selima Hills & Matthew Sweeney

[Note:  This is 39 minutes.  To see all comments & heart –  click on the Periscope.TV link in the tweet above.]

Paul O’Mahony live-streaming two poems from the anthology  Staying Alive – real poems for unreal times“

“Cow” by Selima Hill (1945 -)  – from 15 minutes 50 seconds in.

“Sleep with a suitcase” by Matthew Sweeney (1951 – ) – from 30 minutes 36 seconds

Irish Water

https://audioboom.com/boos/5078435-love-or-hate-irish-water-political-poem

 

Irish Water
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”

I ramble thirsty as a shroud
from pub to pub and by the riverside.
Paddy Power in sight,
sure I’m right tight
– a death to chasers coming.

(Fresh demand in post,
investment dear,
to plug the pipes that leak rainfall.)

In search of a drop
to quench the thirst
to wet my whistle,
“cad a dhéanfaimid fasta gan báisteach ”
translated into water charge
hailstoning on showers.

(Taxpayers used to annexed wages,
consumers used to value added tax )
Now an extra fee,
you pay more for a slash
extra for a poo.

Water water,
never had so much
to squelch & welsh.
transparent pain, expensive rain,
we conserve you with pleasure,
and hurt pockets
where suffering’s egg is spermed:

I gamble boldly as a sect
that floats on high
o’re tombs of Micheál Kenny.
We Ourselves roll back the stone
and bury both alive
before the cock crows thrice.

As for the whiskey,
we drink it neat
until the Republic sings
the song of wandering Bacchus
from the ocean of the West.

Over-achiever

harlequin-ichthyosis-250x150
Overachiever

The sun overachieved

when she provided light, warmth, direction, security and reassurance

to the solar system.

 

The moon overachieved

when it reflected, drew tides, cast shadows and fed poets

mottled metaphors.

 

The stars overachieved

when they gave Hollywood a reputation, grains of sand a run for their money,

and inspired the search for Graham’s number.

 

There’s a woman with blond hair, tall, blue eyes, imagination of a harlequin,

and an inclination to call herself

overachiever.

Over-thinking as a way of life

Overthinking as a way of life

You have hurt me

Don’t think for a minute

I don’t know you’re about to deny it.

I know you’ve done that to me before

and

you’ve  probably forgotten

or

wiped it conveniently out of your memory

because

it suited you.

You’re always doing that

so

don’t go letting yourself off the hook

because

you’re the one who started this.

Aren’t you?

You might at least apologise.

But

you’ve apologised before

and

that hasn’t changed anything

so

what makes this time any different?

This time you’ve really hurt me

and

I suppose that doesn’t mean anything to you…

(And  so on…)

 

People who have no imagination

People who have no imagination

‘Twas wet outside the RDS in Ballsbridge,

under the bus shelter there was light against dark outside.

It wasn’t that I had no raincoat

(I’d saved money on showers)

nor the 2,016 strides to the Summit pub

– it was strangers-in-want that held my attention,

the black and the white

Mozambique and Mill Street,

Marrabenta and Riverdance.

They were talking in pauses

and the back of her hand brushed his sleeve.

I bet neither of them remembers

the advertising placed by Adshel.

I was the only  eavesdropper

with tickling drops of Irish moisture

massaging my humour.

You might well say there are “people who have no imagination”

but certainly they weren’t waiting for a lift.

As soon as we wake 

 

https://audioboom.com/boos/5039858-new-poem-as-soon-as-we-wake

 

As soon as we wake

As soon as you wake up,

you’re seduced by the sun

that comes over your horizon

and shines light throughout your land,

sky and heart scape.

 

As soon as I open my eyes,

I’m seduced by BBC News,

emails, notifications, Twitter, Facebook,

Instagram, Anchor, WordPress, Audioboo

and

“From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace“.

10 years ago …

[I don’t want to give you the impression I’m depressed now – so I better let you know I wrote this 10 years ago.]

https://audioboom.com/boos/5030988-a-poem-from-10-years-ago-ink-by-paul-o-mahony

 

Ink

There is a black blob of ink on my paper
and no amount of dipping the pen
will tidy the stain.

There was an inkwell sunk into my desk
and I used to gather a load of liquid
to decorate the page.

As the tool for writing became a fountain
and I learned to collect my ammunition
leaks came and pus dribbled.

This pool is drawning me down into its depth
and I’m too heavy to float in filth.
I need a good clean.

A note to my mother – August 2006

https://audioboom.com/boos/5021773-a-note-to-my-mother-2006

Dear Mum

If I simply say ‘you’re the best mum I’ve ever had‘,
you’ll know I’m in touch with previous lives.

But you’ll deserve it – because you brought us up
to think and duel with words, and look beyond

to the next time when I shouldn’t be late, or break
House Rules, lest you and I would give and take

for hours and hours – so I would learn and yearn
to be my own person – as is your way.

Poetry: “We played hide-and-seek on holidays”

We played hide and seek on holiday

I would close my eyes at evening,
the breeze would slip away
to another appointment.

I would count the lights go down,
cover my head from stars,
let the moon keep watch.

I would draw back shutters at dawn,
go search for the wind
outside

A mosaic of pale stone
ferociously pushing heat into my face,
a frog fixed in the pond with fierce eyeballs.

I would look behind corners of brilliant white
across luscious grass blades, erect, unmoving,
plumbago petals still under cork oaks,

palms hanging arced in the oven.
I would look and look,
until both eyelids would give in,

and call out to the wind:
You have won, Unfound One
You are master of this game.

A man I looked at twice

https://audioboom.com/boos/4999032-a-poem-a-man-i-looked-at-twice-by-paul-o-mahony

A man I looked at twice

I saw a man that reminded me of another,
grey bristles conjured up a face
I’d forgotten.

The forgotten put me in mind of the father
I’d lost, and that deathbed
brought back to life

the mother of my best friend
as she lay wasting
and the nurse checked the cathedra

made in a country where I’d visited
the Pied Piper’s adopted home
and fell asleep

in a single bed over which a portrait
of Saint Aloysius hung, next to the holy water font
replenished by an unknown agency.

 

___________________

Note:

I self-published the first version of this poem on my blog in January 2006 

 

I used to be nice


I used to be nice

Years ago
I composed this wish
Never noticed the clichés

I meant no vice:

may you go from strength to strength
may you soar over every sapping strain
may you float on the cushion of your dreams
until your sun sleeps and acorns reach maturity.

_________________

Note:

On 24th December 2005 – I self-published that bold stanza on my blog. Spot the phrase that doesn’t feel like a cliché to you …

To write a poem now

 

cafesmall

To write a poem now

To write a poem now
forgotten how,
fingers all too stale,
grown pale.
Unused soul went to sleep,
troubled deep.

Christ rose from the dead,
threw off sheets drenched in blood,
woke up, pushed the stone back
so light and birdsong dawned,
his dream made flesh,
again.

Fear revisited,
traces linger instead,
as if painted over.
Whitewashed over…

Jesus wrote his poem
on the road to Emmaus,
recovered from Gethsemane.
The words even ascended into Heaven
and were repeated.

To write a poem now…
the least I could do.

__________________________

Note:

I wrote this in 2011 – shortly after I recovered from a long bout of depression. I began it in Ely near Cambridge UK, & finished the first draft in my local much-loved haunt Cafe Beva, Glanmire, Co Cork. 

At the same time 

A woman leans 

elbows on a counter,

bends her right wrist

reveals painted fingernails

ring on middle finger.

She leaves a teaspoon in an empty coffee cup.

———

At the same time, 

a barista rinses stained cups in a sink,

heats a filter drip 

lets water flush down a drain,

replaces a glass jar of Columbian 

Tasting notes say

“stone fruits, milk chocolate, nutty”.

His hairy calves naked,

elbows sharp. 

———

At the same time, 

at a wooden bar,

two men play

‘Dungeons and Dragons”,

a fat crusty roll 

washed down by tap water.

A woman in a floral dress 

leans over, close,

demonstrates the best way

to lipstick both lips.

The men don’t ask to borrow her make-up.

——-

Bars explode and peter out…

Who is she? 


She’s a modern woman

I’ve never heard her speak.

Now I’m in love with her voice

angelic, soft, soothing

(not weak).

You probably imagine her saccharin, 

all sweetness and light

– so far.

(I bet you can feel the ‘but’ coming)

She utters a bitter sound of the night

across a breakfast table

turning in a bed

walking a street

brushing her teeth

even sitting to do her business.

Her voice creeps behind the words

subverts the common meaning of social intercourse.

Her stories are not my stories

If you stumbled across her vignettes

you might also mutter ‘they’re gold dust, 

they conceive, germinate, grow stronger

in the soil of daily life’.

And they bear seed

– whenever I get close enough.