Category: poetry

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

 

The rain was downpouring on Monday evening.

Cork city centre was dark at 7pm because black clouds hung low. No one was outside on Oliver Plunkett Street.

I certainly wasn’t. I was warm and snug in the Hi-B, halfway into a pint of Guinness. Myself in the corner next to a couple who were leaning into each other.

I can’t resist eavesdropping. A habit from childhood.

Why have I never told you you have wonderful teeth?”

Thinking about it “could anyone resist listening in to that?

She said nothing at first, as if she’d misheard.

Your teeth are precious.

I saw him cross his ankles & tuck his legs under the seat. He pulled back from her eyes smiling.

How do you mean … precious?

They sparkle, so white. I’ve never seen teeth like them.

In all my fifty plus years paying wrapt attention to the intimacy & frivolity of others, I’d never seen anyone woo anyone by complementing their teeth.

It reminded me of the teeth poems I’d written when I was working for the National Trust.

The cleaner who changes her toothbrush 47 times a year…

The father who manages on two brushes a year…

Sounds like you fancy my teeth?

That’s not all he fancies, I said to myself.

Life is electric,

it sparks

it flows

it explodes

like lightening

in sheets

and forks.

Fuelled by water

fossils

and atoms.

There is more to electric light

than meets the eye.

Electricity lives in particles

wherever imagination reigns.