The Celtic Tiger, stone dead.
Isn’t it awful, awful?
She wandered onto the M6
Somewhere near Kinnegad,
Into the brute smack
Of a Lidl truck going west.
The heft of headlines, snap rage.
Isn’t it a real disgrace?
Someone left …
Tiger Wake
Category: Poetry
Poem: Us & Then (Exabyte)
Us & Then (Exabyte)
Billows of dust
Thickened and dry
Colour of rust
Blotting the sky
Comments flicker in the fallen night
(A trillion stars in a trillion galaxies)
Flickering, bickering, faraway old light of
1000000000000000000000000 stars
Go on, get …
Poem: Solstice on Skye Road
Summer Solstice, 2017
To watch from a distance
The world settle in for its night
From a bank high up under the Skye Road
Where I can make out
The comforts of lights in windows
And cars in drives
And …
Poem: Breaking News
This poem is called Breaking News
This is it guys
It’s happening
Clear the decks
This is breaking
I want pictures
Get the victim names
Find them on Facebook
Cross reference with LinkedIn:
We need names, faces, stories, now
Quick …
Poem: Notifications (5)
The body it waits, all tensed up
For the next sudden ping,
[New message]
And from the top of the stomach,
When it hits,
Nerves spark and jitter.
The body is wired from the mind to the world,
[Permission required …
I am (Poem)
I am
The car jolts and rocks along the track, as though dragged by chains to a chased beast.
I am the beast.
The indistinct greyed-over bogs and swollen rivers coming down the hills whish by the windows
I am …
Poem: Let’s Get Angry and Call it Like it is.
Let’s Get Angry and Call it Like it is.
Inflame inflame!
There is not enough
Fire in the game,
Or teeth in the trough.
Stoke, stoke!
The peace of your pieces;
Shake from the smoke,
Sparks to the breezes.
Whip, …
Spring Fishing (poem)
Spring Fishing
Am I in a trap?
Did I build it myself?
The punt bobs on the waves between Broochen and the point of Fournaugh
This is no weather for fishing; no weather for anything bar the
Seat next to …
Máméan: Photos and Words
Máméan, Pass of the Birds
According to legend, St. Patrick blessed Connemara from a well at the top of the pass, and slept there (“Leaba Padraic”=”Patrick’s bed”), though to my limited knowledge there was stuff going on there before that …
The Ends of Glann: In photos and words
The Glann road follows the western edge of Lough Corrib from Oughterard towards Maam, ending close to the foothills of the Maamturk mountains. The lake narrows towards its Northwestern corner, with peninsulas like the Hill of Doon coming within a …
A poem from a man to his bride on their wedding day
Daffodils rising, raising yellow heads to bob in March winds.
Driving from Aberdeen across a Scottish Motorway,
Over the Irish sea in the belly of a ferry
South from Belfast and west from Dublin
West to Galway City and beyond,…
A Reading of W.B. Yeats’s Among School Children
W.B. Yeats visited a public school in Waterford in 1926, and there, as an ageing man among the young children, his mind wanders, first to Maud Gonne, to youth, and in an unexpected way, to something universal and beautiful: Among …
Poem: The Little Things
The smallest thing; flap of a finch’s wing
Dart of a blackbird’s eye
Rising of spring from buried roots with a cry
Strange to be here again
Late, behind schedule, delayed, out of time,
Yet back at the beginning, where …
Poem: An artist regrets having never committed
An artist regrets having never committed
Streets outside the curtains
Draw me back
A bad sketch of a hollow tune
Hums above the others in the room
For her, my vacant ruin.
Waking in a strange old bed can be …
Poem: Solutions
Do not forget me when the door clicks shut
Let me linger and fidget as a breeze
I would prefer to persist
Like the smell of toast or coffee or Febreeze
And my foregone exit resist
The lake at its …
Poem: Rainy Day in Renvyle
Rainy Day in Renvyle
Rain sweeps across the wide open,
Clouds rolling in from the west,
Tears from the sky set in motion
Blown by a wind that won’t rest.
Ceaseless the changes chase over,
The shelterless landscape at speed.…
Loading, loading, lost
Sit, sit and be still. Douse that ragged brain in cold water. let it sting until you settle, finally awake.
The preacher stands waiting at the gate. Is he coming or going, hearing or telling? With your finger raised to …
In Need Of…
In need of
Distraction,
Direction,
Redemption.
Stripped down, the workmanship laid bare,
Twisted knuckles hang in the air.
At the doorway, pause, freeze, statue-solid,
Like you had never read and your ghost had just disappeared,
And armies marched across your …
Real Heart
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Huh?
So a verse-
Am G D (fingerpicked)…
The Critic
When she pressed on her glasses and drew the words near
Their shape and their meaning began to ring clear
The humdrum around her then faded away
And her mind drifted back to an earlier day
Where raucous and ready …