Love made arcs of us,

and as water dreams

of droplets,

we dreamed of perfection

and might have made it,

but the curvature of our arms,

unfortunately,

had to round a perfect circle.

Clean Technology

 

How vicious those butchers

with bloody hands!

Our deaths delivered

clean as hovering.

How wonderfully civilised!

Pike

 

Pike resides in Gothic gloom

among the ever-descending piers

in dense silence.

Is the shadow of a ripple.

A Christian life,

shaped to it;

does as God directs.

Has the dark stain of silt.

Sweeps nave and aisles,

never actually grumbles,

swallows the unwary altar boy.

Is custodian of the gravel.

The White Square

 

The white square;

that dense emptiness;

the pressure it exerts.

I point out that there is nothing there,

that you are struggling with nothing,

that there is only you.

A Time

 Didn’t our lives come together? Once. 

Wasn’t there a time that was ours; 

the two of us? 

Isn’t that so, wasn’t there?

A time, once?

Survision Issue Nine

Includes 33 poets  from Ireland, England, Wales, USA, Canada, Australia,  Italy, some in translation https://survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm

And entries  open for submissions to the James Tate Prize 2021 for a poetry chapbook. 1st Prize: €120; 2nd Prize: €80. Both winners will win a chapbook publication + 10 free copies. There is an entrance fee of €16 for each manuscript. Deadline: 31th August 2021, midnight. Info: https://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm

Gulls

 

Dazzle-bellied off the graphite sea,

curds flying from the churned-up agitation

of the tide; the ocean’s mouth foaming, venting

furiously onto the beach at Rossnowlagh.

Inside the thunder-ear, climbing the grey air,

slicing the storm, they stitch cloud and water, screaming

obscenities at each other; thrashing and wheeling

in the cage between a ferocious earth, indifferent Heaven.

The wish

 

Grinning in the sunlight, the river

plays jazz on the stones.

I sit, feet dangling,

its frequencies lighting my face;

toss a coin for happiness

into the honeycomb of bright water,

It settles among the pebbles

that all wishes become.

Sitting Outside

 

He sits, comatose, outside his door;

the beer tins, spent cartridges

scattered all around.

She wakes him, suggests dinner;

he insists on having one more,

pulling the trigger releases a gasp.

Next time she comes

he’s slumped back in his chair,

a trail of beer running away from him.