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The Unremarkable

– Who is he, the man on the left?
– Him? Oh, he’s a robber
  A petty thief, more like than not
  And though he’s gone, his kind are not
  There’ll be many more like him around.
– And what of him? Him – on the right –
– His stock is much the same, I fear
  A criminal, not bad but wrong
  His like are always on this hill
  There’ll be many more like him around.
– And he? He in the centre, him?
– Another rebel, though I can’t
  Recall his name. His following
  Deserted him. They’re all the same.
  There’ll be many more like him around.

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PETITION – EDUCATION

My name is Molly O’Gorman – I am 15 but am in 6th year (the last year of school in Ireland) and was all set to sit the Leaving Certificate (leaving exams) in June. I have done 18 months of the two year course and was prepared to sit my exams but the department of education has decided to stop me from sitting my exams on the grounds that I need two years between my Junior Certificate (G.C.S.E. equivalent) sat in 3rd year and Leaving Certificate – I sat the Junior Certificate last year. This is completely ageist and unfair as I am now being forced to repeat a year that I have already done.

I have set up a petition in order to convince the Minister for Education to change her mind and change the rules to let me sit my exams – discrimination on account of age is completely wrong. I would be very grateful if anyone would sign it – it will only take you two minutes but it would make a massive difference to me!

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-education-allow-molly-o-gorman-to-do-her-leaving-cert-in-2015/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true

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Your Table

Your table
is just – too small.
It won’t block anything
and the wood is too
Weak
to hold out.
It’s just not
resilient –
no, it really wouldn’t be
of Use.
Keep your table
your small, weak table
upstairs
with a small, weak chair.
Even if it can’t support a piano
it can hold your head.

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The Woodwinds’ Lament

Smiling and laughing
We are a quartet
The oboes descend
And the piccolos soar

Smiling and laughing
We are a quintet
A violin soloist
Comes to the fore

Suddenly seeing
We are an octet
But semibreve rests
Are the oboes’ encore

They’re playing a tune
For a string quartet
Forgetting the woodwinds
That once were their core

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Toll

It does not shatter – that is to be said –
But when you strike the metal gold and red
It chimes a sound that mingles with a cry
Of anguish and of pain, filling the sky.
Although the sun has dulled the once-bright gold
The scarlet has retained its hue of old;
A stark reminder of the life’s-blood shed
Are the hourly glances at the dead.
Her agony prolonged with ev’ry ring
As she is forced again her song to sing –
The echo of the world she left behind
Ad infinitum calling back her mind.
 
Her suffering and pain we all can see
Peace! no longer ring it – let her be.

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Iphigenia

The cold, white marble
Of one thousand ships set sailing
Of Ulysses, of Peleus’s markēd son
Of sieges, Cyclopes, lovers and false gifts
Does not depict the sea they sailed upon.
 
The cold, white marble
Does not display the ink that wrote their story
The blood that filled their seas, that filled their sails
And blew them eastward for an hopeless war
Where Hades reigns alone, and He prevails.
 
The cold, white marble
Dare not detail the truth of her young neck
Snatched from the sacred block, yet still to die
Commended and condemned as noble cause
To every youth who cannot hear her cry.

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Harvard by Night

The warm wind blows, and the streetlamp
Indicates the dusk I don’t remember falling
Descending, not as a crashing waterfall
But as the smothering pillows of the south.
And wishing – wishing she were here
Not as she is now, but as she was before
Before a brother’s love had turned to hate
And memories turned sour by tainting age.
I wish away the cold, deceitful time
Marked only by the passage of a field
Not mine, into another’s hands
As confiscating rattles from a child
And I the thief, and nothing from it gained

Yes, I the thief – and nothing from it gained.

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Teacup

A million miles from anywhere

The eager waves do drag me down

Into the realm of dark despair

But they would never see me drown

 

The current raises up my soul

Buoyed by life’s more joyful side

As with the waves my spirits roll

Flowing, ebbing, with the tide

 

Until the time when I am washed

Upon a stony, sandy shore

The tempest of my once-life quashed

And of Selene aware no more.