Chimera Times You’ve lived beyond your relevance— Another song, another age, Another line while in a trance, Routine by prompt, an empty stage. The art lives past the life, and all They want is what you did when young, The bright first thing, the curtain call, When fireworks flew and bells were rung. Yet still … Read more
The First of February Well, here’s a pile of puke on a bank of snow, Yoga-pants-purple, budget-cocktail-blue, Lava lurid as a toy volcano, Day-glo confetti frozen stiff as glue. The fire hydrant’s calked in hardened gum. A Phillies Blunt’s in a bottle of Pepsi Inside a purple Shark Week Slurpee, And it looks like someone … Read more
The Irish winter came early in October with another lockdown, to the disappointment of Billy O Hanluain: Lockdown measures remind me of the prescription of anti-depressants and other psychiatric medicines. They are both harsh, and both are administered in response to a moment of crisis; both often have severe side effects, which in time often … Read more
Spolia Opima Models, slender and famished as cheetahs, Shed their imperial haute couture— Already in sweatpants, they hail their cabs Behind the Grand Palais before Applause dies down inside around The vacant runway. Afternoon sunlight’s Lambent overhead on friezes of Lutetian Limestone. Violinists grimace at their scores— Haydn, Hollywood, the B’s and Broadway hits, Rehearsal … Read more
At the end of 2019, I wrote: In these times it is perhaps inevitable that people will want to write poems about climate change, or Twitter and politics. But poetry knows in its heart, what has already ended inside your consciousness, to which you and the world are gradually catching up. In the greatest poems … Read more