Poem: ‘External Return’

Eternal Return My sixteen year old daughter comes to me to complain about Patrick Kavanagh. O great irony, hardly are the words out of her mouth And I can see those fucking potatoes, The drills and the furrows of old bloody Monaghan! Why do we do it? Why does every generation get subjected To this … Read more

Poem: Hope in Despair

Hope in Despair I have always loved museums, no doubt having a kind of prophetic disposition I realised the somewhat terrible and prodigious potency that was entombed in their almost sterile yet  paradoxically life-affirming grace. Loss, chronic loss, is the ultimate domain of all humans. It seems to me that the problems here below on … Read more

Poetry: Commuting with Baudelaire

Commuting with Baudelaire We are living in a time when there are no gentlemen. So, women stand for hours without being offered any seats. It’ s a privilege which they have laboured for and for centuries, It appears! Madness, I know, but you must respect them. As you watch their small fists tightening on the … Read more

Poetry: Peter O’Neill

The Bridge After Meryon Bridge of Be-ing, all arches mirrrored upon The river running – Heraclitean ; Looming above… turret trumpeting, All Barnonial excess, pure 19th century. And aligned in sheer proximity the great monolith Of glass and concrete, its emphasis Presenting a sheer 20th century existentialism. Seen from the quays, it’s pure Baudelaire! The … Read more

Poetry: Peter O’Neill

Poems in the Manner of the Devil After Alexandar Ristović (1933-1994) If you can’t chew on oxtail, eat knuckles instead. The bounty of bedlam, Let these crumbs be your Thanksgiving, Or Last Suppers. Imitation is always the greatest form of flattery. See the world now through the light of wine. Do you have confidence in … Read more