Cassandra Voices

Tag: Poetry

  • Poetry: Michaela Brady

    White Bay Park

    And cows trod on thickened sand,
    Bow their heads beneath the sun.
    It’s as if this summer was planned,
    With days that cannot be done.

    That sun implores, infects my sight,
    Surges fire through greying sea,
    Through my heart and through the night,
    Perennial, I am allowed to be.

    Could I spend an eternity here?

    If I lassoed eternal dusks,
    If you were caught as well,
    All our present woes would rust
    In Atlantic’s alabaster swells.

    But life will change, not just the tides.
    I cannot say when I’ll be back.
    You cannot know what you’ll decide.

    Could eternity wait for our return?
    I cannot trust a view revived
    To last a lifetime I have hardly lived.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Advent Poem by Haley Hodges

    Advent

    We have endured long in the dark.
    It is a burden (A magic? A madness?) particular
    To us. Long endurance of darkness is not light,
    But speaks of a belief that light’s radiance
    Merits enduring long in the dim we know—
    In the dusk we are.

    The world is a bone
    Full of Christ-marrow; its sun a merely
    Mortal star, spending itself to lighten
    What it can, just as the Godman upon
    Entering our long dark did, except
    In his mortality—no mereness.
    He will put flesh again on this
    Old bone, the world, his own
    Milk-fed flesh in the great
    Stable dark, a holy darkness:
    All the void
    Is not.

    This is, and has been,
    And shall be.

    What Mary treasured up
    In her heart was Death
    Leaving the carcass of the world
    At his arrival. She treasured up
    The world alive, all alive
    With a brightness
    That turns the noble sun
    To pitch.

    Feature Image Advent and Triumph of Christ by Hans Memling, 1480.

  • Poetry: Kevin Higgins

    Formation of a Young Irish Intellectual
    after Nazim Hikmet

    You will go far young person
    if as soon as you enter this building
    you follow standard operating procedures
    and stop thinking altogether.

    We will do the thinking for you.
    For the more intellectually curious of you
    this will be as difficult initially
    as nailing yourself to a chair.
    But the appropriate doses
    of the right sort of alcohol will ease
    you into it.

    Before long, you’ll find yourself
    not thinking a thing.
    In your lunch break, you’ll write poems
    that are secretly okay with NATO
    and won’t know where they came from.
    But we’ll know,
    and that’s all that matters.

    We have a library of pre-existing think pieces
    from which you can choose your opinions,
    which we’d like you to massage
    so they seem different at first
    but end up being exactly the same as the rest of us.
    For there is no opinion worth having
    that someone in here hasn’t already had.

    You will be in favour of all the right wars
    without having to sweat the niceties
    and put the appropriate flag
    on your Twitter handle
    without us ever having to mention it.

    You have no idea yet
    the thoughts we have in store for you.

    Feature Image: UCD Quinn School of Business.

  • 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 candelabara of Street lamps whose
    Illuminating auras burnish the passerby
    Ghosting them with their luminance, and lustre.

    Fate drops like a Stone in the water
    Troubling the stillness with ripples outward,
    And whose faces Flow forever onward into the Dark Pool.

     

     

    Heidegger’s Dasein 

    There is a philosophy born of storm to encompass Be-ing,
    And it assails in the tumult of the unending assault of the days.
    To storm troop on and over into the assailment of the heavens;
    God forbid, what is left of them those splintering fragments!

    As in the woodwinds onrushing conducive to the Heart-fires
    Still governing, just about, out from the holocaust of Thought.
    Essence at the forefront of being, attuning to the tumult
    Of the Sway, like anyone finding their ground.

    Such as the down and outs rolled up in sleeping bags
    On the public benches on the boardwalk,
    Those pupae, or premature mummies,

    Whose alarm clock would be police siren,
    Heineken clock and other hallucinatory prey,
    And whose breakfast would be coloured by the sweet aroma of Hashish!

     

    Gothic Landscape 

    Thought’s colour broodingly bleeds through to the skull,
    Seeped to pour and stream into the brain.
    The bridge is moored there through its anchor
    Above the liquified riverbed afflux.

    The skeletal fragments of a backdrop,
    Etched architecture of a Gothic replica.
    Its organic structure today looms out of the fog
    Which to the stoner is a mesmeric enterprise to induce Funk!

    Through the viral air of a city masked,
    Its denizens the very harbingers of their own Hell,
    Introduces the notion of Dantean comeuppance.

    Tramping along on Bachelor’s Walk,
    Crossing the widened Carlisle over Gandon’s hump,
    Only to reach Eden – the irony sits well.

     

    Roman Noir
    “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
    Raymond Chandler
    For
    Daniel Wade

    John A. Maher, Private Detective, peered out
    The window of the fourth floor of Lafayette,
    His vantage point on par with a Gargoyle!
    The river split the city like a fissure, before him.

    It was a city divided by accent and money.
    On the northside, speech was contracted to the point
    Of almost unintelligibility, which he liked
    Never quite trusting language himself.

    While on the south, it was all accent darling,
    Barring the odd enclave. Maher moves through it all
    Monosyllabic, stony-faced and with mild amusement.

    Humans are weak creatures, so prone to error.
    And some are driven to crime; one needs a hard fist,
    Copious amounts of alcohol, and a certain penchant for metaphysics!

    Feature Image: Lafayette House and O’Connell Bridge © Peter O’Neill

  • Poetry: Michaela Brady

    Uaigneas (Dán do m’athair)

    Crows befriend the bread-handed boy,
    Squawk and battle for a bite.
    Metro wires hiss and wheeze,
    Spite the hills and sun-soaked fields.

    New York blinks its bloodshot stare,
    Recalling you and I were there.
    From azure deli doors,
    Whiffs of baking bread
    Flirt with slow-cook sunburn.

    But now I can be anywhere;
    Western cities groan the same.
    Riding through a London green,
    Gliding through the shadowed dawn;
    I’m convinced it’s just the same.

    But where are you when I awake?
    Where are you, voice beneath music,
    Brimming with stories owned and rented,
    Debates and schemes for woodsy walks.

    Bottled up in bucket seats, we watch
    As worlds of millions catch the day,
    Battle for statues to recall their names.
    We’re facing west to Hudson, south to Thames.

    Do you have a friend these mornings?
    Do you choose to drift and dream?
    Yes, it’s just the same.
    And never is again.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poetry: Nicholas Battey

    Last Breath of Leaves

    Cup a pear, hear it abscise,
    number the days until ripe;
    the river chuckles with swollen pride –
    back to a ditch by six,
    drained away to the scaly, selfish sea.

    At dawn there’s steam across the water,
    a cloud of egrets scuds over;
    old and waiting, mud for water,
    leaves for a last breath
    of wind, tremor, helical free fall –

    after life, lope and leap
    to nattering heaps; then left
    to turn to mull, down horizons sift,
    forgotten shades of ochre,
    lignin nets over rheumy, russet stones.

    Fish the shilletts from their dark homes
    in the deep, brown ocean;
    grateful, cosseting crumbs swirl in,
    close and ready for roots:
    succouring limbs of bulb, corm, meristem.

    Here my mulling days are numbered,
    pride in appearance doomed;
    hares teem across the water,
    while clouds of regrets scud over;
    for I am old and loping after life.

  • The Candidates Explain

    The Candidate Explains
    after Charlotte Nichols MP

    I didn’t know the meaning
    of “incursion” or “dealt with”
    the negative connotation until this morning.
    Didn’t realise the possible definitions
    of “parasite”, “rubbish dump”, “bad human material”.
    Didn’t know until this morning the connotations
    of “dismantle”, “pikey”, “assimilate”.
    The negative meanings of “scum”,
    “child thief”, “branding iron”.
    Didn’t know “dirty”, “asocial”, “expel”.
    The connotations of “a people involved
    in the manufacture of human freaks.”
    Didn’t know the meaning until now
    of “Rahoonery”, “pollutant”, “Pharajimos”.
    The problematic side of those over the age of five
    being taken away and civilised.
    Didn’t know the meaning of “The Devouring”,
    “The Cutting Up”, or “behind concrete walls”.
    The negative connotation of “whoever kills one,
    shall be guilty of nothing.”
    Didn’t know the meaning of “deport”
    until I saw it done this morning,
    clean as a Police Superintendent’s signature
    or a Councillor’s campaign for re-election.

    Feature Image: Constantino Idini

     

     

     

  • enuff

    live long enuff yoolsee enuff war –
    yool think this is not what life is for –
    yool feel all the feels feasibly feelable –
    yoolbee both heart sleeve-able and heart konseelable…
    live long enuff yoolhear enuff bang –
    yool vibe off protest songs yoor parents sang –
    yoolyawn at the yarns elected folk spin –
    yoolbee both heart open and heartbroken…
    live long enuff yoolsee enuff war –
    yool think this is not the days of yore –
    yool roar all the roars possibly roarable –
    konflikts not adorable – kuntreeze are not hoardable…
    live long enuff yoolhear enuff bomb drop –
    yoolwish yookood command call all bomb stop –
    yoolwince once more wearily – weep waspish tears –
    we all be humanity – same loves – same fears…

  • Poetry: Kevin Higgins

    Memorial to Myself

    I have been away toasting tables lined
    with the pricier variety of imbecile;
    humouring old buzzards in Aran sweaters
    and cranky caps
    until their sweaters collapsed
    threadbare off their bastard backs.
    I have cut ribbons for guys
    floating balloons across the town square
    and calling it dance.
    I have eaten with people of enormous importance
    and forgotten most of their names.

    I did not shrivel like the rest of them.
    Though they thought they had me
    I was not bought and sold at the market stall
    where you can get (third hand)
    Fianna Fail senators cheaper
    than Mayo flags two weeks after
    an All Ireland defeat.

    I am again what I was before
    and secretly always was
    though I sometimes had to hide it.
    I did not kill the dream I dreamt with those others
    not all of whom made it this far.
    Tonight I consult their ghosts.

    Feature Image: Higgins and Ivana Bacik campaigning during the 2011 presidential race.

  • Poetry: Peter O’Neill

    Irish Rail

    Dublin, that old whore, with her piss -stained pavements
    Abruptly transforms into a woman of a certain station.
    Such are the, at once, brutal and subtle shifts where
    In an instant, Hell aligns in an altogether strict

    Congruence… Like when you climb aboard
    The final commuter train of the week on a Friday
    Evening on Platform One at Pearse Station.
    And, as the train finally pulls out, leaving

    Behind her the contents of a working week,
    Passing images are reflected back to you
    Through the compartment windows, revealing

    Dune and marram at Portmarnock, to a passing
    Lagoon at Malahide, and then the panoply of imagery
    Miraculously washes away all of the whoredom from your mind.

     

    The Great Burnishment

    Your Pirelli calendar moment must last, at least, twenty score years;
    Nobody makes this very important point entirely clear.
    So, try to remember, while cavorting in the Sun,
    That the memories must endure, and for everyone!

    Call it, if you will, the great Burnishment.
    When like two figures from a fabled myth or play,
    You roam the most remote shores and the very
    Earth appears made for you both alone.

    It is the cliché – you look on her then and on those mythic shores –
    With the aroma of wild rosemary, myrtle and Goat;
    Desire bears you both ever onward with its emblazoned sail.

    Fast forward two decades now and she stands before you in your kitchen,
    And the initial violence of the sun from that first day,
    Tell me, do you still feel its impact burning your skin?

     

    The Flies 

    The two house- flies, Beckett and Joyce, buzz about you
    And the TV screen. There they land, buzz again
    Before flying off to Memphis copulating
    And multiplying on the wing. As a sign of virility,

    The Egyptians displayed them on their amulets.
    That great race, unlike our own, had a great respect for insects!
    Even the Greeks showed a similar respect,
    When having a BBQ they offered a sacrifice to Shoo Fly Zeus.

    The crabby meat men, in this way, could eat their own
    Undisturbed by patrolling swarms and Oxen that had fallen
    Were replaced by Lotus Eater, and burning eucalyptus in the Sun.

    Now, you look at the books of both these modern sages
    That you have been reading for an eternity,
    And still you hear the flies buzzing across the pages!

     

    The Vico Road

    From the vantage point of Strawberry Hill,
    A Victorian Villa recently selling for a cool 5 million,
    A place more evocative of Raymond Chandler
    Than anything remotely Irish. I am reminded,

    Again, of the Neapolitan philosopher who
    Peopled his New Science with giants. In fact,
    While lunching there on one of the picnic tables,
    I had a slightly hallucinatory vision of Gulliver

    Striding in 18th century breeches, and croppy hair
    Over the Sugar- Loaf Mountain, while
    The Lilliputians below discussed the ongoing

    Business in the property sector: vulture funds
    And NAMA; hedge funds in Texas,
    Where the multi-headed Cereberus roars.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini