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Christmas is the time for heartbreaking Trócaire ads,
The time when decorations are put up by Dads.
Children are told stories of old.
Broken souls sit in the cold.
Big families arrange for big Christmas meals.
Dust cover young, chapped heels.
Santa and his reindeer fly across the sky.
When yet another hot season slowly passes by.

Christmas is a time when we all exchange gifts.
As just another angel lifts.
Choral chants assemble at front doors with sheets.
While the homeless continue to wander the streets.
The incandescence of lights fill our black,
When the darkest world still remains behind our back.
We receive the joys and the magic.
They only feel the tears and damage.

We have two worlds:
The First and the Third.

We live in the one with a Christmas..
But they live in the world that is still unheard.
12 - December - 2013

© All Rights Reserved Joanne Heraghty
///
the ladies look odd---
****--
helpless, powerless---
shaky-

when I see
girls waiting at the corner of the road,
in front of a brand new black Ford
red lipstick with red rose--
in a nightclub with a **** model pose--
buying, selling and contracting
with thee,
they are paying, trading,  
and making  X- Film,
online *** service,
growing *** worker,
making capital to grow capitalism  

I can't do anything,
only I can sigh,
I am too worn only a smile
and making a sad love song for her(victims)
you, my friend, hear in a car
and moving so far

Ah!! my friend,
'O' ! my love--
you see, we are in dark!
slowly and slowly we feel,
how the poison grabbing our body and soul!!
///
@ Musfiq us shaleheen
Yeats said romance was gone and dead,
Back in the day when most tears were shed.
Times when the IRA were up and strong,
Days when they could be seen doing wrong.
Not right now, when its just biased times;
The next Love/Hate enlightening their "newest" crimes.
Our time does differ from the old.
And if Yeats could talk right now, a different story would be told.

We're due a time when they all come home
Cross the shores and along they come.
Times when they are safe to stay,
Unlike the war years when they were forced away.
The times when Yeats said our heroes did us good.
Now, no novelty, no heroes: villains. Although, there should.
President Higgins, the 9th to stand.
Who speaks of "our own Aisling" in this shared land.
Our time does differ from the old.
And if Yeats could talk right now, a different story would be told.

A hundred years, we're still the same.
When the "recession" is so easy to blame.
A choice that Sinn Fein never got to make,
Lead by Kenny, the government's mistake.
Choices made, nor law but religion.
Medical misadventures under moral obligation.
A jury given a choice of two verdicts: one story,
Savita's death, goes down in history.
Our time does differ from the old.
And if Yeats could talk right now, a different story would be told.

Our time when networks send youths to their grave,
An earlier landing caused by how others behaved.
Still mothers shed tears upon the pit of their sons,
Ashes to ashes, a new war has begun.
But, a type that is different in a virtual way,
For the past is the past and today is today.
That's how our times differ to those of 1913
And if Yeats were here right now, what real difference would be seen?
22-April-2013

© All Rights Reserved Joanne Heraghty

This poem was written as a response to W. B. Yeats' poem; September 1913.
///
when you feel shame insight
the foolish road trends to misguide
you can discover an apple
inside a dark basket

I sigh too long to lose the time
that could make a space between us
the clock is unmanageable,
the horizon grew gray

yesterday night turned on,
the sleepless romantic torment-
I made my hand long,
too long to hold my dreams

where there you were standing
behind a wall,
very thick, and dark
shuttered my eyes

I grew gray
underneath a dusky black moon
finding myself within you,
no focus point imagined

the forgotten days clapping
mystic, bleeding on the red carpet
turned too dark when storm wind
closed the windows-

dreams uttering on a blue sapphire
till the twilight has broken
making a waterfall on a rising sun
but coming closer into a vain of the vale--

///
@ Musfiq us shaleheen
blue sapphire: ------------------------
Absent are the people
I truly believed were there.
Absent is my sympathy,
To truly love and care.
Absent is the one,
Whom directly I talk to.
Absent is the name,
I rather just call 'you.'
Absent is your presence
In a friendship that you played a part.
Absent is the love
You claim is within your heart.
Absent are the words,
I long to let pour off of my tongue.
Absent is our future,
Though, we are still young.
Absent are the reasons
For all of the swift ends.
Absent are the people,
I once had called my friends.
Absent are my thoughts,
That figures this all out.
Absent is my voice,
To whisper, talk or shout.
Absent is my courage,
To tell you about my pain.
Absent are the benefits
I would ever wish to gain.
Absent is the trust,
In whom I grew to know.
Absent is your reluctancy,
That wanted me to go.
Absent are the smiles,
That once sat upon my face.
Absent are my memories,
Of the times you showed no grace.
Absent is the understanding,
I hope we'll come to, yet.
Absent are the days
I never want to forget.
Absent is the truth,
That solves all of this mess.
Absent are my mistakes,
You could forgive no less.
Absent is the happiness,
I once felt deep inside.
Absent is you,
Right here by my side.
Absent is the person,
I could never quite love more.
Absent is his existence,
For he's not who he was before.
Absent is my knowledge,
To explain all in one poem..
Absent is my ability
To climb right up to Heaven,
And bring you safely home..
30 August 2014

© All Rights Reserved Joanne Heraghty
This is the last thing I'll let you know,
Before I say goodbye,
Before I let you go..

I forgot the reasons that brought on this end.
Wiped back the tears that I let fall.
Changed your title as my friend.
Unraveled your lies and figured it all.

I found the answers to the questions I had.
Spent all of my time trying to know you true.
It seems I, somehow, banished your bad.
I guess, it was because, I really did love you.

Now all I want, is for you to know,
Why I'm saying goodbye,
And why I'm letting you go..

I see your face through every crowd,
And within the moments you're not even there.
The silence became extremely loud.
It seems, I lost myself somewhere.

The knots in my stomach became undone.
As you continued to walk, in my mind, you grew small.
My journey backwards suddenly begun,
And I swiftly remembered it all.

The moment you had first taken hold of my hand.
Posed for a photograph with that crooked smile.
Times when, together, we would stand.
Or walk, if not even, for a single mile.

So this, my dear, I hope you know
I've said goodbye,
But I can't let you go.

I took back every single word I had ever said.
Tore out the chapters from the story of us.
Broke everything in sight, if only within my head.
Woke up one morning, and boarded that bus.

The glimmer in my eyes dimmed down slow.
I recanted the first smile that welcomed you that day.
Collected up the pieces of my heart, and decided to go.
I gave you one more look, and then turned the opposite way.
23rd June 2014

© All Rights Reserved Joanne Heraghty
I make the choice to start the plane;
I mount my seat and turn the key.
I join the force in the rain:
To meet a certain destiny.
I know them not, those other men,
Nor enemy, nor ally do I fight.
If I could live it all again
I'd steer away from this final "delight."
I'd banish these thoughts that pois my mind,
And discourage the little man inside.
Too rash I was to leave it all behind,
And venture off to the clouds to hide.
Distant are Kiltartan's men, at noon.
Heartbroken; Margaret and the three;
She may receive the dreaded telegram soon;
Because mine the falling aeroplane shall be.
Through the glass, I can see them ones,
Those times of pain, and those of smiles.
Tears jam in my throat like stones,
As I continue my journey on for miles.
It's clear you question my choice to die,
Needlessly, you assume, within your poem.
But, you see, I just love being in the sky..
It feels a little more like home.
11 April 2014

© All Rights Reserved Joanne Heraghty

This poem was written as a response to W. B. Yeats' poem; An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.
She's the one who makes others feel better.
her heart seemed to come to a slow pitter.

Nobody noticed the fake smiles and hidden scars.
covering her arms and hiding her feelings she looks to the stars.

How could someone so perfect learn to hate her own guts.
despite all of the many cuts, she is beautiful.

But as she was falling into the fade.
A boy came and fell as well, he fell as her hearts aid.

Once he left he tore a piece away from her heart.
Now she sits low, trying not to let herself scatter apart.

She just couldn't take the pain inside, she didn't want the monster.
she grabbed her razor and ripped and cut till she finally felt numb enough that the monster was gone.

But the monster ended up being her own emotional mind.
She dug into her arm while she was just a little blind.
~~
new born coconut leaves
standing on the head of the tree
a mild north chill breeze blowing
raising sunlight reflects between the leaves

the falling light playing on the meadows
the growing day in to the fog's shadows

the new moody breeze growing a little
the cowboys wandering with the cattle
the boy is very crazy with his flying kite,
the birds are too busy within the day's light

I am wondering through the shadows
and finding my hopes within the meadows
when thousands of kites flying in the sky
there love growing on her gloomy eyes

where there a few of dreams coming
as the light falling between the leaves
where there thousands of whirling
hopes uttering in to the breeze  
~~
@Musfiq us shaleheen
hopes of leaves

— The End —