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David Noonan Jan 2017
My girl stands beneath a snow encrusted mountain top

Another place, another world, some others perfect winter paradigm

The morning sun breaking through, lighting her hair, her eyes, her smile,

The cold now invisible, as the warmth of her glow is captured in permanence

A vision of my mind so clear, yet of a time since past, a moment lived but now lost

For now she sleeps so soundly in her bed, in her room, one so unknown to me

Are its walls, cream, white, pink or blue, is it just a room or is it truly a room of you

How can we know so much abstraction and yet know so little of tangible things,

And does anyone ever really know the real you, the real me or is life just too fleeting, too fast

And that’s what I wonder as I lie here, while my body aches and my mind races ill at ease,

Taking my only solace in Angelika and of a time since passed wrapped up in a blanket of snow.
David Noonan Mar 2017
After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun
David Noonan Aug 2017
our love i feel is an ancient love
from a smaller world of greater ideal
a love so touched by the stars above
never to fall so as to become so real

our love i feel is an ancient love
an unspoken word of a long lost tongue
flies on the wing of an immortalised dove
to transcribe in dreams and nightly song

yet this night is upon, this night is cold
and sleep she refuses my welcome plea
this ancient love a story no longer told
white winged doves carry my angel free
now what is left, what is there of me
bereft of meaning, vanquished by decree
yet i will treasure each harbored memory
consigned to sail our love through history
David Noonan Dec 2016
A blank page, a broken screen and this my frozen heart.
If I could just hold you, hold you.
Darkness descends and sleep denies those dreams of yesterday
If only, If only I could hold you, just hold you.

Let the **** day break for no moon shines on this sky tonight.
Let the cold winds come, as this bird she takes flight.
Let the world turn to the past, let it not look forward but now look back
If only, for if only so I could just hold you, so I could just hold you

So I turn it up, turn it up, but no more do I truly hear
Trying to wrap it around me, trying in vain to keep you near.
But alas, all in dream and nothing of you remains
Save this sad refrain of if I could just hold you, hold you.

Nothing remains but this song,  this poem, this prayer
Clinging to its desperation, breathing it's desolate solid air
For there is no place so alone as realising who you are
No place so alone as accepting what you are.

If I could just hold you,  hold you
If I could just hold you,  hold you
All in vain nothing but this sad refrain
Yet now if I could just hold you,  if i could just hold you.
David Noonan Jan 2019
those were the best days of our lives
those were the days
tomorrow shall not shine brighter than yesterday
but i still believe in you
an angel on a pin that pricked my skin
coursing through my bloodstream evermore
etching your name upon my soul
endlessly spun and wove around my core

i will always try to help you through this maze
although the path you've found is true
you've begun to shine like those same stars
so much more than i could ever promise you
sometimes i may seem carelessly distracted
sometimes you may wish to call me blue
as the lights go out and on once more
i'll always and forever believe in you

now looking and living through another's eyes
for my place with you could never be
your happiness must depend on someone new
as mine dissolves in this darkened morning hue
where descending devil beasts begin to breathe
in a familiar tale told once more
yet my veins will swell and my heart shall repel
for my angel on a pin, you'll call as you live
   for now
              and
                      for always
                                       forever within
David Noonan Aug 2017
the weeks stretched out to months
on a whispers gentle breeze
he hadn't been seen at Tuesday's mart
nor the public house for an evening's 45
most had blamed the drink driving laws
the cosmopolitan killing of simple ways  
yet the rusted gate, the untended fields
told another story not so easy to regale*

for hearts can break in so many ways
to devastating effect or slow debilitating decay
now sitting and staring by my window chair
this television set pleads for repeal of the eighth
unknowing that what is gone can never be
i reach within myself to find next to nothing there
for my mind now fails the memories of yesteryear  
no longer can i recall what Kathleen wore that day
setting sail to end one life so as to start anew
how i feared in truth that she would never return
like those letters i sent shrouded in uneasy pen
lost to the shame of the times as that were then
today, i'm the old man from an older boreen still
facing this death that relieves me of all my pain
my story, my dreams, my life i shall no longer recall
for my stage is set and the curtain it slowly does fall
where i will become so anonymous to even myself
perhaps only when all memory is lost shall i see
golden dreams to return my sweet Kathleen to me
Irish-ism's as follows:

Mart - farmers cattle market

45 - s a trick-taking card game popularly played in rural pubs

repeal the 8th - The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland gave explicit recognition to the right to life of an unborn child, effectively introducing a constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland.  A concerted campaign to have it repealed has led to the announcement of a referendum on abortion in Ireland during 2018. Historically women traveled by sea to England to avail of services there.

boreen - A narrow, frequently unpaved, rural road in Ireland.  Generally, not leading to anywhere but a few old farmhouses or small dwellings
David Noonan May 2018
And i don't own a piano to blame for my drinking
But there's something about an Irish summer sky
That smiles like Luke Kelly with a tear in his eye
Ballads of clouds float over a burning blue desire
You could travel the world having never got higher  
A slab of Polish cans cobbled from a cities loose change
This place is our kingdom, this place is a cage
Never feeling so trapped, never living so free
As when I set you down at our favored midday tree
Where a charm of magpies promise silver and gold
And us two more, with secrets long since told
Effing and blinding for all that we've missed
Soon to forget how long its been since we've kissed
And i swear to you darling, we'll never see the dark
This here sun, stay true to us beggars of Arthur's Quay Park
David Noonan Feb 2017
As morning breaks, naked on a bed of a foreign hotel room,
Outside the hustle of city life rumbles and roars to its daily grind
A lone bird of paradise soars then swoops bringing her mystical song
The language of love, the rhythm of passion, a hypnosis of the mind

Transforming from melody, the minds most beautiful vision appears
Radiant in splendor, a goddess of beauty and of all celestial desire
Filling the room, her presence, her grace, awakens the truth of my colour
Exposed and set free, lifting my soul eternal, above, beyond, still higher

Yet such need of the body, of her flesh that I so desperately crave
The press of her thighs, the swell and majesty that calls her rising breast
Lover come to me now, be my sense, my dream, my perfect oblivion
Lay your form upon me, so soft to my skin yet hands so hard to my chest

For i am a bird now, soaring and joining in my lovers glorious song
Above these skies, beyond these ages, a place we can but call somewhere
Where two birds of paradise now roam, free save this eternal embrace
As morning breaks, a foreign hotel room and my love she takes me there
David Noonan Dec 2016
Just another stone on a broken shore.
No meaning nor purpose just drifting towards home
And what's left of that heart when it's love is forlorn
Is it empty? Is it hollow?
Left lifeless, loveless, no path to lead nor follow

Or does it somehow live on in perpetual silent scream
Breathing on loneliness,
Consumed by regrets and despair
And please, please tell me whatever happens...
Whatever happens when that heart finally just stops.
Is it cast away on a wasteland of rock
Just another stone on someone else's broken shore
David Noonan Jan 2017
Women
Race
Climate
*****
Rapists
Fallacy
Bleeding
Disability
Wall
Islamaphobia

10 words
Here's 10 more

A ****** up Friday
What a ****
president donald trump
David Noonan May 2019
I met you for the first time
Rather unexpectedly
On a Thursday night
An upstairs gig in town
Hadn't been in quite some while
And you, no never before

I arrive before the show
A lone man and concertina
Play a weeping lament
For the lost children of Aran
And the hopes they carried
To the devil of a western sea
It was standing room only
Save a few lonely seats
At occupied and chattering tables
For which i dared not tread
So I slunk to the shadows
To a half wall
Left side of the bar
And watched it all
As another now enters
I swear he's wearing my coat
He's younger but shorter than me
My soul knows that i wear it better
Yet it is he that unifies tables
That I but watch from afar
As introductions are made
Strangers transform
To like minded souls  
No more lonely seats remain
Only lonely half walls
And half sentences of the mind
As once again,
I don't want to be
Who it is
I am left to be
Of who it is
I am meant to be

The show commences
And it does not take long
For the singer to introduce you
Through words and through song
Violet Gibson as Irish as can be
But it is to Rome
In a year long gone
That you go
To leave your mark
And to a fascist dictator
You fired your shot
Grazing Mussolini's' miserable snout
You aimed to ****
But it was not your day
As the crowds howl  
They lead you away
Mad as a box of frogs and old rags
That is what they say
As they expel you back
To dear old blighty
Our old colonial foe
Not ten years since
Your country rose to be free
You find yourself back
Incarcerated in an asylum
For life and for death
A window
A blackbird
A rose garden
All that you are left to possess
For you never get to go free
Unrepentant and unbowed
A violet not a rose
As once again,
You remain steadfastly proud
Of who it is
You were left to be
Who it is
You were meant to be
Violet Gibson was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1876.  On 7 April 1926, Gibson shot Mussolini, Italy's Fascist leader, as he walked among the crowd in the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome.  Gibson had armed herself with a rock to break Mussolini's car window if necessary, and a Modèle 1892 revolver disguised in a black shawl.  She fired once, but Mussolini moved his head at that moment and the shot hit his nose; she tried again, but the gun misfired. She was almost lynched on the spot by an angry mob, but police intervened and took her away for questioning. Mussolini was wounded only slightly, dismissing his injury as "a mere trifle". At the time of the assassination attempt she was almost fifty years old and did not explain her reasons for trying to assassinate Mussolini. It has been theorised that Gibson was insane at the time of the attack. She was later deported to Britain after being released without charge at the request of Mussolini. She spent the rest of her life in a mental asylum, St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton.
David Noonan Mar 2017
One fleeting chance to catch you between trapezes
Yet my head was bowed, my thoughts immersed
In another dream of another life that i longed to live
A moments lapse careers you to that downward spiral
Through all those safety nets, all those webs we wove
Once so secure borne from our labour, love and toil
Exposed now like a promise of night through a civil dawn
As you fall through each of my declarations of trust
You blow out the candles and knock out the lights
Of celebrations and occasions now shattered like glass

Blackness descending through this never blinking eye
As those moments and time perpetually relive yet resist
The blood still refusing to flow freely through my veins
As i sit and wait for this evening coffee to run cold
That i may embrace the sanctuary of night once more
For I was one that could never dream in the dark
No more than one who could ever make amends
Between those two trapezes that signaled our end
David Noonan Apr 2019
Last night once more
I ventured beyond the pale
To find Nanci Griffith
Awaiting me there
She's pushing E's
On her drum n' bass knees
Pleading with me please
To be the last
of the true believers
But I can't and yet I can
Feel her watching over me
From a distance
She is just another no one
That's been sent to deceive
Yet another love for sale
Beyond this pale

So I move on at least
To my fourteen year old self
Weak arms and weaker will
Holding back a door
All in vain
As the screams grow
The knives and living dead flow
My father at the kitchen table
Silver bangle adorns his strength
He laughs at his son
How could it come to this?
A useless seed born with
a breathless kiss
Leave it to me comes his hiss
Tough love is for sale
Beyond this pale

To a foreign city
With the few friends I've left
It is anxiety and fear
That begin to whisper in my ear
You do not belong
You should never have come here
As the skies start to tear
Separation comes next
The rain empties the nest
Two by two, one by one
Friends and companions
To this city are gone
Desolate in a storm
Lies a desperate man
With a lonely love for sale
Beyond this pale

Tonight once more
I shall venture again for sure
As I pray to the gods
That I will not see you there
For my ecstasy would dissolve
At the closing of a door
As you walk out on me
Towards a rank only you see
That last cab to set you free
So tonight do not appear
Nor take to their stand
To settle their score
Let them be the ones
To finally understand
True love is not for sale
Beyond the pale
And oh my dreams
It's never quite as it seems
'Cause you're a dream to me
Dream to me
David Noonan Jan 2017
This is not a eulogy nor let this be my epitaph
For what i have in you, I've waited my whole life to see
Someone to hope for, something to believe in
Trusted and true
Blue nails, red lips and you

Something good that not ever can get lost
Even now as you must make your way
Out of these darkened woods, brambles and thorns
Breaking on through
Blue nails, red lips and you

Forgive me now as i deconstruct this tempo, as I alter this key
And reflect on all that you'll continue to mean and to be for me
Yes something to believe in, a faith in you that knows no relief
A beauty, a grace, an honesty of heart, a purity of soul and mind
Be all you can be, travel your chosen paths, never falter nor once look behind
Be that shooting star that eclipses our sacred and shared celestial moon
Soar so high yet may you always have someone to watch over you.
Live, laugh, love
Blue nails, red lips and you


So go now, take your leave my love
Open your precious wings once more, take flight
For my eyes will never leave your translucent sky
Dreaming for two
Blue nails, red lips and you

And if that sky should ever darken
Where foreboding clouds warn of storms to run through
Let me provide your shelter, let me be your refuge
All that i can do
Blue nails, red lips and you

I'll always remember you, for me we shall never part
As your spirit echoes within the chambers of this heart
Each night i'll pray to all the God's and none
To false ones and true
That those red lips may never turn blue
David Noonan Dec 2016
This is where you'll find me now
Sitting in silence at the edge of our world
Alone but for this endless push and pull
Memories of you yearning me back to peace
Regrets spiralling me closer to that precipice

This is where you'll see me now
Further distant than I've been before
Naked save these trappings of life's  success
All so false, for what can ever be achieved?
Before that final bell has tolled

This is where you can reach me now
Forever longing for your faintest touch
Still burdened by these ties that bind
To a role, to a life, to a world so far removed
From the love and warmth that in you I find

So this is where you've left me now
You chose my heart but abandoned my soul
To wait in silence in hope for you once more
To find me, see me, reach me, to call for me
And for when you do, to once again, call me blue.
David Noonan Feb 2018
another door closed
another community mourns
a macabre picture on a frame
for a tear stained love to find
once crafted by his own hand
not twelve months since
now a final resting place
marked by a note in steady pen
and why should it take
an angel of the epihany
to deliver a man in a plastic bag
to teach us of cbt
of an emotional intelligence
to be mindful of ourselves
while church, state, school fails
this country's young men
for generations and on
the silence does creep
so many futures in the past
too many paths closing so fast
there are so many questions
that sustain this male disease
silence never speaks in answers
or hears society's griefful pleas
today in another village
tommorow yet another town
a young man fits an attic joist
with silent eyes so cold
for jesus he was a carpenter
or so at least we're told
death by suicide continues to a nightmare visited on so many towns and villages of rural Ireland for generations and on with next to no supports of state ever prioritised to tackle this disease of predominately young men
David Noonan Jan 2017
There it is again
Momentary recall
That first time I saw you
Smoking on your balcony sill
Immersed in Joy Division
A symphony in your shilouette
September streetlights rising on every exhale
If i could have stopped all time I would
Escape with you in a polaroid still
Relinquished my heart
Discovered my soul
Eyes transfixed
Wanting only you
Yet you looked to the world
And you wanted it all
That song is the same now as then
Love
love will tear us apart
tear us apart again...
David Noonan Feb 2017
Backdropped by your setting midnight sun
This blackened tree of gnarled and crooked branches
Shorn of starlings nest or buds of leaves to bloom
Is but Mother Nature's abandoned child awaiting Proserpina's call
As its frayed ropeswing hangs unstirred and unmoved
A seat for two carved and formed of connecting crosses
One of breathing heart, of hope and purest salvation
One of loneliness, despair and decomposing isolation

For time has never seen right to pass our way
And I've long since stopped believing in some afterlife
Yet with you, i dream to reincarnate another life
Where everything is different yet nothing has changed
And I will seek you out, I will hunt you down if i must
I will choose your beating vibrant heart
Encapsulate it forever in that painted yellow sun
So connected crosses can dance as one before thy Spring is done
David Noonan May 2017
You're my fear
Everything that i hold dear
You hang on every word I say
As I pray, you won't grow
To one day, live that way
But to find your own words
Of world's old and new
That take you places
Beyond all that i once knew
Till that day, I'll always say
I'll carry your fear
Like a one true love
That i keep near
So grow my angel child
Take this life as you can
Be it one or be it many
Let it be dreams that you carry
And if you ever misstep
If you stumble or falter
I will always be humbled and proud
To be the one, to call you
Daughter
David Noonan Apr 2017
In such need of a distraction
To save me from this attraction
Alter me, misshape me, reintegrate me
Reform or deform me
Any form of chemical reaction
Contraction, extraction or detraction
To allow me escape this endless inaction
And there goes rhymin' simon
From 1973 and before i was born
Somewhere after the crown of thorns
But again before the golden age of ****
So accuse me again that i would overthink
Easy to say, when you've never read Batfink
Now there's a guy too ****** up to live
So much so, left the scene to resurrect as fixative
**** him, let him tell his story and i'll tell mine
And most of time i do that pretty fine
But this ain't poetry just a personal diatribe
My own little sick bucket, a self centered whine
For the purists this rhyming is surely a crime
But hey look at the title, see i'm just killing time
Anything to stop this endless push and pull
The gnawing of the brain, the heart shaped lull
There's nothing so intense as purest attraction
Yet in your absence i flounder to each & every
Distraction
ps... go read fixative, guy is an absolute treasure.
David Noonan Dec 2016
How many thoughts go through your head on a simple drive...same road..same time. same life ..days..weeks..months..years.. .engine keeps whirling..wheels keep rolling..thoughts keep forming and releasing..living and dying..in isolation..in connection..all born of something..all disappearing to nothing.... A man came on the radio to Jagger in ‘64 to tell him how white his shirts can be..now they tell me of positivity, mindfulness, the search for self fulfillment..all these years later and what more does it say about my life..what more use than a whiter shirt..i ain't buying..i ain't playing..congratulations. congratulations. .well done..my facebook feed scrolls and scrolls..friends of friends I've never met..never will..new jobs..new rings ..Dubai, Chicago the chance of a lifetime..lives joined together as one. .everlasting love..everlasting happiness ..babies and pets..houses and debt.. congratulations..congratulations..so so happy for you..all good..all good..share and comment..but whose really living today. .whose really sharing the truth..where's the comment..where’s the reality...because it's never enough..it's just not enough.. And yet these thoughts keep coming..this blank road..this busy mind..and now winter is on its way ..cold finally setting in..and I think of you, but put you to the side..not for here..not for now..this is something else..this is I..who am I..never enough ..im just not enough..why oh why..it starts in the womb they say..starts at childhood..over protective parents..over bearing teachers.. fractured and brittle friendships..no freedom..no encouragement..no trust..be good..be safe..be what we want..it's what you'll want too.. but what when you know it's not..always and ever yet do it anyway ..what then..for its not enough..no its not enough. . why have I never known jealously ..nor never once felt envy..is that self worth..is that contentment or is it just more ambivalence..just an ever held lack of ambition..lack of desire.. stop thinking..stop thinking. there's more to life. who'll play left midfield on monday..can't wait..big game..defines the season..means everthing..means nothing ..gotta stop..pull in . parcel motel..collect package for her...quick snap that i got it ..you're great ..thanks a mill..was collecting a record anyway but never said..she doesn't need to know..white lies..little lies..guilty as charged..and she's started to paint ..why..what's she searching for there on that blank canvas.. filling it with a kaliediscope of abstract colours and shades of blues, greens and reds…all smiles..all flowers and perfect sunrises. will it be enough..i hope its enough..keep going..back to the car..pass a student..long hair and glasses under a big umbrella..now is her time..will she seize it..no regrets. nows the chance ...positivity ..mindfullness ..self fulfilment wished upon a perfect stranger but not sought for I ..contradictions .. contradictions ..in everthing I ever say and feel..back to the road..leave the city lights..welcome the falling autumn leaves ..where's the beauty..where's the change..the new..the future . a changing of a season upon us soon.. autumn browns to winter grey.. just the same old..same old.. when was the last time i looked forward to something..**** knows..what was it..**** knows..work is over..why think of it..what do they think of you there . conversations in the canteen..teenage discos..tut tutting all round..a chorus of disapproval..how could they leave their daughters out like that..all agree..all agree..not me..let them live..let them find themselves..let them be enough...let them be all they can be. do I even respect these people..do i even like most of them..how many days..how many years. am i liked there  .am i admired. am i respected…am I even known.. don't be naive..no one dares to care just as i don't of them or there . its all in a game…be nice..be professional . white shirts. pressed suits. Not enough. Never enough...how many minutes have passed..all these thoughts..Nothing decided. Nothing changed. Where's the beauty...where's the light..where's that dream to cling to..same journey..over and over..days and weeks and months and years. the gates of home..the musics final coda ..the last lines of a faded  favourite fantasy..cause love is tough..when enough is not enough

not enough

not enough

not enough
David Noonan May 2017
I shall internalize to the point where i rise
Like a grey misty ash through sullen harbour skies
To descend on these eyes who never danced with ambition
Nor once sought to covet nor hold executive position
Sweeping through parochial house to office building
I consume this room as a deathly prison warden
Where time passes and falls in a desperate eerie sigh
Unable to cry in an endless stare of just getting by

I shall crawl through the past of these city streets
Retracing my footsteps as the years they recoil
The red terraced housing of old Hungry Hill
A young boy in his room sitting there still
Head full of dreams waiting for his moment to shine
Such foolish naivety of a dreamer in his prime
He would never tie his shoelaces anything but straight
Just getting by, the sole manifestation of a solemn fate

I shall leave as a mist to cover these countryside hills
As a wandering soul, a veil rolling down as early dew
Comes upon a house where children asleep in their beds
Let it be them that carry the dreams of lives better led
So that I may finally relent and lay myself down to rest
Not for deaths cold embrace but a warmer peace instead
In a world of all or nothing we have this life of you and I
Where it shall be enough to get by, by just getting by
David Noonan Feb 2019
and are u happy says she

no, but i'm not hungry either,
nor am I misplaced, nor destitute
but i do have a thirst
for that
i can't seem to understand
that of the mind, that promises more
and all that it is this life ignores
as we play generation x rules
this slacknesss consumes
oh for the tears left in their wake
these bodies tighten and ache
christ on a cross
we were promised so much more
and yet dreams don't die
if they ne'er had a chance to live
or love, or breathe, or feel
maybe that's too big
maybe that's too real
lift it and move on
its just another week
from another long past year
hold on dear
hold on dear

shur' i'm grand says I,
smiley face
full stop.
David Noonan Mar 2019
Sure, i was born working class
But that hero he was never in me
Does that leave me something to be?
Other than this mess of insecurities
Those that i seek to pass on to you
With these bats in my eyes and spiders in my bed
How do I see through the webs of deceit?
That dark the night but flame the passions of the free

Running wild within a solitary cell
An inner longing endlessly persecutes me
Hell is round the corner offering sympathy and tea
Laughing  sarcastically, a mirror of 1988
A parish hall, a community, a church fete
Still life of a young boy of Corpus Christi
Stealing cards, running yards, playing to be hard
As I pray to the saints and plead for relief

Mother calls as supper lays on the kitchen table
Boy complies, studies hard, proves to be able
Now those days are gone, left far behind
All freedom is lost through the estates of the blind
Where are they now, his prayer and his plea?
Grey eyes, grey suit and grey tie
Nothing is left, there is no one to be
This is the hero, the hypocrite in me
David Noonan Jan 2017
End of a terraced wall
Atop of Hungry Hill
Three of us, two thirteen
Smoking John Player Blue
**** all else to do
This council estate
All we knew
From there i could see
My Da's own family home
Where he grew
How far he'd come
Could retrace his journey
While the ash still hung
Council estate to council estate
Old Ballynanty Beg
To this shiny and new
No boarded up houses yet
But stifled with bags of glue
Yet we were no dreamers
Just a three minute pop tune
A wish to run wild and free
No thoughts of  breaking through
Red brick, grey skies, hollow minds
To town we'd go
Dunnes, Boyds, Roches Stores
Robbing what we could
Batteries, perfumes and tackies
The thrill of the chase
A need to feel alive
Over Sarsfield Bridge
Where we could belong
Hearts pounding, legs racing
Back to Hungry Hill
And yes we were young
Of course we were young
But we'd still be there now
Smacked up on those bags of glue
If not for our Ma's and our Da's
For they knew how far they'd come
They knew
David Noonan Aug 2017
the weeping that makes me half a man
the rage that divides me greater still
are these the created or the original sin
that leads me down to the drunkards well
there it was that i had found you again
your hair changed, your dress less pretty
life lived through a jukebox country song
that preached no rights or saw no wrong

our greatest hour the one so fast to pass
leaving moments of perpetual memory
seeks a home for a weary vagabond soul
left grasping a belief for something more
full of regrets sustaining broken promises
time waits for no one and no one for us
Sunday comes down, the night still young
dance with me now jukebox country song
David Noonan Mar 2019
On another long *** haul flight,
just thinking about my life.
Or one of them at least,
don't wanna confuse this write.
I get to my late night hotel
and throw my bags on the bed.
So that i can curl up on the floor
and try to sleep once more.

Waking at 3, take to my phone
to stream free **** till i ***.
Throw those same bags on the floor
and somehow sleep on till morn.
Rising in the bed next to the door
unruly, unkempt and disheveled.
Oh New Orleans, how i expected
a promise of so much more.

And back in dear Dublin
at St. Michans' protestant church.
Some **** just gone stole the head
of an ancient Knights Templar.
Mummified by the limestone
or from some methane gas there.
800 years he's been laid to rest,
greeting tourists and locals alike.
2019, taken on a last crusade
by some thieving dublinian scobe.
Sent floating down the manky Liffey
a river that stinks like a vikings robe.
Dublins' archbishop Michael Jackson
tells the papers that he's shocked.
Thats' right, Michael ******* Jackson
how weird and steaming is that.

This story i heard from a
blind boy with a bag on his head.
And he said he wanted to cry
for he so often visited that crypt.
Well i guess i've never been
and had never really planned.
But christ it still makes me sad
another switch I guess just tripped.

But hey, whats it got to do with you
and whats it all got to do with me.
Well me, i'm back on this hotel floor
trying to keep my own head.
And as for you, well you go right on
cry me a river to float me on dreams.
For me, for you and for above all,
that Templar Knight of New Orleans.
David Noonan Dec 2016
Let Our Love

Let our love not be a war
Not played out on battlefields of mindless ****** revenge
Nor one of splendid victories followed so soon by crushing defeat
Not one of heroes and villians for i no longer summon the desire to play my part
Let our love then not be a war
As all wars end in eventual separation and follow an uneasy peace

Let our love not be a game
Not bound by rules nor by instructions to play
Nor possess a Jack of Diamonds to steal your Ace of Hearts away
Not one with winners, losers or cheaters with only ***** tricks to wage
Let our love then not be a game
As all games end in finite time so as only to begin once more

So come now and let our love be art
One of shimmering  colors, daring abstracts and brilliant hues
One formed of sophistacted melody, soulful voice and driving beat
One of perfect prose, eloquent verse and the purest words of a story never since told
Come now then and let our love be art
For its art as our love for all its flaws that shall live and breathe for ever more
David Noonan Dec 2016
Just for one precious night under clear Polish skies.
I'd surrender all my memories reflected forever in her eyes
For her perfect porcelain skin lit by a shimmering bright star
I'd forgo my dreams and desires, have them cast aside and afar
To witness before me the truth of her body laid bare
I'd sacrifice my heart, my soul and all that I remain or care
For to have lived that one night under clear Polish skies
Is to have seen the freedom and beauty of where my own true love lies
David Noonan Mar 2017
If i wore an elastic red band taut on my wrist
And snapped it often would it help me recall
The first day that i saw you from a distant past
The only face for me in a crowded lecture hall

Or if i was to pull that old instant photograph
Sequined black dress of another graduation dance
Monkey suit, pressed shirt and paisley bow tie
Two who never believed in a need of second chance

If I retook a trip to the wild Atlantic coast
Flew a kite of a deserted evening on Lahinch beach
Standing laughing at another baltic Irish summer
Would i just feel the cold whilst you remained out of reach

Or if i dropped the needle to our favourite record
A glass of Italian red wine and Waits' Blue Valentine
Would i feel you again where so often we lay
Or just hear the Blue as it drowns all reason, all rhyme

Yet wherever i go or whatever i do
I will never be able to recapture that glory of you
They say to move on, don't you ever look back...

Maybe tomorrow those same truths fade to black
David Noonan Feb 2017
Someone's taken a serrated blade to
the core of this night
It's moon, shrouded in a widows veil
forms the dimmest of halflight
As the stars all seem to weep its
passing where they fall
And I,
I don't want to sleep with you,
I just want to stay up and talk
As the sounds of the street resound then
fade through this tiny boxroom
The silence filled with comfort as the blue nile
soothe on late night radio

Our view, 
a city landscape towered by the now
idled dockland cranes
Do they dream to escape
to the endless deep blue
like you and I
Or do they cower in the darkness,
longing for morning and
a purpose once more
That dawn jolts as its light reflects
sharply to my eyes from
your stainless blade
But I wake alone, with you lost
to the thoughts and dreams that you are
As the cranes begin to clank
to a meaning they crave,
I cower alone and
accept my fate
David Noonan Dec 2016
North Atlantic Wind
Rip through this useless flesh
As I stand before you one last time before death
A sacrificial offering in a search for some inner truth
Let your fiercest storm strip away all I possess
Eight hundred years of hated oppression
So as to sell our miserable freedom
For a state sponsored religious repression
For what died the sons of Roisin
For what died the sons of Erin
To an over protected child with a shyness from birth
Anxiety, insecurity, a national depression
North Atlantic Wind
Take me from this Irish disease
Nationalism, Catholicism, Alcoholism buried within
Howl now away it's bitterness
Roar upon me your enlightenment
Let me be relieved and shorn of all these tired excuses
No longer ones of Gods' or chemicals or States of fear
Strip me to my core, and let me see what's finally within
North Atlantic Wind
Answer all it is that I never felt to ask
For it is I and I alone that I now must fatallly see
And to stop my running and hiding from this Irish disease

My North Atlantic Wind
Let this be my end.....
David Noonan Apr 2019
Criss Cross
Moments arise
Thoughts and life
Perfectly align
Synchronized
Harmony
One true life
Felt effortlessly
So seldom seen
To scarcely believe
Life more ordinary
Thoughts roam free
Running wild
To Dissipate
Claustrophobic
Fragments form
Ghosts of War
Nosebleed
David Noonan Jan 2020
I felt that i would age easier
never once having been young
Yet how could I hope to finish a race
that a starting pistol had not begun
So the crowds they stand assembled
with that ticker tape pulled so taut
I'm chipped and pinned from today
as my mortality begins it's rot

I'm digitised and I'm monetised
a childhoods faith long since lost
Personal decline shared communally
as another nail is mounted on this cross

Yet we slow reveal that we have a tribe
through a lonely sax on the mystery train
We shall survive to take another step
a radio dial through the driving rain
Towards that path of lifes confusion
to start again how would it feel
As night does fall and day does break
we mould these chains to our tribal wheel
David Noonan Dec 2016
What is a man if not the lightness of night and the darkness of day?
A crush of sullied confusion, a mess of uneasy contradiction
Drven by his own stolen ideas and lifes fractured ideals.
Is this what makes a man?

What is a man if not the dreamers lie and it's devious truth?
In all of its bitter failings and its many crushing defeats
Of private investigations uncovering endless regrets and remorse
Is this what it takes to be a man?

Ssshh..let him be, leave him rest, for tomorrow dawns another day
When all these questions and doubts
Shall be answered by a starlings call or the piercing of a silver bullets heart
Perhaps that's what it shall take to call oneself a man?
David Noonan Mar 2017
That song you sung as you drove
South towards home, six hours or so
The distance between us stretching
As the road unwound to the night ahead
I knew it by Cindi Lauper, you by Ane Brun
Yet sooner or later that day will come
Where all that you'll see in those same sad eyes
Is a fading rainbow of grey and blue

Your heart to me, so beautifully profound
So oft resembled a puzzled word-search
Where my dreams and reality never collide
Complex and scattered yet meaning within
And how i'd long to find my own name there
Between love and desire across its central core
All this time, there it was but broken in two
Like a fractured rainbow of grey and blue
David Noonan Feb 2017
Yet i stay

Recalling all the regrets of life
As they fuse to hazy memories of all i didn't do
Just like those defining mistakes
Were ones that I  never knew

And yet

I never asked to be a God
Or hold someone's fate in my hand
To be responsible for a heart, a life, a love
That was more than i could ever withstand

Should I now

Feel jealous, or some remorseful envy
Is it possible or would it as you said
Involve consideration for someones feelings
Other than my own instead

And yet

I long to feel, to make me seem alive
So come shatter this heart, break me
Let me writhe in anger, bitterness or futile rage
Desecrate this unkept grave and set me free

Yet i stay

Bleak in the shadows of a time since passed
Alone with this unrelenting sorrow
Save for the faint thud through the chambers
Of this heart empty and hollow
David Noonan Jun 2017
casual conversations
evoked then folded
amongst the personal things
stickered and stored
i've so often asked myself
is it possible to fall in love
with every woman
that you ever meet
and if so
how do you let go
and where can you find
a removal van for the mind
for the memories
of all that's left behind
stepping out to start anew
how can i cleanse
in this irish summer rain
with it's tears of a lost love
permeating through
everything i own
records and books
now boxes on a pavement
left signing an old tune
to these photographs of you
of a time
where a photograph
was so much more
than a nine second delay
but something to own
yet like these memories
time too gets overtaken
with no distance left to run
i try to hold as best i can
from the steely approach
of the oncoming removal van
David Noonan Jan 2017
They all gather to the deadhouse
Like actors taking to a well trodden stage
Whether from London's' Kings Cross
Or the finery of NYC's Queens borough
Back to the fold all prodigal sons must return
To join with those that could never find a way
From this barren cold land and its insular bitter lies
All united now in a grief of one that has been lost  
All divided by a rivalry, a rumor, some generational feud
The priest commences his weary and over versed tone
As he summons his God, his Jesus and his Litany of Saints
Incense burns as a symbol of the prayer of the faithful rising
Yet rising no further than their hypocrisy descends

And where do you look when even Jesus lets you down
As you turn to wipe that burning tear from your face
One not born from holy water nor from their devils grace

Doors are opened and a captive audience awaits
A procession of mourners to take their turn to the stage
Heads bowed all and one, as hands are extended
In weak and feeble grips amid their mumbled exchanges
"Sorry for your loss" and "taken too soon"
None hesitate too long as they navigate this fallowed room
An occasional recognised face among a community of strangers
A moment of warmth emanating from this ritualistic parade
All gone too soon unlike those memories of years past
Of wanting to get out and get free, promising never to go back
Yet to the last of this line they swear that they remember you well
Whilst retiring to The Old Stand with promise of more stories to tell

Where the whiskey chasers flow like the Guinness on draught
Helping to swallow the lies on how good it is to be back
Rehashing of old platitudes but nothing really said

For no one shall ever speak ill of the dead
David Noonan Oct 2017
I used to keep score of every teardrop that would flow
Until like some punch drunk boxer you couldn't give no more
Bells they sounded and to corners we returned
Red to red dirt ground, blues retreat to blossom in bloom
As our hazy Mondays blur through to vague Thursdays
What we had in November was lost come September

A galaxy of oceans separate my disappointment from my disappointment in you
Yet for a chance encounter on a lonely Friday night
Our shadows would dance bathed in the crystal moonlight
For magic it weaves through the diamonds of a roadside bar
Our senses unravelled by some mystical cabalistic charm
So why should we ever try to make sense of it all
Seconds out - round two, don't ever stop, don't ever fall
David Noonan May 2019
we learn then unlearn
how to be free  
as we trade secrets
with the magpies
of Arthur's Quay Park
it's' on these summer days
such promises are made
keeping us warm
through seasons change
as we dance
to The Golden Horde
where a two for one
concession on the door
grants access to Termites
and its' cider soaked floor
here in this world
we have all that we need
we feel it through
reverberations
of music and heart
we won't want for much
once we don't lose our senses
our senses of touch

the years would give
what the magpies stole
to a lakeside hotel
where the clinking of glass
greets a grand hall
wedding guests align
a ballroom of romance
two friends move
so lost in time
trying to adult
whilst never growing old
we won then we lost
and we won again
but i never promised riches
i never promised poems
so here is our world
and all that we have
we feel it through
celebrations
of our music and heart
we don't want for much
for we never lost our senses
our senses of touch
"We are two friends lost in time
when your eyes are passing mine
I see we've been through
so much in our lives
We are two friends so in love
the times we've been together,
We're true friends in time"
David Noonan Jan 2017
Taking two words to describe yourself
You just smiled "Annie Hall"
I had only seen Manhatten but somehow
Knew, knew how hard i'd fall
As for my turn
Well you just placed a finger on my lips
And then so softly whispered
Sentimental boy

That was then, as for now
Maybe the final credits have rolled
Our picturehouse now in ruins
No more screenings nor stories to be told
Like that derelict Ballroom of Romance
We visited at the edge of town
Summer nights, flagons of cider and your  
Sentimental boy

Recreating it's history
By it's broken down and boarded up wall
Slow dancing in the moonlight
Stopping only to swear we'd heard a call
Rising from the paupers graveyard
Dancing silhouetted in the stars
Ghosts of dead lovers to an old fashioned tune
Sentimental boy

This town now has changed so much
But none so more than we
Yet so often on a warm summers night
By that paupers graveyard you'd still meet me
Humming some half remembered melody
Whilst wishing on the brightest star
Please oh please, won't you just let me be....

                                                      ­               your
                                                sentimental boy
* Rural Ireland in the 1950s/1960s offered little in entertainment or socializing, save for dance halls. These became known as Ballrooms of Romance but were little more than large sheds and most lay unused and derelict by the late 80s/90s

** In modern Ireland a flagon usually refers to a two-litre bottle of cider. Very popular for underage bush  (street) drinking due to its relative low cost per quantity

*** Paupers Graveyards were a field of unmarked and unkept graves of the poor and destitute . Originating from Famine times  (1844-1849) they were common sites all over the country. 150 years later the only signs that remained were often a single cross on a mound of the field
David Noonan Jun 2017
she tells me that she's breathing only that shame again
and that there is nothing i can do to relieve her pain again
she has walked a thousand miles in hand me down shoes
no stretch of roadside can ever quench these travelling blues

i don't know how to feel but yet i pretend to understand
what do i know of her life or this punctuating hard land
bequeathed to her from generations since come and passed
as culture, a sense of identity, a life much too innocent to last

she's reaching out, longing for her own voice to be heard
masquerading empathy i offer all these right and measured words
for with no one to answer to nor no real actions to take
i master in hollow sentiment formed from these feelings i fake

as always i seek the beauty of fragility for only my gain
i play out this butterfly's life as her delicate wings are stung by rain
briefly she flies as her life sparks and dims over fourteen days
by resurrecting my jesus my self satisfaction empowers my ways

so why is it she that carries this shame and i stand left of frame
as a spectator, a commentator, an outsider to the rules of the game
whereas she is the soul of the mythical dancer in the flame
i am the vessel devoid of heart breathing in this cold cold shame
David Noonan Apr 2019
Meeting below Shannon bridge
under April skies
From where
we could just about see
your Da's office in the
National Bank
They say he did the State
some service there
but as far as you were concerned
you didn't care

Sur' why else would you be here,
mitching school
with nothing to give
or leave in this world
but
Twenty John Player Blue,
this boy from the council estate
and a mark to be made
from a golden can
of aerosol spray

We laid it there beneath that bridge
with those of others
that had gone before
Above "Iron Maedin" spelt with the
e where the i should be
and the i where the e
And to the left of that
"Brits Out"
and
"Up the Ra"

I wanted to place a ****
before the Up
but sharp as a tack
you realised
that we had left our names
and it wouldn't take a genius
with or without
an i or an e
to figure it out
so I just
let it be

We joked that you
had the looks and the brains
and if only I had the brawn
we'd have been sure
to make lots of money
and opportunities
Instead we sat back
smoked
and enjoyed our craft
How I marvelled
over the beauty of your name
next to mine
added to a date
that now goes
unrecalled

But recall I do,
how when the April breeze
would blow
even just a little
that that bridge would whistle
and how it would seem
to carry
a song of hope and expectation
over the river
through the underpass
and straight onto
a promise
from my lips to
yours

Looking to the past
it seems as perfect now
as it was perfect then
and yet it passed
without that kiss
that had been dreamed for so long
now held up
in the breeze
of crippling fear and the ease
of not knowing
and
could have beens

I consoled myself
with the notion of stages
and building blocks
for closer binds
but blocks
they build walls
that blind
as they get too big to climb
and moments do pass
as dreams do die
under whistling bridges
and
April skies

I still have occasion
to walk that bridge
and still it whistles
fainter now than it used to do
a more distant song
carries a nostalgic air
for I don't dare
to go under
nor wonder
of the existence
of a golden mark
of an April day

For the ease of not knowing
our names go unseen
two more
long since lost
could have beens
The Shannon Bridge in Limerick City, a popular haunt for those of us wishing to bunk school for the day with nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a head full of teenage dreams. Built in 1988 it is the last bridge on the River Shannon, Ireland longest river. The bridge was also known as the Whistling or Singing Bridge as after constriction wind would blow through the gaps under the bridge making a whistling sound.
David Noonan Mar 2017
Where the river meets the sea
Behind a walled office of a harbour estate
A motivational picture hangs with dust
"Chart your own course", it patiently pleads
But surely knows little of these things
You called to me there once more today
Even sweeter than i ever could say
It had seemed so long in many ways
Yet you were opening up like yesterday
Whilst the world still spins around us
And painted ponies dream of ferris wheels
The early April sun breaking through  
Is at best a mere coincidence
For I never believed in anything more
Than people and what they choose to bring
Like the honesty that flows of a simple smile
Slow reveals all your intrinsic gold
We celebrate how we can never say goodbye
In a place where sad songs no longer reply
For I've sang too many of those of late
Hold'til tomorrow to reminisce about today
Pause and realise real beauty resides
For eternity in a true friends eyes
David Noonan Jan 2017
In the name of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost
This Catholic education offered no hope
A religious nationalism their only concern
How righteous men must make our land
A nation once again we were foretold
They died in my name
died in my name

This is not now Nineteen Sixteen
Nor from the pages of your history text
This is now my weeping TV screen
A Saturday in a small market town
And twenty nine dead
Twelve kids and a mother pregnant with twins
Not done in my name
not in my name

Heroes don't just rise at Easter
But appear on a Saturday Night Live
Like a mystical phoenix from the flames
Like a newborn filled with indignant rage
Signing of another War
Of fighting the real enemy within
You sing in my name
sing in my name

Aged 25, twenty five years ago
They nailed you to an American cross
As you ripped up that page
Broke their silence, tore down their walls
Who would count the children you saved
If history could recognise heroism in this way
Yet it does in your name
it does in your name
sinead
David Noonan Oct 2017
our mothers tears fill a hospital ward
as a doctor summons the Chaplins call
last rites administer to this tiny newborn
thrice in five days you're destined to fall
born with a hole in such a delicate heart
yet no doctor nor cleric could recognise
this was to allow the world seep through
a shining eighth wonder of pale blue eyes
held on the sill outside a neonatal room
i saw with my soul a love birthed anew
dad he promised that you'd be home soon
there to the years of childhood we grew

the time had come for mam to say to me
sister was different in other ways as well
not for you was destined a desk at school
nor books would you read nor stories tell
innocence of the pure and purity of truth
special she said born of down syndrome
and yet would i never once see you down
for your smiles to me evoke only wisdom
now as you pass over your fortieth year
my sister i cherish all that we hold dear
for you are a family's jewel in it's crown
raising a world from love handed down
for my sister Siobhan, a shining eighth wonder of pale blue eyes
David Noonan Aug 2017
Welcome Sorrow
no need to seek forgiveness
for not knowing me by name
i've waited long and lonely
to feel the touch
of such desolate company
tell me then
are you here to show me
all of my tomorrows
reflected in a deep pool
of tears from yesteryears
show me that i can be a lover
but can never be loved
show me that i'll still be here
but never will i belong
that these are not my people
these are talents
to which i'll never possess
so stop whispering
stop whispering
come closer my friend
show me that nothing exists
over those grey foreboding hills
show me that nothing survives
at the end of a fractured rainbow
show me that the rivers and oceans
are but a flow of tiny tears
show me that all the dawns and the dusk
of this world to you belong
show me that the only peace to be found
is in a black dogs stare
come now my confidante
wrap me in your arms
so tightly once more
let me see through your eyes
feel through your veins  
speak through your wisdom
emasculate in your reign
but go now my lover
my temptress go
place these words so delicately
on your parched and wretched tongue
from a kiss
to a whisper
to a shattering scream
that this is my goodbye
this is my goodbye
that this is to be
Your final Goodbye
David Noonan Jan 2018
And i can't take my mind
From that hairdresser i frequent
Just had her second baby
Right after her father had died
To leave her care for a half brother
That is lost to the angst of teenage pride
Unknown a mother on a drug fuelled ride
Stacey the one to pick pieces as they fall
For she is beautiful, she never cries.
She only ever smiles, she only smiles

To her my coat of colours i do gift
On a hook does it hang
As her life she strips bare
With an ease of fallen discarded hair
Her colours unfurl in humility and grace
Her red is of creation, of a burning fire
Not one of foolish unrepentant desire
Her blue a reality, a living breathing sky
Not the word of a poet, not of you nor of I
Her green is her renewal
Of the fertile lives that she now tends
Jealousy nor envy no means to that end
Yet evening falls, in who will she confide?  
No one to turn to, nowhere to hide
For she is beautiful, she never smiles  
She only ever cries, she only cries
David Noonan May 2018
If only you'd take me for a fool
And not take me for granted like you do
I would rather live on in some ignorant bliss
Than taste the reality of this deathly kiss
For this is too easy to understand  
This is too easy to lose ourselves in
If you would only take me for another and not as I am
To lay me down on this cold hard ground
Pick up my pieces in some different form
A brand new me raised from your ideal storm

If only you'd take me for a fool
As fools are the ones who fall in love
Whose words seem to fall from the stars above
Dancing till dawn under cider filled skies
They are the ones that carry life in their eyes
So rescue me from this vagueness that consumes
Our daily routine of me versus you
And yet maybe you do, at night when i dream
Delivering my innocence rebirthed anew
For only a fool could keep returning to you
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