#gaeilge
Green beer sweating on lacquered bars,
plastic beads, paper hats, rented stars,
“Kiss me, I’m Irish” stretched across chests,
parades of bad accents and borrowed bests.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig!
Shots lined up like saints in a row,
toasts thrown loud where the fiddle flows,
everyone's Irish for one long night,
everyone's drunk on a filtered green light.
Cabbage boils in a *** of myth,
and corned beef’s cooked into counterfeit,
Cheap clovers stand in for prayers once said,
while history’s hushed so it won’t upset.
This day wasn’t born under neon signs,
it was forged in fields stripped bare by design.
In hunger that hollowed the ribs to dust,
in a language crushed quiet for speaking up.
A choice was carved clean, sharp as a blade:
die with your culture,
or live white unafraid.
So they lived.
They cut Gaeilge words from the backs of their throats,
shortened their names, learned acceptable notes,
when to laugh, when to bend, when to disappear,
how to survive by erasing the years.
They rocked the cradles of strangers' sons,
while their own slept in slums ten to one,
shacks below the towers they raised,
paid for in silence, hunger, and early graves.
America kept what passed white at a glance—
the song, the joke, the drink, the dance—
and buried the rest beneath soil and stone:
the famine, the bodies, the roads of bone.
Grass staining tongues, ships full of grief,
women and children swallowed by seas.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig,
raise your glass full of glee,
but know this day isn’t just revelry—
it’s a wake that forgot why it gathered at all,
a people cut down to a slurred drunken call.
The Irish are more than fairy tales told,
more than four leaf clovers and pots of gold.
Language buried yet still awake,
We are exile and fire, endurance and ache.
Mar 11
Mar 11, 2026 at 2:41 AM UTC
Buaileann gáire m’chluas
Foréigean an maidin.
Le troideanna ‘s Aoire,
Long too forgotten.
An ‘Screech’ gearr pic donn
A itheann an greann.
M’fhocail ach fianaise
That I hadn’t known.
Ach tá fhios ag’m fhírinne
An scéál, is ár stair.
An gá lenár gaisce.
Why we are how we are.
Ag lorg an rath
Chaill tú d’Aidhm
Is d’fhág tú rud siar
Our reason for triumph
Mar sin, ná stop an gáire,
Coimeád do chuid greann.
Ní stopadh mo chroí
We know who has the crown.
Nov 29, 2024
Nov 29, 2024 at 7:05 AM UTC
who gave you the right
to collect other people’s misery?
heartaches and tears,
are not yours to own.
don’t you dare take my name,
it is yours no more;
not my life, not my soul,
not my home.
tá m’ainm! tá mo bhaile! tá m’anam seo!
with sweet voice,
and deft fingers,
you rewrite the pages,
to suit some plan of your own.
but my name? and his? and his?
our county, our place, our home?
stand upon your lonely ridge,
gaze down towards this fort,
and see:
taking others’ names is dangerous
when you don’t know what they mean.
Sep 7, 2019
Sep 7, 2019 at 8:06 PM UTC
bhí coinne agam anocht,
chuaigh muid go Lus na Gréine.
bhí sí go hiontach.
labhraimid le chéile,
faoi gach rud agus níos mó.
bhí sí go hiontach.
tá sásta orm.
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 9:53 PM UTC
laethanta sásta,
botharanna salach ‘s
éan orágamaí
May 28, 2019
May 28, 2019 at 11:42 AM UTC
teanga álainn
san aer.
ar gach taobh:
daoine áille
agus
tír gálanta.
éistim,
mo shúile druidte -
tarraingím anáil dhomhain:
síochain
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 8:43 PM UTC
anocht, d'ithim dinnéar le chairde:
bhí áthas orm! rinne mé dearmad orm féin.
May 10, 2019
May 10, 2019 at 9:21 PM UTC
scríobhfaidh mé rud gaelach gach lá,
fiú má tá drochghaeilge,
agus fiú má nach mhaith liom.
mar sin, tá mo theanga seo,
's úsaidim í!
May 9, 2019
May 9, 2019 at 11:41 PM UTC
Éire,
The beauty of a broken land,
Where each and every man
Took up his own fight
And fought it with all his might
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 9:08 PM UTC
is mo croí theanga í,
is an t-anam ó t-am dearmadta
gur ní cuimhnigh mé.
tá sé bhriste 's,
neamhiomlán,
ach is breá liom í fos
mar sin,
is mo bhaile í
agus tiocfaidh an lá
nuair tá mo theanga agam
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 7:49 PM UTC
Exisiting in yet another space between
Two worlds, two lives.
Searching for some new meaning -
Or running from old demons?
Trapped in the divide, between
This and that,
anseo agus ansin.
Torn, tattered, stuck in an lár:
Teanga, life, baile, love.
Falling to pieces
Clawing at - clawing at what’s left,
What is left?
Left is the eight months since you did -
Not that that affects me anymore
(He lies to himself),
It’s just a marker, a buoy -
keeps me on course.
Struggling to see what's right,
What is right?
"If it feels good..."
I am uncertain - but I don't feel peace.
Conflicted, definitely, and yet I don’t cease
Meddling in things I have no right to meddle in:
lives and loves and people -
Human beings.
Can you not see the damage this will cause?
Not you, but those who you misuse -
You are an evil, twisted little boy
Trapped in this space between
Right and wrong;
My twisted actions and my convicted mind;
Him and me.
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 17, 2019 at 7:41 PM UTC
anois, anois,
it's not that bad
níl sé a lan dona,
ach gearr mé fhein
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:12 PM UTC
Is fuath liom mo fhoinn
Mar ní thuigim iad nó
Ní feidir liom?
Ba mhaith liom túsa
Agus do thine
Ach tá heagla ormsa.
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 10:18 PM UTC
go maithe dia dom é!
is peacach mé,
agus tá bás uaim.
le do thoil,
sábháil dom uaim féin.
Mar 14, 2018
Mar 14, 2018 at 10:39 PM UTC
tá brón orm...
I'm sorry,
but, God, there is a sadness on me.
I know you have begun your move on,
and I promise I am happy for you -
but I have more work left in my heart
agus dúnéaltach mór.
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 7:21 PM UTC
You could have been mine.
You could have been all ours,
we Children of the Dark.
But the Angles came
imposing their own as supreme,
though so tainted by French.
But like our myths you stand strong
in a way.
Few speak you, know you,
but you are you.
Not pure for none are,
but you are you,
just like our tales of old
which you sang so high.
The Angles came, but you remain.
Nov 13, 2017
Nov 13, 2017 at 11:36 AM UTC
Nothing serves to fumble with your heartstrings
quite so well as a ceremony of the dead
(and nearly so)
where a tall man,
with black tie draped across broken heart,
wrestled with his voice;
in order not to display
what we are so practiced at hiding.
Nov 8, 2015
Nov 8, 2015 at 4:11 PM UTC
Ag an mbuaicphointe
na coimhlinte
Ní raibh siad cinnte.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 8:01 PM UTC