"connell" poems
Melted souls
The old one grows
The tic and tac beneath my toes
A last regret
These paths forget
That once I had a room to let
Back before
A ****** war
Lovers and poets dreamed for more
A better day
A bed to stay
A gun to keep The Lord away
Before I fought
I often thought
That hopes and dreams could all be sought
But now my goals
All filled with holes
O'Connell street like melting souls
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
Intimate adventures: purple sunset;
Sabrina Elliott at her canvas;
My brother boarding some Utah-bound jet;
Easton Connell reciting tender lyrics,
Caught in a mad faith’s unwitting net:
“Daylight licked me into shape”; then night fell;
The city struggling with unheeded debt;
Lieberman and Sathyadev dying young;
Their mothers, a heart-wrenched duet.
James Howard humming, his guitar unstrung,
Paganini in that delicate hand:
The failed romantics; a thing to be forgotten again.
Mar 21, 2013
Mar 21, 2013 at 4:40 PM UTC
It’s 18 years later and I’m strolling down O’ Connell Street.
I notice a rough-sleeper in a shop doorway. There is a queue
for the bank machine contouring around his limbs
as he lies face down on the hard ground talking loudly to himself.
I remember how the investigators worked flat out in Kosovo,
almost captive to the corners of fields and the cruelty
of the events they sought to prove, the soil they touched
became a membrane surrounding remote scars.
They lay face down at times in abandoned crops,
measuring tracks, listening for crowded spaces,
recording the gossip of trees.
They reminded me of Indian scouts from the movies,
feeling for the signature of passing armies
in the broken grass beneath their fingers.
They were asking the dead for directions, the way somebody
might search a cemetery, calling on long deceased
relatives to whisper if they are close or not.
Soon the world will discover another war crime and the skeletons
of civilisation will once more bear witness to its own ******
As the Earth opens recent wounds I imagine the rough-sleepers
as skeletons of society communicating with scouts,
investigators leaning over precipices,
contemplating what goes into the filling of a trench.
Michael J. Whelan
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 5:23 AM UTC
Today I saw a sign in a
town called Cahirsiveen
County Kerry, advertising
what appeared to be, Sive.
I sieved my thoughts, and
what came through the fine
mesh of my mind were the
filings of amnesia.
Earlier, I had passed by Glencar
the foothills en route to Valencia
an island off Ireland, last stop
before New York harbour.
Hugh O' Flaherty, The Vatican
Pimpernel was looking at me
through James Joyce's glasses as
I passed Daniel O'Connell's church.
It was O'Connell country for sure,
**** a native of the island could
share the ball with O'Dwyer and
Paudie O'Se, the three coasters.
Balinskelligs, monks Islands,
isolation, invasion, inhospitable
weather, antarctic insurmountable's,
Inis, Inn's, Inch, Tom Crean, Fungie.
I sieved my sievings only to discover
that Sive was by John B Keane, but
guess what, the Queen of the Kingdom
should be Miriam O'Callaghan!
Ps.
This is a poem with a colloquial
flavour, one needs to be a native
to comprehend it.
Mar 8, 2019
Mar 8, 2019 at 3:27 PM UTC
Brother John,
unfurl your purple banner,
let the peace dove soar
above Grafton township
proclaiming victory
over endless oppression.
Ring the chapel bell,
light the candles
in the sanctuary,
shelter us with tea &
the word of God.
Brother John,
the forecast is gray.
I want to hear the truth.
I want to hear your voice
as the world grows dark.
Brother John,
will we ever forgive our transgressions?
Will we survive the winter intact
to bloom once more into the flower of art?
How do we find our pathway back
to our spirit?
Now is time to travel within.
Pray. Forgive.
Create peace. Walk with God.
Make magic.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 7:22 AM UTC
Magdalene's mother yaks
about the price of things
in the shops
when she gets back
from town
and how she'd met
Bridget O'Connell
and how that woman can talk
it's no wonder her husband
goes away quite frequently
and what was Mary Moran
doing here?
her mother says
just listening to records
Magdalene says
better be no mess
in your room
I only tidied it up
the other day
no mess her
daughter says
(she'd tidied up the bed
and floor and hid
the ***** and cigarettes)
there's talk of her
at the school
from the sisters
Magdalene's mother says
what talk?
none to worry
your head with
her mother says
so what was she
doing here?
you know I don't like
her being here
don't you?
just listening
to the Billy Fury record
just friends
Magdalene says
(they'd lain in bed
and kissed and did things
and she reflects
on it now
as her mother
yaks on)
and that other
friend of yours
that Martha
there's talk of her
there at the school too
the nuns thinking her
being a nun at sometime
now if there's one
to encourage it is there
she's the one
the mother says
putting away shopping
don't want that Mary here
unless I am here too
understand?
Magdalene nods
it is easier than arguing
and I smell smoke
have you been
smoking again?
And with her?
she's a bad influence on you
I won't have it
and if your da finds out
you're for it
now let me get on
and make sure the room
is tidy because if I go up
and it's not then
there'll be trouble
Magdalene says nothing
watching her mother's lips
opening and closing
like a fish out of water
and she
the queer girl loving
daughter.
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 2:40 AM UTC
And she's no more
A ****** than that
Magdalene who
Dried the feet
Of Christ with
Her hair, said
O'Brien, giving
You the wink and
Nodding towards
The girl at the bar
With the skirt way
Above the knees,
Carrying a tin for
Some charity, laughing
With O'Connell, giving
You the eye and O'Brien
The pip and shaking
The tin around the bar,
Like some ***** in
Biblical times ringing
Their bell and old Mrs
Murphy smiled a smile
Broader than her hips,
And you shaking your
Young head, looked back
At the girl and her tin
And the way she walked
To the door with the
Backside sweet enough
To fill a thousand dreams.
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 2:14 PM UTC
Didn’t we stand there then,
black tuxedo, white dress.
when the world seemed so small?
And oh, the innocence of ours.
The blue, soothing sky love in our eyes
and in our hearts.
And weren’t we tender,
and awed and scared;
knowing we were stepping from the room of desire
into a lifetime of love?
And wasn’t it holy, the sweetness of our way?
And were we not simply lovely then?
Were we not as lovely as the white gardenias,
as the moonlit night, as damp grass on our bare feet?
I think so.
Copyright © 2014 Linda R. O’Connell
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 11:40 AM UTC