Pictures and Postcards
Mountains to mist, Beckett to boxer to blonde-
platinum of course, looking me straight in the eye,
over the slope of her shoulder.
She says nothing, and a million things.
not one can I catch as, like the accusations, I fly.
I'm back on the midnight bus as it pulls out and pulls in
passengers from the random roundabouts of my youth,
girlfriends dressed to kill and dying from the cold.
Yards and years away are barges passing,
coal powered, just like the square panes of light from the
Arndale block that lure people like moths.
The bigger picture hints of a hunt, of war, of winter,
brothers in arms, their quarry sought their silence confident,
reflective, pleased with themselves and whatever they have done.
I remember their faces peering in from the streets to the dreamy Cafés
'Stay a while', they seem to say, 'Drink your coffee,
compile this list for lesser days.'
Introspection
I turn the eye inwards
See the dark of me
That all the oceans of the world
Could not hope to fill.
Dinner with her ex
New-fangled fancy chilli-vinegar bottles,
I have to say in my defence,
my absolutely necessarily,
absolutely completely deliciously,
rat-arsed defence,
can- almost, in a certain seductive light I swear,
be virtually visually indistinguishable from red wine.
But try telling that amid his histrionic spurting, gagging,
the frantic back-slapping, ruined tablecloth, her
'I'll deal with you later' glancing glares, and me
wondering when I’ll be sufficiently sober to care.
Copyright © Peadar O'Donoghue 2012
