Thursday, 22 July 2021

Three Stunning Poems by Patricia Walsh

 



The Poisoned Bride

 

Reciting the riot act, its first step backwards

The impression of punishment lingers fine

Rotted in money, the keepsakes infernal

Occupation in hearsay, having heard enough

The catchcry of failure blaming others.

 

Crying out the emperor, rolling in the fresh

Loving where none right, rummaging in malice

Rubbed in till it bleeds, ambidextrous argument

Holding the nerve until absent notice

Wanting too much, resigned to the shelf.

 

Needing feelings too, or at least, some sentiment

Fighting for a full name is certainly not the answer

Rummaging into debt a time rescinded

Aborting for convenience a whistled right

Feelings on both sides unwon, defeated.

 

The blinded pantomime, growing into a better shape

Parking the likelihood of a matrimonial disease

Philosophical retirement won't do a disservice

Working into disturbances, feeling pretty good

Scribbling at night to uncover the righteous flaw.

 

Longing for deliverance, meted all year round

Corrosive dissention rises above the acrostic

Stalling at preference, marriage co-starred

The next violin swings on its hallowed hours

Music for the denouement, a cause less likely. 


 

Recyclable

 

Wanting to be caught out, not helping itself

Not able to, screeching the brakes supreme

The solemn sunlight courses through wind-ups

The settled matter relieved of its costly duties

Stripped of this privilege, fitting in obscurity

The bated anticipation goes forth like a lamb.

 

Growing into spite the innumerable cashier

More plastic than fish a scourged reality

Minding nets, waiting for the Lord to assuage them

None being indispensable, got up and left

A rock on the church to stand on gracefully

Looking back not fit for glory, as advised.

 

Looking out for signs, close cousin of information

Gotten away to the bitter end, joyously sick,

The unnerved flirting over extreme drinks

Revealed by the gift, you strain at intellect

Slipping through frosted windows from the outside

Desperate hours covering a multitude of sins.

 

The world is already on fire, solitarily said

A song for the deaf in an attentive episode

Where the next meal is coming from, cannibalised for food

The employed self-esteem runs foul of tenacity

The pet-name riots through speed and efficiency

The average bolt-hole on a capsized entity. 


 

The Generous Gene

 

Not always writing, at the end of a smart phone

Hijacking the email at a diffident time

Cracked for marrow, siphoning the bone

Future queens of content, poisoning conversation

Cutting through silk, mumbling on the quiet.

 

This mark is good for you, like it or otherwise

Picking out husband's on a father's free will,

The essential bowing down to the break of dusk

The hungry minion basis in its own cold

Hitting gibes at the less fortunate, a date sealed.

 

What to give for another leeway!  This substance abuse,

Flying in your own hands above a universal slob,

To cease and desist from the potential snowflakes

Crying out scandal, at least before time

Inferno in a heart wiping out transgression.

 

A place for the self-absorbed, true, it is,

Right time for repentance, paying through the nose,

Growing in stately fear, a port in a storm

Home truths of hell measuring precious deeds

Expelled at midnight through the wedding feast.

 

Rippling through good, the stately mansions bleating

Gone through sarcasm in a classroom brawl

Lies and conjectures roving through desertion

Falling in hate a growth more than cancer burns

Not returning ever, evermore aged and foolish.






Patricia Walsh was born in the parish of Mourneabbey, in north Co Cork,and educated at University College Cork, graduating with an MA in Archaeology in 2000.  Her poetry has been published in Stony Thursday; Southword; Too Well Away Journal; New Wasteland Magazine; Quail Bell Magazine; The Poetry Collective;  Quiver Review; Blazevox Magazine; and The Rational Creature

She has already published a chapbook, titled Continuity Errors  in 2010, and a novel, The Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014.  She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine, and a further novel, In The Days of Ford Cortina will be published in late 2021.




1 comment:

  1. It would be invidious to have to pick out a favourite from amongst these 3 marvellous works.But it's been kind of a rule of thumb of mine when it comes to reading the work of another Poet, if I wish that I too had created such couplings of words - as in one very small instance- "blinded pantomime" and there are so many more that I simply adore after the first reading;then that's my kind of a Poet and my kind of poetry.

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