Three Poems by Michael Durack

 

SECOND PLACE

 

Someone must settle for second place,

be considered first loser or best of the rest.

Losing with honour is surely no disgrace.

 

At the final whistle or the end of the race

so many dreams of glory gone west.

Someone must settle for second place.

 

Hide your disappointment behind a poker face,

step on the podium serene and self-possessed.

Losing with honour is surely no disgrace.

 

You can accept defeat, go and embrace

your fate or make your heartbreak manifest

but someone must settle for second place.

 

We can’t all be champions, all be ace;

without the runners-up there’s no contest.

Losing with honour is surely no disgrace.

 

So relish the taking part, the giving chase.

Don’t hang your head, go puff out your chest.

Someone must settle for second place.

Losing with honour is surely no disgrace.

AGNOSTIC

 

Turning your back on God is something drastic,

a self-inflicted excommunication.

Better get used to being called agnostic

 

Though that falls short of full-blown atheistic.

Anyway, no more Heaven, Purgatory, Damnation.

Turning your back on God is something drastic.

 

Those icons, the plaster saints, or plastic

Jesus no longer require your veneration.

Better get used to being called agnostic.

 

Seems such a waste abandoning majestic

churches, the towering gateways to salvation.

Turning your back on God is something drastic.

 

You could have stayed onside, harboured an elastic

conscience, maintained ties with faith’s consolation

but better get used to being called agnostic.

 

You were always a rebel, a touch iconoclastic,

the stations of the cross never your station,

yet, turning your back on God is something drastic.

Better get used to being called agnostic.

 

 

WRITING POEMS

 

Writing poems is harder than you think.

It’s not just a rhyming game, that’s mere child’s play.

It’s more than having paper swallow ink.

To start with, you’d better have something to say.

 

It’s not just a rhyming game, that’s mere child’s play.

The rhymes must serve the theme, not the other way round.

To start with you’d better have something to say

and know what it takes to marry sense and sound.

 

The rhymes must serve the theme, not the other way round

although you’ve still got the option of free verse.

Even then you must marry sense and sound

or your free verse will go from bad to worse.

 

Although you’ve got the option of free verse

you must not let it degenerate into prose.

Your free verse will go from bad to worse

unless the words catch fire, metamorphose.

 

Your poems will not degenerate into prose

if you use metaphor - say one thing in terms of another.

But make the words catch fire, metamorphose.

Choose carefully; ensure that they hang together.

 

Why not use metaphor - one thing in terms of another -

allow your imagination to take flight?

Choose carefully, make sure it all hangs together;

it will take time before you get it right.

 

If you allow your imagination to take flight

your poems will mean more than paper swallowing ink.

It will take time before you get it right

because writing poems is harder than you think.

Michael Durack lives in Co. Tipperary, Ireland.  His poems feature in The Blue Nib, Skylight 47, The Cafe Review, Live Encounters, The Banyan Review, The Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light, The Poetry Bus, The Stony Thursday Book, The Honest Ulsterman and Poetry Ireland Review as well as airing on local and national radio. He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and three poetry collections, Where It Began (2017),  Flip Sides (2020) and This Deluge of Words (2023) published by Revival Press.