David O'Sullivan's Blog, page 17
September 5, 2016
True love
He found me walking home one day, and he started to walk with me,
Every house we passed, he would run in and check for any food left out
And see if he could win a bite,
But then he’d catch up to me and walk at my side with happy pride.
He followed me four blocks
Until we came to a highway
And I turned to him and yelled at him to go.
His face turned to hurt fear and he left.
I crossed the road and regretted what I had done, turned and returned to the other side
and searched for him,
That black and white dog,
But he was gone and I couldn’t find him.
Chances come and go, but I had a chance to love and I let it go.
She stood in the morning light, a sad determined look on her face
And told me to leave.
I left and turned, looking one more time at her standing in the doorway
And my mind goes back to that black and white dog.
The real mistakes I have made haunt me, again and again,
They come like spirits at midnight and dance in front of me, screaming.
The woman didn’t matter, she found someone else and moved on
We did not suit each other,
She’ll never starve.
But that dog! What became of him?
September 4, 2016
On Smith Street and Nagle Lane.
Outside the supermarket
A man surrounded by fat, heaving along his belly.
Is squatting on a chrome bench
Sucking hard on a cigarette.
He looks a cool breeze away from a heart attack.
On the same road
A young woman as beautiful as summer rain
Stands by a fast food restaurant looking lost.
Her eyes are wide and gentle,
She has all the innocence and none of the hardness
too many people in this place carry in them.
Around her are cold people, angry at life. People whom lovers have fooled
Life has lied to them, broken their dreams like old sticks
This woman is no reflection of these others,
I watch her walk along the street
And feel ashamed to follow her with my eyes.
She passes near the fat man
He drops his cigarette
And leans forward, like a boulder soon to drop
And says something I am not able to hear.
Her face changes, something horrid has been spoken,
She steps away; he is laughing now.
The flower has been stepped on.
How long will it be before she is changed forever?
The world crushes what it falls upon.
August 31, 2016
The swimming lesson
It was summer; we were little,
My friend’s name was Sal.
We played, minding our own business,
When her dad called her to the side of the pool.
He reached across to her, picking her up by her arms
And dropped her into the water.
She couldn’t swim
And he had decided, at that moment to surprise her
And have her learn.
I stood by the edge and watched her sink.
It was beautiful.
She was so resigned to the fate
She sank slowly; the water bubbled lightly,
Her eyes wide open as down she went.
The pool seemed infinitely deep.
Her hair floated like snakes around her head
Her hands outstretched so sadly, pleading
Like Ophelia.
Goodbye. I remember thinking goodbye.
Her father reached into the water
And plucked her out, back into the air.
Sal took some deep breaths
Lightly coughing- but quiet
Well behaved and accepting.
The father was angry
He cursed at her and turned away as if she had failed.
I went to her, but she wouldn’t speak
She was changed after that; she began to grow up
An adult coldness began to grow inside her.
I’ll never forget her eyes as she sank
Se clear, so wide, like looking into the universe
As the universe looks back.
August 30, 2016
Beautiful and Smart
She was a city lawyer,
Beautiful and smart, she was all that the city holds up as prime.
She killed herself.
Her body was found in the trees behind her house, a thick group of trees
Where people go to sniff paint and dump rubbish.
Her body was found by a man involved in the search,
She was in the tree where she took an overdose of some drug.
She was found folded over a branch, her beautiful long blonde hair hanging down like gold
But her skin was turning purple.
They suggested she killed herself
Because some foolish man had ended a relationship with her,
And she was so upset she could see no over way.
But she was so beautiful
And smart.
Perhaps things were too much for her
Perhaps the pressure was too much
And the bolts came out, letting the cold water flood in. I think she was tired,
And so she ended it all.
I knew a girl once who said
You shouldn’t write about beautiful girls
Because it’s so clichéd; but I’ll write about beautiful girls all I want.
She was beautiful and smart
And she killed herself.
August 28, 2016
That Queen, The Moon.
She started to stay away,
That beautiful woman,
And she didn’t share with me those sweet secrets she used to,
So the terrible feeling crept in like winter wind under the door.
I set out to a friend’s farm to keep away for a while.
I would lay awake in the morning, watching the sun arrive
Pressing against my open window, putting a foot inside warming what he touched.
Early, early, I would set out across the dew-wet grass,
toward the mountains, toward the pine forests.
Even as the sun rose, the moon still sat in the sky,
Like a queen, not moving, not being told to leave,
But pleased herself to walk in night dripping with diamonds
And to stay in the day, watching over that fool, the sun.
Slowly she would leave, unhurried, in her own time
To sleep in her private chambers over the hills.
In the forests, I could breathe, rest alone and witness the forest animals,
Like spirits
Dancing across the fallen logs and up the sides of ancient trees.
I listened to the silent streams and watched for fish.
I knew that without her life continued,
And no one is irreplaceable.
Except for the moon, the moon alone is unique.
August 27, 2016
These are the poets
Poems are born from wild times,
From struggle, love and anger,
from men with soft hearts and hard fists,
from women whose smiles are like gold,
whose dreams are larger than the moon
And harder to reach.
Poems are not soft or weak,
They die if given 9 – 5 jobs
And secure homes with understanding friends.
Poems live at 2 am, drinking liquor and waking up in strange rooms with strange people
They live on new cities, tough attitudes,
Unplanned journeys, tall beautiful women on short dark streets
And fist fights with broken glass in their mouths.
Poems don’t live with old men who never danced in the fire
They don’t share a bed with someone who has never been broken
Poems see the devil and laugh.
Silas the famous poet, leaped from the ship at Troy
and dug his feet into the sand, his eyes surveyed the lines of men
heavy with shields and crazed with spear.
The sound of armed men crashing, ringing like thunder
Dying with choking screams and soaking the ground with their blood.
Silas wrote his best poems here.
Twenty-five centuries passing like shadows
Silas the poet still lives, standing on the city bridge, looking out into the lights
Seeing lovers walk hand in hand, deciding if he should jump or not.
Seeing the angry dying with a choking scream
On busy streets, in the arms of strangers,
The lonely driven insane by loneliness.
Pick up a pen and write of love that was never found
Of kindness that was never received
Poems are the children of the angry and mad, the ones not chosen,
Those who tried to hold another and were left
To lie awake at midnight cursing at the moon.
These are the poets.
August 23, 2016
A walk home
Walking home from a meeting,
Where a man had screamed at us, telling us how to vote
And who, in those greedy seats of power,
We were told, had the best interests of the people at heart,
I saw a mechanic at work in a small garage on the edge of town.
The sun was dipping low, the clouds were red and yellow
And the tall, thin man, covered in the black blood of automobiles
Slowly stepped out from under a car lifted high
And switched on his lights so he could see by.
How hard he works, I thought,
Long hours and hard labour
I could see the lines on his face,
The hardness of his skin
The thin hungry look he had,
No tax funded office, no chauffeured car.
Long hours into the night, oil, and bleeding knuckles.
August 22, 2016
Her Beauty
Her beauty spills the wine from my cup
it brings the tide upon the shore
it burns the forests
it keeps God interested
it breaks the ice apart.
She sits there, her legs crossed
and my eyes wander across her thighs
like little men climbing to the moon.
But if she but laugh or wink
that haughty moon would crash into the sea
crushing all, crushing me.
The lights in her eyes
At university
I took a few English literature classes.
I would sit in the same seat each week, usually alone
But I would read all the texts
I would hand in all the assessments
And I did well.
I loved the poems, the novels, the short stories.
I took a subject called literature and the screen.
Every Wednesday night the class would attend the campus cinema
To study a movie on that big screen.
I met her on the first night
She had dark black hair and sat just behind me
Her face was gentle like an angel’s
And beautiful.
The dark cinema, would throw pure white light upon her
showing her brown eyes.
She wore woollen tops, and the sleeves would be pulled down over her hands
She wore jeans that hugged her beautifully.
We would talk in the darkness
And she would make me laugh
Her perfection would burn me inside
And each night I would think of her, counting down the days until I saw her again.
I never asked her out, I don’t even remember her name,
But I think of her often.
That I was too shy to tell her how I felt
Still haunts me.
I wonder what she is doing now,
Do you wonder what is happening to those you loved?
I hope all those old loves are happy,
And may they live forever in our hearts.
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