Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2021
Patricia Walsh was born in the parish of Burnfort, Co Cork,and educated at University College Cork, graduating with an MA in Archaeology. Her poetry has been published in Stony Thursday; Southword; Narrator International; Trouvaille Review; Strukturrus; Seventh Quarry; Vox Galvia; The Quarryman; Brickplight, The Literatus, and Otherwise Engaged. She has already published a chapbook, titled Continuity Errors in 2010, and a novel, The Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014. A further collection of poetry, titled Outstanding Balance, is scheduled for publication in early 2021. She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine, and is a regular attendee at the O Bheal poetry night in Cork city.
Delicate Anger
We burn through fiction, caring less about opinion
Goodly timeframes leave the glory unstick.
Nutritional misgivings harbour the tailored encounters
Guarding self-possession to love a monumental fray.
What needs to relegate the more common theories
A likely summer dances on our respective faces
The perfunctory “bleep” forgives all our masters
Walking with a purpose, intentions driving through.
Tame monsters mill about, emasculated, shamed
Watching for the bad motor finger, suicidal gesture
Burning for the will of God, wrapped in its purpose,
Pedestrian crossings going into a fashionable meltdown.
Chucking out names for welcomes, gossip aside
Citizen like everyone else, prepped for the guillotine
Spying meekly before death, eschewing importance
Tweaking now and again a finalising solution.
Jewels rendered sour, passed on with another,
On pain of death covering handwriting supreme,
For public convenience sparkling a human touch
Long forms needed as you don’t take the piss.
The parlaying wind-up catches the annoyance
Of which goes where, catechism on the sly
The rate-from kissing death a monumental urge
Time kept under orders this demolished failure.
Kicking Out Time Revisited
Nutritive gone with the stones, to work
Going into darkened corridors to be seen
Mediocre flashing the front headlights
Spelt out birdsong unwelcome regarding same
Wanting so much it hurts in the craw.
Idiotic recording, liberating to be on site,
Promotion someway off, worse expecting
Proffering licence over pints, you know
Wanting a hot feeling, jumping to style,
Pirouetting on site, detrimental ability
Watering desire to residual love above.
Not to be enjoyed, it’s an occupation, remember?
Taking residual breaks, watching the horizon
Better soaked than overworked, laughable times
Godly workings kissing the repeated arm.
This uncomfortable sleep, crushing on reality
Overbooked excuses perform an exclusion zone
Casting aside credentials for sale of carcinogens
Caulking the antibiotic lung, wrestling apologies
From the timely laid-back, little miles pervading
Biblical knowledge of same going ahead.
Some doing nothing, a famous deadpan knowledge
Kicked into touch, free literature worth taking,
Caught on the briars of hardwired industry,
Near through the horizon, exploded possibility
Accepting again the dimensional mistake.
Jewellery
Wrecking marriages in face of another time,
Pleading not to go, through renovated stares,
Plodding past the unicorn and his virginal meat,
Plugged-out hours ago, likewise desecrated
Multicoloured standoffs honour the offer
Siphoning the sunshine like time didn’t exist.
Typing a long distance off, flavoured diminution
Caught on the briars of consumerism, tasting sweet
Living on false promises until paperwork untied
The rarity of sunshine runs through spirit
Logistical begging to pay off a stupid bet
Nothing to give them, I being more broke than they are.
Leaking dissemination, misspelling symptoms,
Loss of friendship here and there still no loss
The full pain if exclusion never peters out,
Being early for everything a failure in need
Die-hard perfection over numerous coffees,
Time-consuming wish listed dotted over town.
Written on scrags, the seemingly irrelevant
Dismantling numbers to wreck the mind,
Borrowed at a premium, stowed away lightly
Paying negligible taxes on a home run
The blighted sight over a flask and some biscuits
The rubble of an eyesore ugly unto death.
© Patricia Walsh