Live Encounters Poetry & Writing March 2021.
Peter McCluskey is a fiction and poetry writer from Dublin, Ireland and has published 4 contemporary novels to date. His first anthology of poetry, “The Flickering Tide” is due for publication Autumn 2021. For the past fifteen years he has been lecturing on the subject of the music industry/ music publishing and copyright. Peter is also a certified TEFL teacher and teaches English as a foreign language to students all over the world. He has a wide breadth of experience in providing articles and news stories to major print and online music and social media magazines and newspapers. He also creates and narrates videos for a number of his fellow poets. He previously spent some time as a music press photographer and also ran his own record label. He holds a Science Degree in I.T. and Diplomas in Advanced Web Design from Dublin City University. His fifth fiction novel will be published early 2022.
Giving Hands
Had I the hands,
The soft skinned hands,
Of youth and pace and life,
I would wield them high and catch the light
And wait for you to pass.
Take one look,
One glimpse at these,
My hands, the hands I give,
And lift them up to take your strain,
To hold you true on course.
I take my place,
I wait in hope,
My turn to speed the plough,
My giving hands, my hope to shine,
My gift to pass to you.
Venetian Kingdom
I stare at the ripple on the curling wallpaper
And your image appears as a youth
resting on the steps under the portico of The Ponte Di Rialto.
The fresh breeze plays a trick on my ears.
I’ve walked the Grand Canal side-streets for you,
watched the bustlers blunder about the Square, the locals agape, aghast, amused.
You vanish, you break to atoms of silence and I begin to drown on the journey home to
Murano.
I am unsure. I am listening for you.
The boats on the water tell me Kingdom is approaching from Treviso and Padua,
the population cloaked in silk and spice.
© Peter McCluskey