There are more blue flowers in Spring.
Winter has passed.
The ancient tower is abeyant.
Trees rush to cover it.
Dwarf irises and hyacinths,
lift their powdered arms.
Narcissi crowned, ignores them.
A hawk trembles through the upper reaches of my trees.
Souls in the tree of life,
their small bowls aflame.
Small their lights,
a bird begins his song
Amaryllis is old gold
coppering on my sill.
New leaf is come,
where hedges were shorn.
The hacked hedges,
harshly cut,
Last cut before the nesting –
© Chris Murray 2025
from "Found Poem, Spring" first published The Honest Ulsterman at this link
Tag: The Honest Ulsterman
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The Trees, Dawn
Late, the willow pushes out her new leaf.
Great pink blossoms in bunches like
bouquets hang head-heavy against
willow's stasis.
Peonies emerge, pink and blood.
Wren piccolo,
and the heavy perfume of a dying rose.
She brings flowers that are dying. These
are mauve. Zephyr-caressed, their petals,
fawn-edged.
Shades of pungence,
of mauve pungence.
They will bow-down by morning.
I do not understand. The green leaf falls
on my black end table. Why bring the
dying to me? Haven't I had enough dying?
Your mauve roses, zephyr-curled,
are browning. Frilled.
The white cherry blossom is blown. Tulip
mouths hang open in despair. I almost step
on a white eggshell, broken, out-of-nest.
There is a dead tree and no nest above me.
The small birds have flown.
The rooks in the ancient tower
do not want to be disturbed by me.
There are trays of proliferating pansies
by the church steps. Several snails seek succor in her
door frames. A cross across a mossy path once
an egress, stops you in your tracks.
The village vases are being replenished.
© Chris Murray, 2024.
Note. "The Trees, Dawn" forms a part of my recently published work "Found Poem, Spring". The three parts of the poem are "The Trees, Night", "There Are More Blue Flowers in Spring", and "The Trees, Dawn". Thanks to the editors of Skylight47, Bernie Crawford, Ruth Quinlan and D’or Seifer for publishing this excerpt. The poem in its entire can be read here. -
The Trees, Night.
Souls in the tree of life,
their bowls ablaze–
coppering their old gold.
As day moves to evening,
all warmth leaves the trees.
Red blood in their branches
remains. Heating
her lamps.
Brighter now than ever
for a short time before
sunset, moonrise.
Souls in the tree of life,
their bowls ablaze–
Small and dwindling their flames.
Small birds fly.
Moon waxes gibbous,
its tilted egg almost there,
almost full.
Souls in the tree of life,
their copper bowls are night-warm,
small their flames.
In dead of night, their
flames flicker, dance.
The stars are trees' tongues,
moving into language.
Her lamps lit,
her diamonds hung.
It is long, long
before dawns' song.
In the bluelit
darklight,
bluebells thread
into boundary hedges
working up,
closed, their flowers.
Light begins round the great Yew,
setting red the comet tail of a spider's
house.
It is hanging by a thread.
© Chris Murray, October 2024.
'The Trees, Night' is an excerpt from a tripartite poem titled 'Found Poem, Spring'. The titled parts of the poem are 'The Trees, Dawn', 'There Are More Blue Flowers in Spring', and 'The Trees, Night'. The poem in its entire can be read at The Honest Ulsterman , with thanks to Editor Gregory McCartney.
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Her Red Songs was completed at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan. My thanks to the wonderful director Dr. Eimear O’Connor and her staff. Thanks to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaelteacht, Sports and Media for including me in the Basic Income for the Arts Scheme of 2022. Thanks to my editor Elizabeth McSkeane for her support and encouragement, and to Leeanne Quinn and Anamaría Crowe Serrano for their readings of the book.
Acknowledgments are due to the editors of the following publications, Nessa O’Mahony editor of Poetry Ireland Review 138 for publishing ‘tree is real silver’. Dr. Roula-Maria Dib, editor-in-chief of Indelible Literary Journal (American University Dubai) for publishing ‘red rose world’ and ‘Addendum to‘ in the Skin in the Game Issue of Indelible. “The Lares Series ‘ was first published in Indelible Issue IV, January 2021. ‘Seed‘ was published by Timber Journal, Issue 11.2 Summer 2021. ‘Leaf Settles’ was published by UCD Special Collections, Poetry In Lockdown, A Pandemic Archive, in February 2021. ‘lily crowded window’ was first published in formafluens, March 2021, Ed, Tiziana Colusso. ‘Morning Star’ was published in Irish Times Poetry with thanks to Gerard Smyth. ‘Aftermath’ was published in the Honest Ulsterman in June 2023.
Publication Notes, https://textworksite.com/journals-bibliography-publication-notes/
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Aftermath Body knows soul does not accept— the worst happened it is over— ||nearly|| it is nearly over| body experiences s i l v e rdawnssong blackbirdsong silvers, slivers of its song are a silversong— I feel it along my arms soul trembles it is over, nearly— flowers were—their lights light the path body knows— © Chris Murray 2023 First published The Honest Ulsterman, June 2023. Aftermath is companion to Violence, from fragments 1&2 first published Belfield Literary Review, issue 2, spring 2022, Eds. Paul Perry and Niamh Campbell. Both poems are from my forthcoming book. -
The House
The regularly-occurring representation of the human form as a whole is that of the house
~ Sigmund FreudThis is my house my place my home
first one I ever owned
leave now you dirty scum
she screams at auxiliaries gripping
wrists and raging elbows
washing face and neck
and shoulders.
This is my house where stairs climb roots
to a crouching door
there an old key turned in a raven’s heart
spreads out blankets of bare brick
a pear tree’s silver fruit
a skylight in low rafters
its pendant handle – first night’s umbilical.This is my house it is mine alone
one tramps like you could never own
she shouts as holding her hands tight
we chisel faeces off nails
ours wrapped in disposable wipes.
This is my house, these high windows –
a geometry of winter echoes
dreamt in dusky corners.
And over there a rosewood armoire
its soul kindled with rags and linseed oil.
In its lacquered drawers
prayers and poems
laid out like ammonites and white shells.This is my house always my house
so get out to hell
none of you are welcome to stay she sobs
while we insert a catheter tube
dodging flailing fists
and sputum heavy with MRSA.
This is my house, these the contours
of worn cellar steps
where stars born under earth
flower on a cobbled floor.
O my house, my heart, my home
your hearth stone drawn from the west
all your great timbers, all your dark arches torn.The Stache
He had buried strange things
in that great drooping Mexican moustache.
There were the lines, two from Saint Luke
five from Frank Zappa,
printed on tiny scrolls
rolled up inside a wren’s hollow bone
and somewhere near the corner of his mouth
bleached seahorse ribs
strummed with selenic whispers
and a plectrum of green ship’s glass.First and only rebellion against a father
who knew a bloody gimmick
when he saw one
the Zapata had been there right under his nose
for the best part of forty years.
She liked it from the start
thinking that first winter
it made him look like Omar Sharif
in Doctor Zhivago
and during the long laudanum summer
a badass cowboy kicking up dust in Dodge.Settling soon after his appointment
to a grammar school where that pelmet of hair
was quietly at odds with the navy suits
and brown brogues
he wore weighing words like emeralds
each and every morning assembly.
For some a mask hiding scars or jutting chin
his shielding nothing behind
rather a holding within.Exposed in white astringent light
after cerebral vascular accident swept him
down long corridors in a centre of excellence
to his very own primary nurse.
With reports and care plans correlated
and risk assessments all up-dated
what could he say when she asked to shave
his food-stained moustache?
Six weeks to the day since a left-sided stroke
what could he say what could he say?Sundowner
Reciting place names bright with the smell of opals and sun
he leans in close to her chair.Stooped forward she is silent, her arms
like the thin lucent wings of a batmark X on her chest. With the fading of the day outside
her neighbour begins to shout for motherwhile a small man driving a wingback chair
screams can someone open the doorsoon the shuffling, the banging, the pacing; her Cuban heels
deafening among soft slipper soles.Up and down, up and down,
up and down the long corridor he walks beside herpast doors with pictures of toilets
past the woman strapped to a wheelchairdragging herself along with two bare feet
but when he begins to hum a song from Street Legalshe stops, stares at his face
and for a second somethingthen on her way past the window framing a solitary star –
a chamois of starlings shining the grey.Early Dementia
Crisp like the accent you brought back
from the south
your hair is snow
fresh and falling on a spine
so silently straight
as he says
only for a short time only for a short time.Spancelled to minds wandering
the blue borderlands
patients’ bodies trudge past
the Lenten chapel of your hands
its ciborium – a locket
bought years before he said
only for a short time only for a short time.Sifting memories in that silver heart
you recall the night he returned
in a clapped out Ford
your name encrypted on his arm
but not the hour
since he said
only for a short time only for a short time.Chic in black beside a bed not your own
you are unsure how to act
here where there are no maps
no neatline or legend
to quiet the wings in your breast
till he says
only for a short time only for a short time.Self-isolating no longer you have become
a good mixer, stains on your clothes
mixing well with stains on others
the weekly bath four days away
settles grime under nails
and still he says
only for a short time only for a short time.Confused by the new roads he travels
you ask
why a woman’s wayfaring soul
cannot follow, watching him
punch a keypad at the door
before reaching out
to catch for you a falling petal from a rose tattoo.Advanced Dementia
Matisse dancer tripping chemical light
he comes to menaked and pale at four in the morning.
Arched arms held highare courting cranes; wrists and palms
buttocks and thighs glistenwith night soil as turning he sings
Scotland the Brave.No longer can he recall a walled garden
cut from purple and muslinwhere in dusk he walked, and stooping
whispered at the mouths of roses.Self-Neglect
Thin winter moon
set on the pale blue edge
of an orthopedic chair –
her spine (like her face
her heart her hands)
has a history
going back a good three years.All there
documented in black biro –
the food stains
round her mouth
the whiff of urine
on her clothes, the first fall
wearing carpet slippers in the snow.A voluntary admission
coming without any trouble
she melted
into the routine.
The face
of an old woman called Pet –
soon the only one she remembers.Until a nurse fills her lap
with the sepia tones of a girl
grinning at someone
behind the lens.
Five-ten-and-a-half in heels –
a girl in a pencil dress
click-clacking downA garnet-dark evening in Berlin.
.“Sundowner” and other poems are © Clare McCotter
Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won The British Haiku Award 2017, The British Tanka Award 2013 and The HIS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2011 and 2010. Her work has been included in the prestigious Norton anthology – Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. Her longer poems have appeared in over thirty journals including Abridged, The Blue Nib, Crannóg, Cyphers, Envoi, The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, The Interpreter’s House, The Moth Magazine, The Stinging Fly and The Stony Thursday Book. Awarded a Ph.D from the University of Ulster, she has also published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Clare was one of three writers featured in Measuring New Writers 1 (Dedalus Press). Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, appeared in 2012 (Alba Publishing). Revenant, her first collection of longer poems, was published in 2019 by Salmon Poetry. She has worked as a lecturer, a teacher of English, a psychiatric nurse and a full-time carer. Home is Kilrea, County Derry. -
Cloud Forest
On montane roofs,
Veil-thin sojourners
Serpentine through green
Flightless birds —
Myriad crowns perching
One-legged, spreading
Multi-tiered wings
Plush with plumes now
Dripping fresh
With the gilded bath.In the plumage larders,
The green birds set to
Spin their sugary fares,
While at it,
Gazillions of their
Tiny lungs
Are humming the
Three billion-year-old gift;
Coursing far and wide
Through life’s tributaries,
Even of those
Who wish to silence
The gift
With their acute myopia.Current
The Asian openbill stork alights
Amid the wheeling terns,
Then drifts along
On the hyacinth raft –
The raft by now
A seasoned drifter;
Growing organically
And by fortuitous mergers
On this placid
Cloud-mottled river.That makes three drifters
On this course of the river
Giving ourselves over to
The current of the moment –
My thought self
Long embarked with the stork
On the raft.The Balcony Wall
The alliance, one of an
Indefatigable nature
Forged between
Time and Weathering
Has rendered its coat
What was once a gleaming
Eggshell white into
A variegated sooty black.Cracked peels
Like cartographers shape
Tattered maps
Of its worst battered regions –
Laying bare
Raw cemented pasts to
The potted ferns;
Their frondy tips tracing,
Seeking sense
The genesis of these elements
Now breathing.The Island
Enter a southerly wind,
A whiff of saltiness
And from the recesses
A stealthy seepage …
Then wave
After wave,Recollections lap up
Against the shore
Of the room –
Now an island skirting
With long-tail boats
And wooden stilt houses
Perch on pebbly beachesWhere a hog resident
Forages with impunity
Right into its hills
Overlooking routes
Promising sightings of
Pink dolphins (I remember
our host prostrating to give
thanks at the Naga Goddess
shrine after the sighting of
a pod deemed auspicious by
locals).I bask in my island room –
Relishing the sea salt
On my cupid’s bow,
Giving myself
Over to the lulling
Rustling of coconut palms
When a flower crab
Scuttles from my gaze
Into the shadowy depths…
Do excuse me,I must get going,
There are nooks yet
To explore:
The wind is like
A postman bringing
Summons of dues.A Bangkokian’s Consolation
An April morning,
A pewter-grey
Volvo 240 sedan
Lingers in the shade
Of a Golden Shower tree
Now at the zenith
Of its bloom.There’s still time
Before igniting
The infernal
Tarmac regime;
Enduring to and fro
The crawly
Lengthy hours
Of fumes and jams
Alongside the
Metal herd –
Huddled in the
Urban cauldron
Simmering
Rage and anxieties.Yes, these are moments
To be solitary still,
For the windscreen
To indulge in
The tree’s silhouette;
To drink in the
Sprawling sinuous branches
Where floral clusters
Droop like ponderous grapes,Where their petals now
Dust the roof and bonnet
Like gilded butterflies
Frozen in time.
“Cloud Forest” and other poems are © Ellen Chia
Ellen Chia enjoys going on solitary walks in woodlands and along beaches where Nature’s treasure trove impels her to document her findings and impressions using the language of poetry. Her works have been published and are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, The Honest Ulsterman, Zingara Poetry Review and The Tiger Moth Review.Image: Ellen Chia & ‘Giken’
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REDRESS
After Junichiro Tanizaki.
Give us this day your problems.
Allow us to torment ourselves
about shadow and beauty and good taste
and we’ll swap all that we’ve got
for one hour in the life
of a tortured artiste
who wants to sit in a fancy lav
and listen to a mosquito.We’d leave the shadows
to the banshee and the pooka,
and the nun who died young –
she lurks and snaps bony fingers
as your backside hangs
through a hole in a bench.
You tilt forward to tear
a scrap of newspaper.All useless decoration stripped
in Sunday’s Well where Little Nellie
dances for Holy God,
Artane boys march
and Heaney’s henhouse child
views the moon
through a chink in a plank.Ancient Magdalenes and crones –
sister-stitchers with blackened teeth
and white, pinched faces glowing
overmodest grey kimonos –
enhance heaven’s cloth,
embroider Limerick lace.
Give us this day.(published in The Stinging Fly.)
BLESSED
after Padraic H. Pearse.
I grudge them –
more than any of you will ever know –
my two strong sons
and their stupid, bloody protest.I have cried all day and all night,
every day and every night
since then, ever and forever –
no amen on my tongue –for Pat, our melancholic prophet,
fainting at a drop of blood,
but calling out for insurrection
over an old warrior’s grave.He set off that morning,
his pawn-shop sword
threatening to catch the spokes
and throw him off his bike.And Willie. Will, my baby boy –
his big brother’s shadow –
took the tram to town
to throw away his life too.You must not grieve,
You too will be blessed,
Pat wrote to me
that terrible day.Blessed. Ha!
I tend the graves.
I feel the burn of lime
on my boys’ flesh.(published in The Wake of the Rising, The Stinging Fly.)
TARMAC
For Garda Adrian Donohoe (1971 – 2013).
When Death was a sacrament and needed to lie down,
on a feather bed with cool white sheets and a quilt
made from the remnants of your great-aunts’ tea-dresses,
there was a candle – blessed and holy –
steadied in your hand by a neighbour;
sacred oils and Extreme Unction;
a litany of saints and martyrs to light, to guard, to guide you;
and tears on a face of love.So,
when smoke and badness billowed from a car-window;
when the shotgun’s snout slid out to answer the policeman’s knock,
Tell me that the old ones climbed the stile –
or slipped through the bars of the gate –
rustled their way up the hill and along the road
in their sepia gowns and wedding-suits
to kneel on the wet tarmac, to cradle your head, to hold your hand.
Tell me that they looked on your face with love.(published in The SHop.)
HARE
After the nuns left
we noticed that a hare –
a beast of a fellow
with strong back legs,
proud ears
and a thick fur coat –
had moved in.Superior now, our hare
lays waste to what is left
of the lay-sisters herb garden,
savages Reverend Mother’s salad bed
and emerges fragrant from the Mistress
of Novices’ lavender border.Sweet and sated,
it bounds through the cloisters –
not a chance of prayer
passing its cloven lip –
its soul long saved.(published in The Best New British and Irish Poets, 2017)
BED-SIT
For Brendan
Once, the city stood ankle-deep in snow
and in a single bed in Rathmines,
we listened to the joyful news –
sombrely announced at the scrag end
of universal bad tidings –
that schools had closed until further notice.We walked to Morton’s for butter and fruit, sugar and spice.
My cowboy boots let in wet, your work-boots weathered all.Rolling pastry with a beer bottle
we raised a blizzard of our own,
filled sweet shortcrust with cloves and apple,
challenged flatland’s drag of Vesta curry and cigarettes
as molten caramel flowed,
burned the rented oven.(published in Poetry Ireland.)
Saorstat
On one of those hot summer’s mornings
between the Troubled Times and the Emergency,
he found a penny outside the mart.Backed by the harp of Saorstat Eireann,
a proud hen – with confident wings
and abundant tail feathers – sheltered
five chickens and promised better times to come
for some, if not for all.He remembers considering the box on the nun’s table –
the slot, snugly cut to fit a brown penny,
over the picture of a hungry child –
but his small palms still smarted
from an encounter with the good sister’s strap.So, when his father matched the copper with another –
the price of a bag of liquorice sweets –
he forgot the nun’s black baby.He thinks on these things now,
as a young woman – with liquorice braids
and the whitest teeth he has ever seen –
coaxes him with custard-spoonfuls
and calls him her darling boy.(published in Skylight 47)
TARMAC, for Garda Adrian Donohoe (1971 – 2013) and other poems are © A.M. Cousins
A.M. Cousins‘ poetry has been published in The Stinging Fly, The SHoP, The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Literary Review and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear Publishing). Her work was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Competition 2015 and 2016, and she featured in Poetry Ireland’s Introduction Series, 2016. She also writes memoir and local history essays and is a regular reader on “Sunday Miscellany.” -
Alice and her Stilettoes
We always walked faster
past her little house on the brae.
Every so often she’d scuttle out and
snare us, clutching a plastic bag with
the highest heels, scuffed
and peeling, ready for the cobbler’s vice.Her elfin face powdered,
her fuchsia mouth pursed,
the stain snaked onto her snaggled teeth,
crept over her lips.
She lay in wait,
behind net curtains that twitched.
Her ears hitched to the sound
of the school bus, stalling,
as we stepped off at Charlie Brown’s,
stinking of fags.Once John got three pairs
of spine benders, for repair,
so she had a choice,
for Mass on Sunday.Dressing Up
I crept the three steps to
your room, which smelt
of musty aged breath
and butterfly panic.
Sandwiched between the glass
and a chink in the net curtains,
a Red Admiral, whose
fluttering mirrored my
tiptoed approach.I stumbled over slippers
to your jewellery box.
Fishing out pearls and the ruby ring,
that swam off my finger and dropped
back home into knotty chains and
clip-on earrings.
Brooches from another life
paid for, with dollars
to pin on collars of real fur.Sparkles and hallmarks
piled up, a pyramid displaced
in this fisherman’s cottage.You called me for lunch,
puffing upstairs, flapping by in a
flour cloud with your
dentures clapping in a slow applause,
making a tumble of your speech.
Waiting for the tart to cook,
bubbling under with
homegrown apples,
we sat impatient
as cinnamon, allspice and
cloves wafted in droves
from the scullery.You promised a tomorrow slice
as the Ford Orion arrived
early with your daughter,
to take me home.Dressing Up was first published in The Honest Ulsterman (October 2015)
This Time
He came back this time with hens,
returned with his swagger and
whiskey breath. Crisp, folded notes
released in rote from an arse pocket,
handed over the counter
without a scrap of guilt,
while she prayed the car wouldn’t stall
the red orb on the dash unheeded
and sat tearing skin from cuticles,
the bleed a warm release.
Taking rage out on her hands
that used to knit him Aran sweaters,
in earthy russet tones,
the chain stitch a secret from
a pattern she wouldn’t share.
They stayed in the shed, the hens,
with their downy necks of terracotta.
Plodding with their fearful eyes and
four pronged claws, their droppings dotted
the concrete floor as days whiled away,
egg laying, cackling, pecking for grain
until the day they each made a whimper
as their slit throats bled scarlet streams,
his free range dreams dying with them.Intrusion
Two days after your burial,
we sifted through your stuff.
Thirty three years worth shifted
from that lonely flat, spilled from boxes,
placed in piles on the rug
where you loved to sleep.The striped suitcase stood waiting in turn,
its worn zip, frayed from changing addresses.
It held a rackful of folded trousers,
neatly layered like missal prayers,
two sizes too small for your bloated stomach.
I inhaled, searching for your perfume in cardigan fibres.
I found the pretty compact with the rose
and the blusher brush that retained your scent,
dusted those apple cheeks
at a time when you cared.I clicked that clasp, tried to grasp at memories.
Your thirty three years in plastic bags,
cases and cardboard storage,
a paper trifle in bin liners,
now wafery ash in the hearth’s grate.
Sorry for thumbing through your diary
the emptiness stark in white lined pages,
your slanted name in child-like scrawl
spoke pages of haunted, unwritten words.Unopened post bound with elastic bands,
sat in my hands like despair.
My tears fell on your name, softly blurred
the letters bled into the next world,
where I want to believe you’ve gone.Your late present
She came head first as I opened
like a slow flower on your birthday.
A moulded little head, topped with
black ash, remarked the midwife
peering between my legs
as my womb, her frenetic room
evicted her methodically
in 30 second spasms.Squeezing her out into our existence
and my hungry arms,
as dawn fractured over a pithy horizon.
I stayed silent, gulping in clinical air
to expand the weary rungs of my laddered lungs,
My blocked nerves couldn’t fathom pain,
spiked on a graph and ebbed at random.
I didn’t scream or throw out expletives,
as she entered a sparkly Sunday at a quarter to six
denying me sleep.
My little girl with the mottled face and tiny fingers probing
was wiped, weighed, handed back to me.
The tendrils of placenta, already peeling away
and losing its hue of regal magenta.
This wonder, this sustenance
destined for the clinking bin with the garish sticker,
whilst I passed over our daughter
and my happy returns.At the Baptism
At the font, the blessed water trickled down.
Raindrops off a kitten’s fur, tinkled notes
into the marbled basin.
The small pink head with its pulsating fontanelle,
cradled in the swell of outstretched hands
then retraced to the nook of his elbow.
The infant squirmed in ancient lace,
the robed Father gesticulated with grace,
this collector of confessions.A sudden shower drowned out the ceremony,
cleansed the air.
Sun fractions sliced through the jewelled windows.
A rainbow arched overhead, as we shuffled in
pews with pads of blood red.
The burst foam, from split leather
bunched like partying warts.Sunbeams shone on your suit
as she looked on, with emptiness
and an envy
worthy of penance.Dressing Up was first published in The Honest Ulsterman (October 2015) and in Quail Bell edited by Christine Stoddard (September 2016)
Alice and her Stilettoes and other poems are © Lorraine Carey
Lorraine Carey from Donegal, now lives in Co.Kerry. Her work has been published / is forthcoming in the following journals; The Honest Ulsterman, A New Ulster, Proletarian, Stanzas Limerick, Quail Bell, The Galway Review, Vine Leaves, Poetry Breakfast, Olentangy Review and Live Encounters. Her first collection of poetry will be published this summer. -
Conchita reads Pablo’s letter to God
(while he is painting)
Your committee for time-keeping has ruled
diphtheria a highly unpunctilious event.
By consensus you can’t seem to remember
this being planned into any agendas.
You call me precocious but Pablo, honestly
it’s you that Mama has always adored,
Papa ignores me, I can’t even draw.
It’s all planned for you so perfectly.
You’re a stickler for timeliness,
and planned these years differently.
You have the domestic dates regulated
but I heard you, silently
trying prayer on for size, gambling paint
for my life. You waver clandestine.
Your brushstrokes will sacrifice us all
and I will be the first in line.
First published by Helen Ivory at Ink Sweat and Tears for National Poetry Day.
http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=12146
Mrs Violet Schiff at The Majestic
At this gathering of society horsemen
behind Parisian oyster cream gates,
Proust is here. He drives me insane.
Bloody Joyce is silent and seems irritated.
I’m waiting for you Pablo. Please wear,
for me, that faixa wound on your temple.
Stravinsky is nervous. I need another cocktail.
I’ve already told them all Picasso is coming.
Every minute you make Diaghilev and I wait,
so many numerable things are taking place.
250 children are born, pure and new,
100 souls pass through death and space.
The universe expands by 3000 miles, more or less.
400 litres of blood pump through our veins.
100 marry and 80,000 (probably) have sex.
6 billion human hearts beat 300 billion times.
Although there are 500 thousand minutes per year,
and it could be assumed that each one of them is small,
each minute I wait, while they quarrel over Beethoven,
Pablo, my social reputation is going going gone.
First Published by Adam Crothers at The Literateur
http://literateur.com/three-poems-by-jo-burns/
Dora Maar, The Weeping Woman
It’s my turn—
cigar ember stubbed out
by his shoe
he immortalises
that which
he’s formed me into
a souvenir stub
of travels he took
into my gut
my entirety—
a teardrop of paint
on his brush
First published by Lonnard Watkins for Shot Glass Journal
http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/jo_burns1.html
Maya’s soliloquy to Pablo
When you leave, it is only fair and right
to clear the table once set with laughter
and tip the wine glasses into the sea
then mix a drop of blood in salt water.
When you leave, please feed your paint to the fish
and leave the front door ajar for the wind to bring
me the breeze. It’s simple leaving etiquette,
when you’re going and determined.
When you leave, please throw your anchor away,
lose my portraits, burn all those written lines.
Remember from your swaying, wind-blown deck
to point your spinnaker squarely to horizon.
First published by Ann Kestner for Poetry Breakfast
https://poetrybreakfast.com/category/poets/jo-burns/
Finding symmetry
I like it best when things deflect,
let the ocean spread as mirrored glass,
let it unfold my own dimensions,
let sun spread in wash, a simple kind
of reflection, like when I look at you,
laying past saids to dids on sand grain piles,
forming foundations for future what ifs,
curving spirals for your life’s nautilus.
Let the ocean hold the time I held you,
bloodied, vernixed, tied by pulsing cord,
I unfurled and couldn’t love you more;
Narcissus drowned to newborn echoes.
It’s known the heart cannot hear itself,
but in your own fibonacci swirl
let the ocean reflect my diffracted beat,
where chaos in a whirl became symmetry.
First Published by Greg McCartney for The Honest Ulsterman
http://humag.co/poetry/migration-of-the-hummingbirds-finding-symmetry
Nataraja
The Sun aflame in the cosmic lantern bound/we are mere ghosts,
revolving, the flame surround/played in a box whose candle is the sun
round which we phantom figures come and go.
Omar Khayann, Rubaiyat.
His hair spun in halo, the Lord of the Dance,
dances in Samsara’s wheel, entranced,
his breast, one earring—his Parwati side
holds planets still, male half Lingam stands.
His left hand blesses, his right foot stamps
breaking demons’ backs. The stars gaze on,
through horizons towards the coiling snake,
an ocean with five upraised hoods,
watches Shiva twist, as he weaves mudras
with his hands spread over all paradise,
in cosmic manouevres of spiral bliss,
this expanse of life fire, a tripping fuse
is loose limbed chaos in eskapada.
The rattle drum beats out introspection.
Brahma faces all cardinal points at once,
bemused at this paradigm, unending,
Aeons spinning on towards destruction
Clockwise, creation loses time,
but he knows something we mortals don’t.
Before rebirth, we must come undone.
First published by Angela Carr for Headstuff
http://www.headstuff.org/author/jo-burns/
Jo Burns comes originally from Maghera, County Derry. After studying Biomedical Science and spells in Chile, Scotland, England, she now lives with her family in Germany. Her poems have been published by or are forthcoming in: A New Ulster, Poetry Breakfast, The Galway Review, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Headstuff, The Irish Literary Times, Poetry NI P.O.E.T Anthology, The Literateur, Lakeview International Journal of Arts and Literature, Four x Four, Ink Sweat and Tears, Forage, Shot Glass Journal, Orbis, Picaroon and Poetry Pacific among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2017.
She occasionally retweets other peoples’ interesting posts at @joburnspoems
Chris Murray 