martinoregan | Martin O Regan

Author Archives: martinoregan

Another Mask

Posted on October 24, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

A little wipe
To wipe away the face
To not lose face
But still retain the mask.
To be the actor
On and off the stage
To hide the self
To never open up.
To repress all thoughts
While living out real dreams
Emotions hidden
Behind the silver screens.
The camera started lying
While the smile remained
The sorrow long ago
Breached that cool façade.
A tissue in the trash
All powder stained
The tears that never fell
Were never claimed.
So through the tunnel
Emerging otherwise
The mask removed
Remaining just the lies.

Mephisto-ising

Posted on October 17, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Klaus in foolish folly –
For what other?
Selling more than
the trinkets he’d receive.
Martin understanding
Yet surrendering
Wrapped in fine excuses
In exchange.
One sees the other
And dares judgement
While others too
And onwards down the line.
Selling out
And buying in
Are not dissimilar –
Retaining our hypocrisy
In the end.
A daughter’s words
That paint an anguish
Not believed
Calling out the adult world
Till told „shut up”.
At least a lesson taught
That was learned well;
She lets no silence
For herself to breach.
Challenging the ire then
Moving up higher then
There is hope
But teenage years lie in between.
The peer factory
That factors fears right in
A system built on
Rebellious rigidity.

The Stars Of Elsewhere

Posted on October 10, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

“One dream the less, one experience the more!” Géza Gárdonyi: Egri Csillagok

Let it go she said
But I couldn’t
And yet she whispered once again
Let it go, it’s gone, it’s over
I can’t I replied I cannot
My resolve stamped out on every single word
But you’ll have to she implored
And I begged why
Was it not enough to learn inside the dream?
When it’s time there is no turning back the clock
Ah, what machination stands so resolved against love?
It’s me she almost sneered, at least in memory
And I’ve decided that’s it’s time we said goodbye
Tis not adieu if I do not reciprocate
And neither love And onwards I must go
No I cried not this time, oh no you don’t
And I expelled her from my thoughts
Like umpteen times before.

A yoghurt later

Posted on August 19, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Gatch up to Gellért afterwards
armed with a decent bottle of wine
and some munchies,
look everyone in the eye and smile graciously…
Then wake up screaming
in your bedroom
in that darkness before Dawn
and let the fear linger as you try to brave the moments
that stretch interminably before the coming of day
and your salvation
and again imagine yourself invincible till the night creeps in again,
the opportunities to move beyond the dream strangled again
and deny your fear as you down
a bottle of rancid cheap wine while
telling yourself you could have gone, you could have gone
until you can’t remember where
nor why it would have mattered anyway.

The Vacant Lot

Posted on August 19, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The empty space
Where my hand falls
The room to spreadeagle
Tormenting
The hollow room
Unwelcome echoes
The door snatched open
By invisible hands
When the darkness subsides
And still alone
It’s the hope that nurtures
The light that leads
The meal for two
Once lasted for days
Disappearing quite suddenly
In a drunken haze
And yet it’s those places frequented
Now passed by in shame
Not wanting to be recognized
Nor needing to explain
They steal away
A chance at humanity
A chance at the high life
Or some other taint
The streets once strolled down
Hand within hand
The nights loosely forgotten
Now etched – infinite
And yet even still
Intellectualising
Trying to paint pain
The stuffed toy on the mantle
Levelling that façade
Until again in the darkness
That primordial glitch
Where the veneer of bravery
Shattered – in bits

The dream family

Posted on July 28, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

I introduced you last night
You and your brother-
Or your cousin…
Right now I can’t remember,
And I’m trying not to care-
As if somethings are more important.
Last night I shook your hand
And whoever else’s-
As I introduced you-
But to whom?
Even now I wonder if
In reality
Family can be less elusive,
As they seem in dreams:
As ours was not to be?
Was this the real reason for the division?
Or do some couples grow apart,
Not from each other
But all others
And the things they once enjoyed?
I enjoy my life
Yet see the distance
Closeness can create:
Delving into the dream of those who matter
The foundations finally falter
The façade ripped off exposing
The shallow lives we have led.
Maybe it’s just fear
Avoiding company with excuses
But beneath all notions
Perhaps therein lies
Pain, fear, uncertainty.
Perhaps for everyone –
And perhaps across the void
As our hands reached out
Mine asleep, yours eternally,
I only understood
Base wishes;
The truth
The distance
Shall remain.

To Joe

Posted on July 28, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Last night
Or this morning a’round dawn
A thought
Wandered in on its own
Twas an idea
Of who you once were
The stories
Regaling us all
The devil
Residing in you
No different
To the ones in us too
And this morning
Or last night Or whenever
You returned
From that place of forever
And I lent
You an ear, or mind’s eye
Leaving
A vision of horror subside
Realising
Just how much I cared
Surprised
Yet not drawn to tears
Tony

missing you as he will
Honestly
I think of you still.

Dias del Dinero

Posted on May 31, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The subtle thoughts

The Day of the Dead

The loss made image in a prayer.

The flower stall blooming

And business is booming

But ONLY Halloween is unfair.

The gravity of the moment

More grave with every plot

Stepping over friend and family

And the stranger that time forgot.

The Day of the Dead

When all become saints

Beneath a tumble of well wishes and thoughts

When all axes well ground

Are buried with hope

That all grudges in the end become nought.

And that one day in our due

we’ll avoid being forgotten too;

Not left to dwell in a stoney silence

Hidden by time and grass

Removed from a construct

We like to call the past.

Margit’s Bridge

Posted on May 31, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The erratic heartbeat of the city

As rubber padded thunk moves level

Carhorns join in melody

The rush hour music playing strong.

The hum, the purr, the growl of engines

Darkness descended, the beast’s upended

To prowl in search of life outside

The daily click clack,

The daily grind.

And on in bursts of ebb and flow

Below the Danube creeps past slow

A moon appears to offer light

But not tonight… Not tonight.

Illuminating city streets

Arising from the shadows creep

There is no need for stars tonight,

Fluorescence is the guiding light.

And deeper, darker, into the hollow

Blending with the nighttime cheer

The beast appears to disappear

Appearing once again tomorrow.

Planned to be sent

Posted on March 18, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

I’ve decided to write this letter on paper just because, in the face of redundancy, I think all things should get at least one last appeal, and here within the artform that is letter writing, once an actual means of basic communication, be it humble or great, I have found need to defend the very form itself. It is dying so they say because of what? Our sense of urgency, our brevity or is it perhaps because little utterances conveyed too often form the emalgamated whale that swallows all sea life, including the beauty that would convey at least dramatically but a slice of all life? In sheer verbosity through quantity of snippets we have served up execution to the draft and thought, to the long evenings delivered into the arms of wonder as we delve, in search of expression, vying with every pen to paper push, a sinewy pleasure, for the perfection which, as writers we should always fear eludes us, for it must, and without attaining that spectacle of greatness, further purpose to ourselves that fair dangled destiny, that truest of beauties, the fatal enterprise, forever flawed for such is its nature.