BLOG | Martin O Regan

They can’t have it

Posted on April 30, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

They shall not have what we had
They can’t.
“Aw but I remember my first time seeing an elephant”
Yeah, I’m sure you do.
That sideways dance, head nodding, tongue lolling?
I’m sure you do.
They cannot have what we had
They never will.
“But it’s unfair to deprive them of that wonder”
The one that makes up your childhood memories?
Try living for them for a change,
Not through them.
Their lives will be eventful, of that you can be certain.
They mustn’t have what we had,
They can’t.
“ Surely it’s up to them to decide”
Fine by me, but what do you allow a one year old? A razor blade for tea?
Might as well if you keep excusing the present because of a past.
Seems odd to me.
They won’t have what we had
They never can.
“But…”
But what? It’s fucked, all of it.
Clean air, what a joke
Free to travel, that old lie
A future, perhaps
But not on our terms – no more.

Storms Prolonged

Posted on April 25, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The round faced woman with the tight Jewish curls
Let’s the sunshine sheen her face to milk chocolate brown
Red-faced I pass by complacent after storm
The mind’s eye reset one more time.
The depth of the darkness and the thick thorny thoughts
Once more a surprise here at hindsight.
In the throes of the horror all ships had set sail for the shores of respite elsewhere hidden.
The fleet, an Armada, bedevilled being broken
Sunk e’erfore a sanctuary succeeding.
And now in the aftermath I salvage from wreckage the hope to once more move on forward
Yet a scar that runs deep now further extended
A reminder of a forest and bone frailty

Trudell’s* Therapy

Posted on April 12, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

In the dappled moment deranged
The orange glow growing
Cancer chosen again.
The despair spelled out in Circus
The cold brought in from the spy
Douma denounced, despaired over, denied.
Sabre rattling no more
Giants braving the brawl
Borders inundated, shattered –
No divisions in blood.
A child’s nightmare comforted
While one’s own sleep deprived
Fists pummelling the shadows, haunted again,
The dark days returned.
And the people despair
Or delight or don’t care
And the people morphed out again:
No men in no man’s land.

*John Trudell

Protected: Feck the Union Jack

Posted on March 30, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

This is not that poem

Posted on March 30, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

You can pronoun the shit out of the situation but you can still be wrong,

and you’ll be made to understand that you have been so wrong.

You can apologise and yet be classed as ignorant, no room for manoeuvre.

You can be anything but right. You’re white, therefore you’re wrong.

You can protest but that’s violence: there’s a lawsuit on the way.

You have hip friends, young and interesting,

They depart with each word you say.

You studied feminism yet you’re sexist

Cos you dare challenge the new convention.

Even though the old one needed toppling

You expressed doubt that it needed upgrading.

Rather, you screamed, it needed changing

A new direction, post-instituition.

But it got lost in all and sundry:

the dreaded irony?

You die the one that wanted dialogue.

Freyed

Posted on March 26, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

In a vision of the moment cast aside,

and yet – with each intake of breath –

There would seem to be a harmony,

what’s more – a dreaded repetition.

Why does the cycle present its terror

Except in the knowledge of what was before.

Therefore, no man feels stable, secure,

Nor draws comfort from that

which has become oh so predictable:

And in the tortured will to survive

Man surrenders life to existence.

Pessimism

Posted on March 15, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Another step, a neighbourhood
And yet the worries call.
The darkened corners of my doubts
Put service to my fall.
The imagination builds on high
the towers to collapse.
And in the end ruination
– but what will be the cost?

This Side

Posted on March 14, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The scaffolding still stands across the way
And under it other parties now do pass
In the shadow of that tunnel hidden memories
Some borne of repetition some of joy.
Each step a step closer to one’s abode
But- now- the turning wheel dictates the road
Will it be in hindsight our adventure or
In leaving it the spelling of our certain Doom.
The passing faces the road much trodden
The life the thoughts the everything
And in so passing us we too were passing
And are still from this side of the road.

The writer tried what the boy didn’t have to

Posted on March 12, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

As the writer tries a composition
The young child delves to exploration.
The older hand deemed wiser falters
While the boy’s reality at a whim can alter.
The writer concocts mind-felt emotions
The boy just is in his devotions.
Together they occupy this very moment
But which one’s truly in the present?

International Women’s Day

Posted on March 9, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

To women
To love
To sacrifice.

To lovers
To motherhood.

To tears
To joy
To hope
To pain.

To struggle
To equality.

To chance
To ambition
To youth
To old age.

To women

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