Poetry & Short Stories | Martin O Regan

Like I Said

Posted on December 13, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Any confidence displayed
Is fobbed off as arrogance
Any voice I choose
A bitter fallacy
And to speak too loud
Akin to sinfulness
Any display of joy
Just seen as selfishness.
Any mention of my pain
Just insignificant
Because I can’t suffer
Cos that too’s just silliness.
And when we’ve talked our anger through and shaken hands
It doesn’t matter cos with time and choice forgetfulness
The whole thing just resets and needs must we start again.

My Death Reflected

Posted on December 13, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

I have seen my corpse.
I saw it today
Reflecting back at me
As I stared out
Into the darkness.
It wore the ashen
Grey bone mix
Almost regal against the night, the rain,
And the glass window pane.
I have seen my corpse
I saw it today
Not prostrate to the tempting tomb
But erect
And rigid
Almost alive-
And it peered at me
Through darkened eyes
Down all my days
And I surrendered.
I have seen my corpse
I saw it today
And it told me of my future
And not some dainty priestly tale
Of death nor immortality-
It showed me all the treasures
In its ragged decomposing,
The leathered skin
In binding me
My winding sheet becoming.

The silence fraught

Posted on November 15, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

There was that certain calm
The presentiment of Doom perhaps
It seeped in round the cars
And left on me its mark.
Was it a gentle harbinger
Or just a lull in thought?
The world so oft a loud refrain
Tempered stifled if not fraught.
At roadside watching waitingly
As everyone drove by
The silence at once descending fled
In the fleeting flicker of an eye.

The Future

Posted on November 7, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

It may feel all so benign
But it’s not
And no longer.
That flagrant flame of youth

-Misguided, burned out, upended-
All but floated and away
Into the flighty fancy of a memory
But things change
Have changed
And the energy expended
Now finds fruition.
The shadows of ideas
Pilfered in the half-light
Of fear and misunderstanding
Grow clearer, defined
And spell hope, recognition
The Phoenix forlorn
Mistaken
Spreads wing to take flight
And at last in the darkness of a globulus eye
Peering, searching, domineering,
I see reflected the being
That I had many years ago created
And which I’d sheltered
As I dared
Against the world
But it’s time has come
No longer hiding against the tide of criticism
That may or may not follow
On toward the destination
Plotted many moons ago.

Puskin played his part Why not I?

Posted on November 1, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

That I May yet across a summer glade brooding

Imagine love true love through my boyish vision

And yet may I remember it hence

At a time this time of writing

With the clarity that would as it was passing now.

That I May yet paint a picture truly

Not guided by a dream not dreamed but stolen

That I may figure such words as love

From a canvas freshly met and at points still dripping.

That I May yet open up to my losses

Counting them fairly not feigning to carefree

That I may recognize each moment’s worth

Or accept that at times I could have done and more bravely.

What’s In A Name

Posted on October 28, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

We gave ourselves a name

Each and every day we valued it just the same.

We didn’t deride it even when others did

Or we did only at the very end –

Broken, resigned, or perhaps just disappointed:

But we were motivated just the same.

Now our name precedes us

Into the realm of everything we do

And because it’s not unique

We change it,

Design it,

So as to be understood.

We feign indifference

Presume normality

But we have yet to draw the truth from out the stone.

We probably don’t even recognise

That what we’re doing makes us more alone.

We have become disfigured by our fantasy

Where our friends, benevolent,

Fulfil our testimony

Until the moment that we no longer just agree

And then we realise the extent of self-made tragedy.

We sign in, log out, and never stop to think

That we have changed because

That we are not because

That we are because

Of what we’ve chosen.

What I want is

Posted on October 26, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

I want to create again
To write that poem
With proud held pen
I want to write it perfectly
As I imagined when read
It would be.
I want it to express everything
To capture the essence
To finally take wing.
I want it to soar like that Russian’s*
Like that love
And to forget nothing.
I want it to be
remembered for the words it spent
And for posterity.
I want it forgotten
To be misquoted
And turned to something rotten.
I want it to have
A life of its own, organic,
And then I’ll be glad.

*Yevgeny Yevtushenko: ” Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers”

Find What You Love

Posted on October 21, 2019 by martinoregan • 3 Comments

Find what you love and let it kill you,
Let it consume and destroy you.
Let it never from your sight that is inside you
Let it be the definition of the why of you.
But first just let it be that urge to suffer
Let it wander, take a course, that you can follow
And take a risk jump right in and bathe in everything
That presents itself and that yet may have nought to offer
Let what ifs be another’s foolish game
Let regret be experience and not shame
And if you win hold your head in humble high
And let not loss be a reason to deride
Both yourself and those that you would blame
But first find that thing that essence and your end.

The Changing Times

Posted on October 18, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

We are the traders, upstanding us all
Merchants, purveyors, at your beck and call
Ready to help you, relieve you of cash
Just one thing we beg you, no change should you pass
Only paper is worthy, and coins if worth much
The lower in value too filthy to touch
It’s your duty to hoard it, in boxes to keep
And never reveal it to bury it deep
For what is this coinage but the pointless remains
Of the money you gave us, so spare us the pain
And please don’t insult us demanding your right
For if you had any then what here could I write?
In fact it’s a privilege extended to you
So please stop complaining that this will not do
Moreover, how dare you even challenge this quo
And say that it’s we who have burdened you so
For what would you be if it wasn’t for us
So please just be quiet and stop making a fuss.

The Unfinished Hotel

Posted on October 18, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The homeless woman in the homeless women’s line

Always gave me the time to take my change with her sweet smile

The drunken Gypsy begging for a coin

Pointing at my bulging belly when I said that I had none,

As if my rotundness was my wealth

Any man who can build a belly must have money too.

Miklós shouting at me from two floors below

Never sober always drunk then never more

My reflection if I made my life that choice

His face remains but time has lost his voice.

The Jewish centenarians living right next door

TV blaring into the evening

To compensate a faded hearing

But deaf and drunk next door with my guitar

Their apologies unnecessary

Mine greeted with such gentle smiles.

The flower lady made her garden just downstairs

Smiling up at me in all my states

But my brother never felt but focused evil eye

Why me? he’d ask Not you?

I had no answer not that any could ever do

She was the flower lady with the changing mood

To turn her into an angel would do no good.

The courtyard queen sitting watching all

The kindest watchdog I have ever met

The Gypsy family scaring her away till they did leave again and she did stay

The skinhead bar the gauntlet to be run

On Friday nights the kicks would fly but wined up it mattered none

Except to the poor soul coming against me in the haze

No drink bravado to help him along his way

Then turning left or going straight ahead

To wherever this night that night it led

To Tina Turner’s bar at Podmaniczky’s end

The crooked smiles and tilted tongues,

The cheating, daring, hours lost and friendships won

From every side of day no end in sight

A springboard, a pillow, a hunger, till night took flight

Rub a dub dub three men stumbling in

The bodyguard the soldier the chef

A slip on the ice brought the big fellow down

But the helping hand winning free drinks.

Up Pod’s North East the two hearts did beat

The young lady for beauty

The old lady for speech

In our lingo the bar eponymously called

The Old Lady’s Now lost

At Immeasurable cost.

Such news learnt through a bath time discussion

Such things lost with education, progression.

New generations forsaking old ones’ schemes

Themselves in search of future dreams.

The trainyard calling in the depths of night, the tunnel farther up connecting in a howl on the drunken bike

The loneliness on those dark nighttime feats

The memories reflecting on the wet cobbled streets…

Category Archives: Poetry & Short Stories