Tag: life | Peter O Regan

The last time I saw Roy

Posted on May 14, 2022 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

It might’ve been the last time I saw him

That trip up north along the coast,

At least at points inevitably so.

And in all its vagueness surely,

It’s still further shrouded by that doubt,

That almost disbelief:

Surely there was at least one time other.

But if there was, the memory’s withholding

Insistent upon the poetry of this –

The final memory,

The beauty and the beast.

I never cried on hearing he had passed

But stopped to think a thousand thoughts

A thousand reasons

Why our paths

They should have crossed.

But we didn’t know each other

And though I bow to some intended whisper

The wind is only pandering to

My own instilled importance.

We had become nothing to each other,

Just echoes of other worlds

That perhaps we’d wished we had explored.

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.

Once upon a time in Arranmore

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Martin O'Regan • 0 Comments

Pat, Auntie Pat

Both the plaintive moan and tell tale tattler

to myself and Killian’s attempts to flee for a fag by the wayside.

The spy in our midst, at once our traitor and our watch dog bred.

No chance to escape his torment, we suffered him in silence.

Or at least in muttered curses themselves by the wayside fled.

Pat, Auntie Pat

The, at once childish, though distinctly cunning, call to arms of all attention

His will to have us be undone and yet not knowing, even then –

The true power of addiction, the urge which must be answered.

We slipped his noose from time to time but his nose thereafter sharper

Calling attention to our scent, “like old men in a pub” –

the crusty beard-stained-yellow troubadours of hapless pints and memory.

Pat, Auntie Pat

And so the buoyancy of teenage prattle was exposed,

to blushes forth the information that in secret had been cast.

Not to be trusted evermore

The boy to arms alone like many times before

A schoolyard had dared to bully but he bit back

And so he disappeared from out that car and on into his only life

Till time and distance solidified but a memory

Till one cruel Sunday morning and his life cut short

Pat, Auntie Pat

The echo of a time forever more.

A Place Called Grange

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Martin O'Regan • 2 Comments

Through the veil of a vague remembrance
something tries to shine distinctly
Something claims the honour of
being remembered beyond the pale.
And whether truth or wishful thinking
it vies for recognition
And whether relevant to a fact
it remains relevant to us all.
It is not the collective notion
of a notion of our past
Nor the romanticised rebellion
in delusion against the truth
It is rather just a memory
mixed and mattered by circumstance
For it is our pain and how
we each deal with it in the end.

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.

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 • 2 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 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…

The Production Line

Posted on October 18, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

In the depth of a drink
Editing, considering,
I raise my eyes
Just for a moment
And watch
And I allow this distraction
And I allow it to grow,
Grow into the image
Of motion, movement,
Towards…?
The end of the line.

Tag Archives: life