They call me Silent A—
Who am I? They ask and don’t ask
Slithering into a discussion about
School, politics, what happened on the news—
While everyone gazes for a reaction,
Do they look concerned? What are they thinking? Do they know?
But you can’t seem to get out of the dazed,
Confused state I put you in.
I come when you least expect it—
In the middle of a bar,
The music pumping, juices flowing
Through your body.
The heart starts pounding,
Panic sets in like a
Storm crossing the horizon.
You look around, making sure no one notices.
In the middle of the night—
3am as silence fills the air,
Coming off of sleep meds and
Mixture of Vodka Tonics and Merlot,
Anything to keep the mind
At an altered state of nowhere and beyond.
But I’m screaming at you,
The toxicity won’t keep me away.
I’m the one who kills—
Friendships, relationships, your purified mind
Keeping you away from what you love,
What you don’t love.
Standing in that darkened corner,
Waiting for that next high off of me.
They call me Silent A—
You can’t see me, they can’t see me, but I see you.
Hungry and alone the lone wolf hides.
His love fled as she lied even as he tried to be at her sides.
Wounded he licks away the blood,
Now the dark surrounds him as he sinks in the mud.
Pure tenacity allows him to survive.
Pure anger fuels his need to stay alive.
Purity of mind has now lost its shine.
Purity of heart no longer resides in his bloodline.
The cold gnaws at his bones,
Deep inside the void, pain wants to be known.
Unrelenting agony fills his howls.
Unrequited love manifests in his growls.
He lets it all out to the moon,
The only thing that sympathizes with his tune.
The lone wolf is always meant to die,
Yet this lone wolf is meant to defy.
Waiting seemed to be the norm
They never thought how it made her feel scorned
Many times she did not understand
So all she did was take a stand
She would stand no matter what for what her heart felt was right.
After all everyone knew she would never have enough to really take flight.
But she could fight till the end
That is how time taught her spend
Some wait a little while live the life of dreams.
She waited and still waits to have a life free from there seems
She wondered if it would be ever happen
You know the basic things that make a life.
The things that she could only admire and know would never be in her life.
Funny how they never got enough
Enough of trying to teach her tough.
Tough was not her lesson.
She had and learned enough.
No one ever thought about love or compassion.
Those she knew too well
But, they too did not stay too well
Only her heart would swell
Still on she waited….
I hope she gets a little resemblance of life.
For living is not to be a strife.
She need a life to live.
Not a life to give.
We’re on the moon. Years ago, I knew I couldn’t
save anyone. Despite that news, I made sure that
I tried to save anyone thereafter. But it’s easier to say
it than to do it. The moon doesn’t love you. Without
anyone else, I am just a room devoid of life. It is almost
impossible to exist without deception. Do you love me?
I must tell you that I’ve failed at loving you. You wanted a
deep, passionate love from me, but I could not give it. I know
that people need to be loved. But right now, I see only hate. I hear
only hate. I feel hate growing in my heart. My country is confusing me.
Our money is not infinite like the oceans. But even oceans lose their currents. Water runs dry.
Banks fail. Our money is better off under a mattress. Besides, we don’t sleep in the same bed
anyone. We haven’t in years. I don’t miss the warmth of your body. It went cold when my heart
did.
We must refuse evil. We must not abandon our hearts. We must end the worst of life, the
debased, racists, religious terrorists and the elite. They exist because we allowed them to. They
exist without love. Their love is warped. But we aren’t pure either. There is still coal inside us
diamonds.
I wish this otherness would end. But there seems to be no ending. Our love struggles onward,
life support, breathing tube, ineffective medicines. Oceans are dying. The rich continue to get
richer. The poor labor with only love to sustain them. What will sustain us? Something beyond
this otherness.
BIO: Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer from Boston, MA. Ms. Luke has an MFA from Emerson College. She was a 2016 Watering Hole Poetry Fellow. Her work was shortlisted in poetry by Adelaide Magazine. Shirley’s poems have been published by Adelaide, BlazeVOX, Deluge, ENUF and Fire Poetry.
I am the poet
carrying a luggage of roles
all of which I play with equal interest
I am the talkative lover
who knocks on the door of your heart
and having entered,
bursts into a torrid tete-a-tete
with your inner self
and sings fantastic flirtations
I am the justice in the court
betokening perfect impartiality
and never guilty of distorting the truth
None receives the least pardon from me
for any offence
I am the policeman
following the thugs
with a baton
and filing a case against them
I am the overpowering magician
My virility, more ebullient
than that of a gunman or a swordsman
In case they can only kill a person
Yet I influence the latter
and charge the battery of his heart
I am the labourer
digging out moth eaten rubbish mounds
and recycling them
Yet, I am the poet,
the very slight poet,
still struggling for perfection.
Outside whitewashed, pretty as it pleases
Inside imagination hides from the fear and pain
But death never comes to those who pray
Living grows you old
No escaping as a young
Freedom only comes to the elder and not in mind
Devastation is here like a child playing hide and seek with a vicious animal
There are smiles outside, the pillars holding up the heaviness in the mind
Inside see the wreckage of a small soul
Innocence is a bloom that withers in darkness
They say it is finished
they say they will do us well
more than the colonial masters
of the past
that we don’t need to worry about anything
but learn how to be slaves.
They say it is finished
they made us believe
the things for the deaf people
they say we don’t need to worry about anything
but learn how to be deaf.
They say it is finished
they put us here in this paradise
which prison is better of
they say we don’t need to worry about anything
but learn how to be prisoners
hoping to be free someday.
Beneath the broad columns of Herculean Pillar,
Weeps the springtime feather dance
Of freezing frothing blanket.
He lies on Irving’s rocks across the Henry,
Painting words of Freedom’s March across a furrowed brow,
Till tiredness creeps it’s feet on lonely eyes,
Counting mountains
As they frown down from above.
On the first crack of the distant Bell
A teary head raises from a bloody pillow,
And sings out the count, to defiant beats.
Flakes drift softly round a faraway moon,
As drizzle melts the lines of morning strollers,
With the hoofs their companions, embossed upon the heather.
His eyes close as he settles to dreams of futures possible,
Picturing rows of steaming turrets, sharpened blades
And crumbling fear, as they draw known faces on fancy paper.
He hears whispered talk of sagging brows and lobbing smiles,
Scribbling and Scripting our morning news where
New artisans paint Headlines in his head,
“Work, save, and Beg.
Make ends meet,
Work those streets,
Bare them writers, debaters,
Leaders, loiters,
Teeming with poor lice“.
Upset now, he straightens, filled with sculpted fear,
And flagging hope,
Devouring ideals of painful labour,
Darkened evenings and prose.
The Narrow Alleys echo his comrades screams,
‘They are Flogging the undesirables‘.
Cries of the deserted ring out
As sweat now pores on dirtied boots.
On A One page of women Jubilant,
Black Coffins swim across the oceans, and the Singing corpses chant the Voters Slogan
‘The great appear great,
Only because we are on our Knees’
The Parisians have embraced the soul of his youth, stole his heart,
Hardened his resolve,
And emancipated the print of the newest chapters.
He’ll fall upon the lords great will,
The ‘Singers’ and ‘Wobblies’ will call and cheer,
While unrest leaves lanes of torn and listed books.
It’s a world only make believe could make so real.
Locked in, Locked out,
Fattened Guerrillas stalking shadows,
In concrete jungles of law and lands.
Their people Long since, Ner’ forgotten,
For He hears their whispers in his sleep.
This Farmers land, had workers lead their kin to the gates of Slaughter,
Then scavenged, begged and stowed to the cloudy Hill
Of Overlooking
To remorse or return, is a question beyond the door of the living.
He must Shed not for the defiant butcher,
But more for the life now gone,
Since sold to an aging critic.
He was Born in to the Poor mans world,
But now freed from it’s chains,
Must help make what‘s fallow ripen.
On the streets where rubble were once great walls,
Where mounted high, the heavenly stag did Breed,
In fields where blight had starved their plates,
He would toil and drive and Dig and Build.
That day, That day in May,
Upon a hazy heather pillow,
A life of history filled a lonely man.
As He lay and held the hand of glories past,
He raised a fist to salute the one which had just begun.
He shakes hands in his dreams with the men of the mist,
Along hills,
And at the edge of great towns.
James Fitzpatrick
Seamus Mac Giolla Phadraig
James Fitzpatrick is an Irish Poet based in Dublin.
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