Selected Poems
2013-2017
By Rori O'Keeffe
Copyright © 2017 by Rori O'Keeffe
Smashwords
Edition
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The poems in this volume were previously published at Smashwords by Rori O'Keeffe, © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.
Table of Contents
The Persistence Of Tunnel Vision
Admittedly, A Nerdy Love Of Mine
United, We Stand Shoulder To Shoulder
2013-2017
The Persistence Of Tunnel Vision
When they saw slaves twisted in bloody heaps
Under the fallen rocks by the pyramid's side,
They turned and said,
It is not that I don't care, but I am busy with my tasks.
***
I suppose, long ago, flames licked their tongues at the agony
Of my ancestor's dying flesh;
It was good, said some, to burn a witch;
Others, less imbued with divine authority,
Could but watch, and return to their tasks -
Their world narrowing with
Each harrowing desecration
Of humanity around them.
Peace at last, they found in the grave.
***
When many among us
Make good for themselves
By the desecration of human beings far away,
It is as though they are of no concern;
They are not known to me,
So their suffering is but illusion to me.
Besides, I am busy with my tasks.
***
We ever fail to hear the screams,
Until it is Mother, or Brother
Screaming out to us.
As the screams of the world rise,
Threatening to call us out of our personal worlds,
Our tunnel vision protects from conscience,
Or action,
Until, as the story goes,
They at last come for each of us -
And then the screams are felt
Not just heard.
***
Destiny is what may be achieved
With will and love and unity.
Fate is what befalls those who have come to believe
In their own immunity
From the scourge of the ages
That has plagued each life
Since we left paradise
Long, long ago.
Over the years of my life,
I have watched that scotch pine
In its ascent through the air,
From sapling I plunged into the soil,
To the green spire
That now crests
The old home's chimney top.
How many gales has it withstood?
What of it's calm presence in winter?
Though it's beauty enraptures my heart,
I yearn for a pyre
To consume it with flame.
***
I roll and loll about in my bed at night
Wishing in dreams and under baleful moonlight
That you would return
And carry my heart away;
After all, it is your rightful trophy -
Or, perhaps, a notch on your little black book.
I succumb to a vision,
Or a fond hope, perhaps
Of you lying dead, a knife in your chest,
Finished off by a virago that found you at last.
I believe it is likely, however,
That you are off on a cruise ship
In the Sargasso Sea
Where we met so long ago
In those still waters.
***
None have compared to you
And your turquoise eyes;
Nor your lilting trills
As you carried your prize;
Why must I recall you in each
New man's face?
Why do I teach them -
Beseech them -
To learn your embrace?
After all is said and done,
You cut the bloom off my flower
And replaced it with a brooch
Meant for weddings
Though without an engraving.
***
How the years have passed cruelly
Since you abandoned me at sea,
To find a firmer ass
In some other woman's cabin.
Does it matter to you
That I have drifted off course
And find myself alone on the
Isle of Old Maids?
I counsel myself to yearn for
The flesh of a woman -
In the hope that love would become
New again in a kinder bed mate.
I caution myself against desperate
Chance-taking
On the wheel of fate
That is the dating service.
I tell myself that, in time,
I will no longer want a love
To place by my side,
For does not desire flow,
Then ebb as the tide?
***
I have been placed in the tomb,
A premature burial,
While a raven calls out
"Nevermore."
I still see myself in the moon's orb,
A dead ancient world
Scarred by age and melted rock,
Until it now has a companion in me.
My life was changed forever
By you
Under that tropical moon,
And though your kiss infected
My still growing spirit
With your blight,
The sea turned vicious on me -
The price I've paid
For having you
One night.
***
A storm raged around my home
All hours of the night;
The hail bullied the roof into submission
And bolts' light captured the sight
Of a sinuous wind cloud
Snapping the trunk of that old scotch pine.
Nothing will ever be the same
In my old neighbourhood -
All has been moved,
Turned about as omens
Are ironic, yet not perverse.
That fine old tree is now dead,
And I can never now summon the will
To plant a new sapling -
And so my heart will ever be still.
Peace at last
Can now fill my being,
As I walk in my garden
No longer in the shadow
Of that old scotch pine.
So it was written,
As though into my heart,
That all are born free,
And it is noblest, best,
To always be so.
I staved off the ruins
Of another age,
That lay claim upon each soul,
And declared that the lot
Of the peasant
Is duty.
Truly, I set off to the stage of the world
With banners unfurled,
Just a little girl,
And made myself free.
Free for the taking;
Free for lovemaking;
Free, above all,
To do as I pleased.
Fires fell about me,
{From heaven, I wonder?}
And great floods swept my dwelling
Off its rickety stilts.
I was beautiful as Narcissus,
Gazing into the bowl
Of my misgivings about
What I had become.
I was free of it all,
And all of them -
Children were but a ghostly
Alternate reality -
Science fantasy to one such as me;
I had no faith in myself,
Yet, somehow,
I would be free of them all.
Children, parents, and in the end,
My notably wicked friends,
Who made no friends of their own.
Some envied me,
Others pointed to the precipice,
Which at last I have come to,
And so, without hesitation,
I am now jumping to my death,
Where, I have little doubt,
I will at last be
Absolutely free.
This I have chosen to become,
For the life of duty
Is undignified;
Though, I now perceive,
With salt's bitter taste on my lips,
A life with duty in it
Has the charm of being
Relatively happy
Compared to what
Mine has become.
Absolute freedom awaits me
At the bottom of this precipice.
Farewell.
No one has watched that tree grow,
As moss was strewn about its lower branches;
No one was there to water its roots
Or prune its dead shoots;
No one but I, who have within me,
The memory of what I have been -
That tree will fall, and no one will hear the sound
Of a spirit taking flight
Back to its beginning,
With the hope of standing in the soil of the earth
Once again.
She was held to be the most,
In all ways of beauty,
In her village, built on the ashes
Of the Celts' old town.
She was Saxon, and as of old,
Trailed fine golden ringlets of hair
Across the chests and faces
Of her lovers.
It was in a field of barley,
Under the silvering moon,
Still worshipped by many,
That she showed a suitor her flower,
Nestled in gold between her thighs;
He came to her and went in
On his own.
He fled the village two moons later,
When she began to show
The gift that she thought she had
Been given by he.
"What of it?" said an old gentleman,
Widowed for years with children all grown;
She jumped at the chance to marry into cropland;
With a good stepson's support,
She might again have the chance,
Under a silvering moon,
To coddle a man between her thighs,
And find what love there was
To be had,
In this world.
Sundry oaths fly about
In parlours and homes
Across the globe;
Insipid lies are often told,
Then not retracted
By some so bold;
The best of mates,
The best of friends,
Are not told of the passing;
How is it that at the end,
So many make a Hellish mocking
Of a heavenly one's joy of life?
Bitterness makes the
Talking dead
Rage with envy
At the death, and the life,
Of ones who truly lived.
Be wary at the wilting of ones you love;
It is when villains take their vicious revenge
On those they found to be fine, and worthy.
Whatever moon they choose to come by,
They can be heard in fields and yards,
Near and far, and those in between;
Some are speckled black on orange,
Some are a lyrical iridescent green;
Still others are black, and some brown.
They rise, it seems, in unison