If you add up a decade of pay,
For an industry then you can say,
That wearing a wig,
Is a comfortable gig,
But you’re leading your readers astray.
John Moynes
(Graham Hughes/Photocall Ireland)
Author Archives: John Moynes
Thank Heaven for good old Christine,
Who’s about to arrive on the scene,
The people have sinned,
And we need a big wind,
That can sweep this benighted land clean.
John Moynes
(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)
New 12 Steps
at
Anonymous
By John Moynes
First we admit that we are powerless over literature, that our lives have become meaningless.
Then we came to believe that only a power greater than ourselves could restore us to clarity.
And so we decided to turn ourselves over to the care of an editor, as we understand them.
We made a searching and fearless inventory of our vocabulary.
We admitted to our editor, to our ourselves and to another poet the exact nature of our typos.
We prepared our poems for submission.
We humbly asked our editor to remove our clichés.
We made lists of all persons we had harmed.
We wrote verses of apology to our victims.
We continued to draft, redraft and start to write again.
We sought through reading and reciting to improve our conscious contact with Heaney, Joyce and Yeats as we understand them.
Having had a literary awakening as the result of these steps, we went to Grogan’s, and told everybody.
Pic: DublinStreets
In Moyross they’re fond of their rap,
But they’re caught in a cultural trap,
Ever since the committee,
Tried to edit their ditty,
And reduce it to anodyne pap.
John Moynes
Every Corkman will agree,
That it’s great to live down by the Lee,
But they woke up this morning,
To a Met Eireann warning,
They’re about to be swept out to sea.
John Moynes
Pic: Richard Jacob
It seems the statistics will tell,
That The Gathering somehow went well,
So let us give thanks,
To the thousands of yanks,
Who were charmed by our twee hokey spell.
John Moynes
(An Post)
Dennis’s basketball gang,
Are all on the way to Pyongyang,
To take on some short,
Left wing people in sport,
The odds are they’ll win with a bang.
John Moynes
Pic: NPR
The northwest is covered in snow,
While wintery winds start to blow,
Which sounds festive but,
Their power’s been cut,
And they’re facing a season of woe.
John Moynes
Pic: Trevor Michael
The folk at the ESRI,
Are excited, and I’ll tell you why,
They think the next year,
Won’t be so austere,
And they also think that pigs can fly.
John Moynes
(Irish Examiner)
All right-thinking people abhor,
Those Irish who still want a war,
But we’ll never know peace,
Until certain folk cease,
Swinging golf clubs and shouting out “Fore!”
John Moynes
(BBC)