Tag Archives: Poetry

Aoife Cunningham

Heal

Unwrap your wounds.
Let them breathe.
Forget those tainted memories.
It’s time to heal.

Paint your world in colour.
Learn to dance to the rhythm of change.
For there is beauty in letting go.
This suffering is a restraint.

Stop allowing words to shatter your ribs.
Forget the mistakes,
but not the lesson.
Hope is a blanket of comfort,
Don’t cloud it by depression.

One day
your eyes will be free from tears.
Your soul will no longer weep.
When you smell the wet soil
mixed with morning air,
As you wake
from a soothing sleep.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Sylvia’s Mothering

Relit

Choosing Recovery

Leading Me Home

In My Element

A Path Made Of Thorns

Memory Storage

Wings Of Wardship

Running Out

Afghans protest troop withdrawal at the White House, Washington DC, USA yesterday

Kevin writes:

A poem I wrote almost twenty years ago. It seems an appropriate one for this week.

September 2001

Now those geopolitical chickens
have coming winging home to roost,
it’s like roaming the back-streets of Vienna
one of those fateful, unravelling days,
Gavrilo Princip’s lethal itch
having just made its shattering entrance.
From kitchen tables and café bars
everywhere, military strategists
are springing up. My mother’d
invade Afghanistan this minute,
if only she knew where it was.

Kevin Higgins
September 14th 2001

Pic: EPA

Aoife Cunningham with her mother Sylvia

Aoife writes:

I dedicate this poem to the strongest woman I know, my mum Sylvia.

Mother

Your heart beat is imperturbable.

As you absolve all of my pain.

Your mind is my resource manual.

As you camouflage all my shame.

You place,

A sunset kiss on my forehead.

Your heart is the softest veil.

You whisper,

Testaments for my future.

A university letter in the mail.

You are the anchor.

For your children’s dreams.

Hold my smile in your palms.

You dance

to the melody of me.

Tuck me in.

Tight and snug.

Under a blanket

of ardent hugs.

Knitted,

With the yarn

of your

love.

Your chest is heavy with languor,

For my elation.

My eyes water,

at the prospect of you…

saying goodbye.

To me.

You made yesterday’s into rainbows.

And turn tomorrow into a promise.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Relit

Choosing Recovery

Leading Me Home

In My Element

A Path Made Of Thorns

Memory Storage

Wings Of Wardship

Running Out

Aoife Cunningham

Firefighters

Quick!

Grab some water.

She sparked another match.

She is aflame,

Again…

The psychiatric nurse sprays,

over my smouldering embers.

Sometimes,

I hold grudges.

Because I’m no longer alight.

Sometimes,

I hold grudges.

And,

My inner wolf bites.

I incorporate anger into my walls.

As you wheel me down the halls.

Down a path of light,

A path or rediscovery.

And recovery.

An unfamiliar road.

When my mind is desperate to go…

on this pilgrimage of fire.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Choosing Recovery

Leading Me Home

In My Element

A Path Made Of Thorns

Memory Storage

Wings Of Wardship

Running Out

Aoife Cunningham

Aoife writes:

I wrote this poem about choosing recovery….

A eulogy to Anorexia

Days go by,

Life goes on.

as we replace time.

My fragile soul is left to rest.

Even if the calculator is permanently embedded in my head,

I’ll say goodbye to her.

Despite being reminded of her presence,

Piece by piece.

I stargaze through stained windows.

Will I be in this prison forever?

I get lost in her seduction.

So badly burnt from her wrath.

It’s time to say,

Our time is up.

We’ve been to heaven,

Plus a thousand hells.

We might always be in love,

But enough. Is. Enough.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Leading Me Home

In My Element

A Path Made Of Thorns

Memory Storage

Wings Of Wardship

Running Out


The Director Of Provision Shites On As The Tractor Runs

there’s no place like home
says I, the Director of provision
the heat that beats down along the equator is cruel
but the rain in Ireland can be crueller, you say I’m some fool
that I do believe in God but I’m afraid of rainbows well weather
is natural or unnatural depending on whether it makes good Turf

there is nothing and I mean nothing, that can bate the Turf
you won’t find the likes when ye get home
lads, and it’s all because whether
or not ye have the means of provision
the likelihood of becoming the fool
who goes back through Judges decision is cruel

t’is close it’s highly likely your cruel
entitlement to my country and my Turf
would make me take it out on you don’t fool
yourself I’ll give you a scaldin’ you can carry all the way back home
be that bus, plane or shipwreck, feck provision
I’ll give you breakneck, hightide, Godspeed weather

whatever you decide will weather
your face to leather and the cruel
-ty of the direct provision
of neglect will burn a hole the Turf
couldn’t even dream of. Go home.
that golden neon turning in the hearth is making a fool

of you, seducing you, using your fool
-hardy head to lead you to expect a fair-weather
friend in court, but us, we who are Home
we have known an eight hundred year occupation of Cruel
we turned bitterness to shame from those who ruled, Turf
was the only thing that was our own Our only provision

was kept at anything worthless, so provision
in our ears sounds like ‘’shirtless’’ or fool
maggot, blight, dirt. Yurt a Mhac, the Turf
is what has turned us into monsters, the weather
is the only God who answers us now, so hear cruel
exactly as it’s meant the only emotion still in us, not on us, home.

let me turn my Turf to the God of leaving cert weather
and the other provision, petrol or diesel fool?
You have asylum sucked at the wrong teat and entered into a land called Cruelty, go home.

beam

beam is a 26 year old woman from Galway. A new poet and a recent MA graduate, beam is working on her first collection after being published on Spilling Hot Cocoa Over Martin Amis. Recent work includes: ‘surviving the pandemic and several disappointing sourdough loaves’. You can find more of her poetry @personalbeam on instagram.

Previously: beam on Broadsheet

RollingNews

Aoife Cunningham

Aoife writes:

‘A new poem about anorexia and the inner conflict and turmoil of the illness.’

So Much Depends On Beliefs

I never believed I’d end up as a guinea pig,

Tied to a hospital bed.

I never believed

my world would reveal

this path made of thorns,

A path.

That I’d be forced to walk along…

It felt like I was a piece of IKEA furniture.

I’m humpty dumpty.

and the ‘A team,’

Nurse Ailish and Nurse Amy,

Put on their cloaks and

save the day.

So much depends on beliefs

And I’m starting to question?

Can the A team

piece me back together,

Again…

I never believed

I’d be so conflicted.

In mind, body and soul.

As if there’s a battle against

head, body and heart…

Who knew?

My cocktail my is ying and yang…

with progress there’s weight.

That’s when my brain manipulates.

My Actions and. Repercussions.

With progress

there’s fear,

Because I was getting near…

To be free

from this Brain Fog concussion.

So much depends on beliefs.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Memory Storage

Wings Of Wardship

Running Out

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (above) has declared July 19 ‘Freedom Day’ in Britain

This afternoon.

Neil writes:

A poem written in advance of the full lifting of Covid restrictions on 19th July, a decision that seems to owe more to our PM’s dog-whistle populism than scientific analysis or concern for mortality rates.

Freedom Day

Take the mask off and throw it away;
two fingers up to the two-metre rule.
Smile and wave, folks – it’s freedom day.

Leading scientists in utter dismay:
new outbreak at a rest home; a school.
Take the mask off and throw it away!

Flock to the beach and soak up the rays;
pile en masse into a swimming pool.
Smile and wave, folks – it’s freedom day.

Go out on the lash, join in the fray,
the bigger the crowd, the more you look cool.
Take the mask off and throw it away!

Summer in Borisland. Come out and play
urge tabloid hacks who crackle like ghouls:
smile and wave, folks – it’s freedom day.

Reason’s lost, common sense gone astray;
cheap sloganeering wins over fools.
Take the mask off and throw it away;
smile and wave, folks – it’s freedom day.

Neil Fulwood

Neil lives and works in Nottingham, England. He has three collections of poetry out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere and Service Cancelled. He is married with no children but has secured a ‘timeshare on next door’s cats’.

Pic: SkyNews

Aoife writes:

I wrote this poem about being a ward of court whilst being a free spirit. I hope it expresses the contrast of the two.

The Free Spirit Ward of Court

My Heart yearns while my mind dwells,
For liberation.
Liberation from the restraints,
Imposed by the state.

I am energy, so free and abundant,
I crave distance from the piercing eyes of my Nurse.

Give me the sky and I will soar,
Bring me a melody and I will sing.
A free spirit forced to fit into a square box.
A hammered, bent misfit yet vivid and vibrant.

My bodyguards are deaf to this
Boho’s screams.
I cant abscond in present,
But in spirit I am free.

You can cage my body but not my mind,
You can dictate my actions.
But you can’t compose my soul.

You can’t tame me!
I will break free.
And fly as high as my dreams go.

But first,
I must hug recovery.

Aoife Cunningham

Previously: Running Out

iStock

Dublin city centre

Millennial Artist With A Masters Degree Attempts
To Enter The Workforce And/Or Buy A House

Starter pack:
A) Rich parents (if you cannot attain this, skip to part F).

Other options:
B) Pay more money to train better so you aren’t worthless.

C) Educate those around you to appreciate the necessity of art. Please note: you may lose friends and family who (let’s face it) have real jobs, that paid for the little Arts Council funded thing you did, that one time.

D) Create something so intoxicatingly commercially brilliant that it impresses those you lost in part C but ironically only just covers what you paid for part B.

E) You haven’t gotten this far and still thought I’d have any advice for the ‘’buy a house’’ bit, did you? Oh honey, refer to part A.

F) Kill yourself.

beam

beam is a 26 year old woman from Galway. A new poet and a recent MA graduate, beam is working on her first collection after being published on Spilling Hot Cocoa Over Martin Amis. Recent work includes: ‘surviving the pandemic and several disappointing sourdough loaves’. You can find more of her poetry @personalbeam on instagram.

RollingNews