Tag Archives: Poetry

Climate change activist Greta Thurnberg accused world leaders of stealing her childhood at a UN Climate Summit last week

Autopsy

(for Greta Thunberg)

Let surgical saw and a team of scalpels strip naked
the entrails of their hatred.
These are people who if they haven’t been fired
for lying, or don’t live mostly on gin,
at the very least can’t perform
basic bodily functions
without the help of nuclear strength coffee
and the kind of plunger traditionally used
to clear the pipes of obstreperous kitchen sinks.
Journalists whose greatest life achievement
is once being inappropriately groped
by a former Secretary of State for Defence.
People so sad, when the machine stops beeping,
their adult children will rush to book
foreign holidays to dodge the ew
of having to attend their funerals.
And what really gets the acid
of their compromise-times-failure multiplied
rising is your implacable yes
to that thing called tomorrow.

Kevin Higgins

Pic: Getty

Leader of the UK House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg (left) and British prime Minister Boris Johnson

Until We Are Dogs

Johnson and Rees-Mogg
Won’t be happy
Until we are dogs
Until social democracy
Is long gone
And we are their dogs
Fetching the kill
From their glorious hunt
So happy with a pat
On the head
And a dog’s dinner
Desperate to please
Delighted to be teased
Overjoyed to be worked
To the heart-pounding bone
For nothing but a treat
And a blanket in the barn

Johnson and Rees-Mogg
Won’t be happy
Until we are dogs
Until social democracy
Is long gone
And we are their dogs
Fetching the kill
From their glorious hunt
Wretches whose only thrill
Is attacking other dogs
In dark-lit alleys
As our masters laugh
And drink and punt the money
We slaved for them to throw
On us to kill or be killed
Pitiful hopeless cunt after cunt

Johnson and Rees-Mogg
Won’t be happy
Until we are dogs
Until social democracy
Is long gone
And we are their dogs
Fetching the kill
From their glorious hunt
No longer understanding
The language they speak
But ecstatic if they approve
Of us in any way- ‘good boys!
Good girls!’ a finger through the curls
Utterly oblivious to the new routine
Which means in the event
Of any illness or unrest
It’s a bullet in the chest
And pig-swill mince at best

Roddy McDevitt

Previously: Roddy McDevitt on Broadsheet

Pic: Getty

Poet Raven and his wife Angie (‘The Scottish Queen’)

A tribute by Roddy McDevitt to his friend Raven, one of the leading lights in the Dublin spoken word poetry scene and the Irish Festival scene, who died tragically in a swimming accident off The Baltic coast last week.

You Are Of Ireland

(For RAVEN after Yeats)

You are of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland
‘And time runs on’ cried she
‘Come out of Liberty
Come dance with me in Ireland ‘

One man, a man apart
In such outlandish gear
With his glorious American
Feathers answered the call
Of his Caledonian cailin
And came to dance
In Ireland
For he and she both knew
That time runs on, runs on

You are of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland
‘And time runs on’ cried she
‘Come out of ecstasy
Come dance with me in Ireland’

And the Raven danced
With his Scottish Queen
In the paradise gardens
Of Holy Ireland
Verses flowed
From his honey’d lips
As his Angel
Plucked her strings so sweet
They danced and sang
And played
In parlour field and street
Inspiring every soul they met
To live and laugh and love
And ne’er the heart forget
For he and she both knew
That time runs on, runs on

‘We are of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland
And time runs on’ cried she
‘Come out of rhapsody
Come dance with me in Ireland’

Roddy McDevitt

Previously: RIP Raven

J9 writes:

Thought you might be interested in noting the passing of [California-born and Dublin-based since 2005] poet Raven who was well known on the Dublin poetry scene [also a regular at The Leviathan stage at the Electric Picnic]. He passed away while on holiday.

RIP

Raven

Meanwhile…

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) and his Home Secretary Priti Patel

Priti Patel’s Denial
“I just wanted to hear [them] deny it.”
Lyndon Baines Johnson

It is not true that at our meeting today
I forced the Foreign Secretary and
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to bathe
in piping hot custard and gently
scrubbed their backs, bellies, balls
with my bristling, steel wire-brush
until they were strip-loin raw
and roaring to God
for me to stop.

The whole thing was their idea in the first place.

Nor do I make
the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
wear a gimp suit to all day
meetings, during which I only unzip the mouth
to feed it occasional morsels
of uranium washed chicken kebab
with my long hot fork.

She turns up dressed like that entirely of her own volition.

And the rumours I ram
an electric hair straightener
with a loose connection
up parts of the Secretary of State for Wales
not designed to take
an electric hair straightener
with a loose connection
have been vastly exaggerated.

Said implement was in excellent working order.
I even took care to wipe the remnants
of the last guy off it.

Nor is there, for the most part,
any reality to online accusations
that at our most recent
meeting I covered the Attorney General
toe to forehead in cats’ blood
and locked him in a closet
to be fought over by my pet
Staffordshire bull terrier, Enoch
and a one eyed East African wild dog
called Field Marshall Idi Amin
I keep around the place
just in case.

The closet you speak of remained unlocked
during the entire process
which my Right Honourable friend appeared to
thoroughly enjoy.

He was still telling what I think were jokes –
it was difficult to make out fully formed words –
as I drove him slowly as possible
to hospital.

Kevin Higgins

Pics: Channel 4

The Politics of Abstinence

Today begins the great cross and clench
for the Guardian columnist
as her area shuts up shop in solidarity
with people who don’t want to be but are
pregnant in Georgia, Alabama
and places even further from Islington than that.

Tiny flying pickets circle
the entrance to the promised land
with signs that shout:
They Shall Not Pass!
or Dispute On Here.
Though you’d need
a magnifying glass to read them.

So far today, they’ve turned back
the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
who, on inspection, was found to be
naked beneath his gleaming white sheet;
a guy called Doug wearing nothing
but a Make America Great Again cap
imported from El Salvador;
some dude she met in college
who used to like to
have his bum lightly chastised
with briars; the professor she once,
at his own request,
fastened to the bedroom door
with strategically placed
black leather belts; and the late
Anita Bryant carrying
what looks suspiciously like
an excessively sized strap-on.

For none shall break this strike
until it’s achieved
the far better ecstasy
of enough people in the internet
exclaiming our heroine’s name.

Kevin Higgins

 

 

Fine Gael European Election candidate Frances Fitzgerald (right) and Senator Michael McDowell’s dog (left) that she claimed to have found last Saturday in Ranelagh, Dublin 6

Look What I Found at the Triangle in Ranelagh
after Frances Fitzgerald

One of Shergar’s blinkers,
what looks like John Wayne Bobbit’s willy –
though it could be an orphaned cocktail sausage,
I plan to warm it up later and find out –
the missing postman from Stradbally
a lock of Madeleine McCann’s hair
all Noirin O’Sullivan’s phones
the bones of Amelia Earhart
one of Dr Josef Mengele’s fingernails
what I’m pretty sure was the Loch Ness Monster –
though it may have been a member of People Before Profit –
Ailbhe Smyth’s political integrity
the black box of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370
the crew of the Marie Celeste
and the lost city of Atlantis;

phoned the number and returned
them sound and safe to their new owner
Vulture Investments Incorporated of Delaware;
apart from the jokers off the Marie Celeste
who I plan to lock up in Direct Provision
for the next seven years,

and Ms O’Sullivan’s phones
which Garda Special Branch are, as I type,
frantically skipping red light after red light
to deposit permanently at the sweet smelling
end of a vacant slurry tank
somewhere in Tipperary.

Kevin Higgins

 

Saturday: She Doesn’t Normally Do This

Julian Assange following his arrest this morning at London’s Ecuador Embassy

My Wishes For You

(Dedicated to those who are celebrating the arrest today of Julian Assange, and also to those on the Left who are too cowardly or stupid to speak out in his support)

That your son at Trinity College
may graduate
to become a rogue gynaecologist.
That his brother, the paediatrician,
be suspended without pay.
That your husband be caught
selling wheelchairs that don’t work
live on national radio. And the day

you discover all of the above, may
the traffic wardens, every one of them,
be East Galway Gestapo. May you lose
your winning ticket,
and the gun not go off
when it’s supposed to.

May your reflux be acid
and your bowel be cranky.
May your water forever be cloudy
and the pharmacy be shut.
May the funeral parlour
refuse you,

and the lies you told haunt you
long after the cat
has made a litter tray of your ashes.

Kevin Higgins

Pic: Sky

Earlier: Arrested

John Moynes by Alan O’Regan

Last month, while celebrating 1,500 Limericks a Day from the pen of John Moynes – making him Ireland’s most prolific published poet – we asked you to send your best wishes in verse.

The following each win a copy of John’s debut volume of poetry, Scenes Of Moderate Violence which is published on April 18 (see below).

A prolific poet called Moynes
Picked up his pen and girded his loins
Wrote a Limerick per day
which the ‘sheet did display
and often the reader rejoins!

Sam

A prolific poet called Moynes,
Picked up his pen and girded his loins,
“I will shoot from the hip,
and I will not give a jip,”
Said the prolific poet called Moynes

BOJ

A prolific poet called Moynes,
Picked up his pen and girded his loins,
With each rise of the sun,
He Limericked and spun,
A career from an online sojourn.

Newsjustin

A prolific poet called Moynes,
Picked up his pen and girded his loins,
Now that is quite heinous
It’s a pen not a penis
That metaphallic aesthetic of groins.

Nigel

prolific poet called Moynes,
Grabbed his pen and girded his loins.
He’s the ‘sheet’s five-line-truther,
Forsooth there’s none smoother,
(Though, at times one can *just* see the joins).

Gary Flood

Scenes Of Moderate Violence is the debut poetry collection from John.

Written between 2013 and 2016 it depicts a “world recovering from economic turmoil and then collapsing into fear and despair”. There is also a bit about a time travelling cowboy who can recite two poems at once.

One FREE copy to the first person to spot artist Alan O’Regan’s signature in John’s portrait ( top).

Previously: Poems For Moynes

Earlier: A Limerick A Day

How to Rid Yourself of Election Canvassers

Ask them where they stand on the urgent
need for a Greater Serbia.

Tell them nothing has been right
since the Treaty of Versailles,
for which you hold each
and every one of their kind
personally responsible.

Tell them the council’s been promising
to chop down that tree for the past
twenty five years, six months and two days;
that you’re certain
your next door neighbour is a Satanist,
with dead animals buried under his patio.

Start throwing down chicken feed
to apparently non-existent hens,
and wander about your front garden, chanting
their preferred candidate’s name,
as if in some sort of trance.

If a lady over the age of eighty,
or a child less than twelve,
tell them: no thank you,
you’ve given up sex for lent.
If a middle aged male,
come to the door panting
and red faced, with a semi-clad
woman strategically placed
behind you, and say you have
more urgent business
to which you really must attend.

Tell them you’re pretty sure
your most intimate bits
are an unusual shape,
that you’d like them
to take a look and tell you
what their policy is
in cases like this.

Kevin Higgins

Rollingnews