PATRICIA WALSH

 

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What makes someone a liar, you know,

Shuttering to the extreme in another way,

Universal laws of behaviour, a tight perchance

Modestly false through foot falling as seemed,

Defaulting gender to go where never before.

 

Better ruled by women than most,

The functioning canopy drives up the rain,

Laughed off the stage, put paid to the acting

Divorced from the colourfield forever,

Grow up crying, and die disappointed.

 

Cracked up in genes, the sole heirs of the dance

The fitting perfume augurs somewhat trite

Icy feet dampened on a dark thoroughfare,

Eloping to saner environments, gone well,

Numbing on its purpose, seething through.

 

Balancing advertisements, and porn, shocking the system,

This publication going nowhere fast forever,

As much right as any other, to sleep through unattended,

Stealing others spouses, for I'll or maybe good,

True happiness is supreme, so up the ante,

Watched while having fun, gambling the market

The befitting form, a possessive exercise,

No gracious type can save you now,

Thrown out of form into cauldron of fame.

 

 

Escalated Joke

 

Similarly engendered to a type of height

Bloodied on impact from a daring scathe

Knowing when to leave, hapless wind-up

Gambling the necessary into a frigid hole.

 

Ending lives indiscriminately, walking into dusk,

Preferred over others being the lazy type,

Scurrilous parking dwindled by the chosen hand

Riding over misery, repeated like a song.

 

This circular reference, going through the strand,

Indifferent out of measure, asking for payment,

Winning on lotteries, mediocre as they are,

Passing through blithely, with cares in the world..

 

Finding scandal readily, cutting marrow to a surprise

Left-handed guilt setting the world on fire,

Realistic disappointments pass by in a meaty passage

The constant embarrassment at every turn.

 

The force-feeding of schooldays now defuncts

Crying and disappointed, entitled gone awry.

Knocking on perdition's door forever

An alternate deserving a slower rate.

 

Stalled from recognition, the escalated joke

Scurrilous direction into comatose fixation

Stronger patience barking into weirdness

Self-contained as a jibe, not mattered,

 

 

Invasive Planet

 

Someone spins on its own axis, and that's okay,

Being moneyed all along, willing to let them

The fascistic overtures drilling the facelift

Futile fury washed over the direction.

 

Sitting on anthems, a misdemeanor gone soft,

Slitting throats of the still wary, trophy aside

Walking for turgid exercise through the solid text,

Surfeit of characters muscling through heart.

 

The derelict facelift goes through its time,

Overt promises moving in for the kill,

Loved over a certain dross, by understanding

Cash on delivery never sounded so sweet.

 

The heterogeneous screams danger at every turn

Revoking civilised countries from a sleeping sickness

The cosmopolitan birthday goes through the sly

Life manoeuvring on just the same, unknown.

 

The reciprocal gifts, caught unawares, assailed

Dog-eared supremacy stood on, over again

Needing to love the season, evacuated for a day

Gone through the times where everything sufficed.

 

The high-ended windows cry for subversion

Scurrilous tasks to get to floor level

Slipping into hell like it needed an effort

Vainglorious sentences spin it's own story,

 

 

Masters Of The Omniverse

 

Taken out without so much as a biscuit

Taking up space at another second's notice,

None indispensable, broken by recognition

Holding torches to cigarettes unaddicted.

 

Counting down to groceries, backed the better

No deposit, no return, imagining the slight

Of an eaten bread, mis forgotten now,

Crossing the country for sale of further peace.

 

The residual attention-seeker goes on its way

As if miffed, giving the most important seats

Taking up money, a carcinogenic farce

These hilarious beginnings rock the cold foundations.

 

No evidence for malice, laughing at bedtimes,

Taken, where rushed, to the spinning lung

Recurring dreams of cigarettes, life laid again

Just to resurrect the theory we live by.

 

The unfinished diatribe goes on for this time

The highly sensitive alarms go on cooking

Not knowing what goes on beneath your nail

The ragged talker soothes for his own.

 

Taking down the milestones, elevated to thin air,

Strictness of form can't contain the sorrow

Of one being sick, to plead with the warmth

Of dominating the mainstream, so paramount.

 

 

Cold Open Window

 

Those invincible jackets, saviour of the universe

Cracking salted jokes on the idle, aside

The circular references catching the burn

By Spoiling one's duty through a comatose breeze

Behaving strangely on the ordinary time.

 

Embarrassed for a time, reaping the hurricane

Feeling entitled for want of a better stance

Being honest at a cost, secrets gone explosive

The anaesthetic of television wherever seen

Watered, left to dry, too advanced for some.

 

Higher hair, closer to God.  Wishing to be used

The bizarre record sleeves go forth infinitely

Closer to a saviour to pick up and go.

Seated outside to scrag the multitudes medicine

Sucking carbohydrates through a napkin dearly.

 

The convenient public, surveying more than necessary

Given ultimate shocks catching in full view,

Burning entitlement where most gone before

Lapping up design under a broken sign

Sleeping until Christmas a favourite pastime.

 

Drizzled into a cul-de-sac, turned around spite,

Working into cemeteries a typical forthcoming

Never giving up on beloveds, laughed at,

Seated and entertained like always before

The glorious hypocrisy of staying sane.

 

PATRICIA WALSH

 

PATRICIA WALSH was born in the parish of Mourneabbey, in north Co Cork,and educated at University College Cork, graduating with an MA in Archaeology in 2000. Her poetry has been published in Stony Thursday; Southword; Too Well Away Journal; New Wasteland Magazine; Quail Bell Magazine; The Poetry Collective; Quiver Review; Blazevox Magazine; and The Rational Creature. She has already published a chapbook, titled Continuity Errors in 2010, and a novel, The Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014. She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine, and published a further novel, titled In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.