Gráinne Shannon: Poems

Occasionally an idea for a poem pops into my head and I write a few lines down on my phone. Sometimes this happens in the middle of the night. I can forget about sleep then, as the poem keeps adding to itself. Later I save it to my laptop and work on it from time to to time, adding, taking away, until it feels finished. This process can take anything from two weeks to two years. Then I start the submissions journey. Sometimes, when a poem is rejected - which can be a few months after submission - I find a few more tweaks are needed to complete the idea. Then it gets accepted elsewhere. Below is a collection of my poems that found a home in one of these journals, all of which are creative and diverse, produced and shared with love. I'm grateful to be a part of them.


Sea Lights
Speckles of pink cloud rise like snowflakes Into water-colour yellow As the sun exhales its last breath Held long enough To show The light travelling In the distance Clouds fold over the city Waiting to be washed Beyond the sea Blue, grey mountains Silhouette the dandelion sky A lighthouse twinkles, a camera flashes An elderly couple avoid the dunes With a smile for me I peel off outer layers Inviting goose bumps and sand A wave fizzles and I enter the sea Ripples spread like a map Inviting me to explore Nothingness lies below the surface I gasp for air And find a place to float With seaweed hair The sky is on my face and in my nose The mountains are fading My shiver sends a shiver through the water Like a dolphin, I flip and swim Until cold seeps everywhere Absorbing sound The sea clings to me as I reach shore Each drop the colour of moon Comforting cloth scares it away The motion of land comes back My ascent home begins It is dark, but everything seems bright

My mum used to say, "If I could paint, I would paint the sky." Not being able to paint either, I thought of writing a poem about the sky for her. This is the result, which ended up being about the sea. Hope you like it, Mum! Published in the beautiful Door Is A Jar, March 2022


Playground of My Youth
The hill Playground of my youth An hour after school The grass always damp shadowed by oak trees The stream below a bank of weeds and old rope Mudslides in the rain leave ridges to climb The bridge where boys on bikes smile down Too old for plasters Too young for kissing The bushes A shared cigarette There a man with need to shock means no harm The old castle A magic forest An electric walk A first kiss The end of youth

I wrote Playground of My Youth on a trip home to Dublin. Driving passed the parks where I used to play brought back memories. Tuck Magazine accepted the poem for their April 2015 issue. Tuck is an online political, human rights and arts magazine with an international outlook. Do check it out!


Still
Water torn with crossing waves tells how the wind blows currents to fight against the tide rolling forward flattening sand while cloud tissue rises catching fire from the sun and warmth escapes walls built by ancient hands I breathe deeply My lungs billow greedily pulling mineral air into my bones If the earth stopped turning If the moon tugging gently slowed to a halt If I could hold my breath The sea could at last grow still and do nothing but absorb the sky

Yep, it's a metaphor. My mind is the restless sea and shore. The desire to be still and absorb the sky comes from my meditation practice. The sky is...?... wisdom, peace, God? Whatever it is that heals us. Published in Roi Fainéant Press, March 2022. A great online journal combining poetry, fiction and non-fiction in a blog format, with an original look and feel.


Flowers Still Bloom
Flowers, thank you for being So artfully beautiful On my coffee table You bring the outside in Which is a precious thing Since we can only look At the sky through glass And love through a screen Because we carry poison On our hands and our breath We must be still and wait until it dies But you dare to bloom Making pollen for the bees Adding colour to the trees As spring ignites the summer

I wrote this at the start of lockdown in April 2020. Just as our lives went on hold, spring began! It was published in The Junction, a broad literary publication on Medium.


Zoë
We smoked cigarettes in the breakroom And talked about books Your hand manicured, tilted Mine scruffy, hidden We knew each other as old friends But not for long Your face is gone from that last image But I remember your hands neatly folded They felt like candle wax Your mum wrapped her arms around me So that I couldn’t breathe There’s a memory I have Of sitting in your kitchen We already knew But talked about boys Your eyes were really blue Must be the sky was looking in You were doing my nails And we kept chuckling What was his name again?

This poem about my lovely friend was published in the first issue of Linden Avenue, June 2012.


My Couch Says
My couch never asks Are you winning What have you done for me Why not supersize? Instead it calls me over You're welcome any time Have you met remote control? He was lonely without you My TV is a window It fits the world inside Life is great in pixels Nothing lasts Click, the window shows A couch just like mine With oversized coffee mugs And oversized matters My couch is not that busy Should I have jumbo coffee? Couch says not to worry They're trapped in fact Click to listless babies With bodies inside-out My couch says they're aliens Keep switching. Quick. Camp fires burning Throughout the concrete jungle Scavengers of justice By night. Click A human tide reclaims The streets for its children The picture keeps changing But the monster stays the same They don't look as comfy as me Change your mind Go inside Find a couch My couch says I think too much Here's a cushion Have a rest

Even watching too much TV can be an inspiration. This sleepy poem was published in Squawk Back* in 2011.*

Tuesday Afternoons
You look like perfection. Walking through the office with a noble stride. Putting things right, winking my way. If you were my boyfriend, I would be happy. When you leave, I want to eat chocolate, something with icing. A sugar hit to the brain, that’s what I need. Or a blow to the skull, may be better. To wake me from this restless sleep of desire with turns of fear and faith. Probably the cocktail born in humans since one saw their reflection in still water and thinking it was the self, asked: Can I improve on this? And we continued ever more finding flaws in what is Accepting longing as the price for imagination. It's nothing to do with you really.

This one makes me laugh. What do you think about on Tuesday afternoons? It was included in Roi Fainéant Press* Finger 10, March 2022*


Prime Time Guy
From the side of his mouth Comes a cartoon slipstream Animated history With moronic overtones But to those who have noticed The prime time guy With the square-jawed Hi Has a serious soul It’s the distances that bother him Standing in the middle Of American Pie Playing a mirror’s role Pulling in the corners Showing each the other’s Prejudice colors Like flags, home grown Oh, he is celebrated For his comic timing But the air is polarizing Outside the T.V. zone And disparity is deepening As he seeks reaction To subversive attractions Once the anchor man goes home

Inspired by the antics of US satirists. Sometimes the comedians have the most serious hearts. First published in Tuck Magazine, March 2012. Tuck is a literary, music and art journal. Something for everyone! Republished in Pif Magazine, June 2012. Pif publishes fiction, poetry, interviews and reviews, mixing it up with established and emerging writers.


Sitcom Drops
Etherise Hypnotise Sell me life In lemon drops The guitar riff The one-line gags The inside, on-side pops The story safe Safely bold Kick out Confront the force Remorse Relent All friends again It’s a boomerang, circle course They neatly learn And hug a lot And nearly fall in love And nub the broken awkward bits So life fits like a glove Cheering Whooping Smitten crowd Hush for that first kiss The music steers And swells our hearts To dream of wedded bliss Glossy Shiny Perfect hair And teeth and bags and shoes I want it bad Like lemon drops Those plastic sitcom moves

Just a fun poem. The U.S. makes the best sitcoms!


City Run
You focus on footfalls first, rhythmic, reassuring. Then breathing, in and out, controlling pace. While below the ground parts into cobble stone. Quaint to those who stand to watch the Thames glisten but hazardous to your beleaguered ankles. Around a bend another jogger passes without nodding. Your thighs ache hitting the millennium steel. You swerve students who stop to kiss. Your lungs fill on an incline with a smell - roasted nuts from an oven on wheels, parcelled by hands in mittens. You ignore a homeless man and the steps burn up to London Bridge. Why drive in the city? You wonder at cars. Drivers wonder at you. The lights are mercifully green so you can stop. Your chest heaves your knees bend itching to leave the curb. The Monument looms, You duck beneath photos And break into the bus lane. You sprint the last stretch home. Everything to the max.

Before developing a stubborn foot injury, I used to jog through the city. Over the London bridges, along the Thames, dodging tourists. I think the use of second person is to draw you into the feeling and the rhythm of running. Though like with all my poems, I didn't choose it, it just emerged that way. City Run is published in Door Is A Jar, March 2022. Founded in 2015, Door is a Jar Magazine is an online publication of poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, drama and artwork.


Rolling News
"Two shots each, even the children" There was something in those words. But what? He must have been professional. Focused, single-minded, supported by an otherwise disassembling mind. It must have been in haste he couldn’t stay to check. He took two shots each to be sure. Not execution, but assassination. There would be getting in and getting out to think about. It was planned. They were surprised. They must have been a family In a swirl of activity. Are their souls sharing bread while they rot in separate graves? What else? The bulletin was brief. The scene painted first, then "even the children" appendaged to the end. The reporter's voice was flat. Not hushed as they can be – employing a tone respecting sensitivities. In this case they must have deemed the voice unnecessary. The story was not new, then. Our emotions safe – used to the rat-tat-tat of death somewhere else. Some extra tragedy nearer to home, maybe would need to occur for the professional soft voice. But for now, we had a new norm. Though I know some closed their eyes during The Weather.

Rolling News was inspired by the news coverage of the Kandahar massacre in 2012. It was published in the National Poetry Competition Collection 2013, by ForwardPoetry - a poetry press that runs many competitions while also publishing anthologies.


Descending Me
At the top is laughter A healing, welcome, guest Say hi to joy She loves to dance Next is hope A sturdy steam train Sometimes she chokes Love, like flowers Blooms in many colours Hello, sexuality A colourful bird of prey La Ego. Ever performing Never real The intellect Likes spinning riddles And empathy You speak, I feel Ignite anger! She burns and comforts me Beware of fear Poisoning my vision While illusions peel away like dead skin See the past Weighing me down Grief coils in the dark Stillness flickers I try to reach with shallow touch This is the I ascending me

I thought it would be fun to write a poem that I could tweet - each verse less than 140 characters. This was the result. I wrote so many versus! But I managed to whittle it down to the ones I thought best, and give it an arc. I haven't tweeted it yet, but it was published in Roi Fainéant Press, March 2022. Roi Fainéant strives to bolster and empower the next wave of brilliant writers and wordsmiths regardless of background.



The Procrastinator
It was you who fell first, while I lost my footing You said that I was the fairest The promises we made I thought were to keep But our first kiss, it was so careless I don’t see why not, you assured with a smile Buttons parted and I was delirious I guess I knew at the back of my mind Except I was in love and fearless I don’t see why not, you shrugged when I asked Like a man who’s asked what he’s thinking But you must have known at the back of your mind Just as I, that we were sinking You dropped my heart while I was still laughing Look, you said, there’s nothing there And the tightrope I walked wobbled and broke So I let go and fell through the air We were not made to last, I should never have asked I should never have waited ‘til later Now I wait alone but I forgive myself Love had space in the procrastinator

The Procrastinator was first published with WordJar anthology My Love 2, for Valentine's Day, February 2012. It was republished in Forward Poetry anthology: Aspects of Love, September 2012. Two of the versus tumbled out, rhyming, and I thought they were cute. About a year later I saw them again and realised there was a story in it.


Aboard The Waits Train Listening to Tom Waits
All aboard the Waits train It's a lovely sound you make and I'm not the first to say it Leave your bags and credit cards behind Find a seat that slides You move me Let your soul take a ride To an old world Where everything is sepia and torn Over gravel chords I can't see home any more Out the window to your left see the dark side of you Out the right, as tight as night, it's a belly-bound snake that knows the truth The ruthless toothless chattering of fate Cruelty makes the world go round for heaven’s sake There’s a tumbling that’s threatening to crash Laughing at the entreat of the tracks Allow the salve to take effect... A melody beguiling like angels rising, there I’m free to wonder without words Bursting at the lightness of the piano's knowing The refreshments cart is on its way Outside the window my world is flashing by Take something with you when you leave Alight in your own time

I don't usually try to write about a particular topic. But I did attempt a few times to write an ode to Tom Waits. Eventually the metaphor of taking a journey, listening to his music, emerged. It was fun making up Waits-like lyrics to intertwine with the listener's thoughts. Another one published in Tuck Magazine, April 2015.


Hope
What if hope had a shape, she says It would be nebulous, I say, like a cloud Drifting, changing over things Isn't that far away, she says Yes, I say, and my hope is near Inside me, hovering, staid...stale maybe... Overused maybe, like a worn patch in a rug Often visited but never infused So you've given up, she says Is that what it's called, I say I'm looking inwards, seeing the calluses where I tried Seeing the shape of the past, how long it is I never looked before What if fear had a shape, she says It would be a small mark after a storm, I say Sucking in everything around it Changing the direction of things Is that what happened to your hope, she says Yes, I say, maybe you’re right I smile, infusing bitterness with something sweet Except, I say, maybe it was right Not that hope should be eaten by the smallest mark of destruction But that it should mist and disperse And fall like rain back to the earth For disappointment is only knowledge And knowledge is always safe Where do you go from here, she says Back to the beginning, I say To get my bearings

In a philosophical mood one day, I thought, disappointment is only knowledge. And a poem formed. Hope is published in ForwardPoetry anthology, A Symphony of Life, January 2012.


The End
Sometimes I am ahead Near the end of a railway track I can taste dust, red and burnt And there’s an old bench and a sign without letters The picture is punctured only by tumble weed blowing through And the shadow of a bird that snakes along the ground There’s nothing for him here What’s behind the faded hue of this picture? What brought me to this place? I look back over the track And see I am standing there, invisible And then I am back to now * And sometimes it's an old woman Withering she reaches With icy hands She touches and whispers Did you think this was a dream That you would wake Shake off the shackles you have made She cackles as if it’s her only mirth Her fingers grope at me And I can feel her frailty As if cobwebs make her skin And stale water, her eyes She is tired of living But not tired of goading * And sometimes it’s a garden dressed in light The leaves are bursting green Below the table is warm Dressed with fruit Prepared with love My eyes are closed and my hands are clasped In rest at last The quiet is scattered by children They pick at the fruit and run Careful children, I say Corners are sharp

Decanto published The End in their December 2011 issue.


Jar Heads
Forgive me for this rant seduced me Late in bed last night But something on the TV Made my stomach tight Flags waved to the podium As crowd became brigade But I fear out of control Were those applauding from the stage Their egos have prevented them From knowing who they are So to sound like they know all They shove the world into a jar It’s a little jar that lives inside Their fast-fed bloated minds Makes reality black and white And verdict easy to find But not satisfied with slicing off The complex and the subtle They wield their jar for preaching For argument and rebuttal And they run about the world With jar-peddling faces Trying to tell the rest of us How the human race is Is it fear that drives them To the rhetoric and the woe Or the salve of power That needs a phantom foe Or is the devil in disguise In glasses and a dress As an ex-beauty queen With a wink to impress Well, if God said free your heart And the answers come in time Science said if you want answers You have to free your mind But the devil said don’t mind them I’ve answers ready-made for you They’re sugar-dipped, melt in the mouth You don’t even have to chew Forgive me for this fear increasing To the morning glow Perhaps it’s in a mirror I see their paranoia grow But I fear they shove that sugar Into their sealed and fetid minds So they will never reassess What they’ve already misaligned So here’s my two cents To the world-wide convenient store If might is right and there’s no catch It’s probably not al-gore And if the jar heads win the war And their queen becomes head hen Then I suggest we move to Mars And start reality again

Jar Heads was published in The Interpreter's House, June 2011, and was my first published poem. An exciting moment! The Interpreter's House publishes 3 issues of shorts stories and poems per year.

/ The Interface Principle** */ class open bracket { // font changes colour // outside the window // the sky is fogging up the morning sun public (interface) : encapsulated space of polymorphic accessors avoid default construction, as practice shall I overload an operator? undercut a stream? don't forget to destruct, virtually! protected (for inheritance) : // outside the window // the sky is closing in // the sun is trying from the other side enumerate a state add a helper template return a const result to a mutable private (implementation) : for loops do while functor-wrapped predicates of logic variables with underscores denoting membership if they start to grow consider pimpl'ing } to end, close bracket now for those overloads in keeping with The Interface Principle // outside the window // the sky has turned black // revealing stars

Sometimes people say, "Oh you're a programmer and you write poetry? Do you ever write poems about coding?" Thanks for the inspiration! The Interface Principle uses keywords and semantics taken from a coding language called C++.

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