Heartlines

Moving silently, its on it’s way it’s a last chance
Nobody listening to the language of words
Or sounds of war marching to it’s last dance
Angry voices tell of warnings not heard.

Mankind has gone through this many times before
Will this be the last time they file out the blame
Pretending the argument is not theirs
No one gets the reasons for this muffled game

But if the leaders of the world are woken
And the silences of ego’s can be contained
The spells of war maybe somehow broken
With pass mistakes been open and explained

Can the groans of the past be made silent
By understanding the arrogance of tyrants

In Ulster, once ruled by sword and might,
the legacy of history burns less bright.
Here, where bigotry long held sway
and human hopes were mangled in the fray,
a tiny spark of reason has ignited
and kindled hope in those whose lives are blighted
by associations stretching back through time;
where living has become a hideous joke.
Time now to change, to cast aside the yoke
of hatred and grow stronger,
and let the legacy of history burn no longer.

Bill Fitzsimons

For days the ocean has unleashed its ire,
a frenzy born of elemental spite –
winds have raged that will not cease or tire
till all's consumed in endless, blackest night.
The waves break fiercely on the rocks, and spray
flings lacy droplets in the screaming air,
while boats at anchor feel the lash and flay
of water whips – a scene of grim despair.

But in the depths where silence still prevails,
the shark yet glides and seeks the silver ghosts
of fish and other prey, their weaving tails
now teasing. While Poseidon drinks his toasts
to calmness down below, chaos reigns on top,
where banshee winds still wail – and never stop.

Bill Fitzsimons 2012

IMPOSTER SYNDROME. A sonnet.

It greets you in the morning when you wake,
at night it kills your hopes and mutilates ideas.
You’re too afraid to make your mark so, sick at heart,
you face the empty page, then turn aside.

Doubt is a thunder crack, a mighty howl,
it butchers trust and self-belief, swamping
your unborn words beneath its cavernous wail –
whatever else you do, don’t let it in.

Seek hope – it’s smoke and mirrors, snake oil,
gossamer upon the wind. It whispers yes, you can
and, yes, you are, but only if you listen for it well.
So, clear your mind, don’t let that shrieking void of disapproval win,
there’s not a poet here who doesn’t feel
the seeping scourge of self-denial in their soul.

Liz McPherson

in memoriam Seamus Heaney

I never met you, Seamus,
And now I never will, because
as another poet said,
“In the forest of poetry the great oak has fallen.”

Seamus, you lit the darkened corners
of my mind with your lamp of language;
left a legacy of truth and life behind you,
and stirred the broth of imagination
with your words. The world weeps today.

From the squelch of farmyard mud, the leather
creak of harness and iron feel of plough,
to the Olympian heights of Homer’s Greece
and the alliterative Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf,
you plumbed the depths of diverse life.

Nobel prize winner, maker of magic, Irish giant,
you gave the world so much, and I’m sure
that large heart of yours would have given
the waiting world much more. It was not to be –
too early, you found your destiny.

The quotation is from the poem “The fallen oak” by Tony Curtis.

Bill Fitzsimons

At the dawn of time you were born, a spark
flung from the cauldron of creation.
You journeyed onwards through cosmic dark,
child of chaos and imagination.
On your billion year swing around the sun
your orbit gradually decays as you surrender
to the cold equations of physics,
the inevitable laws of gravity,
and those laws bring you closer
and ever closer to a collision course
with our fertile world. Is this the end?
Are all our endeavours to come to this –
a half million tons of alien rock
crashing into the Earth at cataclysmic
speed. Can science save us? Can prayer?
Don’t hold your breath, you will have
no more use for it. The end is nigh.

Bill Fitzsimons

Troubadour, but not the piping boy
Strolling mediaeval landscapes,
Or a vibrant dancer,
Seductive with scarves and flares,
At rustic fairs.

This minstrel stalks a different tradition,
Born not of romance but of aged necessity,
Her pitch cruelly reduced to scuffed doorways
On the pitted marble pavements of Mantua.

Straight backed, with grey hair flying,
Make-up cracked and lipstick smeared,
The troubadour stamps and plays –
Her cardboard accordion pummelled by wizened fingers,
While sprung puppets attached to her feet
Leer hand painted grins at the crowd
And dance their jesters’ conceit.

Children, briefly arrested by the scene,
Quickly shrink away,
Perturbed by her gap toothed smiles of encouragement
And the grotesque underbelly of city streets.

For a second, she snatches my poet’s gaze
With eyes as sharp as a rat,
Defying me to drop a coin into her rusting tin.
Hush money delivered, I gather my embarrassment
And shuffle on like the rest.

It should not be like this
But it is.

Barbara Lawton