Where would we be without Guinness?
Where would we be without song?
Where would we be without craic?
Where would we be without the bodhran?
Where would we be without our colleens?
Sitting miserable at home
With our cabbage and bacon
Watching The Late Late Show
With RTE on
Categories:
bodhran, drink, humor, music, song,
Form: Free verse
Being part Irish I have to admit
that yes indeed, I celebrate it.
If truly the Irish are lucky you see,
I’ll have my green beer and sandwich of brie.
I’ll dress in me greens with a button or two
that says I am Irish, how about you?
I’ll get out me Bodhran and give it some beats;
then my tin whistle, I will play while folks eat.
I’ll have buttery shortbreads’ and other great treats;
and don me tapp’in shoes with their new cleats.
While the fiddler bows his old Irish tunes,
I may take a moment to have me a croon.
I’ll do me a jig or two, for good measure;
then politely say, thank’ye, ‘tis been a pleasure.
Me ancestors came from that dear Emerald Isle;
though they hated to leave, they did it with style.
Categories:
bodhran, holiday, myth, poems, poetry,
Form: Rhyme
stutter along with
the bouncing ball
Struther Martin's
line loops in time
"What we have
here is a failure
to communicate"
keep the pace for
everyman has his
own bodhran
Categories:
bodhran, muse,
Form: I do not know?
The Warden is angry again.
He hangs his gun belt outside
the door, and steps inside my
dour cage-
Fist full of razor blades.
I can hear the heavy drops
of mercurial cerise blooming
as it hits the concrete.
"Open your mouth, Son."
My teeth raze through bits of cheek
as they instinctively collide.
Even in the face of a turbid
shadow, I know what is coming- again.
I clench, and push his sublimated
hands away from my throat.
Echoes of laughter illuminate throughout
the Prison; throbbing inside my carapace
alongside my heartbeat.
"You know you can't win. You never do."
As my body writhes I can feel the air
in the room dissipating.
A fire begins to kindle in my skull as
a soft hand gently strokes my slick
brow as if to say. "Give in."
And yet, I fight. For hours.
As the echoes only pound harder.
Like the Bodhran drums of my forefathers
whose blood gave me will.
And yet, every man breaks in the face
of Eternity.
Every sin has its cost.
-James Kelley 2018
Categories:
bodhran, deep, depression, fantasy, mental
Form: Free verse
BACK TO ERIN
I want to go back
to Erin. I want
to see that green
isle again.
I want to drink a pint
of the Guiness and a
shot of the Jamesons. On
that green isle again.
I want to pick the lucky shamrock
and feel the soft summer rain
back, on that green
isle again.
I want to hear the bodhran thump
and the fiddle squeal as I dance
another Ceili on that green isle
again.
I want to hear the tenor croon out
Danny Boy and belt out
Whiskey in the Jar, on that
green isle again.
Next year, when I retire,
I will board that Aer Lingus Airbus
and wing my way back to
that green isle again
Categories:
bodhran, travel,
Form: Free verse
A line of stones;
the threat of so much space,
a fallen horizon.
Salt grass
coarse with rain,
nights heavy with tides
and the battered story
of the sea,the broken gong
of the moon, strange friends.
Then,I knew not what to call
the rough curves of peat,
slight of the sea,
a bodhran wind over the rocks.
When I am no more;
let me melt in the rain
of this cold coast,
its own name shaped,
the seagull`s call.
Categories:
bodhran, beauty, death,
Form: Blank verse