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Sean Smith Poem
Through cigarette paper skin
such a thin, translucent sleeve;
the light of your life beams out.
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Your eye: a spotlight on mum and dad
as they sing to the beat of
your pulsing heart-rhythm.
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You illuminate this space
like no cut diamond could:
a light on this world.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2012
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Sean Smith Poem
Sun leathered skin, tanned and flayed
lies draped over the bench’s wooden slats.
A long-forgotten art brought back to
lack-lustre life
along the boardwalk.
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This wrinkled pre-aged skin,
pricked in not so neat lines
each track a stop on the journey
that brings their nodding half-lives
to the boardwalk.
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The coke and ice-cream hit, not for their
uncared for, condemned kids
but to feed a sugar rush,
stave off that comedown
on the boardwalk.
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Thick syrup methodone, a sop
to replace the brown heroin
that once kissed their veins,
kicks in as they shadow walk
to the boardwalk
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Calloused, cracked skin spreads
factor 50, to protect the delicate
casing of their ravaged organs
as they lie, replete,
along the boardwalk.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2012
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Sean Smith Poem
That half-breath moment as I wake
light ebbing through closed lids
as will o’ the wisps steal away dreams.
Nothing, everything, is as it seems.
I could be.
In that moment,
in that light,
in that dream.
I am.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2012
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Sean Smith Poem
Currachs, like upturned whales beached
as musical notation on the quay.
Those sleek, mussel shelled torpedoes
ready to cleave though
wavewalls, green and white-tipped,
chasing schools of quick-silver with
hand-strung nets tuned to their scales.
Rhythmic fingers conduct these vessels
in ancient songs that harmonise
with an underwater chorus,
carrying the music booming deep through the years,
where the call and response of the tides
meets the Blasket sound of memory.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2012
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Sean Smith Poem
What if the sea stopped moving,
lay as still as setting concrete?
And all around the gulls
scolded a lament
as seals flapped aimlessly,
trying to raise a swell.
With cormorants stranded on a rock
as poised as a question mark,
while crabs scuttled everyway
as if dancing on hot plates,
becoming the uncovered prey
of seabirds and small boys.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2020
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Sean Smith Poem
When you put your childhood hand in mine,
two spoons in the same drawer,
I felt all your innocence and trust
shared in a moment stretched over decades.
I held the grown man and remembered days
where snow was a surprise to be shared
with wide eyes and astonishment. Where
determination was learned in the tying of
shoelaces and wellingtons could create
tidal waves that washed away tears.
Where cuts could be healed
with a soothing kiss until the cuts
were inflicted inside and resisted all cure.
But the memory of your touch still sooths
as I continue to feel your hand in mine.
Copyright © Sean Smith | Year Posted 2019
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