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Best Poems Written by Myles Mccartan

Below are the all-time best Myles Mccartan poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Myles Mccartan Poem

A Furtive, Surreptitious Affair

Hands touch, accidentally
Short, deep glances by me, as she looks the other away
Be sure not to get caught
Although I expect she’s doing the same
We can’t do this, can we?
No-one will know, no-one gets hurt, isn’t that the line?
I heard it was just a bit of harmless fun

She must feel my gaze on the back of her neck,
Following her outline, curve and grooves
Perhaps she’s doing it to me too
Fantasizing about what it might be like
Or maybe that’s just me.
I tried ‘loves-me, loves-me-not’ on some dandelions
Four goes, two for each I decided not to push my luck. What if it was 3-2 not?

Should I make a move? That’s the question.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
Nothing to lose except perhaps a little dignity
But what if she said yes? 
An end to the fantasy, could capture better the chase?
I see her talking to someone else, flicking her hair, laughing,
I hate that, I feel inadequate, is she taunting me?

My newly acquired quixotic behaviour can hardly have gone unnoticed,
Nebbish ineffectualism gives way to confidence and chat
Why didn’t someone tell me, warn me? 
It’s happened a hundred times, to a hundred different others
I thought it was different with us, what am I thinking, there was never an ‘us’
All done in my own mind, my own feral, overstretched imagining
I’m shot now, disheartened and heartbroken, without a word said I know,
No fool like an old fool, like this old fool

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Hate Them, Wish I Was Like Them

Beautiful innocence, purity plain and true is fleeting
Spent the honest face of likeability that wore the thin veneer of naivety
Forgotten the simple control of ratiocination, it has gone.
To be seen and heard, to be adored has become a primary focus, a purpose
“Listen to me, I’ve nothing to say”.

Jargon, so annoying, the argot so cloying 
Phrases falling thick and abstruse 
Self-respect adds pace to the celerity of idiocy
Suffocating sycophants arrive
Needing to be heard by one and by all

Surrounded by yes and no
Encircled with friends but friendless
At home but alone, minds clouded by the void
Told what to say, and love and do and who
Care less of others opinion, a talent blind and envious 

Believing themselves eloquent sophisticats, nothing but empty headed morons
They could fill a room with words and not know their meaning, nor spell them
Not realising how vacuous and unnecessary they’ve become
Their inanity is an insult to the inane
Hate them, despise them. Want to be like them.

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Skint

Feel the indigence approaching 
Think of no-one and of nothing else
Heart-breaking, all consuming
Penniless pauper, from a storybook romance

“No mon, no fun”
I hear that
No nothing, no life
No growing full or fat

Who to turn to, who to run from
Incipient pauperdom permeates every thought
A threadbare mind to match threadbare costume
Unravelled, patchy, overwhelmingly fraught

Never overburdened with wealth 
But enough to cover simple costs like clothes and heat and food
It should never have to come to this but it has
Only I can lay the blame upon myself

Not a lifetime of jeremiads
Some better stories were once told
Those times a yellowed memory now 
Heart and soul, languid, limp and sere

Reduced to meagre, mere being
No possessions means no feeling
We all know that.
Pride as spent as the money itself
How poor, truly sorry
A pauper born, God help me

Details | Myles Mccartan Poem

The House That Jack Never Built

Plans as solid at the foundations of the house
They’d live in the caravan, sure it was only temporary
A house so big, that all of their family might fit.
That family never did get bigger, only smaller
A quietus ill-deserved

He started in earnest, cement mixed, bricks placed
But then she got sick and sicker still
No more bricks were ever stacked and no family born
He lives in the caravan alone now
That was the house that Jack never built

Details | Myles Mccartan Poem

For the Love of Lost

Heartbroken can’t express the grief
Fingers cannot contain the torrent of tears

Justified to feel fractious
Fractious but without justice

The moil of sleeplessness
An anxiety of tragedy, the tight, oppressive grip

Grief Management, or so it’s called
Manage grief? Palliate this extreme? No, it can’t be done

A cocktail of grief, add frustration and confusion
With a spoonful of angst and bitter

Bereft of supernal force or being
Alive now but without the living. Alone, that’s the feeling

So many questions left, no chance to ask
Brackish aftertaste pervade, maybe evermore

There’ll be no more ambuscade
Care-less, the new attitude

Feeling limp and lifeless now
Sad, but in real terms and alone
Goodbye mum. Goodbye

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From Far Away

My own incipient awareness caught me by surprise,
I figured I knew nothing about anything, like so many of my generation
Fed on a diet of fast TV, fast food but slow thinking
Imagine my surprise when I could converse about the unconversable

I’d always been lazy, that why bother? attitude
Now I’ve moved on to “let’s chatter, let’s natter, let’s do it”
Having an opinion on something, it’s quite new to me
New to others too, who knew. Who knew?

It must have happened overnight, only I know that it didn’t
It’s been brewing now for so long, drip, drip, dripping before forming words
And listen to me, I want to be heard!
So, I don’t have much to say but you know what? I’m gonna say it

Of course for the most it’s plain old sciolism
A pretence, a farce but I know most of the incumbent ears are deaf to me
A yen for others to sit up and take notice of something not worth noticing
I think I’m going to talk myself out of it again

Be quiet, shhh, no-one wants to hear me, an ineffectual nebbish,
Sit and say nothing, that’s it that’s the style
Smile sweetly, opinionless, witless, lifeless
That’s the way we do it ‘round here