Fear Whimpers
Fear whimpers in the whispering dark
Striking terror in your heart
You disappear like you were-never there
Wide awake and well aware
Doubt like winter, always around
It comes to roost homeward bound
We stare wide-eyed into the darkness
Cold as death, completely heartless
Come the morning darkness ends
The demon waits around the bend
Dylan Butler
The Greatest Fear
Pain and tears like falling rain
Flood your cheeks then fall away
Shadows drift like clouds of smoke
Gone adrift then gone astray.
Hunger, death and daily work
Thank god for flight, like a bird.
Sadness like unkept gravestones
But no one sees the skin and bones.
Beautiful landscapes fade to all but blurs .
The future and the world are yours
Nicholas Lesniak
Old Memories
Old memories like cobwebs dwell
Trapped in sorrow’s prison cell
Feelings like old ghosts roam
In the cold dark all alone
We climb these walls to know much more
The things of which we are not sure
The higher we climb the farther we see
For knowledge is what sets us free
The place where the shadows go
So that they can go with there own flow
Jack Hearne
Talent Trapped
Talent trapped by textbooks
The clock ticks half as much as tock
The clothes you wear are much too formal,
Uniformly boring, normal
The last memory of people long gone lay
Their loved ones for forgiveness pray,
You hope they will not go to hell
With untold secrets left to tell
You will come when you are not there
Your perfect skin, pale and fair
Tight as a noose to your bone
The Underground is now your home.
Trapped by what you did when free
The guilt crawls all over you and me
Regret will bubble till punishment is served
But I’ll keep on running alone, absurd
Ada Phelan
Distract me from Reality
Like a viper ready to strike
My insecurities make me envious, shameful.
I try to make sense of my thoughts
But reality is too painful.
My fears swallow me whole
Stops me in my tracks
The pressure makes my mind go blank
I cannot think. Cannot focus.
The answer in there but I don’t seem to notice.
I stare out the window, daydreaming about other places in the world.
I create my own beliefs until my imagination has unfurled.
Roisin O Sullivan
A Safe Place
I feel safe and I can be myself.
I am me and no one else.
I can let my thoughts run free.
In this place where I am me
I laugh out loud and not be jugde.
I stand my ground and not be judged
I stare at the wall not knowing what to think.
I will be the last to blink
I live I breath I eat I sleep.
I cry I laugh and silently weep.
Jane Holohan
I Feel Safe
I feel safe here
Among these cluttered things
A butterfly without her wings
I fall asleep
In a soft lamp light
So I can sleep at night
I learn almost every day
School hip hip horay
I want to go home
After I finish this poem
Marianne Callery
It Never Starts
It never starts but always ends
Anticipation in all my family and friends
The thoughts and actions devour me whole
Tiredness creeping through my soul
The voices speak but do not do
All in favour of pushing me through
The light peaks out from the shrinking dark
Here to finally make its mark
It points in the way to the answer
The question is who will be the chancer?
Janet Ní Choighligh
Laughing Hurts
I try to focus but it never works
I try to laugh but laughing hurts
I stare at the wall, don’t know what to write.
I see the darkness through the light
I start thinking but it’s never ending.
I cannot compute the words I’m sending
Like little insects made of shame
There’s no one else but me to blame
The pressure melts like ice in water
I am the lamb that’s bred for slaughter.
Molly Burke
My Insecurities
My insecurities wrap their tendrils
Around my fragile head.
A wallowing shadow falls soflty
While I’ll lie awake in bed.
All my childhood memories
Slowly fade away.
The game becomes the end game
The skies all turn to grey
We take the blame
For breaking hearts.
Our gossip tops
The gossip charts
Roisin
A Ghost
There is a ghost that haunts our darkening minds
With sneering laughter cruel, unkind
Where rage explodes and minds collide
The cracked shall fall and burn inside
Worries like a constant whisper
Thoughts that bubble burst and blister
From which you will never escape
The darkest age where all is fake
Terror roams killing the weak and leaving only the strong ones to survive
Some of those strong ones dive in the deep end or begin to strive and thrive
Emma Campion
You Told Me
It all happened in that forbidden place
That changed my life for good.
You were standing there, beside the cabin
Made from rotting wood.
You said the young become old
And the old become young
Where the sweet songs of woodland birds
Came from your haunted lung
You said being different is beautiful
And not to be frowned upon.
For we dance and laugh and sing as sweet
As midnight dreams a swan
There is no border to our dreams,
For all here are the same.
There is no judgement in this place
Nobody is put to shame.
The streets have turned chaos.
Children smashing their clay pots
And the world has turned around again
To those who have and who have not.
Sofia Marsella
Ready to Pounce
Ready to pounce at times of weakness
To feast when you’re in doubt
It whispers like a restless spirit
In an old abandoned house
It feeds upon the poor of heart
The homeless and the grey
It feeds off these deserted streets
It growls throughout the day
Like a drought that dries the lakes
That ravages the planes
A species that is long forgot
Where only bones remains
Éabha Murphy
Untitled
The crap that people ingest is created,
“Obesity is not a problem!” They stated.
A rat first bitten by a flea carrying the plague,
Unaware, continuing to scuttle up a woooden stave.
Hundreds of thousands of bones belonging to deceased parisians lie,
A serene catacomb in which turmoil is nigh.
Good souls lie after having suffered,
The torture they endured never once buffered.
Badly driven inquisition took place,
A murderous demeaning of our race.
And so the people continue on,
Though they don’t realize what is, and is to be,
Gone.
Erik Ansel Bakkala
We Are the Forgotten
We are the forgotten and we are the
Brave
We are those who facedown death
We are those whom charge forth till our final breath.
But in the face of the reaper we
Do not flinch
for we are fighting for every inch
Not for so called King and country
Nigh we are fighting to protect
Those we love and the land
Of which we cherish
So as we charge towards death
We are all most likely to perish
So I beg you to remember me
And never forget the men who died
They perished for you
We shall not sleep though poppies grow
In Flanders fields, our souls still flow
Niall Campden
Growing Up
My brother was tragically shot in somebody else’s war.
I realized that he never knew who he was fighting for.
I played my first game of hockey and won by seven points.
I sprained my ankle and dislocated at least one of my joints.
I made my first ever sand castle with seashells and seaweed.
Right above the sand dunes where the turtles come to breed.
I bought an ice-cream cone for my sister’s tenth birthday.
And dreamed a dream of summertime along the sandy bay.
Rhys Kennedy
Untitled
Zeus decided to use Jimmy Johnson as target practice
And then annoyingly he got stuck on a giant cactus
When the rest of the gods came to rescue him
They stared at the mangled body of Jim
Fish jump out of the water for a day and become human
And always enjoy the taste of cumin
When they eat their favourite pie
They find themselves unable to lie
To their friend Jim
Fintan Hanley
Trouble
I got my ears pierced
I got my tattoo
I shaved my hair off just for you
I smashed window
I fell from a tree
I got in trouble
But none for me
Molly Brockett
Nothing
I sit doing nothing
While I try to get the words coming
A giant asked Nancy for a sweet and Nancy said no so Nancy is dead
Or at least that’s what John Clinton the bear had said
No that will not work I said in my head
The only fish in the world lives happily out of water
Although he is being prepared like a pig for the slaughter
That is two random I say too my self
It makes me look like a dumb old elf
I try to eat a plate full of cabbage
Even though it tastes like a heap of garbage
I wait for the lunch time bell
For the Dunnes stores delI has such a nice smell
Tadhg Crowley
Untitled
Throwing a hammer off my brothers head
I WON my first scrap
I left him for dead
I saw a man fall from the top of the tower
I remember the moment, but never the hour
The house I grew up in burned to ashes
The cold wind blows and the hard rain lashes
Our abandoned palaces, dreams that we flaunted
Empty and dark, decrepit and haunted.
Luke Coffey
Untitled
I stared at my dead dog’s corpse,
Anger raging inside me,
He had taken this too far,
There was no hope for him.
With a swing of my katana,
His head fell to the floor,
He ran out of my house headless,
Through an unlocked door.
He got in his Lambourghini,
And his comrade threw on the engine,
Of course, he didn’t realise,
That I had rigged the engine.
I strolled back into my rundown home,
With a smug grin on my face,
Leaving him in a mass, hot fireball.
Cian Courtney