Closed Doors and Closed Minds
If my body is a temple it then it is falling from neglect
By me striving to be perfect
Fighting a war I that I have waged against my soul
Which has left me un-healing wounds
Invasions that I did not approve
Hospital beds and silent rooms
Silent whispers that speak words of dread
Closed doors and closed minds
Secrets that engorge my mind
They say demons hide in our closets
But mine they reside in the mirror
Shona Healy
Well-Being?
Well-being is talked about for a week in the year,
But then that weeks over and were consumed by fear.
Balance is a word we hear time and time again,
But we’re left with the questions of how and when.
It’s difficult to see an end to the stress.
When all you can think is the work and the mess.
Yes, school can be a place of friends and of fun
But there’s always a mountain of work to be done.
Someone will come into school and give us a speech,
But is well-being still too far out of reach?
And I know no one wants to hear the cliché,
That you need to take things day by day.
They say keep fit and active with a balanced diet too,
Do homework, get sleep, yet do the things we love to do.
But we can’t freeze time and time machines aren’t real,
Were a moody, edgy age group and you don’t know how we feel.
There is so much to discover and so much left to learn
You keep our health in mind and we appreciate your concern.
The truth of balance is we tend to stray from side to side,
What’s more important day to day? We struggle to decide.
Sarah Rose Mcquillan
Lost Love
The creepy clock ticks
When the shadows drift by,
The wind howls in the silence
Of the black night sky,
The stairs creek and crackle
As the dark stars rise,
The moon lights the path
Where your lost love dies.
Aaron Mccann
Creeks and Cracks
I stare softly and helplessly
At the alabaster ceiling
Not being able to put myself to rest,
I gaze through the night
Listening to the creeks
And the cracks of the old wooden floor,
I take a sip from the glass of chilled water
That I place slowly down upon the old worn drawer,
I question all the little things in life
Trying to make sense of peoples understandings
How they wander in the darkness
Of the long shadowed alleyways,
Seeking for the fire
That will set their hearts ablaze.
Ciara Gilsenan
I Cried
I cried and punched a wall for the first time.
It felt like I committed an unforgivable crime.
I stepped my first step with my mum
Holding my tiny fragile hand.
My family cheered on me
Like a full brass band.
People drown their sorrows in secret and alone.
But no one else sees that he is in a shadow zone.
Love and hate battles for a place inside my heart.
I just realised that love is a cruel and abstract art.
Ieva Dambrauskaitė
Hailstones
The memories flood my brain, like a tsunami on a dry island,
Where we ran down the hill onto the golden sand,
Now brings heaviness on my weak shoulders, when I walk down the hill alone,
My brain feels sore as if plummeted by hailstones,
I never thought I’d see the day when this happiness would end,
I thought he was mine and I was his, but I should have thought again,
The Love that once blossomed in my heart like a garden of young roses,
Is now poisoned by the dark rejection and the colourful buds have closed.
It is as if the hopelessness has cast a blight over the garden of joy,
Once red and sharp, now black and sinister, the happiness destroyed,
Sadness spiral’s in my head like an imperfect rhyme,
But I know the past can only be healed by time,
The loss of my love has shattered my fragile heart, like glass
And I’m still trying to pick up the pieces that have fallen into the landmass,
Like an uncontrolled plane failing the land like planned,
It crashes down breaking up and parts are dispersed across the vast land
When that hideous girl fled the scene, she believed that she was done with me,
But she was wrong and I ensure you I will make her regret being beastly,
She has hammered my life into a flower pot and has taken all the beautiful, bright blooms,
Leaving the dead and dreary flowers behind of gloom and doom,
What once was is now gone and I have that malicious girl to blame,
But I will get her back one day and she will hang her head in shame,
I’ve set the wild monsters free inside of my heart,
They will shock her when I release them free into her soul she’ll want to depart,
I kill her pride after what she did to me,
On that Summers day with the gentle breeze,
As I walk heavily up the street of Dublin,
I ponder about the many days my love and I walked,
Hand in hand, gazing in each other’s crystal eyes locked,
I now plod with my hand in my rough pocket of my new coat,
They harsh wind howl’s and the bitter cold stabs my throat,
Feeling the eyes of happy lovers gaze through my soul,
Into the happiness that awaits on their peaceful stroll,
Still wishing to feel his warmth beside my side and see his sapphire eyes,
I look to my left and my heart dies,
All I see is the hailstones, running down the walls of shops,
The hailstones plummet inside my head and the happiness inside my heart is locked.
Ella Reilly
Broken Glass
My glass heart was broken for the very first time.
I couldn’t sleep at night, the sun forgot to shine.
I screamed a poison scream, a song of hate for others.
Watched them sit together as the world lost its colours.
My deep black heart learned to love for a second time.
My heart learned sing again, our footsteps learned to rhyme.
My lips had connected with my one and only true love.
When we kissed, I felt like a flutter like the wings of a dove.
Justine Sproge
My Life
Well I’m a teenage girl so we know that strife,
Is nothing compared to the world out there
That crap is so bad you’ll pull out your hair.
‘Its only school girl, you’ve got in great’
Your worst problem is coming in late.
Pressure from teachers? You’ll have to cope
You failed a test? Well aren’t you a dope
In the future of the woman you could be
Because you’re not enough as from what I see.
#metoo sure, that’s a trend
Just a bunch of women who pretend.
And being gay popular isn’t it
If people weren’t famous who would give a damn.
I try to talk these issues every single day with you
Funny in such a “woke” world you still haven’t got a clue.
Sarah Rose Mcquillan
The Farmer
The farmer stare at the ceiling during the sleepless nights of calving season
Why does he do it, there’s only one reason
His countless hours and late nights pay the bills
Up every morning to face the cold eerie chills
He hears the purr of the old tractors engine like an ancient beast
Shes loved and maintained and always greased
The cow balls as the warmth of new life
Is brought into the world on a cold winter night .
To see the small new born calf is worth the fight.
Eoin Bogan
Broken Cog
My brain runs like a broken cog in a silver machine
Anger burns like a flower in hell
My heartbeat beats like a battle-born drum
I have a deep dark secret but no-one to tell.
The cold wind passes through my lifeless corpse
Love screams in the darkness of the night.
I wait for something to fill in what was once lost
But what is wrong cannot be put right.
Jamie Nwaneri
Darkness Peers
We dare not go for fear of being heard,
My sayings would be conferred
By those who would watch
The tears are shed for everyone feels the same,
Leaving no one left to feel the blame
Happiness, bounds like a kangaroo,
Hauling me up to pull myself through
Depression hides in my heart
Like long lost keys,
Darkness peering through the light,
In the cold winter breeze.
Emma Fitzpatrick
Mercury
He wasn’t any ordinary man,
He was quite unique.
With is 4-octave range
Powerful stage performance,
He had no ordinary technique .
He proved there were no boundaries
He may have broke the rules,
From small pubs to huge stadiums
He proved the others were just fools
His last recording echoes
An eerie harmony throughout the studio,
Although he may not be with us today,
His music is here to stay
He had lived an incredible life
Although his death was unready,
He will always be the greatest,
Rest in peace Freddie.
Darragh Darcy
Farming Under the Moonlight
The cattle quench their thirst on a splitting sunny day
On the hill of the meadow where the corn once lay
All taking turns, drinking their fill, without delay
The money is gained or lost, silage or no silage,
On a late night mid-summer with heavy rain on the horizon,
The glow off the moon the only source of light.
On colder winter nights on the far side of the year,
Calves being born, money being made,
Again the moon shining bright,
The only source of fading light.
Philip O’Dowd
Our Money
Our money is made on the cold winter nights
Full beams shining from our van’s headlights
Their journey starts in the fields on a spring day
Watching them eat on next year’s hay
The fun starts in a tractor cab on a long empty road
With a trailer piled high with a heavy old load
The cycle starts in a noisy cattle mart on an early Monday morning
With the groaning heifers calving and a new day dawning.
Matthew Cahill
Cold Morning Air
Out in cold morning air
Battering the wooden posts
Into the ground with a sledge
To secure a patch of Sneering burrows
Frozen hands digging
Into the cold hard earth
We feed our stock on summer mornings
Flying like planes across the fields
Tractors and trailers hauling
Lush green grass
That the earth has grown
And gifted tot eh word,
Engine roaring like a pride of lion in the jungle of silage.
The bull stands above his herd
Like a chief over his tribe.
Crows circling like enemy aircraft over the meal
Trough as the prime target.
The cover of the silage pit
Releasing the gases,
The fumes like fire rising in a furnace
The stones that have been dug
From the deep earth, covered with dirt.
The slurry has plastered over the soil like cooking oil over the Sunday fry.
An early morning, the cold wind passing through my hair,
The darkened water wrapped around my boots,
The cows calling for their newborns in the empty darkened field.
The grass been ripped from the roots of the earth by the sheep.
The wool been sheared from the skin of the boiling yew.
The old sun falls and the moon arises new.
Darren Kavanagh
Self-Consciousness
I hide myself with a layer of toxic liquids
Among fragments of myself
To blend in with the maddening crowd,
Dancing to the music in a world much too loud.
The pulse of my heart quickens
Feeling staring eyes bore into me,
Like a dog watching a timid cat
Clamber clawless up a tree.
My insides twist, my pale face reddens,
But suddenly, the lulling hum of the crowd deadens.
Bríd Farrelly
Paint Brushes
The bright colours of the sky will be mine
When you come to take away the rain
But the paintbrush is dry
Scratching on the ideas that have been put to waste
I hear the artist’s cry,
Ringing out with a sorrowful gaze, it leaves a bitter taste
I witness the colours of the sky fade
The painter’s canvas is left blank
The screeching sirens slither their way into my head
Forcing me walk the gangplank
I look around and I’m hanging on by a thread
My thoughts are drowning me
But the swirling pool stops still
When I witness that clear blue sky of yours
Warm, clear and inviting,
So joyfulness can soar through the high sky
Like a kite in the strong wind once again
Aoife Connors
OKAY?
‘I’m fine’ I say
As I hold my breath
Fight back the tears
And dream of the day
That my heart is no longer broken.
Hannah Shields
It’s Not Forever
When I was three I couldn’t talk or hear properly,
It was like I was underwater,
So all I heard were noises coming out,
Of people no words,
My mother thought I would be like this forever,
But it wasn’t forever,
I was three, learning how to talk,
And now I can hear,
And talk properly,
Believe it and you can do it,
Change it,
So it’s not forever.
Anon
Not Alone
You’re not alone.
You’re not alone,
If you believe you are,
You won’t understand,
How much people love you,
Admire you,
Look up to you ,
You’re not alone ,
Your strong, beautiful,
Don’t listen to the negativity,
Because there wrong about you,
Love yourself so you can love too.
Anon
Fear
Fear is the foundation of success,
But fear is what holds one from it,
We fear what will be thought of us for being different, diverse.
But damn those who strike fear in others as they fail to see,
What beauty lies with those who diverge from preconceived illusions.
We who can see what beauty lies with diversity,
Are more fulfilled than those blind to variation.
Oliver Smith
Life
No hits harder than life!
I come from a footballing family.
So I am forced to push myself and to be the best even when I can’t.
They still push me even when I can’t walk because I need to be the best of myself.
They don’t care if I’m not as good as anyone else
But I have to be my best self so they push me as far as I can go.
But really this only goes for sport.
When it comes to life all they say is be yourself.
And that school is the best years of your life.
But they are wrong being myself causes me to be made fun off.
And school is not the best years of my life.
It’s the worst from being judged to having to hide who you are.
And I feel like the only reason I get some respect is because of my last name.
Monaghan they look at me they think of my dad.
Who owns the Town.
Everyone knows him everyone knows he works hard never stops working.
And then I’m expected to grow up and become him.
But I’m not him I’m me.
And I feel like
The world ain’t all sunshine and
Rainbows.
It’s a very mean and nasty
Place and I don’t care how
Tough you are it will beat you
To your knees and keep you
There permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody is gonna
Hit as hard as life.
But it ain’t about
How hard ya hit.
It’s about how hard you
Can get hit and keep
Moving forward.
How much you can take and
Keep moving forward. That is what life is about.
Yes that is rocky but to me that’s true that is how you get through life.
DJ Monaghan
Untitled
You are strong
You should know that by now
And if someone tries to prove you wrong
You’ll just have to show them how
You wake up every day
With desire of making things okay
You have never given up
And people like that are difficult to track
That is why I want you to know
That we need more people like you in the world
And since i’ve never seen you throw in the tow
Today I consider you my role model
Hannah Bastian
My Poem
I come from a very famine dominated family
I mean I only have one uncle, which is my only male figure
My cousin but I do not see him as often as I would my uncle
I have three aunts two I would see more often than the other
See with my daddy dying when I was 9
I had my male dominant male figure
Taken away from me
But I think the way my mammy’s family have looked after me
And my uncle has been there for me
We always spend time together
I think that’s why I am so big in to football .
My dad always made always made sure I was playing football
He was a good footballer
He always ran with the ball in hand and that’s is exactly how I play
If i’m not creating, i’m running through the defence
Football is my life and that’s all thanks to my dad
I love my dad and i’m sure he would be proud of me today
My mum has to be the strongest woman on earth when dad died
She was the one that brought me to the house where dad was laid out every day.
Dad was waked in my granny’s room it was the worst sight I had ever seen
And I will never forget it
I love you dad and I hope your proud of me xx
Michael Stanley
You’ve Changed
You’ve changed
I no longer see you
As the role model I saw you
As a child.
But you don’t understand
That you screwed up
So you don’t understand
That I am hurt
Nor do you understand
That telling me
You hate me
Makes me want you more.
And I hate it.
Hannah Shields