PHILIP O'NEIL - POEMS

Currently living in The Czech Republic Philip O’Neil has worked as a journalist, editor, photographer, news producer and presenter in several countries around the globe. His first novel, Mental Shrapnel, is due out in June 2019.

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​BATTERED VIRTUE

​This battered virtue cloaked
in the downing sun of its own unease
and so outspoken
yet all I ask of you is why
during these calls you persist
in the suffering
 
and ask, through these outbursts
by the pint of wine
how can I explore the depairanto
of languages spoken as one
oh hearer of tangle tongues.
 
I left you because I counted the numbers
of voices pending to the mood and needs
cribbed behind the mercy of their call.
 
By your term of less held beliefs there is a home
all silent walls call you to bed.
and the town crier is by all shores’
rattled escapes
following the iguana in a canyon 
escaping a slither of snakes.
 
I know you rang to buy me back and head
towards with this spring of ask but no, I
will not go into your suffocating ways
I will rush to the city of volcanic ash.
You can read my swamp hand plain
out of symbols.
Back to the slimy commando
lift of muscle and bone.
 

​GALLEY SLAVES

​Soul sleeplost beauty abandoned
waiting for the chorus of harpies
to laugh at our separating bodies
 
just like galley proofs and slaves
hollow heads exploding with the
cupcake girl-gangs worried about their
figures of eight and pieces of wombs
designed for just the two.
 
I am now between serpents audacious
but lanquid after swallowed
deciding between both
which fille-perdue I fall for.
 
Maybe it’s the time for the news
to entrail them in their moon and black
so it’s time for the jeopardy
blasting on our roof with Requiem
 
Half forgotten it’s time to feast
I’m between two serpents in the garden
Languid with easy snatches
Am I asking for the snake or its kill?
 
Like a galley slave chained to his bench
I fight wars not my own
And that includes yours.
 
Sweat it out sister
she’s already half forgotten
slashing in other towns.
 
 
 

​WHITE NIGHT

​The sun burns a hole through
the sparrow-drab sky
filters through the melting barcode
of skewed greasy blinds .
I gave up on the night
when the pale yellow lights
of rush hour beaters
started sliding across the ceiling
and the sound of faulty plumbing
after a stuttering piss
to a repetitive soundtrack stung
with the hypochondria of sleep lack
that starts in the liver
and works its way up
to the skull.
Shadowboxing with Peter Pan
would be more useful
as running the same dalliance
with you, the past.
Eyes half open, feel
like a plate of glass
splintered by a speeding truck.
 
 

​BARBED WIRE TONGUE

​ 
I have no fear
of your barbed-wire tongue
the way you played
when we were young.
 
Now you call
when you’re alone
so far apart like bone and stone
you make me shy, you make me whole
we can’t reprise our loving roles.
 
Buttressed by another’s kiss
I close my eyes and think your bliss
You were sharp, your lips were thin
I can’t believe I’ll ever win.
 
You’re a magnet with changing poles
You attract and then repel
I want to think, no let’s scratch that
You live alone
So far apart like stone and bone.
The guilt sits hard
 

​KAMPA PARK

He loitered by the Devil’s Brook
and the old waterwheel in the park
of the island covered in leaves
watching topless children, painted, playing
to guitars and flutes 
under the giant limes
when he noticed the spring yellow 
and red torch-heads
of tulips and the same two-tone
peeling paint of the benches
where pensioners dozed at impossible angles
and in the distance from the lock he heard
the plaintive wails of barges
cocooning the whole city with his age.

​NICK

​Nick, I’m crying and
I’m in love again - I think.
I couldn’t get through to you
last night. You’re sleeping beside me,
It’s a little awkward with him.
It’s like we’re in callipers
that stops me talking.
Now, I’m moving in my bed
like a pylon and you clatter
next to me like a fire escape.
Nick, I’m crying and I
can’t tell you I’m in love
with a painkiller and I’m shaking
like a musical valentine. Nick,
I’ll bleed through my eyes
again tomorrow. I just needed
to tell you tonight that
I was right and I wanted to stroke your
hair. I know I’m me and I’m emotional.
I know I like blue curtains,
red sheets and kitsch dogs
and phoning you in the
middle of the night. But Nick I’m crying
and I want to steady your hand
just in case you cry one time. I want to buy
silk pants and Stranger Music and the soundtrack
to ‘One from the Heart’.
I’m tearing away
from five ugly days of pain.

​JIGSAW MINDS

I’m doing the jigsaw of images
that shatters the night from her box



shark-eyed candy on moonshine trees
candelabra ardour overcrowd the countrymen



cadence of a mispent time.
Where shadowlands turn to home fronts



I’m the echo of an age
that cannot bear its millenial diagnosis



I’m also Peter Pan just
a condiment on a demented family table



The couple across play Russian roulette
Over the sick jaw of dreamscapes



every correctly laid piece earns the player a shot
the closer he gets to seeing his shared win.



The closer he gets to Pollocking his brains out
against the dry-stone wall



held together by blood-ejaculate
Am I still in the slipstream of your box?