Philip O’Neil worked as a journalist for 18 years in the UK, France, Belgium, Romania, the US and the former Yugoslavia. He was managing editor for Transition in The Czech Republic and assistant editor for the multi-award winning Institute for War and Peace Reporting based in London. Currently living in Prague he has published his poetry in ‘Wilderness House Literary Journal’, ‘Suisun Valley Review’, ‘Asian Signature Review, ‘Miracle Magazine’, ‘DM du Jour’ and more pending publication. He also was a monthly contributor of short stories for The Prague Review. BATTERED VIRTUEThis 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 SLAVESSoul sleep lost 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
1 Comment
Karolína Hůlová
10/15/2017 05:30:06 am
I can’t but love Phillip’s poems, so deep in all sorts of feelings so that they get into the heart as a freshly sharpened knife.
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