NEIL SLEVIN - POEMS

Neil Slevin is a 26 year-old writer from the West of Ireland. An English teacher, in 2015 he returned to university to complete an M.A. in Writing at N.U.I. Galway and to pursue a writing-based career. 

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​                                                   Flight
 
You emerged
from the ripples,
flapped your wings
then spread them,
tapped out your beat
on pannier drums,
repeating yourself
until you knew
your time had come;
 
in the way
a moment passes,
slow and deliberate
at first, some circling
of the wagons, before
momentum builds and
its wheels begin to spin.
 
Then you took flight,
checked your reflection
in the river mirror
and drove yourself
beyond the bridge.
We watched you go
until you were gone,
knew you wouldn’t return.
It was time to move on.


                                        He played piano
 

Alone, he played piano
to the stillness of the room,
his notes rising and falling,
bursting like balloons.
 
Every song was a way out, a
respite ray of hope in gloom
he played for all who could
not hear, while he stole time,
 
forgot all moments past, his
tears. Then silence reigned,
everything returned to him,
all the memories of her pain.
 


                                                  Where
 
These landmarks tell our story.
 
Where I met the real you, knew;
where I walked you home from
when I didn’t know anything about you,
except that I wanted to know everything.
 
Where we waited, I miss you bouncing
bird-like against my brain’s cage.
 
Where you held me and my tears.
 
Where I took you to tell you,
we shared our truth;
where we went, the first place
you’d ever asked me to.
 
Where we sat in the sun
and nothing had changed.
 
Where now tells me everything had.


                                 Waiting for Her
 
I wanted her
to be you.
 
Sometimes
I think I still do.
 

                                      Splitting the Atom 


We thought Siamese twins was the official term, 
but never thought of what it meant
to be joined at the hip or head or heart
with someone else 
nor how one might achieve extrication 
from such a bond; 
we were too busy following each other 
to leave any part of ourselves
above the parapet of adolescence. 

We grew up, 
learned that they were conjoined 
by some anomaly of fate, 
genetics had conspired 
to mould their beings into one. 

Science taught us how to split the atom, 
of the force and power that act could generate 
when the Enola Gay scoured Hiroshima, 
and later when white coats in Switzerland 
sent particles on voyages of indeterminate length 
about a modicum of the Universe, 
hoping to create another explosion. 

But there were no experiments
conducted to uncover the secrets 
of that so natural yet complex force 
with enough energy and power 
to create another universe, 
one where you and I might live. 
Those, we carried out ourselves 
from the instant we exploded 
until our sun burnt out. 

Then the separation began: 
we didn’t like our odds 
but shared the dream 
that we might find a way 
to extract our minds from one another; 
that our hearts would regenerate, 
one day reproduce those particles 
and rifle them into life’s atmosphere 
so we could discover another twin 
to share our being.