The Arts Office Kilkenny County Council recently launched the fifth edition of Rhyme Rag, a poetry publication featuring the work of young Kilkenny writers.
The publication included the work of 5 Scoil Aireagail students – Brendan Burke, Ellan Hanly, Lee Shanahan, Rebecca Dalton and Ewa Bak.
Love’s Promise by Ewa Bak
I daydream, thinking about us,
Watching sunset and holding hands.
I daydream. I see you looking at me.
You’re not saying “I.” You’ve changed it to “we.”
I daydream. We are together.
Looking into each other’s eyes.
I want to do it. Forever.
I daydream, and then, I wake up.
I see you, different,
But my feelings won’t stop.
I’m standing close to you.
My throat won’t let me say this.
“I love you”
This is my escape.
Using the paper.
I’m saying “stay with me forever.”
My way of saying “I love you”,
I’ll do it next time.
“I promise”.
Whisper by Rebecca Dalton
Softly spoken sentences,
Some are secrets, and
Some are shy
Sounds of almost silence
Reality Vs. Dreams by Brendan Burke
The azure rings of Saturn scratch lazily at my back as I look up at a paper ceiling.
The exploits of Arthur and Zaphod flow down through my eyes.
My lenses focusing a lie upon my retinas, my brain drinks it greedily.
My mind accepts the lie though knowing a world of paper is easily torn.
A wise man once said “Artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use them to cover the truth up”
Sighing, I pause the world with a bookmark.
And switch to a darker tale. Saturn’s icy circumference gives way
To the muddy slums of Cenaria.
Durzo Blint’s footfalls make no sound as I follow him along the rooftops
His target for the night as good as dead. But I feel no pity.
I’ve read the passage many times yet it never loses flavour.
But what is reality but another dream?
The sun never truly sets, just rises somewhere else.
You can’t escape a circle unless you tear the paper and
Thor and the World Serpent showed how well that went.
I dream within dreams just as I find truth within lies.
When books and games have thought me more than life
I know I’ve slept for too long. What will I wake to?
Perhaps a scarier question is do I want to wake up?
Why should I?
While paper worlds can be torn so can this one.
Oxygen can be burnt, earth can be cracked, light can be destroyed, light can be destroyed.
All dreams hold fragile existence.
The only difference is some lies are more believable than others.
Night Comes Slow and Softly In by Lee Shanahan
Where do they go
The seconds I watched, passing by
I can’t be sure,
Night comes slow and softly in
By hanging tree and window pane
All around I can see
Your changing shape,
It was mine
As it was my father’s before me.
Coffee by Ellen Hanly
The lid pops open, gulping air,
An aroma, irrigating my senses,
Maroons me in a forest of fluids
With red and blue macaws,
Lizards and too much foliage.
Men with rich brown skin are haggling, dealing,
But their pesos can’t pierce the canopy.
My eager lips kiss the humidity
And the steam mists my vision
Of a grinding enslavement,
And I am drinking it down.
