Dennis Moriarty is originally from London England but has lived in South Wales UK for thirty years. Married with five children Dennis enjoys reading, writing, walking.
This year he won the Blackwater poetry group competition and read his work at the Blackwater international poetry festival in Ireland. Dennis loves all things Welsh and speaks a little bit of the Welsh language.
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| Dennis Moriarty |
Emergence. 1.
Dawn is a room rising from the ashes
Of last nights fire,
Sunlight burning off the fog of alcohol
And music played too loud.
The writing desk is a landscape of
Abandoned paper
Balled and discarded by a frustrated
Fist, white, uncompromising
As if snow has come through a crack
In the window
And blown by the wind into neat drifts
Burying my pen and thoughts.
The shelve above the desk is a treescape
Spines like trunks
Woven neatly into the forest floor,
A canopy of pages
Bruised with print and smudged with the whorls
Of many a drunken thumb print.
I fling open the window
Cleansing my palate with frost from the lawn,
Scraping the fur from my throat
With the branch of a tree that last night
Mocked from the safety of darkness.
I pull out the chair put down roots into soft
Pale leather,
Clear the landscape of snow until a smooth
Polished surface of oak emerges.
I find my pen, rediscover my thoughts,
Lay out a fresh sheet of paper
That looks on like a frustrated old maid
Begging fulfilment.
Ever obliging I pick up the pen and watch
It bleed my vocabulary dry.
The Shame Of Being Ashamed. 2.
He is sat in the scullery slurping luke warm tea
From a saucer
His false teeth laid out like some macabre
Table top decoration.
Condensation gathers at the solitary window
Like a well of tears
That would never run dry.
She stands by the draining board stiff
And unapproachable as ice
Oblivious to his animal grunts and his attempts
At conversation
Between slurps of tepid tea.
Her regret tangible his resignation sharp as a dagger
It’s blade tarnished by lies and accusations.
And oh how ashamed I was of them both
Back then
Ashamed of his farmyard noises, his bog Kerry accent
And his casual acceptance of old age come early.
Ashamed too of her accent blunt and slightly menacing,
Her formality that left her aloof
And uncaring at the same time stiffening her spine.
Now I sit here slurping memories from a cup
Myself a slave to an accent
That neither time nor the beauty of these hills
Has been able to soften.
My noises are more suburban less agricultural than his,
Though not haunted by regret
My formality has left my spine much weaker than hers.
And the fire of shame still burns brightly though now
It burns with the shame
I feel at ever really being ashamed at all.
Buzzard Circling. 3.
A curl of cloud in a blue
Unblemished sky
Adding shape and dimension
To emptiness
Talons discovering the landscape
Of a circle
Wing tips conducting the music
Of flight.
A voice entering a new phase
Of desperation
The low persistent cries of
A kitten
Plunged into the loneliness of post
Weaning survival.
3 poems are good. the language is lucid, and the portrayal are beautiful with simple diction and, their is a scent of resonance here.
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