Showing posts with label Niall O'Connor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Niall O'Connor. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Squares

In Tiananmen, in Cairo, in Hong Kong,
 injustice draws the buried from their graves,
inciting us to cry: 'You have gone too far.
Our bleeding bodies can bear no more.'

Public spaces of all shapes and sizes, 

overlooked by commerce, monument and greed, 
designed as great imperial statements,
clearings laid out on the powdered bones of 
displaced city dwellers buried, 
forgotten, but now risen again. 

The State must impress to oppress.

And it is here we have chosen to repossess

our lives by dying, if necessary.
Here we will reinvigorate our unborn by blood sacrifice. 
Here we will stand for our freedom.

With barricades of stone and bone, 

with tactics learned by observation, 
we answer you with your own weapons; 
a stone for a stone, 
a brick for a brick, 
a bullet for a bullet?

In every city of the world,

rulers quake and look to their once silent 
people, and seek to redesign open spaces: 
New facades for Independent Square. 
Corrals and trees for Freedom Plaza. 
Car parks on Tahrir Square.

They do not see it is too little, too late. 

In the open spaces of the peoples net,
we pulse with new found freedoms,
ubiquitous in our reach,

we seek to reunite the human spirit.


©niall oconnor 2014

Thursday, 7 August 2014

Rights of Passage

You flowers of El
who live in this ancient passageway,
in a wilderness through which every man has passed,
spreading like a plague across the face of a naive earth,
forging new religions and theocracies;
chains to restrain
what otherwise blossoms free.


Navigation is by night skies here,
both on land and sea,
and you willingly share of the stars,
but not the dirt shaken from your feet.
Christian beware!
The land of Christ is not yours.

Moses parted seas and nations to come here,
leading his tribe into the promised land;
promised by G-d
to His chosen ones . . . to the exclusion of all others?
Jew beware!
The promised land is yours, only to share.

Formed from the same star dust,
believers in the same imaginary friend,
how can dust rule dust I cry!
But when my tears fall,
they fall on lives that are hate-baked,
forming religions from otherwise seamless lives.
Muslim beware!
You too must share.


This is a land that can be possessed, only
as a night sky can widen your mind, only
as an idea can show you the way, only
as love can illuminate and guide us through.

In this land 
we can only have rights of passage.

©Copyright Niall OConnor 2012

Wednesday, 9 April 2014

Ukraine

In the middle of the night they came,

posing as protectors,

with unmarked uniform and face hidden,

they told us to surrender.



Hand over your weapons!

- But what are we to do? -

Weapons are for enemies

and we thought they were friends.



Now we are re-branded,

the cleansing begins,

and they put Cain against Abel

turn friend against friend.



The bully once more

is outside the school gate

and the strong boys inside

consider old boy debates.
© niall oconnor


Niall OConnor is an internationally published poet and blogger, a Pushcart Prize nominee 2013, and reads regularly at the Writer's Centre and other popular Dublin venues. He was longlisted in the Desmond O’Grady Competition 2013. His Debut Poetry Collection, Change in the Wind which was released in 2013 to much critical acclaim. Niall blogs at the very popular dublinepost.blogspot.ie  .