"Sunflower" 2010 Digital C-Print Jenny Meehan (available as poster print with different coloured borders), follow link: http://www.photoboxgallery.com/19507
I came second in the Literary Mary competition in 2009. I often display my poetry alongside my visual work.
Altar
Broken Torn apart Fired passion stands here Not empty But holding life breath Living Saying Remember me
(This was used as part of a Good Friday art installation in an Anglican Church, 2008)
Portent
perch portent figuration
a dream occurs
sometimes you must choose jewelled heart to let a part of you die
because you know if it lives
dark drape
the day will come unexpected spirit
emerge write indelible significance
fly - fall -too far
hit
cold - hard - stone
opaque haze.
Time turns it's feathered flesh to bone
and faithless spirit
dies.
Blossom and Bamboo
curved tips arching low in stillness dips light-flecked wish white blossom pleads pink
Letter
It is the life hardened. The tender shoot matured.
It has grown beautiful, suffering has aged it -
born it again in fresh, clean, whiteness. A silent sheet of speaking words.
Is desire empty?
Is desire empty? Does it reach into space to find nothing? Or does it have direction and point the way forward?
Tiny Bones
I trod on fragments of bone, homosexual, Jew and gypsy. Unknowingly desecrating precious loved ones with my soles.
A heartless, human realisation - I did not know, until the man told me,
when he spoke, my world changed.
Brokenness took a new meaning.
Even the tiniest prejudice is a terrible thing.
I took one of the splinters - pressed it into my skin
and wept.
Love Me
love me with a passion pierce my soul point straight to the core of my being
no hesitation not even a blink no indecision just total direction to me
meet me in a clinging knot pull tight, then spread across the whole of my life that beating heart which finds me entirely yours
Wire frenzy
I am a wire frenzy, I play erratically In continual motion. I cannot contain myself
But...
(limited by time which around me - surreally - lies)
The only thing making tears bearable is that I believe they matter.
They may make a difference on some level currently unknown to me.
If I believed in a God without a heart - maybe a God with a heart which was not broken - a God who did not travel with me...
then my weeping would be pathetic.
Scraper
I watched him try to de-ice the car. Behind him, I saw a broken bus shelter. I sought it, for my own house was falling - as quickly as the snow.
He was not looking at me so quietly I slipped past - light upon my numb feet - spirit shifting slightly within my tatty soul.
The safety glass; a shimmering lake - grey concrete shone with flickering highlights - touched with warmest sunlight. Gently...
It is beautiful in it's broken state - I weep - because of the thought of its release; in one angry fistful of fired up rage; someone has made this a place for me.
I have only hot tears.
I stand, unclothed, with diamonds sparkling between my toes.
No single image appears: On my kness, I search with intent, drop my cold face, hard into the glassy earth which presses flesh grievously.
cry - that I may grow wish - for spikes piercing eyes, because I do not want to see crave - for red tears, mingling within white and glinting surfaces want - soft, pink, blossom, to open up inside.
I pray to God; dissolve the glass - and heal me.
i write in a vulnerable place i hide and wrap my silent disguise in image and undercover words
wandering
make music with my sounding thoughts
hiding
say, but not speak
play, but not to bring forward
that which would show the hurt
but pain... it is the underlying feature of my life
i cannot move it I am built upon it
planted on it
held on to it with clutching hand
yet
shaking off i try
i try with words
to drop the crumbled heart.
Look To The Side
Look to the side
I see your side, Saviour
Your scar meets mine holds its hand bloodied pressed felt together.
Too Much
Pull that zip, right up too high, and over my head. Pull that cap all the way round and round; with it take my neck. Pull my jeans right down and if they're not close enough to the ground I will pull them a bit further just too much so they will worry you and make you frown.
I have taken no painkillers
Who gave me that pain?
tablet small round-red dropped through heart and head
to dwell in a flesh of soulful sleep
in body dead
potion creep
Who gave me that pain?
Three Minutes
I have three minutes to write of pain running through life.
Hide your heads you long necked birds in the sand, throwing up particles with your splayed out toes. Run fast, for your fears of sinking keep you. Let your glassed eyes
pop
from boney-headed-bullet blackness. Beaks open orange, with human shrieks.
Still... Your terror pained expression will freeze in sun so push it deep beneath the thousand grained sea.
See, it shifts below you.
Three minutes over.
Why?
All metal, emotion scribe my frown.
Heaviness you press me down.
Mark me
my words such are of silvered lead.
Ring around my crown hang my heavy head.
From heart, no rising fervour no passion fire or water flow
Only cavern, deep,
dark
and question burning so.
Foolishness
Refusal to see loss Refusal to embrace pain Refusal to see the body on the cross
It used to annoy me; that "Catholic" cross with the body still on it.
For he is risen! He is risen indeed! Keep the wood plain, and your mind totally free! Why think of that horrid time Please forget it, just leave it behind For we are all power and victory now All power and victory
Are we now so independent? So disconnected from the world?
What blessing then, do we have, in our poor state? How do we think we will relate in a Kingdom of God revealed in every part even in the wounded and damaged and bleeding hearts who among us are and ever will be?
There need be no question of allowance, No matter, to try and draw lines around the human soul, No anger, lack of understanding, or question unanswered, If in the brokenness of life, we can embrace the whole.
One day, there will be no more tears.
But for now, we must live in fullness of life.
I would kiss your body (for my brother, loved always)
I would kiss your body
blood red...
seek to meet your inner wound
fragile thread...
life you held in strong hard hand
lying dead...
Now all has passed -
But still the sirens shrill
and cry
like weeping sisters -
and I,
Over your dead, walking, body,
sigh.
Bold type face
it is wrong to push grief into rhyme
it will be too full for each rounded line
to contain
fallingstill
the motions which swell in deepest pain
familiar words, too much used, which hide the inner tear
