Literary Yard

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‘Autumnal’ and other poems by Enda Boyle

By: Enda Boyle

Autumnal

As inevitable as the season itself,
a baggy, vague and crappy word
tumbling out from the mouths
of gormless T.V weather people.
Blazed across reusable coffe cups
in orange pumpkin pastel script.
A department store catch-all
used to add novelty and class
to bedspreads or flax fur coats
sold as part of pre-winter sales.
An advertiser’s magic phrase
which conjurers up portraits
of crisp afternoons in Boston
blood red and cooper leaves
billowing across the Common.
While you and your beloved
sip lattes on the park tables
watching kits of sparrows
flit though the chestnuts
as you debate weather
an impulse towards mischief
or prudence drives the squirrels
that store their eggcorns
on the low stone south wall.
The word is a trend destined
to fall out of use with passing
of another season of fashion.

###

Lunch Poem,

In flight from the ping of the broken till
the recurring whine of licensed muzak,
the crackle of the intercom and the whinny
coming from a dissatisfied male customer.
I have taken my tuna sandwhich meal deal
to this tree-dense corner of St Columb’s Park.
I have no one to share my coke with, nothing
to do except listen to the busker’s gentle strum.
Smell the distant seaweed tang of the river Foyle
and feel the grass warmed by early spring sunlight.

###

The clichés bag

When I was a boy, knee-high to a hobbit
my grandfather called me into his study.
He beckoned me forward with a smile
as I sat down grandfather looked at me.

Reaching under his desk, he pulled out
a bulging black battered old coin purse.
He explained that it was his bag of clichés
and that it was time I learned to use them.

So, he opened the bag and took one out
it was well worn and rounded with use.
The size and shape of a two pence piece
Granddad placed it onto the tip of my tongue.

For years my Grandfather fed me clichés
so now as a man, when the chips are down,
When I can’t do right for doing wrong.
When the whole world goes away to hell

At the end of the day I can keep my head,
see the silver lining, weather the storm,
take the bull by the horns, I now literally,
understand that it is what it is, you know.

So, leave behind your laboured witticisms
ditch your newly minted fine bon mots.
In life clichés are the coin of the realm,
they circulate from person to person
and act the only inheritance that lasts.

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