Michael Mackin O'Mara
  • Poems
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Abstracts
    • Declining Nudes
    • Torso Study
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact

a poem
​
 
after a reading by my dear friend, Lenny DellaRocca

a poem is an exorcism from the inside out
a death threat, an oracle, a billboard of fresh air,               
news from the front,

a poem is a writ of habeus corpus, a bit of flotsam       
from the wreckage of your soul, a letter home         
returned to sender

a poem says: aw shucks, ma.              
its just a scratch.
a poem says:           
apocalypse now, mutha-fucka.

a poem is a ransom note, a recipe, a lost balloon,               
a treatise, a warning, a buoy, a mile marker,       
smoke, lots of smoke

​
a shovel, wings, an aqualung, a space capsule, a time capsule,
a capsule of you'll-never-take-me-alive cyanide,             
another hole in the ground

a poem is a mythical beast, and a slayer of beasts,                 
a poem is what's left

 

- Michael Mackin O'Mara

​Published online in
Chameleon Chimera
and the print anthology from
​Purple Ink Press

@minwpb


  • Poems
    • a poem (Ars Poetica)
    • the boy who could fly
    • the conflagration
    • Dissertation
    • Dreams in Black & White
    • For the Dear One
    • Goya, The Third of May
    • Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988
    • In the South Pacific
    • In Your Global Warming Dream
    • The Irish Goodbye
    • The Lost Canoe
    • Marisol
    • Night Prayers to Guadalupe
    • On These Nights
    • Poem at the End of the World
    • The Scrutinies
    • The Smallest Color
  • GRAPHIC ARTS
    • Abstracts
    • Declining Nudes
    • Torso Study
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Outback
    • Splintered
    • Walk About Colors
  • Contact