Patrick O'Reilly

Patrick O'Reilly Poems

It gets quiet at 3am.
The bedsheets are wrinkled and rolled back.
Another half empty cup of coffee,
Another crumpled sheet of paper.
...

A church is holier when it is empty,
When every private step echoes off the ceiling,
Like ripples of solemn sound
And the candles stand unlit,
...

This is an ancient artform,
A relic almost sacred I told her
As I placed the huge black disc onto the platform.
I've never even seen one of these she confessed.
...

In the downtown clubs you can hear them singing.
Ghost's songs stepping off the coffin ships
Which carried them across that broad Western ocean.
...

The sun came up without permission
To make me wonder which day it was.
The razor sunrise rips into my red eyes,
And I shut them fast and tight
...

Between two trees stood a sullen man
Counting on his words
When two Queens tilted at him
With sharp and heavy swords
...

There is no music tonight, my darling,
This radio is busted.
You can turn the dial all you want.
...

8.

Take the wheel!
We could drive til the gas tank is bone dry.

Because I don't want to die in this town,
...

You went,
A name without a face,
A name on everyone's lips,
Saying `Never more to pass unchallenged
...

The great North Wind rattles the trees
And shatters their twigs to splinters
The sparkling quilt of snow knee-deep
Paves the streets of winter
...

These places are always scary at night.
Dark and demonic,
Grey and grimey,
Forlorn and lonesome.
...

Thursday morning, sweep the dawn in
You're over the fields of Saskatchewan.
I miss you like a city, like a long-lost limb.
...

Goddamn them all!
I was told for just one summer
We'd go to Flanders
And we'd march back home
...

As the ship dragged his body down,
He sailed back to those rugged coasts
And the sagging house on the hill
Where a worried woman waited in her chair,
...

The rust tin leaves
Crush 'neath my feet
The sky is already turning a dark, dusky blue
And filling with a forest's worth of chimney smoke.
...

His guitar hangs off of His neck
Like a tire on a rusty rim
Wooden rust, wind and dust
Rusty strings echoing a million voices
...

Since you left
I have been staring at the ceiling,
Lying on the floor,
Tearing out my hair out of boredom,
...

I took a ferry across the St. Lawrence to take me to the North Country,
To the ore mines where even the newborns hack iron dust,
And their eyes are tinted iron red.
...

The floor of the apartment,
The fifteenth floor,
Cold and sterile against her withered cheek
...

Darling, it is very late
And the sleep hangs from my lashes
Though now it's hardly worth sleeping at all
But because you only want to argue
...

Patrick O'Reilly Biography

Patrick O'Reilly lives in St. John's, Newfoundland. He works in a warehouse.)

The Best Poem Of Patrick O'Reilly

3am And It's Quiet

It gets quiet at 3am.
The bedsheets are wrinkled and rolled back.
Another half empty cup of coffee,
Another crumpled sheet of paper.
Elbows on the table, head in hands.

It gets quiet at 3am.
The only sound is the calm traffic in the street below,
And the late-night infomercial.
A breeze shakes the drapes.

It gets quiet at 3am.
I rub the sleep from my eyes and look out the window.
The streets are a ghostown, lonesome
And soaked in the early morning wet.

I'd like to lay down forever,
But it gets too quiet to sleep.

Patrick O'Reilly Comments

Sallie Howson 23 June 2007

have saved one of your poems to my favourites list so i can come back and peruse the others at will.....great reads

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