Tag: David O’Neill

My Love by David O’Neill


By admin

grumpyladyanim8

 

My love is like an iridescent hue—
A coruscating haze of orange, red and blue;
A parlous transformation certain photons rue
That face destructive interference.

My love is like a bowl of comely fruit,
Whose shiny, dimpled, waxen pericarps impute
The bitter mesocarp, that hints the more astute
Should give sour endocarp due clearance.

My love owes beauty, cold and statuesque,
In graceful poise evoking perfect arabesque
With classic virtues, recrudescing Romanesque,
In worse excesses than Octavian.

My love has feathers in her coiffeured hair—
A monstrous, non-cladistic, bird-brained hybrid pair,
Her rostral pole chimæric with the derrière
Of some denuded ratite avian.

(Editor’s note: the painting on which the poem is based is by Isobel Smerdon, aged 11, and is reproduced with permission. The animation is by the author.)

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

Fellow of the Royal College of Hornpipes by David O’Neill


By admin

A prima lento, accelerando cantabile

When the tune starts slow, promenaders feel the magic
As the fiddler’s bow draws its opening sweep
And the melody is easing into incremental teasing
While the keen anticipation makes the spirit leap.

And with each repeat reinforcing the enchantment,
So the driving beat, in accelerando,
With its haunting incantation, musters gentle titubation
And a tapping of the foot upon the floor below.

As the masical mugicians work their artistry
From the nethermost Arena to the Gallery,
Infectious imitation of the mariner’s saltation
Spreads the tapping of the foot above the restless knee.

With the unrelenting rhythm winding up to speed,
So the gathering momentum serves a primal need;
The racing pulse is throbbing, hands are clapping, heads are bobbing;
And a Wooden bust of bronze beholds this bulldog breed.

 

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

The Waiter by David O’Neill


By admin

A long, long, long, long time ago, and then an age before,
A wild and furious ocean beat its waves upon a shore.
Not yet the time for living things, the main and rock were lords and kings
Of all the Earth’s rich store of things from firmament to core.

And flash! and crack! and bang! and boom! great storms raged overhead
And from small atoms, tossed and torn, strange molecules were bred.
In endless cycles, water flowed from sea to cloud to rain then rode
In foaming streams, with solute load, back to its ocean bed.

And round and round the cycle turned while countless years passed by.
And rock, ground into clinging clay, in littoral pools would lie.
And strange new matter, rudely formed, by lightning strike, as heavens stormed
On clay adsorbed, by sunlight warmed, still stranger bonds would tie.

And on through pregnant æons turned the watery cycle round
Till strangely fashioned molecules in helices were wound.
And in the sea, which, year by year, had leached the mineralosphere
Of salt and clay-bound scum veneer, primordial soup was found.

At length within the fœtid broth, a metaform awoke—
Fair Gaia was the fecund maid the life force did betoke.
And, casting wide, she full surveyed what violent storms had crudely made
For light to strike where clay had laid in virgin brine to soak.

And all the while with patient grace a presence watched the scene—
A formless spectral conscient mind who’d marked what there had been.
And, bending low, he strained to see what further changes there might be
As Gaia, in her primal sea, became the planet’s queen.

“Sweet Gaia!” spake the watcher then, “Pray, what will come to pass?
For ages long I’ve waited here and watched your soup amass.
Come, tell me, wondrous parvenue, what can the future promise you—
What marvels lace the vast purview of such a fertile lass?”

“Dear patient friend,” she answered soft, “if low you care to stoop,
With keening eye you may discern one of a larger group:
See, Waiter, of the insects¹, there, you may so mark, if close you stare,
With legs, full six, and wings, a pair², a fly³ is in my soup.”

[1] Subclass Pterygota

[2] See [3]

[3] A Dipteran, eg Musca domestica

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

I’m Getting Out Of Dodge by David O’Neill


By admin

Boar's head erased (scottish heraldry)

 

Brexit stage right, pursued by a bear

I’m getting out
Of getting out;
There’s no doubt
It will be a rout
So I’m getting out of
Dodge.

Everyone’s now obfuscating;
Boris, Mike and Nige are waiting
For
Our plan.
Who’s got it?

Messages on big red buses
Now elicit oaths and cusses—
All the world expecting something
From the hollow soundbites of the
Bullingdons; oh, Bullingdon,
What have your ox-brained old boys done?

I’m getting out of Dodge—
Going down the lodge—
I’ve got more things to
Go and bodge
I’m getting out of
Dodge.

Everyone’s confabulating;
Merkel, Jean and Nic are waiting
For
Our man.
Who’ll cop it?

Promises of wads of Rheingold,
Pups and PPI were missold—
All the world expecting something
From the nibelung ‘un of the
Camerons; oh, Cameron,
You’ve gone and göt a dämmerung.

I’m getting out of Dodge—
Off to make a splodge—
The caput apri
Mocks my todge
I’m getting out of
Dodge.

Right.

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

A Stiff One In His Sunday Best by David O’Neill


By admin

The Goidels of Hibernia revere the stillman’s art—
Their weddings and their funerals are hard to tell apart.
There is one way to know, for sure, once all the poitín’s sunk:
At every single funeral there’s always one less drunk.

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

Straining Credulity by David O’Neill


By admin

The morning after the night before,
I left my carapace on the floor
As instar five followed instar four—
No metamorphosis here.

As entomologists rightly state,
We exopterygotes thus gestate
And Kafka’s travesties truly grate
On every schoolboy’s ear.

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website

 

Exponential Boojum ∂ecay by David O’Neill


By admin

Once upon a graphic day, an exponential function
Extrapolated on his way, with (x) packed up for luncheon.
While making progress down x-street, in orderly transition,
A constant function, in retreat, transected his position.

“Hello, there,” said the smooth exp(x), “What’s seems to be the trouble?
You look like someone who expects disaster, piled up double.”
The constant gasped “I’ll tell you soon but first, I’d better warn ya—
A differential operator lurks around that corner.”

The exponential function thought, “Though curt annihilation
Remains the blight of constants caught in differentiation,
It can’t stop me; I’ll face that lout and be a superhero
For, even if he works me out, he can’t work me to zero.”

He turned the corner in the graph, traversing off down y-street.
He heard the operator laugh; they squared up in a heartbeat.
“The name’s exp(x); don’t even try,” he mocked the perpetrator.
“I’m partial ∂ upon ∂y,” rejoined the operator.

expxy

David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.

website