Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

In the world of modern poetry, Gene Barry, of the Elbow Lane Poetry Group in Fermoy, Co. Cork, is in my opinion, among those most likely to succeed.

With Gene poetry is a virtue, and as we know the best user of anything is the person who has the virtue concerned with it.

Gene uses condensed thoughts with generous words to express his emotions. I asked him to describe this week's poem and he replied, "The bereavement of separation for men is largely ignored worldwide and yet it is brought home to them every day in the simplest of ways like hanging out the washing.

"Closed Line is a poem packed with the pain, isolation and anguish experienced while carrying out one of life's mundane chores. It is a deeply emotional piece that in an instant brings this home to the reader.

"The inability of families to provide emotional support to separated men is a universal problem that seriously needs addressing."

You can contact Gene at: genebarrypoet@gmail.com

Closed Line
For separated fathers

I would walk to my gallows
once weekly and feed the rope
with single men. And witness
the gawking families
unilaterally waving the many
colours of unity's insults.

They would do it without
moving or speaking. Without
even knowing the pain they
had infused. Marrow bound.
A line of useless drones out
of sink with family matters.

Us, was parked in every garden
that wasn't ours, dancing all
day in wind that ceased to live
in what seemed to be the only
lifeless garden. Rainbows of
stories sticking out their tongues.

We never did the feeding of
the nylon, nor the retrieving
of the cleansed. Eyes set down
from conversations at both
boundaries that were lent to
what we now knew as a family.

Everybody beyond our ditches
seemed to gel with the laughter
of coal bunkers and barbeques,
to continue the unfinished over
the flapping icons that waved
them inside their castles.

© Gene Barry