Songs of Hunger

By Sean O'Neill

Like great music, fine poetry has power that can infuse the soul, transform the mind, and transcend the mundane everyday experience of life with what is timeless and supreme.
Songs of Hunger is an exceptional collection of poems – rich in language, imagery, symbolism and breadth of thought, feeling, and place. Sean O’Neill is a poet of great skill and exceptional spirit. His poems take you on a quest of the soul in search of wholeness, healing, cleansing, and discovering a home for the restless heart. It is a journey of mercy and hope, love and faith in the One who paid the price that sets us free. You will find plenty here to feed and nourish both mind and spirit.
O’Neill has published five previous collections of poems. This book not only builds on the others – it soars to a new level of feeling and spirit, hope and joy.

- Don Schwager

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean O'Neill
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310524844

Sean O'Neill

Sean O'Neill is an illustrator and writer living in Chicago. The creator of the Rocket Robinson graphic novel series, Sean loves history, trivia, and drawing cartoons.

Book preview

Turtles in Java

Dedicated to Lucy Jackson

Hope is deciduous.

For every trial there is reprieve,

as obstinate as longshore drift,

as timely as a gallows pardon.

Hope is startling.

For every sin there is forgiveness,

as chance as inheritance,

as sure as the span of day.

Hope is freely given.

For every outlaw there is love,

as offensive as bigotry,

as lasting as turtles in Java.

Table of Contents

One Life Only

Hunger made me.

In a pool of desire

my bones were bonded,

my living form fired

by want of life.

Clever hands coined me

by Clyde’s dark deeps,

stretching me out

into the swirling world,

reaching, tearing, longing.

Hammers taught me.

Weapons of sure order

and crystalline control

dug me deep and down

into smooth skin.

Death hugged me in.

Despairing winds shook

and raked these ribs bare.

Tears and their glinting lights

snuffed my elemental cries

Love sought me.

Pity and quarter,

out of the torpid night,

came tolling steady bells

into my dulled fractures.

Rescue met me,

mercy’s abundant stoup:

that great heart

took me up, staggered

with the wine of life.

Whispers lead me on,

blind and bound

till all has come to pass

and the glad green earth

covers my happy fault.

Air will lift me

to the blessing cup

well met in the clouds.

Hope beyond these narrows

calls to the shipwrecked, Come.

Table of Contents

Dew

One droplet hanging,

swaying on a leaf

let fall the twisted light,

the diamond light,

on my upturned hand,

the ragged no-man’s-land

of palm crease and cross,

of scar and fold and wrinkle,

in the piercing of the eye beam

of the trembling bead.

A lit world of plunging chaos

before the mastering voice

ordered earth, sky, water,

before there was Adam,

before Eve was born.

This is how heaven shines

with crystalline mercy

on the silence of the torn,

while the leaf turns and Zion

quivers in its healing sun.

Table of Contents

The Memory of Then

The break at the door,

like a votive candle

in shafts of swirling motes,

cast solid light shapes

among the boot-scuff floor

and whispered drudgery,

the cooking, the baking,

and squandered itself amid

the emptiness of a table

and a straight-backed chair.

My hobnailed mind’s eye

blundered out to the darkness

of the proximate wood,

the smooth boles still wet

with the slime of autumn

and the dripping dawn,

while the green dainties

of the plowed down

and tucked in hushed

at the hazy sun’s hand.

Now I am standing

like a dewy revenant,

feet crackled in the gravel

and sand of the lane,

watching the milky fingers

of early light’s steaming

curl over the gorse bushes

and the low shrubs and trees,

wanting to believe

in God’s green gables.

With a morning dog’s bark

the yard swells

like a cup of goodness,

clutching the curdled

glooms in the deep hollows

of the night that is dying still

in her maze of starshine

under the sinking

of the fleeing moon

falling down the thrilling air.

So, quick, out of the gate

onto the leaden shimmer

of the asphalt burrowing

through the green skin

of earth’s lush encroaching,

and on to the water pump

that drips and splashes,

drips and washes gouts

of pure, cold lifeblood

onto the speckle of the stoup.

It was a morning to die in,

a day of terrible tenderness

wrapped in the mystery

of ever advancing light.

I fell to with the ax

splitting logs in strokes

practiced on childhood

and