---

Had to move along, taking up a seat for three,

shunted upstairs through an embarrassed industry,

archaic music perhaps a slight anyway

found and lost on any diktat, warm inside

loved, then forgotten, an annoyance allowing.

Crushing into a coma, safety regulations aside

unused intelligence will quickly desert you,

worked as a muscle, but not for schoolwork

never knowing enough, think about that,

kicking into teeth a standard punishment.

Intransigent humanity, stonewalled, perhaps

not hurting out of will, but circumstance,

annoyance suffices for attention, indeed

entertainment through school, nothing else

blasé about the future, knowing the like.

Fearing the indifferent, loving the apposite,

this technology sinks the indolence right through,

playing with the self-same games, solitary

hardened rejection blossoms into more than life

watching proper creatures an artist’s redaction.

Passing breaks between projects, punishing stunts

hungry for indifference, detail being the devil,

minded for posterity a fate being closed,

managing a lifestyle squarely within means,

watering the strange tree, broken by care.

---

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland.  To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals.  These include: The Lake; Seventh Quarry Press; Marble Journal; New Binary Press; Stanzas; Crossways; Ygdrasil; Seventh Quarry; The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; Ink Sweat and Tears; Drunk Monkeys; Hesterglock Press; Linnet’s Wing, Narrator International, The Galway Review; Poethead and The Evening Echo.  She has also published anovel, In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.