Mark Blayney
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'A five-star poet' 
LITERATURE WALES

'...the quirky, rural-epiphanic observations of Mark Blayney'
THE LAMPETER REVIEW
 

                        

Published in Agenda, Poetry Wales, the delinquent and The Interpreter's House. Long-listed for the National Poetry Competition. Runner-up in the Arvon Postcard Competition, the Hungry Hill Poetry Prize and commended in the Poets Meet Painters Prize, Ireland. 
 

arrival

what is home?
when you brought me here

two hours ago
it feels more like

than where I live.
I've known you a day

and though we see
we will not stay together

we made our home
we lay on blue sheets

eating raisins from a bowl
shoelaces playfully tied

around your wrists
and I drew, in felt tip

across your shoulder blades
boats and trees and birds

and people swimming away.
That pact to meet again at forty

has been and gone. We met
at the wrong time, you said;

we could compare notes
when we are older / wiser.

Come to me
when we can be young and forgetful

in the distant future
and we will marry.


First published in Poetry Wales




banqueting hall, tara

I rolled in the grass
and heard distant voices:
adults eating

the chink of cutlery
rattle of glass
a scrape of chair;

and seeing my hands raw
knees red and mystical
(not my knees at all)

the smoke rising softly,
the memory of those not here
and a diminished, but rousing, cheer


First published in The Lampeter Review 7



favourite writing place

I write words on your back
a thought on your hand
a verse across your stomach
the central O rising and falling
in the forest after rain
you read yourself to me
I throw away
unused notebooks


Second prize in the Arvon Postcard Competition




clogher beach

white spray
the sea flicks into the sky

blue of rain
remembering hokusai

he saying, modestly
by the time I am ninety

I hope I can be competent
our lazy intent

as we watch the spray in the sky
to kiss, and idle

while the sea
does its work, diligently

we lie in each other's arms
and, you have to watch it, it's sly;

the sea flicks into the sky.


First published in The Lampeter Review, Issue 5



glimpse

cloud took the sun away
for a moment
but the white house
soon reappeared
strange the reassurance we take
from slight things

you see concern on my face
and kiss me lightly
you taste of salt and summer
I follow you down
to the sea
glowing


Commended in the Poets Meet Painters poetry competition



valley

our new house
trees like broccoli

our toys the shadows
forming windows

with you
I am five again

we play by the fence
knowing the house

will call us back for tea
we both hear, as we run

our mothers' distant voices


First published in The Lampeter Review, Issue 5

 


Peace 75

Peace is found in the corners;
the fall of light on glass. The rattle
of sea on a stone. With a corner
we can think. Lean by a wall, feel the sun on our faces, enjoy the pregnant nowness of it all.
 
Peace doesn’t arrive with a fanfare, or 
from beneath a magician’s cloth.
It comes by building corners, one by one,
invisible to begin with, insignificant even,
cementing slowly, solidly, until they are
everywhere.



Commended in the Welsh Centre for International Affairs 'Peace75' competition, for a poem of exactly 75 words.   



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Picture


arrival
published in Poetry Wales 48:1


Picture


long vision, mayfly
and football results published in the delinquent 17


Picture


obsessive compulsive
and untitled
published in The Interpreter's House 47
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