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    First Words
    First Words
    First Words
    Ebook93 pages35 minutes

    First Words

    By Andrew Byrne

    ()

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    About this ebook

    He drifts away under sunny leaves

    And stands beside the waiting bus,

    a skinny boy of thirteen,

    As soft good-byes expressed in his ear

    tilt the smile off his face

    In this collection of poetry, Andrew Byrne combines a strong voice with a keen wit as he explores conflict and resolution and questions whether fate determines the course of our lives. Byrne, a seasoned poet, uses clever wordplay to observe how vulnerable we are in personal relationships as well as in society. In an animated, open, and unsparing style, he shares lyrical verse about love and loss, violence, death, and betrayal reexplored not only through modern eyes, but through mythical and ancient figures such as Orpheus, Heracles, and Achilles.

    First Words is a diverse collection of poetry that shares one mans view of the world, designed to provoke emotion, humor, and most importantly, reflection on the beauty of life.A journey to remember.

    Albert DeGenova, poet, editor, and publisher of After Hours magazine

    A catholic sensibility and untrammeled imagination combine to create an original poetic voice that is wry, witty, dark, and hilarious

    P. Hertel, editor of After Hours magazine

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9781475981780
    First Words
    Author

    Andrew Byrne

    Andrew Byrne graduated from Loyola University, Chicago. He has published poems and fiction in After Hours magazine, The Chicago Reader, Poetry Quarterly, and Oyez Review. His short story, Delores Decides To Die, was produced and staged in 2004. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Oak Park, Illinois, and they have three children.

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      Book preview

      First Words - Andrew Byrne

      Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Byrne

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4759-8177-3 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4759-8178-0 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013905094

      Cover painting: The Hudson Valley in Winter from Olana, Oil on Canvas by Frederic Edwin Church, 1871-1872c. OL.1980.36. Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

      iUniverse rev. date: 04/10/2013

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Stations

      Sacre Coeur

      Vainglory

      Achilles

      Chaos

      Las Ramblas

      A Life to Be Picked Up After

      Tragedy

      The Ballad of Heracles

      A Fallen Empire

      Betrayed

      The Death of Agamemnon

      Crazy

      When She Refused

      Blueberry Hill

      The Sistine Chapel

      Orpheus

      Lennon

      Don’t Speak to Me of Love

      Film Noir

      Night

      Five Irish Haiku

      First Words

      The Palace of High Noon

      For Sharon

      And Lucy, Erin, and Brendan

      Summer afternoon,

      Pianissimo, eco-

      System is in tune.

      Acknowledgments

      Acknowledgments are due to the editors of the following

      journals, where some of these poems first appeared:

      After Hours and Poetry Quarterly.

      Stations

      The moment he tenses the verbs,

      He inflates the I

      And sees the shimmering iota of the priesthood

      emerge from the warmth of his father’s gaze,

      from the clouds under his mother’s eyes.

      He drifts away under sunny leaves

      And stands beside the waiting bus,

      a skinny boy of thirteen,

      As soft good-byes expressed in his ear

      tilt the smile off his face.

      He fears the camera will clip his wings,

      So he raises his voice and begins to sing.

      At seminary, he fulfills the perfunctory obligations with élan,

      Toasts the sky with heads-up laughter,

      Trumpets the clouds, salutes the trees,

      Feels the pulse of the hills,

      And fields the best of his temperament.

      During summer, he wraps the mornings around the Mass,

      And in the afternoons, he spins a girl into the Pieta,

      -him the corpus-

      —a daydream that crushes the solidity of the real world—

      And by the evening’s Top 10, he enters the shimmering light of

      reveries

      And walks among girls, arm in arm.

      When all’s make-believe, what’s the harm?

      Back at seminary, he descends through an atmosphere

      of

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