Vincent Mc Grath is a native of Limerick, Ireland. He is 33 years old. He graduated in 2019 from a bachelors degree in English literature from the University of Limerick. Vincent is a writer of both poetry and fiction. He enjoys travel, film, and meeting new people. The poetry of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Charles Bukowski are favourites of his. He also strongly believes in mental health awareness being bipolar himself.

To Die in a Dream

To die in a dream and its peace,
Far away, mourners a muted cry,
Laying in the heavens like a wreath,
O to be glitter amongst a starlit sky.
I’d take all pain and moaning sorrow
And discard it to depths of black sea.
My will and fire no longer borrowed
From God’s nature, his magnanimity.

Divine infernos, consume my flaws,
Melt the ice from my heart’s walls.
Let me be all things humble, yet able,
Bless me with contentment’s cradle.
Father, save my life through this ink,
I’ll walk meadows with bloom to drink.
You’ve saved my soul, sewed its seam,
Will my final gift be to die in a dream?

III

The sage questions life’s dress for many hours,
There’s something to be said watching a flower.
Rapture teaches nought, but wisest is the reaper
As he knows and does, ignores the loudest speaker.
Knowledge is a party piece, wisdom the true cream,
I’d take the latter as swift as I would death in a dream.
They say if you die before you die, death is the start.
A bounty awaits, so take the pieces, that quote apart.

At the otherside of breath, life, galaxies, and the wind
Sit things I dream of yet my dreams won’t let me know
Of truths I seek, answers to big things, to universal riddle.
I’d claim the answers, but then my sanity would rescind
Its embrace, the mirror would house an unwell face.
Gandhi, Luther, Yeshua, lived and died in a dream,
The lucky and old lay down and die in their dreams.
However small, I’d hope to do the same. By grace.

Like the Tide

The wave comes rolling, gliding in
As I hear the ocean’s allaying din.
But I’m deaf to its bless and music,
The quietest silence calls. I’m losing
Appetites for joy and robin’s tweets
Because to me, only sorrow speaks.
A soul numb to its light and worthful
Things, am I lost in Dante’s circles?
Nature’s riches lay close, dew is near
Yet I only see sparkles from my tears.
I fear the mirror as my reflection derides,
Joy to sadness, I’m fluid, like the tide.

The waters recede, back out to the sea.
Prophecy and highs warn of who I’ll be.
I feel like a king now, master of the skies,
I’ll shun every warning, the cherub’s cries.
What power is this? I walk as an Olympian
Marching forth as a thousand men, a legion
Within my thoughts, a curse in my heart.
Timidity, morals, wisdom, they all depart.
What fool bows to stars? Rests or sleeps?
Not I! I’m no longer that shadow who weeps.
I’m manic, they say, yet I refuse to confide.
Am I coming or going? Just like the tide.

Time’s Bliss

Time bleeds profusely. Under the peering
And revealing light of day, beneath the
Black ocean of shimmers. Time bleeds
And flows for us all like the gush within
The artery, the gush of life’s unfolding
Story, the thrill or wallop of each moment’s
Turning page.

Ticking or tickless, it’ll do its deed as burden.

It’ll bloom a meadow while it wilts a rose,
Wrinkle a face as it nurtures wombed life,
Bring weeps in a deluge as it coaxes a smile.

A smile can be built or lost within time.

But time and a smile are close, brethren.

Each are a Rosetta stone, melting
Barriers of dialect, creed, charring
The ice about our hearts, opening
New doors to new souls, gifting

Opportunity for the mending embrace

Of kind words.

A rocking, warm, and snug cradling

Of inner cries.

Time bleeds profusely.
Slow or swift, either/or.

Slouching time irks the youth as speeding
Days worry the old.

But time, in its burden, lacks time for apology.