Francis O’Hare was born in 1970 in Newry, Northern Ireland.

Publications include Outside the Walls – with Frank Sewell (An Clochan Press, Belfast), Falling into an O, Somewhere Else and Alphaville (Lagan Press, Belfast), Home and Other Elsewheres (Evening Street Press, U.S.A.) and Sailing To Omeath (Arlen House, Dublin).

In the Jewelled Light of Morning, a pamphlet-length collection, received an iOTA Shot Pamphlet Award from Templar Poetry in 2024.

His new collection, A Different Light, is available from Arlen House.

A Vision

for U

Was it sunlight or the light of love
I saw you in the day we met?
All I know is it hasn’t yet
faded; you’re still emblem of
a beauty I cannot forget

no matter how I try. Your face,
your figure, all of you in fact,
(I hope I’ve worded that with tact)
is filled forever with such grace
in my mind’s eye, no cataract

could ever cloud the sight I see,
the sense I have, the love I feel
for that young woman, intensely real,
who lives still in my memory
and breathes though she’s ethereal.

Meeting

My first sight of her in fifteen long years,
though she says we met one night in Belfast,
(which I don’t remember; too many beers)
is her walking towards me in sunshine, the past
repeating itself as I’m lit up inside
by the smile on her face, her beauty a flame
that never goes out, the unravished bride
of stylish insouciance, lips exactly the same
shade of red favoured back in the day,
and suddenly Prince’s Street blazes with love
for the girl that I lost, the woman whose stray
hair leaves me breathless still, as I say hello, move
closer to hug her and once again hear
her voice, touch her body, catch her scent, hold her dear.

Song

after W.B. Yeats

I went out to the beer garden
Because I needed a cigarette,
And lit myself a Marlborough
And drew a smoky silhouette;
And when last orders were called and served
And fairy-lights were all turned off,
I drained the contents of my glass
And caught a glimpse of stars above.

When I had taken my last puff,
I noticed the smoke had taken on
The shape of something, lust or love,
And someone shimmering, like a vision:
It had become a full-blown woman
With rain and moonlight in her hair
Who called my name, turned and walked
Away, as if into thin air.

Though I am bored with wandering
From bar to bar, ad nauseam,
She will be mine. Oh yes. She will
Be mine. I’ll kiss her lips. She’ll come
Back some night at closing time,
Pick up the thread of our conversation,
Beneath the apple-silver moon,
Until the apple-golden dawn.

Mod Song

“Mod-ism…an aphorism for clean living under difficult circumstances”
                                                                                                        -Peter Meaden
When I put on my parka
I become the real me
riding my meta-
phorical scooter like Jimmy

in The Who’s mod-opera
Quadrophenia, free
of the crowd, psychodrama,
out to the sea.

The wind in my face,
the air in my lungs,
the feeling of grace,
of speaking in tongues–

as I hurtle through space
as if I had wings—
dispel my neurosis
and right all the wrongs

I’ve suffered, as if
I’m born again, clean,
as the seagulled blue gulf
before me looms in

and I dare the white cliff
of oblivion, then
put my foot down and rev
the Lambretta’s engine

before jumping clear
and walking away
(as the credits appear)
into a new day,

an electric guitar
windmilling, surfspray
behind me, and soar-
ing o’er me, yeah.