Jones Irwin teaches Philosophy and Education in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. He has published original monographs on philosophy and aesthetics. He has published poetry most recently in Poetry London, Showbear Family Circus, Passengers Journal, Plainsongs, The Dewdrop and Cathexis Northwest Press.
His work has been previously featured on In Parentheses’ blog.
Artwork: Photography by Strixx Slade
Never Promised Summer
Mid-June, have we ever known
A year which never promised Summer?
Down at Portmarnock the sea water
Feels colder than May. The sand
Appears greyer and less welcoming
On my bare toes. The woman in the purple bikini
Says that she so needs to get away. Anywhere will do,
She says. Her very annoying husband is driving her
Slowly crazy with angst. Last week, I gave her a book
By Søren Kierkegaard and told her to keep the faith.
She came back this week and said she can’t make head nor tail of it.
That’s the problem with the Existentialists.
Moreover, I don’t think that this woman’s marriage is going to last.
Lost Beauty
After Roger Giroux
That previous girlfriend
Of yours there is surely
No despair. I see she has
A new boyfriend. Tall,
With a louche background.
The Head
After Blaise Cendars
If the French Revolution took some
Heads off for Art
Not its least of justifications
Was the despair
Attendant on not being able to tell
The difference between cruelty and beauty
If the guillotine was to be brought back
Today into the Central Squares
Not its least of strangulations
Would be the long swanny necks
Of the remaining hubristic poets
All throat loose in cerebral mendacity
A Poem for Sonia Delaunay (who is Wow) #2
After Jerome Rothenberg
The Angel has nothing to do with it
I saw the Devil enter the room
In the long, lustful afternoon
My eye was craving to see what next
I imagined the gyrations and cries
Of pleasure shriller than song
That evening I wondered if still
They lay there together becalmed
A while until the Night again would begin
Breakfast
After Jacques Prévert
At the café on the front
During a summer storm
He puts the coffee
In the cup
He puts the milk
In the coffee
He thinks about
Adding sugar
But in the end doesn’t
The rain expresses itself
Laterally across the wide pavement
He lights a cigarette
He makes smoke rings
With the smoke
He picks up his hat
Puts it on his head
The tears flow down his face
Laterally across his checkered existence
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By In Parentheses in IP Volume 7
32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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