A Prayer For Everyone Poems by Tomas O'Leary

A Prayer For Everyone

Poems by Tomas O’Leary

Ilora Press

Circumstantial Productions

Washington, D.C.

ISBN:9780983006008

92 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Poet Tomas O'Leary

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti… et vobis fratres. Yes, I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned exceedingly well in thought, word, and deed by reading and enjoying way too much blessed Tomas O’Leary’s sacramental poetry text, A Prayer for Everyone.  And, indeed, in this collection of prayers, sermons, homilies, psalms, parables, confessions, and meditations on the curiosities of religious rites, O’Leary demonically and wittily serves up something for every appetite with sometimes skewed, sometimes laugh-out -loud humor. That is not to say that the poet does not have a serious bent. He does. He confronts “heaven’s vacant lot” and life’s “cannibal convention” with due Kierkegaardian dread. The difference is that he responds with exhilarating wonder and glee—a holy glee.  

The title poem, A Prayer For Everyone, appears as the first poem in the book and establishes the poet’s comic view of life and his all- encompassing philosophy. The poem takes the biblical form of the beatitudes from Christ’s all important Sermon on the Mount and with a twinkling eye expands on them. O’Leary’s version begins this way,

Blessed are the absent, for they are not here;

Blessed are the near at hand, for they would

               seem to be;

Blessed are the saved and the damned, for both

               are born to blessing;

Blessed are the best and the worst, the wisest,

               the most foolish…

This way of looking at the world is comic not in a satirical sense, but rather in a Shakespearean sense. O’Leary unflinchingly accepts the world as it as and prays only for the blessings of inertia. In fact he ends this first poem that way,

And blessed, ever blessed, thrice blest, the unbegun

               And neverending;

And blessed, ever blessed, the blest and the unblest:

May all find rest.

Like a bookend, the last poem in the collection reinforces this world view with the addition of an observant, if detached God. The poet says,

Let it end

as it begins

a pale green flash

in that no-ness

of an eye

calmly watching

with potential

wit and wonder

over all nothing.

The poem O’Reilly’s Rites gut hurts with its hilarity. Readers follow the progress of O’Reilly’s internment by his pub mates and their meditations on the “awful ass” and “slobbering plague” that O’Reilly was. After they plant him O’Reilly’s colleagues engage in a memorable toast to his life’s accomplishments. The poet describes this rite of passage thus,

… as we put him down

with decent cause, him dead and all, and we pause

here ever so briefly in our sorrows

to raise strong spirits to his snuffled flame

and send him winging—egregious, lugubrious, ill-famed—

past the hell he well merits…

The poem ends with an inside joke that I won’t spoil for future readers. I must say however that I’m startled that this poem has not been included in a major anthology of English literature. It certainly merits such an inclusion.

Black humor and irony rear their heads in the poem The Prodigal’s Party. O’Leary takes Christ’s famous parable and poetically takes us though the father’s emotions of love and anger. Nothing is as simple as it seems the poet points out in the versed out subtext. The father intimates,

Let us further assume

that I love you

without condition.

Must be nice coming back

to such a dad

after debauchery failed

finally to deliver…

But O’Leary’s not through with this forgiven ingrate. He concludes,

You’ve been a rotten son.

I love you.

Welcome home.

Balancing the spirit world with the material world can be a tricky undertaking. O’Leary rises to the challenge with the poem The Patient Diners. The poet sets the ritual table with a metaphorical meal of bread and wine. Not original, of course, but quite powerful. He uses this imagery to get at the sacredness of life’s every moment. Then he takes a step back and real practicalities take over. He puts it this way.

But hey, we’ve now romanced the fading thread

of time itself, and pray our spirit  

will turn to matter and be smartly set before us—

not that we’re in a hurry to be fed,

just that we’d sooner eat it while we’re not dead.

The absurdness of life, of which his God is part and parcel, has already been digested by this poet and has become part of his sinew. The poem So How Am I Today seems to reflect the poet’s unease, his loss of center. As in Yeats’ Second Coming the center cannot hold. O’Leary puts it this way,

that thin, mean edge, that hint of ill-repose,

the bother of a psyche spinning fast

in its erratic orbit around lost

evidence of a solar burst somewhere …

Did I mention that O’Leary rhymes with the best of them when he chooses that poetic technique (think X.J. Kennedy). He taunts and teases and sets baited traps for his unsuspecting readers. Listen to this ending sequence from the poem Gnosis,

… as words ascended into rhyme;

himself, psychiatrist in earnest, blinked

a wise and vapid catch of phrase each time,

as if to say: : I’m a sphinx with which your linked,

by virtue of my timely diagnosis;

not that you’re nuts—just that I know my gnosis,

and know it never must preclude psychosis.”

Now consider the first stanza (a veritable Ars Poetica) of the poem Rhymer’s Horoscope,

The point of rhyme

is to catch time

by its streaming hair

and hold it there

the split second

till time is beckoned

back to onward motion

upon the sound’s ocean…

Wonderful imagery like this from a playful but reverent intelligence can’t miss. And it doesn’t! Imprimatur!