Robin McNamara is an Irish poet with over 50 poems published worldwide, including having poems published in America and in the UK with Saccharine Poetry, Pink Plastic House, Full House Literary Magazine, Dream Journal, Spillwords & Ephemeral Elegies.

A regular contributor to Poetry Ireland and Black Bough Poetry poetry prompts. UCD Library have a selection of his pandemic poems in their archives as a record of poems written during this period. 

Happily Ever After 

In this house of us,
We (you) picked out 
 
The new wallpaper in this
Sitting room of silence.
 
The pictures on the wall
In the hallway near the door
 
(Which once promised freedom)
 
Seem somewhat: incongruous,
To what the seperate bedrooms 
Entailed. 
 
Two unfilled souls in their 
Own Les Misérables.
 
All the while, frowns, sighs and shrugs 
Are reiterated daily.
 
From a beginning of;
 
“You’re so lovely!”
“Ah stop I’m blushing!”
 
To the happily ever after of;
 
“Did you put the bloody bin out?”
“Where’s my socks?” 

The Nun on the Bicycle 

(Based on a true story)
 
I met a nun cycling an old bicycle 
I told her I loved the old thing,
She said:
 “It takes me quicker to God,
But I could do with a new one.” 
I told her I religiously collect old bicycles, 
So she said:
 “You buy me a new one and you 
can have my old bicycle.”
I said:
“It’s a deal.”
So I bought her a new bicycle; 
more shiny and quicker. 
We both won and got to our respective 
religions faster. 

Alice in Undergrowth 

Slithery, slimy snakes and snails, 
Wriggling, crawling, sliming across
The forest floor in the undergrowth.

Nibbling magic mushrooms, giggling like
Alice in Wonderland. 

Buttercups, teacups, all here 
in the undergrowth of the poet’s imagination. 

Robert Frost, lost in woods by a road in the undergrowth.
(Seriously!)

No time to waste, run rabbit run. 
How the lichen and moss grows 
so slowly over my mind.