AUTOMATIC WRITING
by
Tom O’Brien
(written in a two-hour against-the-clock frenzy one summers morning in ….  a long time ago)

Why is me? Why is god? Bad grammar I know, but syntax isn’t everything, is it? Syntax…must look that up, not too sure what it means. It’s as if this pen has a will of its own – I am merely sitting here watching it trace outlines on a virgin, amazed at what I am reading. I wonder if Trollope employed this technique in his writing? It sure seems like it; he wrote 3000 words every morning before work. But why go on about it….everyone knows that old chestnut. Duncan McDaid, who was he? A footballler in Askeaton? No, that was the McDaid clan from Northern Ireland. Good footballers, but hard to stomach. Shits, every one. Still, one humoured them. ‘Now is the summer of fucking content.’ Something like that would have suited the Bard better. ‘Not to be at all’ sounds better than the other one. It was a dark and dangerous hour…why do I keep changing the words before I write them? Good practice for later, I guess. Scott Fitzgerald liked to try this form of writing; get all this shit down on paper and see what resulted. Nothing much ever did. However, it’s a discipline that has got to be tried – see what comes out apart from shit.
Shall I begin a new paragraph? Go on, treat yourself. Buy a few pages of crap; spout it all out here at this end-of-page feeling. This life is but a dot on a far horizon…a blank dilettante….almost faltered there… doesn’t blank dilettante almost rhyme? – and if it doesn’t does it matter? Now this plate on my table stinks; old dog-ends mashed up in rasher grease, and outside cats-nip that some should nick. The old shed at garden’s end was nicked too. Oh, not in totality; but layer upon layer, chopped down with a buzzz-saw, and then nailed to the cross that bore it. What crap you say, and of course you’re write (right), but then you always are my dear. Never known to be wrong, for long are you crucified, eh? Maybe that is right too, but you hammered in the nails yourself. No martyrs for me, but you – you – you stood there screaming – it was him – him who brought the house down – stood there ankle-deep in shit telling everyone our secret. Secret? That was no secret; it was written in italics on every cinema wall in the state. She loves you but she daren’t admit it, not even to her fairy godmother, who happens – and this is true – to be the biggest fairy in dog-land. I don’t know where dog-land is, but by God it is rough. Ha 
humer..ho…try again…ha humour…that’s better. Fucking prick. Kicking yourself, eh Tony? Tony Bigmouth who swallowed the word and believed it was true. The lies, I mean. If you sold him an Eskimo he would look for the ice. Lice. Now, where do they fit in? Headgear I guess. But back to the Eskimos; Igloo Land…with nooky thrown in. Crispy nooky because dick stands firm in cold too. Maybe not as hot I agree, but his hairs crinkle like sawdust on a hot griddle. Pancakes. Thought association.
Wonder if I can make any sense of this when 12.41 arrives? Back-breaking this automatic lark – couldn’t I just get the pen to traverse the paper without me? What if letters were jumbled together spaghetti-like, cast to the water-font, then splashed in the pews? I know it rhymes with Jews, but I am not falling for that old dog-bone. Dog-bone, to repeat myself, is nothing but calcified crap. Or soon will be when the paper is recycled. Or cycled over – though what impression you can get from a baldy tyre beats me. It’s like pissing in the sand. What comes back is certainly diluted tripe. But still stripe – that should be tripe – and tripe it is. Have you seen how they make that stuff? Livers and insides and lights and things boiled scaly white, then put in plastic bags for people to eat and be sick. There is a new paragraph coming over me, but I think I will just ignore it – they usually go away without too much hassle.
Here we are then, new words old ideas. What did the man say who sat on his head? Heads you win, I lost my tail. Poetry, now that is the business. So obscure that you can’t even see the window that it is hidden behind. Poems are dead language brought to life – kisses in the dark. Brightened by dreams of tomorrow – and all the long days after that. A cup…could you write a poem about that? My cup runneth over. Kenneth Clarke runneth over. Kenneth over. The Conservative party runneth over – over everybody. Now there’s a poem; Kenneth Clarkes streamroller. Tarred the whole nation. Bollox to the taxis…give us more drivers; and water that isn’t pure; and life that isn’t long; and gin that isn’t Cork; and most of all give us Red Indians. The sort that come home from the Caribbean every Autumn, with their faces melting like someone had struck them in a microwave for ten minutes. These microwave people, burned or browned to cinder quality…can you imagine them in bed? Dick as red as a turkey-cock’s head, fanny bleached to peanuts, and they contemplating what to do. Shall I put it in? Shall I pull it out? What’s that in your ear? Is that a nipple I see on the floor, or is it my shirt button? You know the sort of conversation? – that produced by automatic writing. The hand that scribbles rubbish usually succeeds at it. For there is nothing greater than catfish when it stinks. I think I am becoming incoherent waiting for the postman’s knock. He never knocks twice, although he likes kicking my dog-end. No dogs you see – not dead ones at any rate. I wonder who will read this rubbish when my time is up? A steady emptying of the vessel they say, and maybe something of genius at the end. Now I shall proceed to other roads.
The road, long and lanky, scurries upwards, face-in-the-window style, observing everything, seeing nothing. There are many faces at this window, disfigured, transformed, upright, drooling as the world passes by. Nightmares are their worst dreams. They dream of white horses pawing the ground, their tails flicking the flies like nine-tails, their hooves splintering the wooden parapet, leaping over bushes in their frenzy to be gone. Who can hold these giant mice, their antics reflecting their attitudes, looking mean and moody, snorting their prayers to the heavens? I can see small men too; Willie Carson stooges, like leprechauns on toadstools, shouting; ‘It’s me, it’s me!’ Of course it is you, you morons! It’s always you, or someone smaller; dwarfs in their own hedges, looking for sparrows eggs to throw. Crap, that’s what they are; or maybe it’s carp; they certainly carp on about their mean lives, their cock-sucking wives, and the thighs. Oh yes, it always comes back to the thighs – and what’s between them. Birds nests where the cuckoo has flown and the seed sown and horse-collars need stitching every now and again. Especially when they sag and seem more like open sewers. But enough of this sex. There is enough to go round, I contend, I only we let it. Rubber johnnies have spoiled the night, littering it with condom culture, so much so that an innocent lyric like ‘Where has my Johnny gone’ can now result in long-fingered hands poking in sewer-holes looking for the damn thing. And another thing; there’s no justice in a Johnny. Pull one on and see how it will stretch. Between two poles I mean. But don’t stand in the middle if you know what’s good for you. Twang…twat. Ponce…pinch of salt…where it wounds no doubt. For few are frozen if they are made of gold. There were lots of shoes in my life; two many of them one-legged, humpbacked, and drugged by ditchwater. Anyway, they had no soles in the holes…or should that be souls? Never have I written such drivel – not because I didn’t know how but because it didn’t seem right.
Ollie Cheasty never existed. Ollie Walsh did. So did Tom Cheasty. Fucking farmers again. You can’t take the smell of the cow from the man, but you can make him good hurleys. I once made a hurley, then broke it on someone’s back. Bit pointless really; I could have broken it easier with a hammer. There’s no justice, they say, when the justice is dead. Bring on the hangman is what I say…or is he dead too? Or merely not working overtime anymore? Pierrepoint, the man they couldn’t hang with a string of sausages. His sausage bill was savage apparently, so were his beady eyes when he worked. Bowler-hated to the end, he still went down the long slide screaming. And if anybody says they won’t, don’t believe them. I mean, what is the point of being there at all if all there is is that hole and nothing else? It doesn’t seem worth the effort spending all that life-span digging it. Maura Sullivan has big tits. Not that she knows it. Yet. It’s all in the future. Oh yes, about nine months. Then when that little fucker comes winging it out of there she’ll know they are big – or they will be when he’s finished tugging on them. I kneaded them for her recently and they will do just fine. Gave her a length too; she wasn’t complaining either; lying there shouting, ‘more, more, what’s the matter with you you short-cocked cunt. Get it up, get it up, you little fucker’. And now for something that’s little better than pornography. How many yards of women would it take to reach Zanadu? Six hundred if they were stupid enough. There I was, thinning turnips, and T J Power, the cunt, was right beside me. ‘What are you trying to do, break the world record for bastards?’ I said, when he climbed all over my drill and threw a handful of turnips in my face. That’s the kind of fucker he was; treat you like shite then smile at you. He got his come-uppance though. Ask his daughters, who castrated him and swallowed his balls. Later on, when they passed through their systems, they played ping-pong with them. Low net though; they didn’t bounce very much.
Shadows in eye-corners could be anything; flies. women in love, fellas having wanks (two a day keep the women at bay, four or five on a rough one), but who cares anymore? The world is full of wankers, male and female. It doesn’t make you go blind either – it just blurs your vision. Stiletto culture, that’s what we have, whether we like it or not. And arses that are just as dirty whether you stick your finger or your cock up. Temples of shite, nothing more nothing less. So don’t kid yourselves, girls, that you are something special. Beneath that smooth exterior is the same crappy little body that we all have, only it gets crappier as time goes by. Until, as you know, one day it will be fertilising grass…and what do you say to that? Oh yes, it will happen. Don’t think you are going to escape, with your sows-purse fanny and your tits tilted a bit higher than anybody else. Arse perted to perfection, and face caked to contrariness…oh yes, it will happen.
12.03. I cheated and looked at the lamp. There’s goodness in everything you do my dear. You are too good for your own good, if you know what I mean. There is no justice like rough justice, and you have had your share. Oh not that total outright disaster, but enough little ones to make a big pile. Maybe you should have changed direction sooner, to a better planet, where goodness is recognised, not this grubby little planet bequeathed by Dame Thatcher. And some dame she was too; typical shopkeeper (corner-shop); selling everything she could lay her hands on, and staying up late to achieve her ambition. Ronnie Reagan should have married her; then he could have stuck Nancy in her mouth – the unspeakable eating the uneatable. Americans generally are uneatable – even with mustard on. Hardnosed gobshites – and that’s just the women. There is nothing more detestable than an American high-priestess slobbering over the last rites of her alimony; ‘Well he owes me something for all I gave him…)’ All you gave him my dear was a dose of the runs, preceded by a dose of the hots. If he stuck his cock in a bucket of porridge he’d have got more enjoyment.
There is the window now, where literature should flow like cream from a golden cow. Alas, it dribbles like my cock – nothing inspirational emitting from either spout. Oh fount of wisdom where are you lurking? No turkey-in-the-straw shenanigans now please! Spew forth some of that didactic (dictionary please!) waffle that separates the greats from the waits. Why can’t I be like Scott Fitsgerald? painting the pages with wit, why can’t I be like Graham Greene, instead of some limp-wristed scribbler of drivel? What magazines say to me, ‘Write us a story, any old story. We need you Tom boy, God we need you’? Damn it, why can’t they see me for what I am? Undiscovered genius – even by myself. There is a thin line between success and failure, and I am that thin line. Invisible maybe, but there nevertheless.
I suppose if I had began forty years ago I might have made it by now – instead of this automatic waffling that is neither pleasing, or coherent. But then is coherency necessarily successful? Why not write complete drivel and see if someone falls for it. You see, there are many tricks but no trick-cyclists. Oh yes, some will tell you ‘this is it, this is brilliant’, but what fields have they greened? What mountains have they looked at and said ‘ah fuck it, I’ll try again tomorrow’?
Tomorrow, now that’s a useful day – especially for a writer. There’s always tomorrow, isn’t there? When your brain writes quicker than your finger, when your arse itches, and your cock twitches to be stroked; there are holes to be poked, wicks to be dipped , and tits to be tipped. So what if love makes the world go round – lust makes it go faster.