4 poems by Tom O’Brien

 in Kathmandu

Memories come on wings of light

A shining bird, high pines in the sun

The fire in a floating leaf

The autumn heat in weathered wood

Soft lichen on a stone.

A light-filled imminence simmering and breaking,

Leaving me breathless and in pain.

This sickness of infinitude that leads to the madhouse,

This ‘self remembering’ of the present

Instead of wandering the ephemeral worlds

Of past and future.

I was a true believer in my magic carpet;

Ready to fly as far as it would take me.

The search begins with a restless feeling,

As if one is being watched.

One turns in all directions but sees nothing.

The path that leads here is not a path to a strange place,

But the path home.

But you are home

Cries the Witch of the North

All you have to do is wake up.

 

NOAH’S ARK

Noah knew a thing or three about Arks

Though he never had to deal with dry snakes in the parks

(as far as I know)

Or alligators eating raw taters

In the fields where potatoes used to grow

Or see the hedgerows decompose

‘Cos underwater rots your toes

And lettuces float lonely in orderly rows.

There is ice in the neighbourhood

But it’s not in the fridge

It’s log-jamming tightly

Against the almost submerged bridge

While uptown bright red stilettos

Are swimming downstream

Towards the emptied-out ghettos.

The people are gone

But the water hurries on

Self-raising evermore as it swamps the seashore

And heads for the hills and the high-rise domains

Where soon this new-spawned Atlantis

Will be all that remains.

 

RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
See all the down-and-out lickers and fuckers
Down the Embankment they tumble
Unable any longer to bear much reality
Too much self-knowledge and time spent trotting
Between the Tate and the National
Or one of their endless reading groups
Believing they had a story to tell
If only things had worked out,
If only the monkey had hit the right keys.
Hush! if you listen carefully
You can hear the dead click of their keyboards
In the raucousness of the Soho night;
The minicabs, the limos, the rickshaws all screaming
Take me…take me…I’m free
And the hen nighters, the stag nighters,
The whatever-the-fuck nighters,
Lingering in pools of their own vomit, waiting for the paramedics to call;
Shirts open to the navel, skirts slit from here to eternity.
Late summer, later winter, who gives a shit?
The restaurants are all full though nobody is really eating.
Just being there is what matters.
Smokers stop the traffic inspecting their mobiles
What would a Martian make of that?
No one sees anything anymore
Except the lampposts they walk into;
There are no witnesses to crime;
How anybody falls in love anymore is a puzzle
Eyes no longer meet in lingering amazement
Unless they are reflected
In all those infernal hand-held screens.

 

 WHO IS THAT MAN?

 I feel like screaming

I feel like kicking something

I feel like my head is…exploding.

You  are…your name is…

Ah…David

Yes…David…

David?

It’s there

Buried in that sea of viscosity

That I am scrabbling about in

I can see it

It’s almost on the surface now…

On the tip of my tongue…

No…it’s gone again.

And I am in this room…

Looking for…

What am I looking for?

It all reminds me of my grandfather

Who, In his last tortured months,

Was convinced that somebody was forever following him about.

Then one day he spotted his own reflection in a plate glass shop window

There!, he shouted,

There he is!

Who is that man?