HOODS

Do the clothes I wear
Make you feel scared?
Hoods and baseball caps
Are for chaps
With no good on their minds
Aren’t they?
Well, so they say…

But I remember when
Drainpipe trousers sent
Shivers through the establishment
And winklepickers were for kickers
As mods and rockers
Put the mockers
On each other
And the flick knives came out
As brother fought brother

When bovver boots were prized by skinheads
(just as leather jackets were by Teds)
And flares worn wider than a mile
Put an expensive cut to the latest style
And then there was Flower power
and minis and midis and maxis
And Maharajas and Yogis and baldys with bells
And Mohicans sometimes appearing in taxis

So, when you look around
There’s little change on the old merry-go-round
‘Cos nothing’s new but it stays the same
It’s boys and girls playing a different game
That’s all!

© Tom O’Brien

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAT

I’m famous for being fat.
(Well, I used to weigh thirty five stone)
I realized that I was different
When a taxi driver
Suggested I hire a crane
To get myself home.

Fame comes packaged in every shape and size
I can’t walk down the street now
Without being recognized
People stopping to stare,
There goes that…that
Look…there!

But fame has its downside, let me tell you
And not least the ‘reality’ the TV men want to sell you
Up at the crack, feeding the camera till noon
Then a trip to the trick-cyclist
(And meet others who howl at the moon)
It’s all in the mind apparently, this eating lark
Then off for more fun with the TV men
Nibbling grass in the park.

Alas, now I’m smaller, the adulation has gone
Not half the man he was… All skin and bone
Nineteen stone men are ten a penny, it seems
When it comes to newsworthiness on our TV screens.
But if you weighed half a ton, said the last one,
We could make you bigger than Andy Fordham!

© Tom O’Brien

MR PIANO MAN

Perhaps I walked across the water,
(or was it on it?) as they say.
My wet suit bereft of the labels
So designer-desirable today.

My voice remains conspicuous by its absence;
My nationality a puzzle too.
Do I look like someone
Who is familiar to you?

Maybe I am just a con man
Who got tired of walking.
Please, can I have a piano?
So my fingers can do the talking.

Tom O’Brien ©