THE CAFETIERS
Oh yes, the cafetiers;
They sit here day after day
Sipping their lives away
Out in the open air
In historic Hastings town square
Good sides to the sun
Contemplating another sticky bun
Watching the girls parade past
Leaning like mannequins at half-mast
SOME DUBLIN CHARACTERS
Not necessarily born in Dublin but lived a significant part of their lives in the city.
THE BIRD FLANAGAN
BRENDAN BEHAN
PATRICK KAVANAGH
JIMMY O’DEA
MYLES NA gCOPALEEN
SEAN O’SULLIVAN
ENDYMION
JONATHAN SWIFT
DENIS GUINEY
SEAN O’CASEY
W B YEATS
JACK B YEATS
ALFIE BYRNE
THE TOUCHER BYRNE
MARGARET BURKE SHERIDAN
JACK DOYLE
JOE MCGRATH
etc etc
PRISONER
The ticking clock is silent
Articulating emptiness
Mainspring not busted
Just not required.
Time gulling it over the horizon
Speckled in the distance
The residue left behind
Not worth a light
Over some visionary hill
Virtual reality is real enough
More and more scream the worms
Turning every which way but one
More length, more depth
More leisure, more pleasure
More love, more life
Bur mostly more coin
Nothing prepares us for this
The hand that held the answers
Trembling now before new idols
Knowledge bootless as experience
New waves have old beginnings
But tired dogs own no snap
It’s the rut we’re stuck in, see?
Slow going forward but no going back
Sitting by time’s window
Waiting for the daily rebuff
To come winging by
Sifting little crumbs of comfort
From the embers
Screaming all the way……
FLASH FICTION
My stars had predicted it. ‘Go for maximum growth and opportunity, late in the afternoon’, said the Sun’s Stargazer. Well, it was late afternoon and here I was in firm’s stationary cupboard. The maximum growth had already taken place, and the opportunity was about to present itself. Just as soon as Jackie managed to free the stubborn zip on her skirt!
WITNESS
If I bear witness of myself
That witness is not true
There is another who bears witness
And that witness is you.
You are a burning and shining light
My only reason to rejoice
You gave me hope where there was none
You brought sanity to my voice.
If now you should wish to leave me
Where is there another who will believe me?
When I shout out to the heavens up above
That what saved me then, and will do so again
Is nothing other than unconditional love.
THE WAY WE WERE
The picture house is full of it tonight;
‘A TEAR JERKER…THE WAY WE WERE.
See that old woman?
She has three carrier bags of it
To comfort her in her doorway.
Belfast Johnny has two bottles
Of it in his greatcoat pocket
And eight shiny photos of it
Bridging the gaps in his shoes.
The preacher ladles out doses of it
With hot soup. Georgie Best,
Rock-n-Roll, wedding vows,
They are all part of it.
The past follows you around:
Like a faithful old dog
It never leaves your side.
All available on amazon #amwriting
Just been reading a review of GUANTANAMO DIARY by Mohamedu Ould Slahi. Incarcerated without trial since 2001, he was first held in a prison in Jordan, then after seven months of interrogation he was stripped, blindfolded, shackled and flown to a US airbase in Afghanistan. A fortnight later he was shipped to Guantanamo Bay. So begins a nightmare story worthy of Kafka. Thirteen years later he remains in a segregation cell some 4000 miles from his home in Mauritania. He has never been charged with a crime.
His handwritten manuscript was written nearly a decade ago, all 466 pages, after months of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. It took years for his lawyers to obtain the declassified diary. Slahi asks regularly during interrogations, ‘what am I accused of?’. He never receives a straight answer, and his efforts to tell the truth only anger;
Looks like a dog
walks like a dog
smells like a dog
barks like a dog
must be a dog
In the end he resorts to false confessions to end the torment. He lives in abject terror, suffering sleep deprivation, sexual assaults, beatings and threats against his mother’s life and his own. He is forced to drink salt water, and convinced he will be murdered.
Before the manuscript was released, US government censors pored over it, adding 2,500 black bar redactions. A federal judge ordered his release in 2010 but after 4 years he is still locked up. Why? A must-read for me.
GUANTANAMO DIARY Canongate £20
BUNKER ON PORTLAND BILL
This windowed concrete slab
Touching the hedgerows
Bunkered in leaf-strewn soil
Chivvies me
Muskets were reddened here
By shorter men than I
Defenders of a long-gone realm
Stooped between fissured ceiling and creviced floor
What mayhem bedlamed this rocky causeway?
Its cannons foddering the deep
The stun of steel slamming granite
The stench of gunfire turning stomachs
Loose limbs cluttering pathways
Death hovering
All quiet now on this promontory;
Sheep nibbling, tea and scones in the old armoury
Picture postcards of battles fought and won
Day-trippers picnicking
In the shadows cast by the big guns
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
Going round the sun sixty eight times
Takes some doing
Even if you are merely a passenger.
The first time round was really a blur
No sense at all that we were
Doing almost seventy thousand miles an hour.
Mother said I screeched most of the way
And that the snow piled high
For months every day.
Even the tenth spin;
I don’t recall a lot of that
Except that it was the year mother got fat
For a while, anyway
And then she was thin again.
The years stretched to decades
Still round and round we went
Sometimes I travelled in the company of steel bars
And sometimes I journeyed with the stars.
And there were times when writers came to say
Becket, Behan, Millar, Hemingway
Of course the children came too.
But for many years I have tripped with you.
My father got to number sixty nine;
I wonder how many rounds will be mine?
taken from my poetry collection ’67 PLUS’
available @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
My Writing Life 