MAN OF STEEL
I fuse bits of metal together;
A sculptor of steel.
Inanimate iron
Comes alive in my hands.
Angle-iron,flats,beams and round bars
Are my materials.
I heat them, bend them
Shape them and weld them.
I can make anything with steel;
A strong frame
That will hold a skyscraper
Erect;
A steel hull
That can ride the waves;
I can even make a boxy flower-pot stand.
Author: gorgeousgael
OBSERVATIONS
OBSERVATIONS
Our lives are not our own
Our cards are marked from womb to tomb
Jealousy is the art of counting
Someone else’s blessings and not your own
You will never grow big by thinking small
The life you leave behind is no big deal at all
Be strong, be brave
But most of all don’t be a slave
To fashions, to politics, or whatever is the craze
Don’t run if you’re not able
And never expect happiness to come
With a glossy buy-me-now label.
RUSSIAN ROULETTE CURES DEPRESSION
RUSSIAN ROULETTE AS A CURE FOR DEPRESSION
‘The first time I pressed the trigger
I knew I was immortal’
‘I wished the feeling could last forever,
My jubilation was total’
‘I’m a five-timer’, he told the newcomer
Extending his gun-finger and closing it slow
Every lost life seemed etched on his forehead
Five down, one more to go
‘Boredom mostly’ and ‘it passes the time’
Were his excuses for such dramatic play.
‘And it turns the girls on too
In some extraordinary way’
‘The best cure for depression I know’,he said
Handing the game to the next in line
Where the muzzle blew a hole between his eye and his ear
Death, too, passes the time
taken from my recent collection ’67’, now available @ http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/product/67-2/
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
Harold pinter wrote the following poem as a comment on the Gulf War and the USA involvement in it.
It was rejected for publication by the Independent, the Observer, the Guardian (on the grounds it was ‘a family newspaper’), the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. The last named, in particular, aroused Pinter’s ire by accompanying rejection with the assurance that the poem had ‘considerable force’ and that it shared the author’s views on the United States.
Harold says; ‘I started to write this poem on the plane going to the Edinburgh Festival in August 1991. I had a rough draft by the time we landed in Edinburgh. It sprang from the triumphalism, the machismo, the victory parade, that were very much in evidence at the time. So that is the reason for “We blew the shit out of them.”‘ Most editors used the words ‘obscene’ justify its non-publication. But that is the whole point:This poem uses obscene words to describe obscene acts and obscene attitudes.’
I GUESS NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE PINTER WROTE IT IN 1991
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!
Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.
We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES
IN PRAISE OF IRISH THEATRES
For more than twenty years
I have emptied pens on virgin pages;
A million words at least
And many more chewed in frustration
Then spat into the dustbin of the ages.
Words are cheap and wordsmiths cheaper still
But we like our efforts to be appreciated
And performed ( better still)
Yet to Irish Theatres great and small,
I do not write plays at all;
You have ignored my work
Yet the English do not shirk
To place my plays centre-stage
And Americans too have premiered a few
Which makes me ask you nicely
Irish Theatres, what the FUCK
Is the matter with you?
BELONGINGS
BELONGINGS
I do not have a mill with shady willow trees
I have a horse and a whip
I will kill you and go
I do not have a red Ferrari or a pink rose
I have a rifle and a bandolier
I will shoot you and go
I do not to have a wife or a tiny yellow bikini
I have a mother and two goats
I will kiss you and stay
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
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 stay
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?
MILKING TIME
MILKING TIME
Father always hummed at the milking
Pausing only to say ‘easy girl, easy there’
When a troublesome horse-fly struck
Sitting on his three-legged stool
His pail clamped between his thighs,
He caressed old Daisy’s belly with his head
And sometimes sank his fist into the wrist
When she lashed out
The sound of milk hitting the pail
Was like rain dancing on corrugated steel
He could hit one of those flies
At three paces with one long squirt.
Sometimes he practiced on me.
all my books are available @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
TWO POEMS
UNTITLED
This man’s war’s not fought
With cannonball or shell
This piper plays in places
Where the mind no longer dwells
This piper raises all the rafters
Left in hell
MY TIME
This then is my time;
A ribbon of memories
Stretching back to an age
I can hardly remember
Anymore
With an indeterminate
Number of coils
Still to be unrolled
From a drum
Revolving ever faster as it
Unwinds
HITCHBOT THE HITCHHIKER
HITCHBOT THE ROBOT WILL ATTEMPT TO HITCHHIKE ACROSS CANADA, STARTING ON 27th JULY. GOOD LUCK HITCH!
HITCHBOT THE HITCHHIKER
Hi! I’m Hitchbot and I’m hiking not biking
From Halifax to Victoria
Then maybe reverse the process
From British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
I have no driver’s licence – yet –
Otherwise your services I could forget.
I am short of stature
And I wear wellies when it’s wet.
I know I look like a dustbin on legs
And my thumbs are really
Just glove-covered pegs.
I have no neck to speak of
And there are times to be honest
When I am tempted to just sneak off
Into the Canadian dark
And comfort myself in some technology park.
I mean – a welly-wearing droid
Is something most drivers
Would swerve violently to avoid!
My Writing Life 