PLAY ON
Ensconced here in contemplation
Your presence overwhelms me
Arms outstretched, yet never chiding
Even knowing my ways were wrong
Burning both ends speeds up damnation
I can see that now;
Lust living in the wings
While the songs sang themselves
And courage dredged from the bottle
While the melody lingered on
Music was my life
But you changed it all;
Your song will still be nectar, Lord
When all this is gone…
from my new collection; http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
The Morris Dancers were out inn force today, in preparation for the traditional May Day celebration of Jack-In-The-Green, which takes place tomorrow. JITG is a tradition going back hundreds of years; In the 16th and 17th centuries in England people would make garlands of flowers and leaves for the May Day celebration. They became increasingly elaborate, and many groups would try to outdo each other. In the late 18th century this became a matter for competition, milkmaids in London carried garlands on their heads with silver objects on them, but the crown had to go to the chimney sweeps. Their garland was so big it covered the entire man, and it became known as Jack in the Green.
However, by the turn of the century the custom was seen no more. The reasons were twofold: the Act which stopped boys climbing chimneys had been passed and these had been the main performers; secondly the Victorians had a different attitude to such customs, the prettification of customs took place; no more the giant maypoles with drunken and promiscuous behaviour. They were replaced by small poles imported from Germany with happy skipping children around them.
The custom was revived in Hastings by Mad Jacks Morris Dancers in 1983.
CIRCUS
For fourteen days now
The tiger has prowled
His container home;
Two paces forward, stop
Two paces back, stop
In between times he bares his teeth
To applause behind tungsten bars
Around him, candy-stripe tents
And shabby eight-wheelers
Cluster the green,
Whilst pint-sized piebalds
Lacklustrely sniff flattened grass
And stray dogs move silently
Between guy-ropes and giraffes
The carnival is over;
Clowns without their faces
Mingle with the roustabouts
Just an extra pair of hand now
And the Three Amazons are exposed
As jaded blondes without their trapeze trappings
The nondescript retinue pull the final peg,
Collapse the big top
And lock away the magic…
And still the tiger prowls.
taken from my new book of poetry, ’67’, now available @ http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I see they have sent him down – again
A two stretch this time
I sold a typewriter for him once
And got six months for my trouble
(he got three, but swore it was my idea)
Then there was the time he
Asked me to burn his house down
‘Two hundred quid’ he said ‘easy money’
‘The insurance won’t twig it’
(when I declined, he did the job himself)
After that we lost contact for several years
He removed his wife and daughters to another town,
Where he was just as big a bastard – to them –
And to the world in general
Drinking, gambling, big-mouthing and beating,
Mostly his wife,
Till she put a slit near his throat
With a carving knife
Left to his own devices
He hung misery about him like a shroud;
He went to Knock for a week
And returned a changed man
Flowers from Interflora, presents for the girls,
Flannel for everyone else.
She relented of course.
They don’t speak much about him in the town now
A nudge and a wink
When his wife appears;
‘She must have known what was going on…
Doing that with his girls….
And she had him back!’
taken from ’67’, my new book of poetry, now available @ http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
JOHN JUNIOR WAS ***T.
jUNOR WAS VARIOUSLY DESCRIBED AS REPTILIAN, ONE OF THE MOST DISAGREEABLE MEN IN BRITAIN, A BIGOT, A RACIST, A DEEPLY UNPLEASANT, PHILISTINE AND HYPOCRITICAL MAN.
HE WAS A MONSTER, WHO INSTRUCTED HIS STAFF NEVER TO TRUST A MAN WHO WORE A BEARD, HAT OT SUEDE SHOES, WHO BELIEVED THAT AIDS WAS A FAIR PUNSIHMENT FOR HOMOSEXUALITY, THAT ONLY ‘POOFS DRANK ROSE’, AND WHO HATED THE IRISH WITH A VICIOUSNESS THAT HAD TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED
HE WAS EDITOR OF THE SUNDAY EXPRESS FOR OVER 30 YEARS, WHERE HE MANAGED TO LOSE OVER 2.5 MILLION COPIES IN LOST SALES DURING THAT TIME. AT LEAST HIS READERS WEREN’T QUITE AS BIGOTED AS HE IMAGINED THEM TO BE! I FIRST BECAME AWARE OF HIM WHEN HE WAS LATER WRITING A COLUMN FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, WHERE HIS ANTI-IRISH TIRADES WERE LEGENDARY. HE ENDED ONE ARTICLE WITH THE WORDS ‘WOULDN’T YOU RATHER ADMIT TO BEING A PIG THAN TO BE IRISH?’
HE WAS KNIGHTED IN 1980 FOR HIS SERVICES TO BIGOTRY AND RACISM – A CASE OF THE ESTABLISHMENT YET AGAIN LOOKING AFTER ITS OWN. PASS THE SICK-BAG, ALICE.
read/buy my books @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
PIGS AND J JUNOR
This island, this septic island
Adrift in a sea of indifference
Towed along by other entities
Once fearful of its wash
Hear the battle-cry from every tower block,
Every street corner every public bar,
Every private club
It is the cry of the wastrel, the cry of the vagabond
The thief in the night, the rapist, the pick-pocket
The whore,
The low cur, the high roller, the insider,
The asset-stripper, the banker and the bounty-hunter
Ask not what I can do for my country
But what my country can do for me
You have fouled this planet with your culture
Profaned us all with your arrogance
You value dogs more highly than children
And leave old soldiers to freeze in empty rooms;
Single mothers flaunt their skin-tight jeans
And ‘gentlemen’ still peer down their long noses
Where the only good Irishman is a stupid one
Or a dead one
And the only good Black man an unemployed one
Or a pimp
Wouldn’t you rather be a pig?
Bruce Chatwin was a bisexual who died of Aids in 1989, aged only 48. Bruce was one of the finest travel writers of the 20th C, and books like In Patagonia and The Songlines influenced me just as much as the works of Hemingway, Behan, Greene and O’Casey did as a fledgling writer.
He loved exotic destinations and always wanted to go to Patagonia; in 1974 he flew Lima, Peru, for the Sunday Times Magazine, and decided to go further. ‘Have gone to Patagonia’ he said in a telegram to the Times, and for the next 6 months travelled around the region, listening and writing, which resulted in the book ‘In Patagonia’ a couple of years later. Part travelogue, part story-telling, it dramatises in graphic detail the regions of Patgonia, and Tierra Del Fuego – which is sometimes called Land of Fire.
In The Songlines, he follows the trail of the Australian aboriginal people – the native Koori – and learns about the Aboriginal idea of Songlines, the tracks of music the Aboriginal Ancestors left as they walked from place to place singing creation into existence, naming things and attaching stories to their sacred places. Each Aboriginal is associated with an animal, or totemic family, who sang his Songline, and considers that association as even more sacred than the one he has with his blood family.
Both books are a blend of fact and fiction, and revolutioned the art of travel writing.
details of my own books are on; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
SEVEN A.M. IN THE SMOKE
‘No surrender’
The motorists’ battle-cry
Echoing through the smog and fumes;
Furiously-pedalling cyclists
Sinisterly masked
Towing technology in their slipstreams
Legions of static transporters slowly going nowhere
Human perambulators
Reeling them in one by one
Phantom headlines flashing before my eyes;
FOUR PEDESTRIANS MAIMED
BUT HE GAINED TWO CAR-LENGTHS
Onwards to the asylum!
OH YEAH!
all my books are available here; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
SAYING IT IS THE HARD PART
The secret is to be casual;
Matter-of-fact words can
Sometimes inflame the senses;
Not straight away, perhaps,
But later, when the hurly-burly
Of conversation has had time to sink in
Maybe the trick is not to be seen saying it;
‘I love you’ is such a difficult phrase
To force between clenched teeth
see more poems in my new book of poetry ’67’.
http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
My Writing Life 