get your copy free now!  (a review – good or bad – would be appreciated)

JOHNJO…is the study of a man from the cradle to the grave. Forced to go on the run from his Comeragh hill farm at an early age, Johnjo washes up in Lincolnshire in war-time England. Working on farms, and often finding himself treated worse than the prisoners-of-war, he goes on the run again. And so begins a life-long association with ‘the lump’ – the dark underbelly of the construction industry. From building motorways and living in camps you ‘wouldn’t keep a decent dog in’, we eventually find him working in London for a ‘subby’ called Bannaher – not having been home to Ireland for more than thirty years. Disillusioned and bitter at having been ground down by the harshness of his life, he, nevertheless, hangs on to a few sparks of defiance. The final straw comes when he sees his friend (lover?) buried alive in the trench they are working in, and he embarks on a rebellious ‘last hurrah

JUST WALKING

Walking…just walking

Away from the hum and drum

Away from the hub and bub

Away from the whine and grind of this rusty city

Couldn’t take it, they will say

Well, let them

This place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

I saw a man today selling boxes to homeless people

Business was brisk

Did you know that the stone from the Pyramids

Would build a wall round England ten feet tall?

They say John the Baptist was gay

Funny the thoughts that come into your head when you’re walking

There was an old woman who lived in a hovel

She didn’t have any shoes but no one cared

She fell down one day

The hospital put her in a trolley for a few weeks

Then sent her away

Back to her hovel, her piss-stained bed, her broken radio

Her clock that didn’t tick, her bare cupboards, her solitary chair

Carried her up three flights, stood her in front of a walking frame

Said ‘take care of yourself, dear’

The whole fucking world anaesthetised by indifference

Emily wrote only one book, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and is world famous because of it. Yet, she wrote and published many poems in her short life and hardly anybody knows it.  She published a book of poems with  her sisters Charlotte and Anne, called POEMS OF CURRER, ELLIS AND ACTON BELL, which initially sold only 2 copies. This is one of those poems

No Coward Soul Is Mine

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life – that in me hast rest,
As I – Undying Life – have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou – Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

Happy birthday Emily.

Well worth a read!  So funny.

https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/hunter-s-thompson-the-kentucky-derby-is-decadent-and-depraved/

SUICIDE BY GUNSHOT

The Gonzo man is gone

His height when living was six foot three

Much less when he was dead

His ashes were fired into space

From a canon

In a ceremony

Funded by his old friend

Johnny Depp

He looked down the barrel of a gun

Didn’t like what he saw

And so he pulled that motherfucker trigger

No more games

No more bombs

No more walking

No more fun

No more swimming

Sixty seven is seventeen years past fifty

Seventeen years more

Than needed or wanted

Act your (old) age

Relax

This wont hurt

BANG.

HUNTER S THOMPSON ONLY WROTE ABOUT 3 POEMS IN HIS LIFETIME AS FAR AS  I CAN TELL. THIS IS THE BEST OF THEM

Collect Telegram from a Mad Dog
by Hunter S. Thompson

Not being a poet, and drunk as well,
leaning into the diner and dawn
and hearing a juke box mockery of some better
human sound
I wanted rhetoric
but could only howl the rotten truth
Norman Luboff
should have his nuts ripped off with a plastic fork.
Then howled around like a man with the
final angst,
not knowing what I wanted there
Probably the waitress, bend her double
like a safety pin,
Deposit the mad seed before they
tie off my tubes
. . .

Suddenly a man with wild eyes rushed
out from the wooden toilet
Foam on his face and waving a razor
like a flag, shouting
. . .
We’ll take our vengeance now!
. . .

We rang for Luboff
on the pay phone, but there was
no contact
. . .

Get a Lawyer, I said. These swine have gone
far enough.
Now is the time to
lay a writ on them,
Cease and Desist
. . .

The legal man agreed
We had a case and indeed a duty to
Right these Wrongs, as it were
The Price would be four thousand in front and
ten for the nut.
I wrote him a check on the Sawtooth
National Bank,
but he hooted at it
While rubbing a special oil on
his palms
To keep the chancres from itching
beyond endurance
On this Sabbath.
. . .
Later, from jail
I sent a brace of telegrams
to the right people,
explaining my position.

    October 13, 1965

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/619/hunter-s-thompson-the-art-of-journalism-no-1-hunter-s-thompson

WORKING FOR THE SUBBY – Johnjo’s tale….available for 99p on Amazon

JOHNJO…is the study of a man from the cradle to the grave. Forced to go on the run from his Comeragh hill farm at an early age, Johnjo washes up in Lincolnshire in war-time England. Working on farms, and often finding himself treated worse than the prisoners-of-war, he goes on the run again. And so begins a life-long association with ‘the lump’ – the dark underbelly of the construction industry. From building motorways and living in camps you ‘wouldn’t keep a decent dog in’, we eventually find him working in London for a ‘subby’ called Bannaher – not having been home to Ireland for more than thirty years. Disillusioned and bitter at having been ground down by the harshness of his life, he, nevertheless, hangs on to a few sparks of defiance. The final straw comes when he sees his friend (lover?) buried alive in the trench they are working in, and he embarks on a rebellious ‘last hurrah