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OLD ACQUAINTANCE

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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/

 

THE REPTILIAN JOHN JUNOR – OR ‘PASS THE SICK -BAG, ALICE’

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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.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/john-junor-%E2%80%98-bigot-and-blatant-hypocrite-who-lost-25m-sales-over-32-years%E2%80%99

 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

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 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?

 
This poem is taken from, 67- a collection of 71 poems, now available @  http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
 

 

 

 

 

 

BRUCE CHATWIN WAS HERE

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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

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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!

 

HOW TO BECOME FAMOUS

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Image

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

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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/

 

CROMWELL’S TOUR OF IRELAND

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‘Cromwell’ started off as a joke. We were touring Ireland a couple of years ago with another of my plays ‘On Raglan Road’, and had just played in Dingle, Co. Kerry, where I had purchased a new biography of Oliver Cromwell’s time in Ireland. When somebody asked what my next play was going to be I replied ‘Cromwell The Musical’. Everybody laughed, including myself, but over the next few months there were several (joking) questions about ‘how is the musical coming on’, and I thought ‘ maybe I will surprise them all’. I did surprise them – myself included – by actually writing – and finishing – it!

Cromwell's Tour of Ireland - Courtyard Theatre Poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Hell or to Connaught: that’s where Oliver Cromwell plans to send all Irish Catholics.

(The province of Connaught being perceived as little more than a collection of bogs and rocks, and of little use to English land-grabbers)

The year is 1649 and Oliver Cromwell is on the rampage in Ireland. His mission is to quell the Irish Catholic rebellion, with its growing support for English Royalists. Failure could mean a new Civil War in England. Not that he countenances failure; he has seen a vision – he truly believes he has God on his side.

Ireland’s only hope is Owen Roe O’Neill and his Ulster Army. O’Neill is a veteran of the Spanish Wars and is recognized as Ireland’s greatest soldier. Cromwell plans to ensure he doesn’t leave Ulster.

We see his journey through Ireland through his own eyes, those of his Puritan soldiers, and of two girls, Emir and Eithne, who, having been captured at the battle of Drogheda, are now being forced to work in the kitchens before being shipped off as slaves to the West Indies.

Emir is hiding a big secret; she is a spy for Owen Roe O’Neill’s Ulster army, She plans to poison Cromwell, little knowing that Cromwell’s own agents have a similar plan for O’Neill.

When Eithne is raped by one of the Puritan soldiers, both plan to escape and join the defenders at Limerick, where O’Neill’s Ulster army is making a last desperate stand.

PERFORMED IN MODERN DRESS – WITH A SPRINKLING OF MUSIC!

CLUEDO

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CLUEDO

Courage is all it takes

To say ‘I don’t love you anymore’

Instead of all this rigmarole

About finding yourself

 

Looking back now

I can see the clues;

Stupid of me not to notice them;

The KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign

In the middle of the bed;

The HIS and HERS towels in separate rooms,

And the YOU INSENSIBLE BRUTE!

Scrawled on the bathroom mirror

(that should have been the clincher)

 

But then, love is blind is it not?

Most of all to those who are

Its one-sided recipients

taken from my new book of poems ’67’, now available as an ebook and shortly as a paperback; http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/

 

THE TWENTY FIVE BEST PLAYS OF ALL TIME

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THE FOLLOWING ARE THE 25 BEST PLAYS OF ALL TIME, ACCORDING TO THE TELEGRAPH. ONLY TWO IRISH PLAYS QUALIFY; WAITING FOR GODOT AND THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE. NO ROOM FOR O’CASEY, SYNGE OR BEHAN? SHAKESPEARE GETS ONLY TWO, HAMLET AND A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. CARYL CHURCHILL GETS ONE, AS DOES VACLAV HAVEL AND NOEL COWARD. BETTER THAN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS OR BRIAN FRIEL?  JOE ORTON, TOM STOPPARD, JOHN OSBORNE ETC,                       I DON’T THINK SO.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10631419/Best-plays-of-all-time.html