DAFFODILS
I saw Christ nailed to a tree
In an East London churchyard
Weather-beaten from looking,
While the adjacent graveyard
Played host to a thousand
Sloping stone soldiers.
There, daffodils bunched together
And it made me wonder
Why the graveyard should display
Such a profusion of yellow
When the churchyard itself
Was barren of colour
Ernest Hemingway got it about right; There is nothing to writing, you just sit at your typewriter and bleed.
There are 10 types of writers block – I kid you not!
You can’t come up with an idea.
. You have a ton of ideas but can’t commit to any of them, and they all peter out.
You have an outline but you can’t get through this one part of it.
You’re stuck in the middle and have no idea what happens next.
You have a terrible feeling your story took a wrong turn a hundred pages back, and you only just hit a dead end.
You’re bored with all these characters, they won’t do anything.
AND SO IS THIS
You keep imagining all the reasons people are going to say your story sucks, and it paralyzes you.
You can’t think of the right words for what you’re trying to convey in this one paragraph.
You had this incredibly cool story in your head, and now you’re turning it into words on a screen and it’s suddenly dumb.
. You’re revising your work, and you can’t see your way past all those blocks of text you already wrote.
AND THIS E
Oh jaysus, if I didn’t have writers block before I’ve got it now
to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
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
OLD MATTRESSES
They have raised a highway
Across our valley
And landscaped it
With blocks of windowed concrete.
Beneath, the river strangles itself
With shopping trolleys
And bits of old bicycles
Worn-out mattresses
And smashed-up pallets are everywhere
While a bloated condom
Flutters by on a piece of driftwood.
Painted hoarding-women
With rotating eyes
Compete for attention
With pram-pushing young love,
Their stilettos tap-dancing the hard shoulder
On a clear day
Juggernauts gleam in the sun
And rolled-up tabloids
Tell tall tales about Royalty
Or football….and Sex
It says NO!
My new play NO BLACKS, NO DOGS,NO POLES has its world premiere at PENTAMETERS THEATRE, Heath St, Hampstead London NW3 6TE and runs from 13th May to 1st June. It deals with racism and bigotry in Ireland
Synopsis
The dysfunctional Kennedy clan are having a re-union. There’s the father, Con, a successful building contractor in London who has had to relocate back in Ireland because of tax irregularities in the UK. Con is secretly bisexual, although not-so-secret from his wife, Marion, who has known it all along and kept quiet about it. His estranged son, Michael, turns up after five years in Australia with Cathy, his new aborigine wife. To say his parents are surprised would be putting it mildly. His nephew, Jimmy, also turns up and it is soon apparent that his racist, bigoted views haven’t mellowed any as he has got older. We learn that he is there at Con’s invitation; his real reason being to spy on Marion, who Con suspects of having an affair. Jimmy also has his own agenda, selling crack/cocaine to the local drug users – a plan which backfires when the drugs, which he has buried in the back garden, are discovered by Michael, heightening the already tense atmosphere in the house. Add in JJ, construction manager for Con, whose attraction to Marion must be obvious to everyone except Con.
WATCH THIS SPACE FOR UPDATES
to purchase or read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
LONDON HIGH-RISE
The graffiti spreads like muck along the walkways
In the lifts and on the stairs;
BOLLOCKS TO THE POLL TAX
TANYA SUCKS and CORINNE FUCKS
The stench of urine everywhere
This calcified menagerie
Bakes hearts as hard as concrete
Solidifies old attitudes, buries hope
Deifies ignominy
Here, echoes of hollow laughter
Ghost through the floors
Children play high-rise hopscotch
And stilettos click rhythmically
Along tuneless corridors
Another circus of misfits
Adrift in the maze
Cocooned in captivity
In this graceless legacy
Of the stack-em-high days
to read extracts from any of my books click on my Amazon page; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
…is more shitty poetry. So says Charlotte Cuevas on her online blog. Or doesn’t need. (she was being sarcastic) Charlotte is a napowrimo knocker, who feels that this month of unfettered poetry offerings brings out the worst in people. Poetry-wise anyhow.
“And we especially need more shitty poetry that conforms to predetermined themes and forms- daily prompts which relieve us from the bothersome task of coming up with something on our own.
“Write a persona poem from the viewpoint of the first thing you see when you look away from the computer screen.”
“Grab a blind person and write a sestina using the first six words they point to in the newspaper.”
I’m sorry, are we poets or are we vending machines? What the hell kind of poet prides themselves on “Hey, pick any random form and subject and I’ll make a poem out of it in 20 minutes or less or your money back.”
There’s more in the same vein, but to be honest I don’t give a shit anymore!
SHITTY POEM
Perhaps we were less deceived
Than first we believed
In nineteen-sixty-three.
Legs, The Beatles, moon-talk
And JFK going down that
Long slide to eternity.
Later, there was Dylan
Vietnam killing
And Mini’s both
Mechanical and mercurial
While all the time
We were shooting a line
That was both entertaining
And entrepreneurial
This wasn’t the way we were;
A generation of graven anonymities
Their money-God waxing
While free-thinkers wane.
Well are you shot of it, pal:
Nothing, like something,
Is happening again.
TRAVELLING THIS HIGHWAY
Travelling this highway
Places more than distance between us.
As the gap widens
So the empty feeling grows
Lovers can’t be choosers, you said
Our meetings timed to fill your empty moments –
As if such transience could ever be enough.
He rules you still though love is gone
Dead as the wasp on this window sill
Your heart would race away if you would let it;
Why care a jot what others think?
You were never meant for running
I can see that now;
Too much you value to be arranged.
I never believed I could say good bye;
So I didn’t.
Not always. Sometimes it is in the most unusual places. On the Hollywood hills for example 
My Writing Life 