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
Posts
CIVIL SERVANTS SHOULD NOT LEAK
CIVIL SERVANTS SHOULD NOT LEAK
He said it, my God he said it!
Brazen-faced, to the watching nation
‘They should not leak’, he said
‘After all, they are servants of the Crown’.
Leaking in public? How revolting!
And where would it begin?
A seepage from the ears perhaps?
Or a welling-up from beneath
All those virginal starched collars?
Or would it occur in the nether regions?
Visible only as a steady trickle
Down around the ankles.
A telephoned enquiry brought no joy;
‘I can assure you, Sir, we have
No leaking Civil Servants here
Why don’t you try MI 5’
HOLE IN THE GROUND
Don’t dig there, dig it elsewhere
You’re digging it round when it ought’a be square
listen to the inimitable Bernard Cribbins sing it on here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGk4AKOwJbc
I was reminded of this song earlier today when I saw 5 workmen around a hole in the pavement. One man was actually digging the hole, the other 4 were standing about in various relaxed poses watching him do the work. Maybe they were acting as a kind of barrier from the wind or something because nothing else made sense to me. I mean, you don’t need much instructions to dig a hole do you? You just get your shovel and dig. Or could they possibly be part of a relay team?; one man at the time, dig furiously for 10 minutes, then you hop out and the next in line hops in. Yeah, that could be it.
I don’t know what any of the above has to do with writing, but I do know that we writers often dig ourselves bloody great holes – and invariably have no idea how to get out of them again!
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
NAPOWRIMO
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
WRITERS BLOCK ME ARSE!
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
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
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
WHAT DOES THIS IMAGE SAY?
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
THE MISSING POSTMAN AND OTHER STORIES
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
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
My Writing Life 