MY LITTLE CHICKADEES

It’s that time again

When the school holidays come round

And all sane adults go to ground

To avoid the pavement madness

Of the two-wheeled angry hordes

Swarming like demented wasps

Buzzing in and out, turn about

Up and down, round and round

The world flapping in their wake

All seeking somewhere to have their cake.

Perhaps W C Fields was right;

When asked his views on kids he cried

It all depends on whether they are boiled or fried.

OUT SOON AS A PAPERBACK ON AMAZON – CROMWELL’S TOUR OF IRELAND

Playwright Tom O’Brien says…

‘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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Ro 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!

cast of original production:

SOME PICS FROM THE BIG APPLE

Sitting in this rather arty apartment in downtown Brooklyn. The wind from the river whistling  tunelessly past the brownstone houses and the recently-risen dazzling glass-fronted edifices sharing this over-crowded parcel of the Big Apple. Across the Hudson Manhattan looms large; the great caverns of 5th Avenue, 7th Avenue,42nd Street, et al not visible from my lowly standpoint.

I am reading  – or rather re-reading Kerouac’s On The Road – and after over thirty years absence it reads like something brand new. I don’t think I appreciated way back then how great a book it is. Kerouac talks endlessly about this shadowy character Dean Moriarty as he travels across the Great Plains of America. Maybe Moriarty is himself, who knows?

Yesterday I saw the metropolitan sprawl that is NY from the top of the Empire State  Building- 102 floors up ! – and what a sprawl it is!  A view from Central Parks which reeks of old money, all the way down to Wall Street where the new money burns holes in many pockets! And in between such varied sights as TImes SQuare, the  Chrysler Building, the Museum of Modern Art, St Patrick’s Cathedral, and so on. They say if you’re tired of NY you’re tired of living. I am sure it is true!

SNOW!

LOVE POEM FROM BONMAHON God in his heaven never bettered this; Never hit perfection more square-on. Rugged cliffs lip the strand, Opening to fields behind, The Atlantic, white-layered, Sweeping int…

Source: LOVE POEM FROM BONMAHON

Merry Xmas

 

POEM FOR MY FATHER

 

 

 

 

THE NIGHT THE MUSIC DIED

 

He lay in the box quite comfortably

His waxen face staring into infinity

Looking much better in death

Than he ever had in life.

It was all that I could do to peer

At him through slatted fingers

From the back of the room;

The ever-present smell of tanning

And leather aprons absent now;

More than forty seeping years of it

Scrubbed away one last time

 

His moped – a natural progression from pedal power

When his legs gave out –

Lay discarded in the coal shed

At the back of the house.

(No driver you see, and mother still had the shopping to do)

He dug turf, cut down young Sally trees,

And turned over his bit of stony ground endlessly.

In summer he clipped sheep slowly

With a machine bought by post from Clerys,

Carefully stowing it away in its box

When the shearing was done.

 

The clay pipes he sucked on – their broken stems

Held together with blood pricked from his thumb –

Were redundant now

And his three bottles of Sunday-night Guinness

Would stand corked under the counter evermore.

Who would dance half-sets with her now?

My mother enquired of no one in particular,

The smoky saloon bar stunned that the music had felled him

Knocked him to the floor in the middle of the tune.

He lay there with a smile on his face

Knowing it was over

And I never got to know what was on his mind.

 

We put him in the ground

And sadness trickled through me

Like a handful of sand through my fingers.

Later, everyone stood around

Eating sparse ham sandwiches

While I stood there, dry-eyed;

He was a great man they all said

Slapping the back of my overcoat;

Sure he gave forty years to that tannery

 

And what did it give him?

I wanted to shout to the throng;

A gold watch and a tin tray

And both had his name spelled wrong