THAT IS THE QUESTION
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
THAT IS THE QUESTION
LACKENDARA
LACKENDARA
Ah Lackendara
You heard the voices too
At Paschendaele where you
Cowered as the big guns
Bombarded your world to silence
Blasted your thoughts to kingdom come
And left you forlorn
On that ragged outcrop
In the foothills of the Comeraghs
The fox and the curlew your only companions
The gurgling Mahon Falls
All there was to quench your thirst.
For thirty years you trod those hills
Taking little notice
Of ordinary life around you going on
Your presence on the mountain a constant reminder
Of mans’ inhumanity to man.
FALL
FALL
Autumn mornings are best;
The sun smiling low over the gasworks
Flighty leaves browning the common
Kites lark-high over the tree-tops
Coffee and a roll in the old rectory
And you by my side
NO THANKS
NO THANKS
If I left you now, what would you miss?
Grumpy mornings, silent evenings
And taken-for-granted pause between the emptiness;
And hidden behind the tall tales, adultery;
Mental maybe, but real nevertheless
You dazed me in the park one Sunday’s summer afternoon.
Your smile was electric.
Later, you hid your patience well
When freedom was dragged from under my feet.
You ticked of the (waiting) time
And I repaid you with monologues of deceit
There are those more deserving of your kindness;
Less selfish, less angry,
And less possessed of my bloody-mindedness.
You bore your cross to the edge and beyond.
Always hauling me back to the fold.
Snatches of love were your only compensation,
Were I a better man I would cloak you in gold
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
I love this poem; Walt Whitman’s 1865 eulogy to Abraham Lincoln. Whitman lived through the American Civil War, and being so close to the founding of the country knew many people who were part of the revolution.The main political and social issues during his time were slavery and rights for African Americans. He admired Abraham Lincoln immensely, sharing his commitment to the Union and his opposition to slavery.
Robin Williams makes repeated references to the poem in the 1989 film DEAD POETS SOCIETY
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring,
O bells! But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
MY LATEST POETRY COLLECTIONS
NORTH CAROLINA TREES
NORTH CAROLINA TREES
Tall pines, straight as railway sleepers,
Stun me with their skinny beauty
Some of these were old
When Abraham Lincoln was barely knee high.
And it is even possible that George Washington
Touched one or two as he rode by.
Durham was young when these pines first sprouted life
As were Raleigh, Charlotte, and Queensboro et al
Perhaps it was the Redcoats who seeded this lush terrain
Beauty shipped all the way
From England’s green and pleasant land
To conceal the carnage of their long and murderous campaign.
PLAY ON
PLAY ON
Ensconced here in contemplation
Your presence overwhelms me
Arms outstretched, yet never chiding
Even knowing my ways were wrong
Burning both ends speeds up damnation
I can see that now;
Lust living in the wings
While the songs sang themselves
And courage dredged from the bottle
While the melody lingered on
Music was my life
But you changed it all;
Your song will still be nectar, Lord
When all this is gone…
ZOO TIME AND CHANGING TIMES
Some writers should be avoided like a swarm of mosquitos. I am thinking of the likes of Martin Amis/Will Self/Salman Rushdie etc. I would probably have put Howard Jacobson in that category until I read my first book of his – ZOO TIME – recently. Brilliantly funny, waspish, and with prose so sharp you could cut yourself. Ostensibly it is about writer Guy Ableman and his obsession with his mother-in-law, but really it’s about writers and their obsession with the writing profession. No one reads any more according to Guy; his publsher, fearing the same, has committed suicide, his agent is in hiding, and his wife, Vanessa, is writing her own novel, which together with his unruly passion for his mother-in-law combine to make this the best novel I have read in years. 5*****
CHANGING TIMES
We are murdering time
Now is no good
Maybe what happens next will be better
Life is someplace else
Perhaps on our poncey phones;
It’s like eating in a restaurant
And discussing the menu
From somewhere else;
Everyone is on edge
Like we are slipping a cog
Or like musical chairs
When the music stops
You change your life
Doesn’t matter if you get it wrong
It’ll be shit whatever you choose
RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
See all the down-and-out lickers and fuckers
Down the Embankment they tumble
Unable any longer to bear much reality
Too much self-knowledge
And time spent trotting
Between the Tate and the National
Or one of their endless reading groups
Believing they had
A story to tell
If only things had worked out,
If only the monkey had hit the right keys.
Hush! if you listen carefully
You can hear the dead click
Of their keyboards
In the raucousness of the Soho night;
The minicabs, the limos, the rickshaws all screaming
Take me…take me…I’m free
And the hen nighters, the stag nighters,
The whatever-the-fuck nighters,
Lingering in pools of their own vomit
Waiting for the paramedics to call;
Shirts open to the navel, skirts slit
From here to eternity.
Late summer, later winter, who gives a shit?
The restaurants are all full
Though nobody is really eating
Just being there is what matters.
Smokers stop the traffic
Inspecting their mobiles
What would a Martian make of that?
No one sees anything any more
Except the lampposts they walk into;
There are no witnesses to crime;
How anybody falls in love anymore is a puzzle
Eyes no longer meet in lingering amazement
Unless they are reflected
In all those infernal hand-held screens.
for all my books see; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
My Writing Life 