THIS ALSO BE THE CODE
Aflunters,babyshed,churching
Drizzen, exflunct, faffle, geo-graffy,
Hoined, infradig, jampher, knoop
Liversick, mafle, natkin, oblat
Penfellow, quackle, raddlings
Scalch, tazzled, umbeer, vagitus
Welwilly, xyster, yafle, zuggers
ACHTUNG BABY!
This refreshingly quiet street
Round the corner from Checkpoint Charlie
A miasma of tourists
Taking selfies
Next to two fake American soldiers
Dressed in full cold war regalia
Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata
Keyed by unseen hands
Drifting through the lazy afternoon sunshine.
And you framed in the cafe window
Waiting for me.
.
All quiet on the western front these days
The almost musical sound of jackboots
No longer linger
No Stasi lurking
Berlin is no longer east or west
Just plain Berlin will do
.
Twenty five years ago
This was no mans land
Then the walls came tumbling down
Almost by accident
A flurry of missed communications
Garbled orders; fearful guards;
People shouting
Let us out, let us out
And we on the west side shouting back
Let them out, let them out
And you shouting
Let me out, let me out
And it happened
.
Today a row of plastic flowers
Mark the line where the wall stood
Mark the spot where we met.
Someone is watering them I see
Making it more difficult for me
To come and tell you
That the cold war has returned –
For us anyway.
THE BEAR NECESSITIES
‘What kind of animal are you then?’, she asked me.
‘Well’, I replied
‘I do not growl like a bear, I roar like a lion’.
‘Ah, one of them, are you?’
‘No actually, I’m more of a bear to be honest’.
‘Oh, they’re fearsome creatures, they are’.
‘Not really’, I said ‘once you get to know them.
For instance, take me
The other day, whilst in my bear mode –
Brown bear, I might add –
I took a notion to frighten some motorists.
I spotted a likely candidate and stepped from
Behind my tree hiding-place
And plonked myself in the middle of the road.
Then a motorist stopped and began berating me’,
You’re an ugly brown bear, you should be ashamed;
Trying to frighten people
Get out of my way. Don’t you know who I am?
I didn’t, but he told me anyway.
I am Ernest Hemingway.
GUT FEELING ON THE DUCK THEORY OF EVOLUTION
In the beginning there was silence
Slow symmetry break-dancing in the bleakness
Time’s arrows curving beyond comprehension
Soon, the dance of geometry commenced;
Atom, electron, proton, neutron,
Wave upon wave
Spin particle, spin!
Then into the melting pot
The first sounds of all our futures;
Quark, quark, quark, quark, quark, quark…
NOT WORKING
‘Not Working’ doesn’t sound too bad
Except on Monday morning
When the long weekend has overslept again
And you try to think of something you might do
That hasn’t already been taken care of
Like an old clock you chide me;
‘Not Working’; analogous to some
Broken-down contraption whose time is past
Well, nothing lasts forever
Tomorrow’s SUN may be the last!
‘Not Working’ means all rusted up
Out of action, unable to breathe
Useless, finished, dead
‘Not Working’ is in one’s head
Not a place in the unemployment queue
I won’t stagnate. Will you?
THE BLUE LAGOONS OF MAYO
Like oceans behind my eyes
The blue lagoons of Mayo glittered in the mist
‘Blue lagoons of Mayo? – Christ that’s rich’, remarked O’Hare
‘Unless the bogs have changed their colour since I resided there’
‘I remember ploughing through the Mayo wind and rain
Endlessly
And ne’er a pinch of blue did I ever snare
Do you remember The Playboy of the Western World?
Christy Mahon – now he could tell you a thing or three
About bogs, blue or otherwise
And windswept, storm-ridden, mackerel skies
He thought he killed his father
But no such luck
Like a faithful old dog
He followed Christy fretfully through mist and fog
Howlng into the wind
You never killed me with your loy
That time back there in the bog, boy’ ‘.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
RUMINATIONS
The world is full of poets
And most of them know it
Rhyming couplets with fucklets
Never thinking ‘dark chocolates’
Most of them over some visionary hill
Buying notebooks they will never fill
Looking for loves lost something-or-other
Or wondering why they never hated their mother.
Oh yes, a poet’s life is thankless
Almost as bad as a life lived wankless
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN US IS A ROOM
Somewhere between us is a room
It has six sides and no roof
‘Why is it open to the sky?’ you ask
I myself wonder why
But rather than show my ignorance
I say it is because it has no door
‘But I am in a wheelchair’, you say
‘I cannot be expected to pole vault myself inside’
‘I can make it four-sided’, I say
‘And we can use the two spares as ramps’
‘But it is eight foot tall’, you wail
‘Okay, forget it’, I say
‘It was only for a coffee anyway’.
PUT THAT FAG OUT!
Now Jeremy Clarkson
Is someone
You could pee on
Particularly
When he is not on fire.
SWEET TEA
Every month a ritual enactment
For the rent man
Mother, floury nose and doughed-up hands,
Smiling practice-perfect
Us children banished to the scullery,
A whispered ‘don’t you laugh now’
A silent prayer
And the teapot ready
Beside the rent book.
Every month ‘good morning Mrs Moran’
Lovely day to be sure’ and
YesI will have a cup of tea, thank you’
And every month a glowing red nose,
Lit up like a hot coal.
Every month silence from the scullery
Until the day little Tommy fell off his perch
And tumbled through the scullery door
To land in a heap in front
Of that illuminated face.
And then mother turning,
The sugar bowl in her hand
Saying – much too casually –
‘How many sugars would you like on your nose?’
My Writing Life 