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…
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
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Despite her aversion to anything red
Marnie still wore scarlet lipstick in bed
A warning to writers
That plot holes are dangerous.
Blog holes are dangerous too;
You can easily fall through
The gaps in the information highway.
But pot holes are the most dangerous
Of these blighters
and must be avoided at all cost
By day-dreaming writers.
DON’T MAKE YOUR HOUSE IN MY MIND
Oh yes, I saw what you wanted
From the very first day we met;
Your long legs wanton in the marram grass,
You promised sex without frills,
Your instincts more mothering than you know,
You delivered it without thrills
After the kids came it was respectability
And a job we could grow old in;
Our own home twenty years down the road
Everything borrowed along the way;
Freedom mortgaged for a safe house
Wasn’t such a big price to pay
All things come to pass in time;
The kids, the home, the income,
Shared lives going down the long slide
But their passing leaves a sour taste behind;
I should have made it clear from the start,
Don’t make your house in my mind
Who can figure this poem out? It has a simple premise. You want a clue? Dictionary.
THIS BE THE CODE
Office, Xerox: Ken,
Tamil? Quaker? Bombardier?
Radical feminism un-looked for;
Watch Nazi Party Manager!
Laminate salt-lick zeal
Incur haphazard eye-ball carpeting
Dump generous yarn
Joyful abundance
ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY
Oh beautiful chromed perambulator
You of the sleek wheels
And wayward inclinations
Carrier of booze and babies
And, occasionally, goods and chattels,
You were a lovely mover once
Look at you now;
Silt to your midriff
Capsized for eternity
Gathering flotsam and jetsam
For a stinking old stream;
Fit for nothing but stopping gaps
THE EMUS
Fuck you
Said the Emu
Though of course
I couldn’t be sure
It was an Emu at all,
Never having seen a live one before;
Well, not crossing the road
Ahead of me anyway;
Part of a group
That resembled a hen party;
(or should that be Emu party?)
A troop of tarty Emus with cropped hair,
Johnny Rotten afficonados,perhaps?
Teetering across the never-ending road
In the Australian outback;
Chaperoned by a wedge-tailed eagle…
Chaperoned?
Who looked just as likely
To sink its teeth
Into their browning flesh
As guide them safely to the other side.
Perhaps it was the eagle
Who said ‘fuck you’?
In the fading light
I couldn’t be certain
Of anything.
see all my books @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
In the Australian outback
JUST WALKING
Walking…just walking
Away from the hum and drum
Away from the hub and bub
Away from the whine and grind of this rusty city
Couldn’t take it, they will say
Well, let them
This place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
I saw a man today selling boxes to homeless people
Business was brisk
Did you know that the stone from the Pyramids
Would build a wall round England ten feet tall?
They say John the Baptist was gay
Funny the thoughts that come into your head when you’re walking
There was an old woman who lived in a hovel
She didn’t have any shoes but no one cared
She fell down one day
The hospital put her in a trolley for a few weeks
Then sent her away
Back to her hovel, her piss-stained bed, her broken radio
Her clock that didn’t tick, her bare cupboards, her solitary chair
Carried her up three flights, stood her in front of a walking frame
Said ‘take care of yourself, dear’
The whole fucking world anaesthetised by indifference
see all my books @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
MY CAR NOW TALKS TO ME
Hello
Goodbye
Raising the lights like a stage curtain
Playing little movies
Serenading me with melodies
The welcome – farewell experience
They call it
“An emotionally resonant experience”
And that digital note of appreciation
“Thank you for driving a hybrid”
As if it was something…well
Unconnected with this thing on four wheels.
And those door handles
Illuminating when they sense my presence
The needles on the instruments
Snapping to attention as I open the door
There’s a welcoming theme
Part Hollywood soundtrack
Part plane swoosh
And that puddle lamp!
A welcome mat of light.
My car is a robot I think
With a personality not just in its body
But also in its behaviour.
“How can I help you?”
It asks now
As I prepare for take-off.
I really feel like telling it
To shut the fuck up
But I don’t want to hurt its feelings.
excerpt from Lorian Hemingway’s memoir on her grandfather Ernest;
I had visited my grandfather’s grave in Ketchum the summer I had caught the marlin, arriving at the small hillside cemetery on a scalding July day, a half-finished fifth of vodka in one hand, a filter-tip cigar in the other. I’d made my way to the simple marble slab marked by a white cross, and stood swaying over the marker for a long time, expecting epiphany, resolution, a crashing, blinding flash of insight…. I wanted to say something of value to the old man, perhaps that I had met a dare he had set forth by example, but nothing came. The neck of the bottle grew hot in my hand. I tipped it to my mouth, taking a long swig, then poured the rest, a stream of booze, clear as Caribbean waters, at the head of the marker. “Here,” I said, “have this,” and walked away.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY (who loved horse racing); “I never back any animal that can talk – except myself”
PAPA
The time is near
The clock is queer
I have had more than one beer.
Papa crept downstairs
In the early morning.
The keys are close to the time.
They open the locked cabinet beneath it.
The shotgun is quickly loaded
Two in the chambers just in case
Then the gun is heeled to the wall
And his forehead firmly anchors it.
Hands reach down –
And Bang!
Papa is no more.
My Writing Life 