CHASING THE RAINBOW
Nights when we were young
We raced the wind;
Banshees in our wake
Dracula lying in wait.
We had left him oozing blood
From the stake wedged in his chest
In the Rainbow Cinema.
But with vampires you could never tell
Hair slicked back, stiff with Brylcreem,
Newly perched on our Raleigh three-speeds
(with dynamo)
We explored the world,
Our winkle-pickers pointing the way.
AUTOMATIC WRITING
by
Tom O’Brien
(written in a two-hour against-the-clock frenzy one summers morning in …. a long time ago)
Why is me? Why is god? Bad grammar I know, but syntax isn’t everything, is it? Syntax…must look that up, not too sure what it means. It’s as if this pen has a will of its own – I am merely sitting here watching it trace outlines on a virgin, amazed at what I am reading. I wonder if Trollope employed this technique in his writing? It sure seems like it; he wrote 3000 words every morning before work. But why go on about it….everyone knows that old chestnut. Duncan McDaid, who was he? A footballler in Askeaton? No, that was the McDaid clan from Northern Ireland. Good footballers, but hard to stomach. Shits, every one. Still, one humoured them. ‘Now is the summer of fucking content.’ Something like that would have suited the Bard better. ‘Not to be at all’ sounds better than the other one. It was a dark and dangerous hour…why do I keep changing the words before I write them? Good practice for later, I guess. Scott Fitzgerald liked to try this form of writing; get all this shit down on paper and see what resulted. Nothing much ever did. However, it’s a discipline that has got to be tried – see what comes out apart from shit.
Shall I begin a new paragraph? Go on, treat yourself. Buy a few pages of crap; spout it all out here at this end-of-page feeling. This life is but a dot on a far horizon…a blank dilettante….almost faltered there… doesn’t blank dilettante almost rhyme? – and if it doesn’t does it matter? Now this plate on my table stinks; old dog-ends mashed up in rasher grease, and outside cats-nip that some should nick. The old shed at garden’s end was nicked too. Oh, not in totality; but layer upon layer, chopped down with a buzzz-saw, and then nailed to the cross that bore it. What crap you say, and of course you’re write (right), but then you always are my dear. Never known to be wrong, for long are you crucified, eh? Maybe that is right too, but you hammered in the nails yourself. No martyrs for me, but you – you – you stood there screaming – it was him – him who brought the house down – stood there ankle-deep in shit telling everyone our secret. Secret? That was no secret; it was written in italics on every cinema wall in the state. She loves you but she daren’t admit it, not even to her fairy godmother, who happens – and this is true – to be the biggest fairy in dog-land. I don’t know where dog-land is, but by God it is rough. Ha Continue reading
THE MEANING OF LIFE
At the forefront of knowledge
Is the edge of uncertainty
Where reality is really
Only a projection of information
At the rim of the universe.
There, black holes loiter with intent.
They seek to break the sacred laws of physics
Which, as everyone knows, state
That information cannot be destroyed.
This is the point of no return.
All the information that ever existed is here
And black holes are held at bay – for now
What is inside is not inside
And what is outside is not outside.
We are merely holographic projections
Rendered flesh at this event horizon.
Asimov, of course, knew this
Way back when computers
Were not ten-a-penny.
He knew the truth, or guessed
That the universe is one vast computer itself
And we are merely its slavish programmers.
Though not living out purposeless existences,
As some believe,
But proving that life does have some meaning:
We are the way for the universe to know itself
Here goes, a poem in 5 mins.
GRYPHONITIS
I saw the gryphon again today
Walking in a rather peculiar way
It was goose-stepping instead of high-stepping
Hugh Granting when it should be Johnny Depping
It looked me directly in the eye
As it it shuffled-shunted to get by
Whispering hoarsely what it had to say;
I bet you don’t see one like me every day!
TRAVELLING THIS HIGHWAY
Travelling this highway
Places more than distance between us.
As the gap widens
So the empty feeling grows
Lovers can’t be choosers, you said
Our meetings timed to fill your empty moments –
As if such transience could ever be enough.
He rules you still though love is gone
Dead as the wasp on this window sill
Your heart would race away if you would let it;
Why care a jot what others think?
You were never meant for running
I can see that now;
Too much you value to be arranged.
I never believed I could say good bye;
So I didn’t.
ZANY SHANE
Shane is planning to rob a bank
And decideS to trust me
‘She’d make a fucking brilliant getaway driver’,
He opines, and Gerry agrees.
‘Well, I don’t know,
I stop at zebra crossings,
And I’m pretty slow’.
‘See? That’s good,
If you were a fast driver
It would be very obvious,
No, a slow getaway driver is good’.
Later they sing;
‘Woman come in the name of love’,
And Shane shouts
‘I am a Catholic,
If I am dying please call a priest’.
‘Are you dying now?’
‘No, but I will be in the fucking morning’.
Then he laughs the bloody bar down.
NEVER
Never say goodbye
If you don’t intend coming back
Never hail a cab
If it’s a colour that isn’t black
Never change your shirt
Just ‘cos it’s covered in grime and dirt
Never go to bed
If there’s something you left unsaid
PIGS AND J.JUNOR
This island, this septic island
Adrift in a sea of indifference
Towed along by other entities
Once fearful of its wash
Hear the battle-cry from every tower block,
Every street corner, every public bar,
Every private club
It is the cry of the wastrel, the cry of the vagabond
The thief in the night, the rapist, the pick-pocket
The whore, the low cur, the high roller, the insider,
The asset-stripper, the banker and the bounty-hunter
Ask not what I can do for my country
But what my country can do for me
You have fouled this planet with your culture
Profaned us all with your arrogance
You value dogs more highly than children
And leave old soldiers to freeze in empty rooms;
Single mothers flaunt their skin-tight jeans
And ‘gentlemen’ still peer down their long noses
Where the only good Irishman is a stupid one
Or a dead one
And the only good Black man an unemployed one
Or a pimp.
Wouldn’t you rather be a pig?
NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING
DEMO
N LOVER
Right now,
I don’t want the demon lover
Or the secret longings
Which call my name from the deepest shadows.
I only want lies…
Sweet sensual lies…
Easing me into peace.
Or make them truths
If you so desire,
But tell me nothing
That..
I do not need…
To hear.
My Writing Life 