THE WALL
I stopped by our wall again today
Staring
Just staring
I saw an image of you
Fleeting
As you hurried by
It was like somebody
Had stood on my grave
You in all your finery
Mirrored on a blank wall
Blank
Just like your face.
literature
SINGER WITH THE BAND
SINGER WITH THE BAND
I grew up and Ambrose grew older
We were together when he died
I was left alone to cry
I don’t know who I am
Please let me speak to Lord Delfont
I have been swindled
A fortune has slipped through my fingers
‘Lord Delfont is on the other line
Can he call you back?’
Mr Eric Morley please;
‘Eric, I have been evicted from my flat
I have nowhere to go’.
‘But Kathy, my dear,
You must have thousands stashed away’.
Now they have sent me to St Lukes Mental Hospital;
‘Kathy Kirby’s here – in a mink coat,
I mean, has she come to entertain us?’
What’s the matter with your hair, Kathy?’
‘It’s mummy, she’s been pulling it out again’.
‘When I wear dark glasses, don’t you think I look like Norma?’
‘Norma?’
‘Norma Desmond, you know, Sunset Boulevard’.
Someone has stolen my legs
I cannot possibly go on stage
I am not the real Kathy Kirby
All the girls in the street have Kathy Kirby legs now.
I am being held prisoner in my flat
I am being possessed by Ambrose
The Queen Mother is in me.
“Well, tell her to piss off!”
http://www.kathykirby.info/index.php?id=4
MORE OLD MATTRESSES
OLD MATTRESSES
They have raised a highway
Across our valley
And landscaped it
With blocks of windowed concrete.
Beneath, the river strangles itself
With shopping trolleys
And bits of old bicycles
Worn-out mattresses
And smashed-up pallets are everywhere
While a bloated condom
Flutters by on a piece of driftwood.
Painted hoarding-women
With rotating eyes
Compete for attention
With pram-pushing young love,
Their stilettos tap-dancing the hard shoulder
On a clear day
Juggernauts gleam in the sun
And rolled-up tabloids
Tell tall tales about Royalty
Or football….and Sex
THERE WAS A TIME… my unfinished symphony is now finished
A couple of days ago I invited contributions to complete this poem. I guess is was an experiment really to see if several different poets could find the same emotions to make sense in a joint effort. I am delighted to say that Michaelnjohns did just that, and he finished my poem better than I could have done myself. Thanks michael
THERE WAS A TIME…
There was a time which was Much better lived than told There was a time we were much younger then And growing up held more sway than growing old Then one day all that growing was done And the long slide down that Imaginary hill had begun…
I’ve slid, lost my hat, what’s worse, I’ve gotten fat, But if, at the end of it all, I could choose,
I’d say it’s been a good slide; I’d go again-
Through every bump and cut and bruise.
And I still reminisce now, of life back then
PUT ANOTHER LOG ON THE TV
PUT ANOTHER LOG ON THE TV
Talking gets harder each day:
Smokeless zones and telephones
Have killed the conversation
Now our lies, laughs, truth and tears
Have all been swallowed whole
By another monster
In another shiny console
Rocking-horse to rocking-chair
And somewhere in between
The fireplace has become a flickering screen
Glowering at the world
Insisting on silence as it reward
Granddad spat in the fire;
I spit in your face;
Old lies die hard.
SOME DUBLIN CHARACTERS
SOME DUBLIN CHARACTERS
Not necessarily born in Dublin but lived a significant part of their lives in the city.
THE BIRD FLANAGAN
BRENDAN BEHAN
PATRICK KAVANAGH
JIMMY O’DEA
MYLES NA gCOPALEEN
SEAN O’SULLIVAN
ENDYMION
JONATHAN SWIFT
DENIS GUINEY
SEAN O’CASEY
W B YEATS
JACK B YEATS
ALFIE BYRNE
THE TOUCHER BYRNE
MARGARET BURKE SHERIDAN
JACK DOYLE
JOE MCGRATH
etc etc
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
Going round the sun sixty eight times
Takes some doing
Even if you are merely a passenger.
The first time round was really a blur
No sense at all that we were
Doing almost seventy thousand miles an hour.
Mother said I screeched most of the way
And that the snow piled high
For months every day.
Even the tenth spin;
I don’t recall a lot of that
Except that it was the year mother got fat
For a while, anyway
And then she was thin again.
The years stretched to decades
Still round and round we went
Sometimes I travelled in the company of steel bars
And sometimes I journeyed with the stars.
And there were times when writers came to say
Becket, Behan, Millar, Hemingway
Of course the children came too.
But for many years I have tripped with you.
My father got to number sixty nine;
I wonder how many rounds will be mine?
taken from my poetry collection ’67 PLUS’
available @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
GOOD ADVICE
WRITING, DRINKING, WANKING
You can either buy me a drink or fuck off
Were the first words Patrick Kavanagh said to me.
He was hunched over an empty glass in the corner of McDaids,
Gobbing and spitting into the embers of the open fire
I arrived here nearly thirty years ago,
Having spent two days traipsing the road from Monaghan,
But I wanted to be in Dublin, y’know?
Where I thought the real writers were.
Real writers me arse!
They spend all their time drinking and talking about writing
And none of it doing any
He nearly took my hand off grabbing the drink I had got him,
Writing should be like wanking –
Best done in the privacy of your own room
CRICKLEWOOD COWBOYS
CRICKLEWOOD COWBOYS
In Cricklewood we had the crack
We went to town and some came back
In Kilburn and Willesden too
We danced in The Banba and the Club 32
(A ramshackle house of bones
In Harlesden High Street
Where the girls danced round their crucifixes
Who knows whom they hoped to meet?)
If you owned a car and didn’t drink Guinness
You were good for a feel if nothing else
But if you wanted to get them into bed
You had to put a roof over their head
Oh, and two little words were important too
And they wanted to hear them loud and clear;
I DO!
REALITY CHECK
REALITY CHECK
Busy hips and pouting lips
Powder the streets of cruel illusion
Sideways smiles and dark alley wiles
Add spice to the confusion
Of the boy who thought sex in the park
Might be a bit of a lark
Until he got unpleasently surprised in the dark
‘Hey! My heels are longer than your dick,
So put it away you scurvy little prick’.
My Writing Life 