poems

DEAR MR PRESIDENT

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DEAR MR PRESIDENT

The prophecies have come to pass,

The great spirit, Massau’u

Says that man should live in harmony,

Yet the government has destroyed our basic religion

In this land of the Great Spirit.

Great roads like rivers cross our land

Man talks to man

Through a cobweb of telephone lines

And travels the roads in the sky,

Man is tampering with the moon and the stars

The White Man has desecrated the face of Mother Earth

In his desire for material possessions

Blinded to the pain caused to Mother Earth

By his quest for so-called natural resources.

The sacred lands of the Hopi are desecrated

By men who seek coal and water

To create power for the white man’s cities.

The Great Spirit says not to allow this to happen

Says not to take from the earth

Not to destroy living things,

Otherwise a gourd of ashes will be dropped upon the earth,

That many men will die,

And that the end of this way of life is near at hand

RED INDIANS SPEAK

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We will not have the wagons which make a noise

In the hunting grounds of the buffalo.

If the palefaces come further into our lands

There will be the scalps of your brethren in the wigwams of the Cheyennes.

I have spoken.

Accursed be the race that has seized on our country

And made women of our warriors.

Our fathers from their tombs reproach us as slaves and cowards.

I hear them now in the wailing winds;

The spirits of the mighty dead complain.

Their tears drop from the wailing skies.

Let the white race perish.

They seize your land, they corrupt your women,

They trample on the ashes of your dead!

Back whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven.

FUCK THE DANES

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FUCK THE DANES.

Fuck the Irish

Fuck the Danes

Fuck Copenhagen the most

In the place that pains;

All sheep are uneducated

Nothing to do with stupidity

All down to the genes, you see;

Unless the Danes now makes theirs go to school

Doing arithmetic and algebra

Sitting quietly on a three-legged stool.

The Danes came to Ireland once before

And Brian Boru showed the Viking hordes

The way to San Jose –

And Amarillo for good measure

Go! Take your fucking sheep with you

And don’t come back whatever the weather.

THE MANAGER SPEAKS

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THE MANAGER SPEAKS
The best player on the planet.
When he plays on snow
He doesn’t leave any marks
He can’t walk on water – yet
Though when he farts there’s always sparks

I am like God
I never get ill
I am always right.
Football is a game of two halves
And is mostly a right load of shite

I wouldn’t say I’m the best there is
But I am in the top one
And that’s the only group to be in
If I walked on water
Some would say it’s because I can’t swim

Some believe football is a matter of life and death
But it is much more important than that
In football as in life
You won’t get far
If you don’t know where the goalposts are

The best way to relax
Is to drink pink champagne
Before the match and after
Then losing five nil
Won’t seem a total disaster.

GRYPHON-ITIS

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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

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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.

ivo3proxy

LOUIS MACNEICE – BAGPIPE MUSIC

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Frederick Louis MacNeice 1907 –1963) was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of “thirties poets” that included Auden, Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis nicknamed “MacSpaunday” as a group.                                              “Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.” He has inspired many poets since his death, particularly those from Northern Ireland such as Paul Muldoon and Michael Longley

BAGPIPE MUSIC

It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.

It’s no go the Yogi-man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tire and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o’ Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs. Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife “Take it away; I’m through with overproduction.”

It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

67 – A COLLECTION OF 71 POEMS

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Now available on amazon

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POETRY REVIEW                            67 by Tom O’Brien
The Co. Waterford-born playwright and novelist, Tom O’Brien, who had two plays produced in London last year, has brought out a curious collection of poetry, titled 67. A collection of 71 poems from Tin Hut Tales Publishers. Written over a period of twenty-five years he describes them as  being “of their time” and some were written “in the heat of the moment”, scribbled on bits and scraps of paper on buses and trains, or on the building sites where he worked. There is a surge of anger, a sideswipe at society, and at other times tender memories of a rural Ireland he had left behind, knowing there was no golden dawn, no rose-tinted place to return to. At other times, the poems are like graffiti and have an instant savagery and frank use of language. At other times, they are like notes to the 20 or so plays and books he has written. Why he is not better known in his home county is still a puzzle to me.
The opening poem Russian Roulette As A Cure For Depression catches your interest ” The first time I pressed the trigger/ I knew I was immortal”. He has graffiti poems, Bollocks To The Poll Tax and an ironic transitional poem from a rural community to heartless urban wastelands in Put Another Log On The TV. Then a poem like Don’t Make Your House In My Mind, hits the sad side with lines like: “You promised sex without frills” and “Shared lives going down the long slide”. A poem like Old Acquaintance reads like the synopsis to a play, but it is a poem you will return to and find another ‘home truth.’
The Clonmel and Fethard writer Joe Ambrose, who went to college in De La Salle, in his story Shapeshifter, tells of Irish people moving to England, and it catches well the sentiment that Tom O’Brien tries hard to suppress – ” They tried to live in England, the bucolic Irish provincial lives they’d actually left behind on Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore. Hillbillies let loose upon the slick city. Peasantry who like peasants all over the world lived to eat, shit, sing, breed and die”. Tom O’Brien catches that dichotomy time and again, especially in My Time – “This then is my time/ A ribbon of memories/ Stretching back to an age/ I can hardly remember/ Anymore”.
I am glad Tom O’Brien didn’t ‘tidy up’ these poems that echo a line ” Sorry sir, there is no more room for memories/The past is full up”.
I am also enthused that Waterford City and County Council have funded Stagemad Theatre to present a Tom O’Brien play later this year.
Liam Murphy  Munster Express

ZANY SHANE

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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

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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