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poems
NORTH CAROLINA TREES
NORTH CAROLINA TREES
Tall pines, straight as railway sleepers,
Stun me with their skinny beauty
Some of these were old
When Abraham Lincoln was barely knee high.
And it is even possible that George Washington
Touched one or two as he rode by.
Durham was young when these pines first sprouted life
As were Raleigh, Charlotte, and Queensboro et al
Perhaps it was the Redcoats who seeded this lush terrain
Beauty shipped all the way
From England’s green and pleasant land
To conceal the carnage of their long and murderous campaign.
PLAY ON
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…
ZOO TIME AND CHANGING TIMES
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
RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO
See all the down-and-out lickers and fuckers
Down the Embankment they tumble
Unable any longer to bear much reality
Too much self-knowledge
And time spent trotting
Between the Tate and the National
Or one of their endless reading groups
Believing they had
A story to tell
If only things had worked out,
If only the monkey had hit the right keys.
Hush! if you listen carefully
You can hear the dead click
Of their keyboards
In the raucousness of the Soho night;
The minicabs, the limos, the rickshaws all screaming
Take me…take me…I’m free
And the hen nighters, the stag nighters,
The whatever-the-fuck nighters,
Lingering in pools of their own vomit
Waiting for the paramedics to call;
Shirts open to the navel, skirts slit
From here to eternity.
Late summer, later winter, who gives a shit?
The restaurants are all full
Though nobody is really eating
Just being there is what matters.
Smokers stop the traffic
Inspecting their mobiles
What would a Martian make of that?
No one sees anything any more
Except the lampposts they walk into;
There are no witnesses to crime;
How anybody falls in love anymore is a puzzle
Eyes no longer meet in lingering amazement
Unless they are reflected
In all those infernal hand-held screens.
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VARIATIONS ON A THEME
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
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
THIS BE THE CODE
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 TROLLY
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
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
My Writing Life 