GONZO MOMMA
Too weird to live, too rare to die
I guess that’s a creed
Old Hunter would swear by
Though he would have a drink first
Or maybe three
Then try to figure out where
The action might be
Before smoking some ‘stuff’
‘Cos he knew plain whiskey and gin
Would never be enough.
Then, perhaps like you, he would
Upheave everything and pack
Screaming all the while;
You can kiss my ass
I ain’t never coming back
ANON
Clubbed by kindness
I sit here stunned
By the knowledge that
You loved me once
Possibly.
No room for any doubt on my side
But you were forbidden fruit
About to fall from the tree
Trouble was
I never tried to catch you
Not really.
And now I have fallen further
Than you ever could
And there you are
Somehow
To pick me up
I AM RED
I am red like burning fire
I am covered with a glowing down
Alight with pure desire
I am glistening ochre, gleaming red
All to light a path to your chamber
And subsume myself in your head
It is time for us to forge
A loving union beyond your bed
BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
The above poem, often called The Land Of Lost Content, was written by A E HOUSMAN, an English classical scholar and one of the great Victorian lyric poets. The poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside with their beauty, simplicity and distinctive imagery. His best known collection is called A SHROPSHIRE LAD, a cycle of 63 poems, which was published at his own expense in 1896. It rapidly became a lasting success and has been continuously in print ever since.
From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.
Look left, look right, the hills are bright,
The dales are light between,
Because ’tis fifty years to-night
That God has saved the Queen.
Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,
Lads, we’ll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.
(first 3 verses from his poem 1887)
THE UNIVERSE AS A HOLOGRAM
I was happy as I am
Living in a hologram
Please don’t add to my confusion
Is my 3D space just an illusion?
Am I in mired in someone else’s dreams?
Well, fuck you buddy
Life just ain’t what it seems.
see my books @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
I find the further back I go, the better I remember things, whether they happened or not.
Mark Twain
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.
THE GREEN FORGOTTEN VALLEYS
Those green forgotten valleys,
No longer can be seen
Lying hidden behind the tall fir and larch
That have made these brown hills green
Relentlessly marching down the hills
Burying everything in their wake
The dead are long gone from this place
The pike no longer in the lake
The houses just hollow shells now
Where the past ghosts eerily through
The vacant windows and doors
With rotted frames and jambs that once were new.
Back then there was no silence, only the sound
Of human laughter, and bird-calls to each other
The dogs growling at a wayward sheep.
And children’s scrapes kissed better by their mother
Nature is having the last laugh now
Soon there will be no trace of us at all
As the trees come marching down the hillside
No one hears the lonesome curlew’s call.
DUNGENESS
Boats that belong to better days
Mingle with iron flotsam
Washed ashore on a sea of shingle
Fishermen’s shacks sit like pygmies
In the shadow of the power station
Their colourful facades
Browbeaten by nature’s extremes
A stone garden sprouts incongruously
Beside one such dwelling;
It does not bloom in spring
But neither will it die when winter comes
DEPARTURES
You look straight through me
As if I wasn’t there
I walk straight past you
As if I didn’t care
Two bodies easing past each other
Both waiting for a train
One heading for oblivion
The other bound for Spain
BEING HERE
I may never be a poet
I may never rhyme;
(having no time for all that crap)
But one thing I do know;
People don’t stay, they go;
And they never come back
Oh, they are there – empty;
Looking like they once were
But deep down you know it’s not really them;
Just effigies
Waiting for you to go too
She loved you once you know;
She would admit it
Now fire has seared her mind
Cleansing the important bits;
It’s not love that sparkles now,
Just tolerance
And not a lot of that
So where do you go
When the fire has burnt itself
But into it;
Ashes to ashes
Dust to December
And no better for it;
Complacency –
And no end to the pain of it
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