poetry

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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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

MILKING TIME

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MILKING TIME

Father always hummed at the milking

Pausing only to say ‘easy girl, easy there’

When a troublesome horse-fly struck

Sitting on his three-legged stool

His pail clamped between his thighs,

He caressed old Daisy’s belly with his head

And sometimes sank his fist into the wrist

When she lashed out

The sound of milk hitting the pail

Was like rain dancing on corrugated steel

He could hit one of those flies

At three paces with one long squirt.

Sometimes he practiced on me.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER ON A TRAIN

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BRIEF ENCOUNTER ON A TRAIN

Blue-green compact

Hazel green eyes

She powdered busily

Then blinked in surprise

When  I winked

Not once, but twice

The train rocked on

She powdered her nose

She looked at me slyly

But I feigned repose

She stuck out her tongue

And I winked once more

Then the train came to a stop

And she dived for the door

HISTORY LESSONS AGAIN

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HISTORY LESSONS AGAIN

Ring of Kerry, Lackendaragh                                                                                                                                            Fachta Finn and Gougane Barra                                                                                                                                       Ollam, Piper, Beann a Ti                                                                                                                                                         Farmer, Fiddler and Land-Lease                                                                                                                                          Viking, Norsemen and Wild Geese                                                                                                                                     Erimon and Fionn Macool                                                                                                                                                        De Danann and No Home Rule

Clonmacnois and The Dail                                                                                                                                                        Men of Erin, Fianna Fail                                                                                                                                                       Democrats and Labour too                                                                                                                                                   Gombeen men, the Dublin Zoo                                                                                                                                        Loonies, Moonies, Lords and Serfs                                                                                                                                         Poets, Painters, Suffragettes                                                                                                                                                Cowboy Pictures, Travelling Shows                                                                                                                                     Ceoltas Dancing, Frightening Crows

Tyrone, Tyrconnell, Red Hugh and Owen Roe                                                                                                                    Cromwell, Robert Emmett, Dev and Strongbow                                                                                                                   Pearse, Kevin Barry, Colm Cille, Maud Gonne                                                                                                                            St Patrick, St Brigid, Mac Murrough, Wolf Tone

Aonach, Feis, Connemara                                                                                                                                                 Irelands Own and Hill of Tara                                                                                                                                              Rock n Roll and fireside stories                                                                                                                                               Sorse Eireann and Mickey Magories                                                                                                                                        The Coleen Bawn, O’Donnell Abu                                                                                                                                  Leprechauns and Faeries too                                                                                                                                         Bloody Sunday, Black and Tans                                                                                                                                             Easter Rising, Bobby Sands                                                                                                                                                   Oisin, Cormac, Tigernach                                                                                                                                                   Cashel, Cratloe and Armagh                                                                                                                                                 The Hills of Tullow, Conor Pass                                                                                                                                             Sarsfields Ride and Dorans Ass                                                                                                                                            The Croppy Boy and Ninety Eight                                                                                                                                       Sassanach and Fenian blade                                                                                                                                                  The Clipper Carlton, Dicky Rock                                                                                                                                               St Stephens Green and Glendalough

Kilmainham, Kilmichael, Kilwarden, Kinsale                                                                                                                       Dungannon, Dunmore, Enistymon, Rathkeale,                                                                                                                   Fedelm, Eithne, Aofi, Kathleen                                                                                                                                               The Shamrock, the Harp, the Flute and Crubeen

Master McGrath and Brian Boru                                                                                                                                         Famine, Firbolgs, the H Blocks too                                                                                                                                        Ard Ri, Mountjoy, Parnell and Rynanna                                                                                                                                Step-dancing, Brian Boru, Big Tom and Setanta

Tir Na Nog, the Galway Blazers                                                                                                                                             Bord Na Mona, Macs Smile razors                                                                                                                                       Mummers, Druids, Unionists                                                                                                                                        Catholics, Jews, Adventists                                                                                                                                                     Malin Head and Poitin stills                                                                                                                                                    Ikes and Mikes, the Book of Kells                                                                                                                                         Shannon, Suir, Boyne and Nore                                                                                                                                            The Gallowglass and Take The Floor

Blackleg, Wrenboy, Blackshirt, Whitethorn                                                                                                                         Whiteboy, Boycott, Blueshirt, Blackthorn                                                                                                                             Plantation, Emancipation, Emigration, Liberation                                                                                                                O’Connell, O’Brien, O’Hanlon, One Nation                                                                                                                     Cuchullian, Rebellion, the Taylor and Ansty                                                                                                                                B Behan, O’Casey, Riverdance and Planxty                                                                                                                         Sean T, Mick Del, Sean Kelly, Glenroe                                                                                                                                James Joyce, Christy Ring, Arkle and Mick’O

IRA, BBC                                                                                                                                                                               UVF, RTE                                                                                                                                                                                 IRA and UCC                                                                                                                                                                            LDF and IRB                                                                                                                                                                             ICA and ESB                                                                                                                                                                          GAA and C of E                                                                                                                                                                Saints and sinners                                                                                                                                                                  C’est la vie                                                                                                                                                                             Everyone is you and me.

 

 

PIGS AND J JUNOR

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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?

STEVIE SMITH – NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

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Not Waving but Drowning

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

BY STEVIE SMITH

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.