Writing

FUCK THE DANES

/ gorgeousgael / 3 Comments

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

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

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.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

 

THE MEANING OF LIFE

At the forefront of knowledge

Is the edge of uncertainty

Where reality is really

Only a projection of information

At the rim of the universe.

There, black holes loiter with intent.

They seek to break the sacred laws of physics

Which, as everyone knows, state

That information cannot be destroyed.

This is the point of no return.

All the information that ever existed is here

And black holes are held at bay – for now

What is inside is not inside

And what is outside is not outside.

We are merely holographic projections

Rendered flesh at this event horizon.

Asimov, of course, knew this

Way back when computers

Were not ten-a-penny.

He knew the truth, or guessed

That the universe is one vast computer itself

And we are merely its slavish programmers.

Though not living out purposeless existences,

As some believe,

But proving that life does have some meaning:

We are the way for the universe to know itself

 

 

GRYPHON-ITIS

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

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!

67 – A COLLECTION OF 71 POEMS

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

Now available on amazon

81lDM-3q7-L._SL1500_

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

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

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

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

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

/ gorgeousgael / 4 Comments

 

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

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

 

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

PIGS AND J JUNOR

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

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?