conor o'reilly - poetry and poetics chapbook

8/13/2019 Conor O'Reilly - Poetry and Poetics Chapbook

1/18

CHAPBOOKAs Part of the Poetry and Poetics Module

ABOUT

These poems were written as

part of a poetry writing

module during my 2008 MA in

20th and 21st Century

Literature at the University of

Southampton. Not all the

poems I submitted as part of

the module are here, however

I believe that this is the bulk.The majority are experimental

poems. Conor OReilly 2008

By Conor OReillyIfihadaminutetospare.com


2/18

RED WINE LULLABY

I heard you cry the other night too

your tears well laced

in red Spanish winevintage glassfuls

rolled down both cheeks

dripping from your chin

and I could feel your stomach

turning from the delicate edge

you had been pushed from

into a hole where it seemed

you broke and drank

ten whole bottlefuls venting

your fury and your temper

In the morning when you woke at ten

your makeup smudged

in long back lines down to where

it dripped and burned holes

in the carpet where it pooled

I spoke to you and you smiled

trying to hide meekly

deterring the talk from the topic

of your lonely serenade

in the night to a house full

of ears who had privileged

listening rightslast night

you spoke to my friends

who had called and drank

and sang songs after dark

in the kitchen like the old times

how well they looked you saiddespite having no jobs and


3/18


4/18

An open discussion.

Your education is useless reading books that wont do anyone any favours Explain

useless then I mean its no good for society youre wasting our money when you

should be going out and doing a productive course of study which involves the

betterment of humanity Like you Yes like me But I dont want to nor do I care for

your academic interests What use is your education but for a job working in

McDonalds look at where it has taken you and look where my education will take me

to a good job and lots of money But I dont want to nor do I care for your profession

and credit rating What use is it that you spend four years reading about history its

finished and English when they dont explain how things work that surround us and

are so important to society Do you think I dont know how things work or of the

importance of things in society I never said that But implied it did you not Thats

not important It is if you imply something do you not give your opinion without

exactly supporting it with evidence Yes So what use is your opinion in this argument I

know what Im talkin


5/18

Conscious

The morning iridescence

through the Viennese blinds

pale at first but soon

becoming brightthe childrens

shouts on the way to school

and the traffic-flow grumbling

just outside the bedroom.

Moving over in the bed

touching your skin

stealing the heat from

your bare body

trying not to waken you.

Dreams at last over

the room despite the darkness

is decidedly clearer

windows condensation

obscures a frosted cityscape

that peers down on the bed

which naked bodies lie in.


6/18

Getting Drunk While Watching the Sun Set

A bottle passed

around with laughs.

In the background

sea waves curling

over then under

climbing closer

with every fall.

Guitar notes play

and songs sung

hushed by the

light reclining.

All stops

for the state of being

to consume

then pass.


7/18

Recognition

(Blink #1, Blink#2 etc. and problems with creation)

Even conceiving a second guess

allows for the same result:

the fluctuation of the instant

reaction suppression of

feeling, truth, emptiness

and believing what is forming

but never realise the passing

of the instant which tests

your creativity & poeticness.

Alone alonealonebut

For every describable thing

(fixation/article/idea/incident/mechanism)

Attached to the desk and

The environment inside/outside

The head/room

The weakened mental state

Of clarity has affected

the vanity of poetry again.


8/18

The Funeral

Hed left the body in a ditch

half submerged in stagnant water

face down wrapped

in briars and blackberries

Two hours later

a caller came

to the front door,

A neighbour

hardly spoken

with before.

The dog had found it

he said apparently

went mad at the sight

In the ditchstill kicking.


9/18

The Town

Victory! To the denizens of ________________!

Your town is the tidiest of them all!

Congratulations on tidying your town

It looks very nice, very nice I say!

The grand judge may say on television

After many months of competitive cleaning.

The jargon of ladies and gentleman

Discussing the ins-and-outs

Of potted plants and window boxes

(very nice they say A very nice attempt at beauty they exclaim A nice eye for

detail woz ere 08, ho ho ho is touted by the astute gentleman in the grey suit

Perhaps the nice geraniums would look nicer on the nice window facing east. The

nice brickwork could have been scrubbed harder with a toothbrush perhaps the

lady in the flowery dress and summer hat says scrutinising the post office steps)

Categorically classifying the toil

And effort in a venue of no quality,

No heart or soul, no berating evil

Content which echoes of character

And individuality that fits not in

The boxes that are ticked with unceasing

Regularity by the Sunday school graduate

Lookalikes amassing on the corners

In a hundred similar towns across the nation

Speculating on the beautiful beauty

Of little villages and big so-called towns

with more public houses than childrenyoung in the streets dodging


10/18

moving wheels and baton wielding old people

vexing the antics of the delinquents

overflowing with merriment and carelessness.

(aaarrgghh these childrenarent nice anymore they growl discontentedly to each

other. No respect, rude, fast, happy-go-lucky, smelly, unchristian,

uninformed and all the many other complaints which resonate from within them

of which they heard when they were but a lad or lass dodging between moving

wheels and baton wielding old people vexing the antics of delinquents)

What walls and streets we see

Decadent in the splendour

Adorned for the date of inspection

All the hard effort in vain

To have the rain fall heavily

And drag up all the soiled drain effusions

Lurking just below the well swept gutters.

What pain and blood has been spilt

As arguments echoed around the walls

While children cried and looked on wondering

why the streets must be swept without pay

so the street where the shop which will not sell

them cigarettes is look so very very pretty

all in the name of glorious competition.


11/18

The House

Walls red-bricked and pebble dashed

From a distance a two-tone two storied

Structure of domesticity planted in unison

To ten on each side and so many more

Around the corner and stretching up and down

The street full of miniscule bubbling families

Happily creating their own little worlds within

The red-bricked and pebble-dashed walls.


12/18

Thoughts dont fail me now

- I said to my cranium on beginning this assault on the pageFor days I ploughed

through pages of criticism, theory, memories, more memoriesmy own and then

those enviable published kind (niche or no niche yall are what stands between my

own shelf-space and an ISBN#).

White ruled feint crumpled and tossed in corners or plastic bagsunfolded re-read

then crumpled again in a continuous charade of impotent fictive creativityyawning

and yawning again and againtotal absence of all instinct I thought was home

grown in the blood manufactured by semen and ovaries going at it all those years

ago deep in the (warm) womb of my mother who raised my in the typical fashion of

stretch or starve and do it yourself ye lazy article when I asked would you be so

kind as to enough said

Well now where was I or am I or ever have I been or does that really matter because

at the moment it appears that it is what comes out via the medium of the pen which

is of most importance (or have I just created this hierarchy within my head) - Should

that be a question or a statement? What does the sentence or the pen (not

forgetting the paper but which is of more importance) careanother question and I

have still yet to answer the first

This is some pathetic parade on the part of my self, antagonising every

insubstantial utterance of thought lingering about my frontal lobes mixing in my

Wernicke's part below my cerebrospinal fluid (in my brain of course, Im trying to

sound very intelligent) full of wish-wash and detrimental quishiness as I was

saying at the beginning

Thoughts dont fail me now not with this one opportunity to pretend that I know

what I am doing trying to interpret something which has being emerging

successfully/unsuccessfully for the past few minutes (or hours I should haverecorded it for people to laugh drunk and/or stoned and/or_(insert condition here)_)


13/18

on my own under a single lamp in a cold room skull explodingit seemsfrom over-

indulging in twentieth century theory criticism and literature but it still hasnt

presented any allusions or for that matter jumped in front of me and sang waving its

arms in my face:

Im here singing and waving my arms in your face I am the answer

THE ANSWER!

Chance would be an improvement on hopelessness would it not I imagine

So seriously what have I been writing (but really its typing although I did start out by

writing i.e. pen + paper + hand + movement + thought = writingI can show you the

rough arithmetic if you would prefer) forvainly trying to pull some shite out of my

metaphorical/physical top-hat which incidentally is full of air and grey strands of hair

not mine fate and destiny forbid I declare running from the point again like

homework or rugby training after school on Saturday afternoons (and they wonder

why no one is a catholic after six years in that school) to smoke stolen cigarettes and

find some able eighteen plus year-old to buy us cans for the teenage disco that night

in Dublin 4.

Confounded sick twisted memories keep filing into my head, erotic ensembles of

times long dead, not really a priority but they just keeping coming to mind mind...

mind full of ___________ doesnt look good here no one can gather whats coming

out in this blather of pen and my head distracted again from the process of writing

Poetry.

Writing Poetry.

ThereI said IT ITPoetryPoetry is IT


14/18

ITis therefinally written I think it can be said successfully and I havent even had a

drinkyetyet poetry is not this surely this means nothing and poetry should mean

all that ever wasrunning off the tonguelyrics declaiming to the tune of a ballad

forgotten by the new youth personifying the self originating in the self a footprint

of the streets and poor misfortunate forgotten leaves which were trodden into

oblivion and washed down empty drains by the melting ice and winter raina

skyline hazed grey by the urban detail of five hundred thousand lives which make the

space below the smog the place in which their homes are madewere not this the

day the lonely maiden made her way with all her life packed away and draped over

her shoulder climbed the flyover above the trains and above any other humans

grave then dropped between the arches below to the stillness of a crematorium

which she hoped would spread her ashes away never to be named

POETRY BE NAMED I finally can free from my mouth the word but three syllables

so hard to stress the start but so much more complete are the words I speak without

that name-tag attachedalmost a sin connecting my words with this archaic term

which makes noses turn reminding them of school or something worse it almost

feelslanguage corrupted like taste from the memory of a past experience

sensory organs corralled into hatredmustard is onemy old disciplinary last

meal when I said a bad word like fuck or shit or poetry

Poetry you you mother of Poetics theyll be screaming on the next Hollywood A-list

big screen extravaganzaswearing W.B. Yeats and William Wordsworth and if things

really turn bad/good my name will also be includedalthough I think I might have to

die firstsome form of suicide is bound to get their (By their I mean EVERYONEs)

attentionit will increase my appeal as a beautiful person and/or a tender soul

damned by reality

Reality (not T.V. or the News) has gone beyond existing realisticallyrules and

words in large block capitals in red have decided that we should all walk on the left

and stand on the rightIm afraid to even apply for a library card in case they ask formy life (or that of a small child I think may suffice)reality has gone beyond


15/18

existencewhat is the point in having a reality without the ability to express its own

tear drops and molecules of emotion (hatredloveapathy) which caress the

footpaths walked on every night and morningthe broken glassthe orange tinted

vomita random unattended dangling under-garmentfading echoes of a dramatic

enactment smeared with jovialityconversation can no longer express the subtle

passion felt when happening on the foot trails of these instancesthe breaking of a

bottle over a head - a brief but over zealous cuddle in a bushtoo many drinks and

a curried dinnerwords wound in a directiontoyed - a performance twisted from

a fight into a playa drama into a gamea love story into a riota moment into a

lifetimea parting glance into a promise to staya house on fire to just another day

Words - stewed well in inspiration - dont fail me now save me from

convention rules and reality!


16/18

Xanadu

I looked all over for you;

the pleasure of your crystal dome

your sacred meandering river

and twice five miles of fertile ground.

But a myth is all I found,

secular and unspoken, clinging

on for people to try to explain

why soldiers lie for their sins

and are taken deep below your

caverns measureless to man

where forgiveness

is a days labour believing

that truth is an evil thing.

From hell I wandered on

to seek the lifeless ocean

the answer to a prophets call

echoed within the frozen

cavern where souls had left

it empty but for the tumultuous

drawl rebounding of the cavern

wall

then dancers came

they haunted newly

ruined gates by

lilting to the lucid,

seducing the stupid,

and pawning gifts

which they had taken.When all was said


17/18

and done they sank

beneath the waves

to the redemption

of the bottom of the sea,

waiting on a chance

to re-emerge

bringing with them greed.

Now, no sacred river left to navigate

or salvation delivering mountain

effusing its turmoil

like an unforgiving

hurricane; only obscurity

and anonymity remain

and in the darkness we hear

a whistle calling our children

to mountain caves and see

a bright light enticing

us to sun blanketed cliffs

white from artificial sunshine

Now

devoid of dependence

on all memory

and memorable things

no chance to choose,

to leave synthetic misery.

It is only the future

that we believe in.

That sunny dome,

those caves of ice,Xanadu, what


18/18

became of you?

Are we left alone

battling against

unseen furious things,

drunk with the fruits

of production

with no declarations

for no domes or pleasure

now, only more decrees of state?

conor o'reilly - poetry and poetics chapbook

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