Michael O'Brien


Seven Poems

meat course

Stroll through Queens Park. Allison Street falafel to go. Head to the tramway. Eat falafel. Look at the exhibitions. One of them has rubbish on the ceiling the other has nicely painted walls and a video installation about gender.

                between the film his dream a novel

                Come home in a looped fashion. Titwood Park. Maxwell Park. Like a chant. Footsteps. Nice. Wander the perimeter of Pollok park. Stop for a coffee in Morrisons. Black. Home.

                meat course
                winter morning
                looking west


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pinning

a handkerchief
to the sunset

the blood clot
becomes a new
arrangement


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a clock

                               refusing to believe

the broken poem

                               a big camel

passes by

                               takes a shit


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farmhouse icon

A staked streak, well done, of blue between grey. The ghosts of place and time building up ghosts - left to centre ghosts. Left sided below grey green cherry leaves. The strong smell of building site. Diesel chips away. Brown bough commerce. Red brick flats. Trees dreaming of being. Time and place become body. Red sandstone tenements. Place starts to haunt. Soft depressive. The skull voicemail and baked camembert. Fungus and me reaching for the ice that has become a farmhouse icon.


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the moon

                               a librarian

moving into intuition

                               lost in australasia

the willow herb’s womb


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watching a lime

Visited my aunt and her family yesterday. It had been nearly ten years since we last met. It was good to catch up. Their house is now the family home of our clan — it is where we all meet and come together. Open house. Lots of food. Babies crying. Catching up. Video games.

the lime
watching a fish
watch a lime


     ф


art blakey as a young cloud

The light cold and spreadable. Cumulus. Art Blakey drum fill. Morning moves. The sky shifts into marble. The neighbour walks by she has a tote bag with the slogan, fighting animal testing. Sticking out of the bag is a rolled up yoga mat the same colour as the sky.

                rolling thunder the glacier’s memory

                Take a stroll upstream along the White Cart. Fallen tree limbs and branches are strewn across the path. Memories of a storm. Along the river there are a few building projects and developments going on - all as god awful as each other.




Michael O’Brien lives in Glasgow Scotland. He is the author of As Adam (UP Literature), Big Nothing (Bones) and The Anabasis of Man (Yavanika Press). You can follow him on twitter @michaelobrien22
 
 
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