Niall O'Sullivan – Poet

A Glass of Water

I’m told by those more erudite than I
at least one atom in this glass of water
has previously passed through Cromwell’s bladder
and if that’s true, then no-one can deny
this first cool gulp has once in history
been in the lake when Shelley got pulled under,
that filled his lungs and forced him to surrender
his unwritten to blank eternity.

And yet he speaks through me when I recite
his ode to so some old god whose shattered face
stays mute for travellers from antique lands.

I’ll speak those words next time I urinate,
though words and atoms flow some other place,
we’ll meet again next time I wash my hands.

“Three-dimensional stop-motion model animation created a fantasy world that was so rare. The way the creatures moved encouraged a sense that one was watching a miracle, but when the miracle becomes commonplace, the concept of the miracles ceases to be miraculous.”

-Ray Harryhausen

For the Master

I learned to dream on Bank Holiday Mondays,
when from the tedium of mid frame shots,
balsa wood heroes, convoluted plots,
and heroines too shallow to entice-
armies of skeletons would be unleashed,
the Kraken would smash great cities to bits,
and though Medusa’s glare gave me the shits,
my young imagination was uncaged.

The thick, black matte lines helped me to believe
that magic could spontaneously fire
from the dull flint of torpid appearance.

The great conjurer, working in his cave,
could alchemize our nightmares and desires
from steel rods, latex, cotton-wool…patience.

by heart, on foot

You don’t know London until you’ve walked it,
half-pissed, heart-broken, during the strange hours,
through the clamour of the daybreak markets
where scent of meat slab mingles with fresh flowers.
You don’t know the river until you’ve trudged
its banks in the pissing rain, sans brolly,
your body’s atoms remember the flood
in which they frothed during pre-history.
There’s no Beatrice down in those tunnels
just a Metro pull-out on Cheryl Cole.
On this descent you won’t bump into Virgil,
no heathen genius among these lost souls.
To find your self, you have to first get lost.
The river veers before it finds the coast.

Ross Sutherland has thrown out a commission for poets to make their own version of the wonderfully abysmal “Last Barman Poet” poem, recited by Tom Cruise in the barman buddy flick, Cocktail. Please take a moment to watch the above through tiny slits between your fingers.

You can find other examples at the project website: http://last-barman-poet.blogspot.com/ , but here’s my version as a Bonus Track for Day Six. Enjoy! Please, enjoy…

The Last Barman Sonneteer

I am the world’s last barman sonneteer.
I see Croydon glugging piss-weak Carling
and Geordie hen night hijinx unfurling
in a blur of fake tan and lippy smears,
in search of a band of virile steers
who get the girls giggly whilst conferring
if men are still macho if they’re preferring
WKDs to drinking real beers.

Sometimes they keep mixing after I’m done
The GHB Gin, the Rohypnol rum…

Romford, you’re hooked on each tipple I got,
there’s no time for old man pub moping,
cos happy hour means it’s one pound a shot,
let the binge-drink begin! Bar is open!

Cruise’s original version (best read out loud while jumping on the sofa):

I am the last barman poet. 
I see America drinking the fabulous cocktails I make. 
Americans getting stinky on something I stir or shake. 
The sex on the beach, the schnapps made from peach, 
The Velvet Hammer, 
the Al-La-Bam-A Slam-a!

I make things with juice and froth: the Pink Squirrel, the 3-Toed Sloth. I make drinks so sweet and snazzy: 
The Iced Tea, The Kamikaze, The Orgasm, The Death Spasm, 
The Singapore Sling, The Dingaling.
America you’ve just been devoted to every flavor I got. 
But if you want to got loaded, 
why don’t you just order a shot? 
Bar is open.

Against Confession

I’m yet to write a real drunken sonnet
spill my hot guts onto a tidy square,
frayed at the edges, lines dripping like rare
neck cutlets, flame-seared, fresh from the skillet
to be devoured by some emo-gannets
without spilling a drop on their couture,
and barely filled they’d doubtless order more—
some brains on toast, or maybe some stewed heart?

I’ll never give the bastards the pleasure
and sometimes have to mine a seam of hate
and bash the keys while wired up on caffeine.
It’s been a while since my last confession,
and those who want my heart served on a plate
will have to make do choking on my spleen.

the gaps, the silence

Pity the poor ape that stares upwards
from the crust of his round gravity well
to view the universe expanding outwards,
the silent toll of its own heat-death knell,

and seeks to find another mind behind it,
a mind that happens to be quite like ours;
a finger snap from which it all ignited,
a Nobodaddy with some super powers.

Our gaze rides light’s curve into the abyss,
our feet plonked on the earth from which we sprang.
Each somatic cell of which we consist
is just as mindless of our hopes and plans.

The cosmos remains cold to how we suffer,
the only warmth we have is from each other.

Saturday Morning

The solemn silence of the pharmacy:
haemorrhoid cream sits snug in pristine tubes
next to tastefully designed tubs of lube.
And though it’s not exactly privacy,
the silence offers up its clemency—
the counter doubles as confession booth
for wronged lovers who only seek to sooth
the itching price of their intimacy.

But the bed upstairs is creaking noisily,
and groans of pleasure permeate the shelves,
the frisky pair stoke up a merry row.

And though we’re part of the community
and should consider others, not ourselves,
they can all fuck off, we’re married now.

Werewolf of London

But remember this Dr Glendun, the werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best.
-Dr Yogami (Werewolf of London, 1935)

On conquering the heights of that stark peak,
in search of the mariphasa flower
that only blooms during the moonlit hours,
I was attacked by some carpet-faced freak.
And though I found my treasure, so unique,
I wondered, if at home, you dreamt of lovers,
old flames with supernormal carnal powers:
in their stark heat would your resolve prove weak?

It was not the full moon that caused the change
but that old flame whose name slipped from your tongue
the last time we reciprocated lust.
And now blood trickles down the city’s drains,
your petals bloomed before my fangs had sprung:
the beast seeks to destroy what it loves most.

The Smile
 
The smile I want to stamp into the ground
is older than the triumph of ninety-seven,
it’s older than its name, body, even
older than the gratifying sound
of promises to nail it this time round
and not repeat the mistakes of heathen
predecessors. But this clean-shaven
boat peers from store fronts about town
and not a drop of blood has stuck to it.
Behind the smile the weasel words still flow
from page to page as they did from the podium.
When its body is earthbound we’ll know that
the smile will linger on, the vilest seed ever sown,
toxic as weapons-grade Plu-Tony-Um.

DJ

The morning DJ’s gag. O tawdry quip
that doesn’t raise a smirk across the city
before the regurgitated ditty—
the auto-tuned bulimic that the paps
pursue for their quota of nipple slips,
when China White spews out its casualties,
the battle of the B-List deities
to be the smile that frames tomorrow’s chips.

And then the adverts, no time for a fag.
He eyes the producer through gleaming glass
and tries to think up one more bawdy tale
to feed the digital/analogue lag,
his voice straddles the future and the past.
He had a gig on telly once. He failed.