Personal Blog

Beneath a white shawl
democracy lies punctured;
digitised hate dissolves.

Labels: Bhutto poem death democracy

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 12:29 AM 5 comments

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 11:35 PM 3 comments

Canaveral Cream



Concentrated and primed
hemispheres clutter drawing-boards;
this jetsam is scraped into polished
tubes of white and NASA livery.


Dragging and lifting and shedding their
Canaveral Cream, they slip upwards,
ripping orange wounds of con-
cussion across the blue-black.


Their telemetry chatters farewells home
before they surrender their unseen wings
and fail, spiralling, beautifully polished
and wearing a hypnotic drone.


Petals darken and freeze.
Land ejects. Disassembled
children aggregate the pavements
beneath the blood-churned air.


Women shower and tinsel; pain and disbelief
vapourise - digitised and syndicated: new fairy tales
that flutter and wink. And older stars hang in an expectant sky.

Labels: Technology Death Space Destruction Mankind

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 12:53 AM 4 comments

Student Quarters



An echoing door combs a mustard, coil-
rich carpet. Curtains sneak and sigh, hold chat
with dawn and chill. Soon, afternoon floats flat,
borne in golden air, drifting in the soiled
en-suite of spiders black, and fungal oil.
And under bed where none dare look but
the hoover, gagged and bound; smile that gluts
upon the micro-banquet sheets of yellowed toil.
“God, oh! God, oh!” fuck hidden paper walls.
The cupboards yawn with temporariness;
an ancient hob slowly scabs and lolls.
And still, this stay was every day or less:
cow’ring roof it gave, but night breaches walls.
And silent filth tsunamis trouble rest.

Labels: student life Aberdeen filth grime loneliness

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 6:41 PM 0 comments

Labels: britain problem concrete poetry

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 2:28 AM 1 comments

Source Code
(July, 2007)

(i) Life

10 DO Born;
20 DO Growth;
30 DO Death;
40 RETURN 10;

-

(ii) Eternity

10 RETURN 10;

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 7:34 PM 1 comments

A Wrong Turning
(To W.S. Graham’s Loch Thom)
(July, 2007)

Low lay Sol, and kissed my cheek as the pastures begin to fade.
The familiar scheme wraps its stone graffiti-arms around me,
but with boarded stares and cold corrugated grins; its blue arrow
has me stay my course. I speed-bump past the spec-adjusting twitch
with the unshaven chin that wears an hour-old musk of ‘Old Whore’,
on its way “tae the pakkies”. A phlegm-filled store disgorges bagged
six-packs and clutches of dough: a dog pants, caged by back-paged
gutturals of denim-arsed bookie-stub expectancy. A little girl sparkles
in her pink roller-boots, one latching a lonely soiled sock from scratched paving.
A long and sparkling, golden screw of piss chains an Alsation to the grass
before it pivots and bounds towards a hacking cough near a pebble-dashed
wall that warns me: “Wilson is a GRASS”. Breakfasted, I am expelled,
(in my air-conditioned now) to rake the temporal ash that was once
the flickering warmth of memory. We can never return to that which is alreadydead.

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 7:32 PM 0 comments

a baby
(July, 2007)

Born,
I am. Spat - and away
I am cradled.

-

Bleached yachts squelch above the barracked babes
strewn across the battered wooden palms
scooping indifferently atop anorexic legs.

Blindly, signatures scream,
etching the souls of flightless,
bending smiles.

Blushing, head-scarved cunts wobble,
traumatising in the damp winter air;
discharged into the forest of fate,
where sterile binaries huddle in fresh dew.

Labels: abandonment, adoption, childbirth, childlessness, love

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 7:28 PM 1 comments

Tabby (draft #4)
(25/06/2007)


Lap I, at dimly-lit oil-island pools
that trickle and gargle from unseen drip.

And plastic mouths have gummy grins from
where I at plastic pick; up this, I hack.

Soft I tread, along dripping walls with large
slogans that, fading, YELL. Passing, bristling,

lose int’rest I, nosing corpses collapsed
in filth. A glint betrays my crouch -

my shield of scars and snapping look, with
paws, silent strike can I - or shadow leave.

No mate have I; still-born scattered, lice rich.
My mist it clings, perfumed on every bitch.

At steaming doorways lit, gaze I; pouncing
And ripping vermin young; blackness tearing

beneath the pitch-night: drunken red-forged draw;
snatched fuck against the sleeping rubbish truck;

cross-legged shouts hailing growling orange-eyed
beasts black, which swallow up the crawling town.

Moon-washed, and perched, tail snakelike licks behind
a whiskered pulsing purr. Dawn seeps inwards.

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 7:58 PM 3 comments

Richie
(25/06/2007)

He was always
ghost-like: a shock
of blond hair and a skeletal
grimace.

I used to watch him
from the church altar: his eyes dreamt of being
with us.
His sister sat translucent also, under
a halo of ginger hair. No physical father ever accompanied
the two children.

Years

passed. Then
I’d see him: denim-clad, chipper, and a buddy
to old men: the newspaper seller;
the shopping-mall sweep.

He’d sport a Morton top. No friend
of the sun, he’d hang
around, under the cold eaves of the chapel grounds.
He would cut the holy lawn; beam
with pride at the clutch of heavy keys.

Friday night. Mother told me:
‘That wee boy hanged himself’

on Monday night.”

posted by Hugh O'Donnell @ 7:52 PM 0 comments