Haiti/2010

Haiti/2010

Drag me from the rubble, Barney,
I don’t want to shake no more!
I have to say, it wrecked my day,
when my roof became my floor.

I had a little house here once,
up there on that hill,
but now (like everything else in town)
its just so much landfill.

I’ve got a little water now,
a chunk of the neighbors dog,
and the meds I got when they took my foot,
have me sleeping like a log.

So,
the hardest thing to do today
is shut out all the crying,
pretend that everything is fine
and there are no more dead or dying.

You know,
it might be good if a tidal wave
should rear its ugly head,
scour out the dust and shit,
and wash away the dead.

So,
drag me from the rubble, Barn,
I don’t wanna shake no more.
I have to say it wrecked my day
when my roof became my floor!

Mike O’Connell
1/16/2010

Original Pistol

(Original Pistol was written about 35 years ago. I've revived it and it's currently posted on the PoetsWest website and is featured in my just printed chapbook, "Meet Me At The End Of The Sky". I think it has a place in the current political and social debates).

Original Pistol

Pick up my pistol,
give it a twirl;
spin on my boot heels
and go out to save the world.

Sun is in whiskey,
boilin' away,
gonna' tip them glasses
'till the day slips away.

Then on my tiptoes,
on into the night;
ridin' all of my plannin'
on this fast and final fight.

It’s the eve of the reign of terror
and peace is on the run;
I know in my heart I'm right
and that god is in my gun.
It's the night of the change,
heads are gonna' roll;
gonna' get back all the things
that the original pistol stole.

Mike O'Connell

Seeing

That was some jet!
Sounded like a rocket!
Instinctively,
I scan the horizon,
looking
for the mushroom clouds.

You Lead The League

You lead the league in ribbies, baby!
You are the damned best bally bopper
in the dug’s out, baby!
High five?
(Chewchewchewchewchew)
Crack of the cracked bat
cracks me up, Bubby baby!
Foulfoull, fling the flippin’ bally, baby,
‘round the base or bases, baby!
Gogogogogogo!
Whip it, wipe it, sniff it....
Throwthrowthrow,
runrunrun;
keep your bunions on the benches, boys,
and chewchewchew.
Touch the proper pillows, ‘round and ‘round.
Rack the K’s up and hope for hits.
These are the worm killers, the cans of corn,
and crap in the gap!
Eat your dogs and rally fries,
chewchewchew.
Hey!
We saw you spittin’ sumpin’ on groomed dirt!
You are side-armed and dangerous, baby,
(chewchewedchaw).
Buddy,
run on homey, now,
runrunrun.
Wind dance on the overgame,
jump, high five,
go home.

Say Hello To My Little Friends!!

Say Hello To My Little Friends

Neutrinos are the gnomes of the universe.
We can only see them out the corner of our instruments
and we can never catch them....never will.
You see, they don’t exist in any sort of
when or then, and are barely here right now.
They are, I think, parts and pieces of something
disassembled,
something prematurely destroyed,
seeking always to put itself back together into....
something totally weird and off the cosmic wall.
They bang around motorless,
borrowing energy from things that don’t exist yet,
and they smell.
They smell like dead ozone, like space gone bad,
like rotting photons kept in a jar
until the light is......gone.
You know that fart smell in a room
when no one’s there?
Neutrinos.
Hold out your hand.
There’s a trillion of them.
The little fuckers give me nightmares.
I know they’ll eat my brain if given a chance.
I considered putting a layer of aluminum foil
inside my hat but its too late.
I’ve already spent too much time
in neutrino storms, in particle fogs,
and there’s no way to repair the damage already done.
They’re in my eyes, too.
They’ve built little forts in there
and send up flares when I try too focus,
when I try to write about the "wrong things".
I was never paranoid before, before.....
you know, the neutrinos came.
Now, I’m a mess.
Don’t really know what to do.
I considered living in a steel room
or never getting out of my car
but then I found out
they just zip right through all that.
That’s the other thing.
I know they’re tearing tiny holes in me,
leaving skid marks in my heart and brain,
going for little river rides
in my synopsis and veins.
I know now that I am merely a puppet,
manipulated by neutrino civilizations
who make me wave my arms about
and say silly things.
I follow what the physicists say.
I smile when they talk about
great neutrino mysteries
and how the little fuckers are so
interesting, fascinating.....
Please!
They’re playing us for fools!
Oh... then there’s anti-neutrinos,
zipping around in anti-time,
turning backwards into forwards,
turning maybes into nothing much.
we’re doomed....
"Say hello to my little friends....."

H1N1 new flu

New Swine Flu poem

Those that pick the nose,
will be the first to goes.
Those that mucus swallow,
will be soon to follow.

The man who kissed a pig,
however,
will not get it,
never!

So, kiss the piggy!
Do it quick!
Kiss the piggy
and you won't get sick!

Mike O'Connell
5/2/09

Fixer

I am not a fixer of things.
I am not kin to the machine,
the board, the roof, or wall.
In point of fact,
I can't fix anything,
anything at all.

Things before me broken
tend to stay that way,
and tools are wary in my hands
until they're put away.

I don't believe the broken things
fear me or dislike me.
I'm pretty sure they just wish
I'd go and let them be.

She Says

She says I shouldn't forget
but I don't remember why.
She says I used to love her...
can't remember, though I try.

She says I loved our children
and they tell me this is so.
She says I should remember,
tell her why I had to go.

I cannot see the past of her,
no history there resides,
but in the future we'll remember
why I left and why she cried.

Talk Of War

When I listen to this talk of war,
I see that creates its own gravity,
orbiting with impunity
around our collective insanity.
It is pushing, pulling events
into odd, warped patterns,
sending fleets out on
manufactured missions.
I am ascending to near reason
in order to land
somewhere
between war and now,
where seeds of peace have been sewn,
where no one dies a silly death.
Someone you might know
died on a battlefield today.
It was supposed to be
someone else,
one of those
other guys.

You know, the dead all get together,
dance at rude reunions, dancing dead dances,
some with parts removed.
It's front page stuff
because the dead ooze news
and the media dreams of multiple fronts,
and some folks think that
guns are fun.

I think what we want is stillness;
no nearby thuds or thumps,
no screech of shells incoming from arc-lit skies.

I think what we really want is
NO MORE WAR

Swine Flu

These will be known as the days when
swine flew,
when we became our own
masked avengers,
trying to thwart a sneaky pandemic
by refusing to go to soccer games.

These will be remembered as the days
when WHO knew,
and tried to ward off panic
with all the words panic is made of.

These will be remembered as the days
when we spewed doom poetry,
wrote hastily conceived wills,
and cowered from imaginary images of
pandemonium and rampant reapers.

These will be the days when swine flew,
when WHO knew,
and we tried to ward off panic
with a little laugh or two.

These days will be remembered......

Mike O'Connell
4/27/09

Brand new poems

Every Generation

Every generation gets at least one war.
It's just one of those things.
A gruesome milepost,
showing just how far they've come,
weapon-wise, and a
puncuation mark
at the end of their hopes and dreams.

The sons and daughters
of every generation
get their own
flag draped coffins,
their own mass graves,
to prove they have participated
in their designated war(s).

Every generation gets at least one war
to acquire for themselves
assorted ideas and other things;
freedom or selected gods,
gold or oil,
land or water,
and other engines of sacrifice
to the certainty of
still more war.

Every generation gets at least one war;
builds armies,
breeds soldiers,
never knowing where their souls may go,
or if they were issued souls at all.

Truth be told,
none of us can tell
where one war ends and the next begins....

Every generation gets at least one war,
even though war logic is fractal,
difficult to measure with only
esoteric quantities of
death and destruction
to calculate the degree of commitment
to their particular war.

Every generation gets at least one war...
Its just one of those things.


Mike O'Connell
5/1/09
#2
Dear, Dear Death

I flirted with dear Death one time,
but She wouldn't have me,
don't know why.
Perhaps I was not worthy,
not commited enough
to love Her and to die.
....and so, on I go,
though I know where She lives still.
Up the hill on Cemetary Road,
lined with headstones,
chiseled by Her will.

Death lives up the road from here,
but I never stop to see Her.
(She keeps nasty beasts, I'm told,
with sharpened fangs and bristling fur!)

She'll break down and come my way,
visit me someday,
take me up and bury me,
then go on Her way.

Mike O'Connell 4/09

At The Pit

Weightless relics in army blanket shrouds,
piled before the pit, appear too stick-like, too numerous,
to be have once been human.
The mind is wrenched,forced to see things less horrid;
The crows are healthy, the flies fat and fast.
Emotions must be numbed to prevent overwhelming despair.
The youngest, the oldest,the ones who died exhausted
from the struggle to bring them all here,
are piled the highest at the edge of the pit.
They will be the first to be desecratedby jackals and Caterpillar blades.
Just at dawn, before sounds amplify,
before the stench breaks free of its fragile,dewy net,
the corpse heap seems to waver.
It heaves from the pressures released
as bloated bodies collapse and give into the weight of friends,
ripples as the heat of the rotting rises up to meet the sun.
Then, the mothers come.
The empty mothers with opaque eyes,
memory muffled wails, halting, half recited prayers
whose words are the lyrics for an orchestra of waking flies.
The mothers will not hear them,
or see the worms in their children’s eyes
or be fooled by the prayer’s most holy disguise
or stay to see the dead sealed off from the sky.
The mothers have removed themselves,
have resigned themselves.
Only their strength of heart has borne them this far.
Now, they wait.
They must be the last layer on the sad grave.
Their bones must be the headstones,
the guardians of the martyrs beneath…
the last to fall from the light of hope.


Mike O'Connell
2009

Me

The End Of War

The End Of War


Meet me at the end of the sky
where rifle parts fail,
where limbs flee, reprieved.
Where we plant thumbs,
crosses grow,
watered by tears.

Here,
we dance in smoking craters
to the thump of guns,
waving our shredded arms about,
begging that old age might find us.

….and a voice from oblivion cries out:
“You owe me!” and
“I would like to have one year
returned to me
for all the friends I’ve lost,
and thereby, live forever.”

Plato said:
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

These searchlights will show you where the dead have gone.
Their shadows will show you where their youth has gone.
Their youth will show you where the truth has gone.

by
Mike O'Connell
1/28/09

Other views of MOL...

Please visit www.omniglot.com/gallery for other views of "Meaning Of Life". As for requests to purchase the piece...it is not for sale...thanks
Mike

Meaning of Life

Here are some pictures of my latest painting. You can see others at http://www.cjoconn22.com/paintings

Eulogy For Danny Parsons

We are, all of us, wrapped up in time.
It carries us along paths of
life, love, adventure –
move us as easily as it does the stars.
Danny,
you still travel along in time,
our time, carried in the memories of those who love you.
You still journey with us,
in our hearts and minds,
even as time pulls us along in our living.

So there are no endings,
Danny.
we will pass through lives creating histories,
and you will be with us always
All of us are chosen to carry
memories of one another
until time is no more.

Danny,
it may be farewell to form
but we hold you still,
deep in our hearts.
Your love and caring will be with us always.
Time is yours now,
to do with what you will.

Thank you for living your life with us
and we’ll see you soon

At Birth/ A poem by Mike O'Connell

At birth,
mother and child
are connected by the moon,
starlight,
and particles shift
to accommodate their love
and one more mouth to feed.
A cuddle here,
a gurgle there;
a small life cast away
from the certainty
of the womb.
Hold it up!
Show it to the moon!
Hide it from
the wild world!
Give it toys
and make it play.
Give it knowledge
so it will say,
“I am!”
Keep it warm
and cool,
and safe.

i,
I know why
the babies cry!
So the wolves will
know
which way to go....

For Andy In Cameroon

In Cameroon


These huts are shaggy temples,
mossy mysteries.
I hear monsoon mantras,
chants, songs,
and the wailing of saxophones.

I stand with bleeding feet
on a mountain top,
dripping with sweat
with a leaky whiskey bag.
From here,
I fling thoughts
far,
to home, to homes,
to lost sleep,
warm and dry.

Just past my bare walls there are
ceremonial colors,
ceremonial swords,
ceremonial tears.

I have waterfalls,
thundering from my shoulders.
I climb above the canopy
to sit with birds,
above the smoking buses,
the dust and the mud.

I learn.
I follow my heart and prosper.

Mike O’Connell
2006

Sheshe(dunflungfurfun)

Sheshe (dunflungfurfun)

She had temples on her head barm
batched of pressed earth and cranberry mortars
whereupon she sported with we wee worshipers
who trickled bouter spinal rumps in the
flutey folds of driftwood gnarls,
handover, endover, toot by toot.

We was swoopers too hoo wore sandals built of vodka,
hoo too voodude strange undernoiseys with
vegetable parts n’ flaps and we were lung lazy
lemonade suckers hooz laser nodes were sew snapped shut.
She had flippers on her tongue flaps (xtraballseffective),
and pucey, leaky push-me-knots on the box fronts where
the buzz boys bobbed and dug for bones.

We know she did livesickdie, Was mummified
in a puffy lumpkin and it was a small death,
a nothing death, for she left no biscuit recipes.
She led a littlIfe, a leaflet life. Her nose ring linklets
limped into compression zones where she chanted and
panted, built a pew or two of blackberry veneers and
collected little shoetheme thingies that she kept shattered
in the frondives and holly bibble moulds.

The next we knew, she was tax exempt and innocence gortex,
big as a booty and twice as true. Goostep, instep, spud chunks
in her sphincter nails, stalking nekked where toes’ scum run
and their prayers unrambled, we found jerkey in her boothe booms,
Bubby, and she was instant, souled out, eaten by her own neutrino
supplements, spoke a hundred imaginary languages, and
cavorted with chips of ancient warrier bones in a
wavering hoo haw full of big-haired monkey chunks
and we swallowed. She was all thump knuckles and dominionos
where the ragworts Rome and the bagmen dumped their tiny
wheeled lives through great boatfogs, where the powdered berms
overrunned into vast sinpathies of fayth and heehealing.
{Only Bennyhints of pompadorian trumpets thumping!},
and we followed. She was of pickly wickets and jellied poodles,
dogmaws filled with waffle squares, and we miss her mummied muzzle
mythic mumblings much and more and wondered where her
labors whiffled loamed. She travolted wingless with Jooney Tuesy
and her prime mates from the edgy forests and brought meat lore
from the dances past. She earned her urns and little statuettes;
they did bobondash and trinkets of her dinkled from the necks
of dietribes and mucklettes, all alike. Her Mafrodytee bookeroos
helped make her rich while never having poised or gleemed for the
evening news. “Frieze, sucker!” she was known to have gnashed
with a rasp, or “Fleas, Ucker!”; we know not witch to this berryday.

She would crawl off walls to dip her toes in wine foams.
She was protoart, suitable for warships, destined to hang tense
from the lips of ships. She was brayed to from the Urinals
and the Corner Tables; and we loved her so so. “Read this!”,
hoot the Wharf Dwarves, waving leaf mites from the techno nips.
”Heed this!”; howl the leastest priestests, candles roaming,
plattelettes gloaming, hymnals fluting, flaming; pages yahning. “Scan this!”;
for we loved her fuzzy buntings so. “Anny, noint this!”
screamed her neatly tucked and blondeing nipletts from
their deep cups, from her neuro nubbins nodding....
dust the plate and bitch inside. She was promises of deep peace
with those curly laces {?}, and sung of dong song,
cleverly, cumceived. We saw her walk on water once,
but we cleaned it up. “Oh, Bay!” we blued and bew cannoned,
buyble babble garbled for the news crewz, and we held her
teensy statechews forth. We made bronze cats of her under wars,
but found she had nun. We swore at her once but it stuck on her shoe
so we bronzed that too. She was funsometimes but timed her funds
to teeze tellettes of truth gleaned from ghost goats
who tinkled their green peas into tomes of cuds,
who were grass catchers, beeper bleepers in the odd eye,
shunned and shunted, curved and bunted up her turd base line.

We bent her timeline to accommodate the barneysaurs
and larger lizards, burnt blood (for color). We stalled the dung dudes,
just enough to pitch forks fur her: “Hay!”. Check, please.
She was godlette, a regular pulpiteer, whose words were
more poplar than the trees she wacked. Southmost Blaptists
went for boysoncaughts, made sheroes of her disneying crevasses
but stilly whiffled the pressures of pleasure; she columnbined and
phosphored. She never kept a copy of the Reconstitution
in the valleys of her orifly, fortwas ointment for the slippyslope
where only lieyers ride and slide; where only the moneyed friends of
the poofydoos may prey; where the great, gray wings of
Goddy Teevee rattle giggling with their froth.
History hissers are prone to glossing and nipping
but we know where the truth is put up, and so know where to go
when the tails of fables try to cook us in their hunting plots.
Of the many guides to her operation, this one is the most
undoctoward, is official, may be zerooxxed and flung about in
motels and hovels and dropped from great heights.
She was vavoom and pranky prone. Words felloffher like
dust mites from the sleepy bags making her natty bundles of
truth time heavy and gap toothed. She was from Bendare Doondat
and knew the secretions for making candied clones and goat tea.
She knew too the propupper way to assemble burrifingers
and general issue kiloed road kill, and groovie, gooey glues.
She piffled pope poop in pretty pinkish pots and shelved schiavo shots
in forty frilly frames. She dun bend to Poem Springs where she
conned a Spocasino and a pulled the holey handles hard.
She provided worm wombs for the ravenous ravens and dizzying dances
for the moon dust masked. We hear here she met Hairy Broo Smappet
who was Fallwellian, Roswellian, Bosworthian, and a non-steroidal combpa, parted to the left. Together, they were witch worthy and smelled fairly wholly.
They sang: “We the lie we the lie
dig strokenpokkin and
we can help you wipe the
blander slander from your
glandular dander and
sing the boat songs
that smash your love so!”

ii

Snot about saving gracie or swiping punts. Snoot about our goalies
pucking about, slapping shots for meaningful meanings
and much, much more. You shunt wish a dish
with dirt or sloping sores, or tainted bug candles,
fat beacons glazing, bubbling, in the gravied night.
The smell of it makes my chopped leg boil!
Save your dining, prop-less manatees singing
for a further time away, away!
Curl up to the sounds of hurling,
Bosco brewing, and the wing-flaps of the seeseeo's...
not for the life of one shitting dog
would we still sit for painters,
(break)
Don’t get us wrong! For their words were taxncapped, putted n’ driven
before rowyerall races, souled killions of copies, were sirreal and proudly vague, Lee!
She hated the govovermint! {but would vellvote, undergowned}.

Well, before she passed her gasses, she deported to her puddly home
where slugs fast, where mteevees wail unplugged and silent;
where pizzas must plummet from the tummies of upside down
hellishcopters, and where her fingers smell like washmenots.
Where, she thought, we could find her naught, Where the wars
of we wigglers could her know her not; where her hairs glow headily,
un-czekked. She wasis Ddemodder, the Mophette. She done died and undied, was fission rizzen, left us breathless, appeared in a
grilly cheese sandwitch on the eeebay, in the deep dumb depths
of digitime, where frumpy friend things fume and fester,
where the mentored meremoms moan and shop;
where she mumbled mantras for the bleakunborn, unprotected
and annalogged. She was Saint Servher, propped up by 8088s, in a ramfog
where we skipped rolling scones downher dinners, inneronner, where the
trimmed Nells poked and rolled and Poed. Weetherebeye node her
namething, in the chatty roams, nevermore.

She was putrid, scumrummed, and nearly bearded; mouldy, gooed and bugrustled.
We believe her pillars ate her brainfuzz, and wonder;
“Is she still our flash-faced friend, double crossed, bush ‘aburning,
or did she part us to lefthead sides of the lillith [light days] pads?”
We must sneakon down to sea, hide behind the leaf logged log’s legs,
listen for the red shift of her wormy dreams, listening for the
wisoned words we know she’ll boom and shed.
We slink about like fog fizz (teeny bubbles in the whine),
wonder wideyed for her truths to blurt; we the willing
sneak and sniffle. Now she nestles in dimensions of khaki dew,
where the yellow stained tooths of multiple modes combine and squeeze
with yogurt frequencies, like yahnees in a pilgrim’s bed,
where the vaperous voidence of her ravaged mouth maw
swirls and curls. She is where Elvis smells us.
We stoop to bow, wow. She now manifests an egregious malfunction
of the bowels of souls, a mis-tinted, mal-fragranced spirit gummed
by faulty powers, Boothe, and flung about the bumpher beds by
Clawed and his band of dandies. She booms about, fuzzily drumming,
everwetty, booped as Betty, looming ‘twixt heavens and oh, hells,
toes awiggling. She supported the cornspear theory under the nomens
Bonnie Margee, Grettlob Cardo, Louisey Czaro, and Bif.
We just called her Goddey Essie, Tickler of the Tucan Tummies
of Upper Nibs, and Madge. She drank a bit. She loved for us
to purr and rub against her, risk a disk and scratch her back.

She cavorted with herpal speed bumps in the Three Forks area of her
verbless, vulvateen lips ‘n lap. We would squeeze the sneeze cheese
and it did foam and fly about her while she did wiggly squiggly
on the arms of chairs. “Swill be doomed!” she would postle,
where the dull gulls sat and shat. We would diddle and wood have
dyed for her but she burst first. She went and got the benzndied, curling in her kabalic chaos crib and croaked. We sang “Bubuy! Bubuy!”,
and she was gone by dawn. Now, we the free, groom a hidef goddess
of commercial free cable vesphers and will miss her not much.
Nd. Thank you for your thyme and please pick you up a bibble tome on your way way out.

The Zero Factor

Here is a link to my first novel, The Zero Factor. Enjoy your trip to the moon!

The Zero Factor (PDF File)