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

A Halloween Poem For 2009

For Halloween/2009

When the demons in my dreams escape,
fly, flung freely, into day;
I flee to lighter corners, then,
pull them back and make them stay
in safer nightmares kept in vaults
where they scream and rot...and play.

When howls of acned monsters moan ,
slog and stagger on their way
to various nightmares, movie plots,
and spooky stories ghosts might say,
and folks with entrails hanging out,
as they slowly, surely, lurch my way.

I’m not afraid of these wretched things,
but they give me goose bumps, I must say,
and I secretly peek about in stores
to see if any beasties have gotten away,
have drawn flesh, form, living stuff,
and are now out looking for things to slay.

Deep in nightmares, (some not made),
In moldy graveyards, dark and gray,
I sow the seeds of visions there
and know that they will someday stray
into the things that I call real
and then, my friend, there’ll be hell to pay!

Mike O'Connell
9/2009
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