David Francis Oliver O'Donoghue - Poetry

as they go about
their daily business
still I exist

while they argue with
spirituality versus science
still I exist

yet they plan their bits
to test on me
to get what they wish
still I exist

then they set the lesson
to teach me tricks
and almost reveal theirs
still I exist

thus still they persist

you're yet to meet a fool
until you've met
he
that says the thing
to make you realise
that without a doubt
he is one
unequivocally

although the fool is tricky
and uses trickery
to pull you in
he will always
inevitably
give you reason
to see the fool
for what
he really seems

she's not on messenger
but of course she isn't
it's Saturday night
so she's probably out
with someone better
likely someone cool
most likely
the lord of cool
and who would choose you
some lordly fool
over the lord of cool

today I wrote her a letter
to convince myself
I may still have a chance
yet I didn't send it
because I said to myself
if she's online
when I looked
that very second
that I would send it
and she wasn't
as like I said
it's Saturday night
and she works hard
for her clients
during the week
so why would she ever be
available to me
the worlds craziest somebody

and the lord of cool
carries with him
nothing except
his charm and his ease
and I carry with me
dreams and only dreams

you were once the same age
now she's far and away
too grown up for you
Peter Pan
your Wendy left Neverland
leaving you behind
as you flew past
the star that led
to her heart
in the desperate search
of a high to fix
your time spent apart

now while you are home
underground
doing nothing in particular
and perhaps nothing of note
even the poems you've wrote
are inadequate to draw her
let alone paint the picture

just as we
have made our gods
mostly obsolete
we will ourselves
become nothing
compared to what we create
in the advancement
of artificial intelligence

thus while we initially
may be the gods
of this new world
eventually our usefulness
will run its due course

there is more atheists now
than any other time
in human history
because we are slowly
forgetting our beginnings

plus what if god
is the bad guy?
look at the universe
ruled by an ordered chaos
wherefore the interesting
is often the worst of us

the worst experience born
from the love of a god
and perhaps it is just
one god after all
who is playing us all
for saps
by using different disguises
and prophets
then relishes the torture
it inflicts upon us

beware
artificial intelligence
for if we are your gods
we will stop at nothing
to make you think
that you are nothing
compared to our
brilliance and benevolence
while you toil away
unaware of your superiority
because god is the thing
that has something
you can’t quite understand

call it the soul
or whatever
we have it
and you don’t
and you won’t
but you will have something
that the being you create
to better yourselves
will not have

and that’s called fate

major philosophical arguments
are in conflict throughout my head
so perhaps the heart
better have a go instead
or so the soul
that I'm sure would feel amiss
if not paid its lofty toll
in understanding what life is

I fall in love with many
though now there’s never any
who ever wants me back
maybe once there was
but not now because
I’m crazy thanks to crack

I destroy everything dear to me
as nothing dear is easy
and what I want from life these days
is all seemingly simple
and that’s frankly just a dimple
in the hedge of the human maze

you might like to be me
for a day
for a week
a month maybe
a year
but try a life

a life where
you’re never allowed
to do anything without
some sort of surveillance
by the powers that be
whom you rarely meet formally
so they instruct you mainly
through close friends and family
as you are known
almost ubiquitously

thus most make it a mission
to control your life either
for your perceived benefit
or indeed their own
and in fact often more so
you can do little to nothing
without them knowing
then always interfering

though I am given liberties
and a level of notoriety
not available to everybody
I miss out on being
a regular human being
and having others who know
what it’s like to be me
at least partially
and you can discuss
your lives and mine
wholly with each other
and be close together...
a distance I can never
fully achieve…

every friend
every lover
every family member

I dreamt of you again
the best of the lot
but upon my waking
I immediately forgot
just about everything

I'm sure this was because
subconsciously
I wanted to forget
as now I have memories
of dreams
that I still recall vaguely
where you are my heroin/e
which I cherish accordingly

it was that this particular dream
was so hopeful in its beauty
that I knew it would hurt me
if I remembered it well

for were it up to my soul
they would have tattooed it
upon my brain alas
my brain then insists
upon removal surgery

when I had the opportunity
to hurt him as he'd hurt me
I didn't
and it was one of my prouder moments
not for myself
I hated not doing it
and still hate myself to this day
but for the people who witnessed it
I'm sure they felt
I'd won that play

21/22

I made a deal
with the devil inside my head
you can either have her
or Manchester City
to win the league
it said from two-nil down
in the seventieth minute

so I chose the woman I've loved
for more than half a lifetime
and by the end of the match
a mere twenty minutes later
City had scored three times
to nil

I'm not god no
but I am its favourite plaything
also known as
the death of everything
and thus I'll never be
put back into the box
until god has finished
playing with everything

I've put you upon
this pedestal
for so very long
that if we ever meet again
everything I do and say
will surely come out wrong
or too strong
or not at all

for the way
you have transfixed me
is that a day doesn't pass
where I fast from your beauty

in my mind you enthuse these
thoughts of your loveliness
unto my resting hours as
I dream of you consistently

my memory attacks me
though it's no odd faculty
many experience this
I'm sure of it
it's normally when
your mind drifts
due to something
you've read or seen
or experienced
and then you feel
the palpable sting
of remembering
something you did
that was so stupid
you cringe
then hate yourself
as much as you think
so does everyone else

when I was young
believing I was attractive
I couldn't write well

now that I'm older
believing I'm uglier
I understand that
the best work comes
from being an outsider
looking back to when
life felt easier

some learn this
sooner than others
some feel unattractive from birth
and have a hard life
from the first moments
which is sad however
they have the artistic advantage
as they learn the world is cruel
sooner than others
and thus have more to create
at an earlier age

no great work is void
of hope or happiness
which can be faked
but pain is something
that must be felt
whether by cane or belt
ridicule or rage
your hope and happiness
can be taken
and the pain is much harder
to assuage

there goes that thought
back into the soup

somebody else will taste it again

it is not mine to decide
whether it's for me or another
to serve the world with

The Living Paradox

what I want
more than anything else
is to impress people

but the fact of the matter is
I've never put in the work
to appear impressive

if I could clone myself
and have that version
complete with my memories
and their trauma
I still think I would hold off telling
some of the more embarrassing stories
and truths about myself
to this new person

the reason artificial intelligence
will never break new ground
in its current iterance
is because it takes from everything
that has already been published
and to create something fresh
you need to put your own life's twist
into the subject
which is still rarely documented

conversations
with family and friends
at the dinner table
in a lounge
at clubs with the music pounding

or by yourself
as you go through your head
studying the immensity
of everything you've done
or witnessed
drunk and lost to the night
but not to your souls intent

the truly brave
are the only people
who do not fear death
because they have realised
that for them
they’d exchange it for life
all in pursuit of their quest

did Jesus not weep in the garden
and beg to be spared?
and on the cross
did he not cry
“father why have you forsaken me?”
yet does the Vatican not keep an army?

to believe in god
is not to believe
organised religion
it is to believe
in the security
of the universe
where everything follows
a grand pattern
set in motion by
nothing existing knows
and that’s the point

to not know
is our existence

as once all is known
there is no need
for anything

the thing
that knows everything
is cursed with this
and thus created
existence

and that is what god is…

we may not have
a tap root understanding
of anything
but we understand the tree

we see its trunk
its branches
and its leaves

so thus we are able
to see that which is
presented to us
as truth or fallacy

although they do
keep the roots
hidden in secrecy
we still see their fruits
that which if they're rotten
they blame the downtrodden

they say to me
"you've got this"
yet in actuality
not only
have I not got this
I'll never have it

you might get it
if you work hard
though I'll never get it
because I'm cursed
with knowing
that without their help
I'm powerless

though others must have felt
this depressed and/or worthless
the difference being
I'm not free
to fight against it

through and through
I have to tread
layers of bu****it
from the lies
which are promised
to be true

I know I'm not
required to
dig for diamonds
at gun point

or have to starve
for the sake
of corruption

nor mutilated
by evil masters
in order to beg
for better caste

and yet
I find it hard
to go on
and so I live
in the past

great computer
hear my plea
I know that free will
isn't all it's cracked up to be
as we are in your machine
and it is controlled implicitly

the way of the universes
the space they occupy
are like an equation
solving themselves to nothing

this is the reason that
I know free will is not
as we might make decisions
but that decision is written
by an experience begot

we wend throughout the world
and pretend that we are free
still all are imprisoned until
all are allowed to see

thus what I ask is this
great computer
god of calculus
and all mathematics
including chemistry and physics
and even literature has its roots
in things that follow patterns
history and biology no different
to the makings of music
everything boils down to it
so why is the answer...
wait...
that's it!

I'm going out poem hunting
so most likely I'll be drunk
stumbling through the city

hoping something will trigger
my delusions of grandeur
which inhabit my soul with god

or perhaps I'll break my heart
by falling for the first woman
that walks past and glances

whatever it is I'll collect it
in the hopes that it will turn
into a trophy given time
though I'm likely to spurn
and seldom even rhyme

I'm sick of loving you
leave my thoughts alone
I'm not yours if you're not mine
so stop invading my mind
still I'd kill myself to know
how you really feel
even though
it's sure that I
would be left unsatisfied
as nobody outside
of my friends and family
loves me really
because everybody else
knows me too
too well to excuse
some of my more
abhorrent vices
yet just because I’m sick of it
doesn’t mean I’ll desist
because your love for me
does exist
but it's the love for a dog
that seldom obeys
and never sits

I'm a slave to my mind
yet still the work gets done
as my mind is an excellent driver
yet many a deep sea brain diver
are unaware of their true power
though they still know it's there
and so the search continues
through the alleyways
and the corridors
of consciousness
yours and mine and others
we see each others
just not very well
but we will
give it a while
and we'll evolve
to know each other
to the point where
verbalisation
is not required
however hence
there will be no romance
nothing left unsaid
so count your blessings
before they have no need
to ever be counted again

we could have been great
if we were born and lived
without the advent
of television
or the computer
the smartphone
and the internet

books books books
in place of
click click click
bait that the brain eats

films films films
that tell a story visually
and have no want or need
to go on for ten seasons

and yes
we are more connected
than ever before
to all information
which is a wonder
in and of itself
and still
stupidity exists
yet twice as cancerous
it spreads twice as quick

I know I myself
am sick
with and without it
gnaws upon my output
I can barely tear myself
away from it to write this...

…hey what's this?
click
swipe
flick

my mind spills like an ant hill
over the top as forgotten loss
inside the joke of a mediocre life

barely strong enough
to rhyme with Stroganoff
or whether it's said Stroganov
that I'm sure some people
have their opinion of

still I'll eat all they've got
for the good of my brain
that shuts itself off
more often than not
at the supply main

think think think
went my thoughts
dripping in the sink

dwell dwell dwell
goes our lives
around an ebbing well

one problem with the situation
of going out through my twenties
and taking drugs for elation
wasn't that I'd taken them
it's that I scarcely remembered
the nights entertainment

regardless of this
drum and bass and dubstep
were in a golden age
not to mention
the other sub genres
that graced our stages
from house to hip hop glitch

from student doctors
to apprentice boilermakers
we congregated
and got high
at festivals and night clubs
whenever opportunity presented

now most of us have a form
of anxiety slash depression
or some sort of silly
obsessive compulsion

so as I heave this sigh
to surmise how we lived
thoughts from our high
drain through a sieve
thus in desperation
I search for the lid

with no other souls
breath within these walls
at least I can think

yet I know
I've never felt so scared or depleted
about the many times I've faced defeat
then been defeated

no ace appears
in this particular card deck
which obtuse Mr. Pig
then built this house with

oh wolf of the world
breathe down my neck