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Make Love and War

by Michael O'Leary

 Make Love and War is Michael O’Leary’s first all new poetry collection for several years. The first section comprises his romantic and elegiac poems, written about friends, people and places and includes the elegy for the late musician/writer Graeme Collins as well as several love poems, including the title poem with its savage ironies. The second section moves away from shorter lyrics and  includes two technically adroit longer poems ‘Auckland Revisited’ (which explores his early years in Auckland) and ‘Station to Station’ - an on the road rail blues song for David Bowie. As with O’Leary’s earlier works popular music is an important influence on the structure and form of his unique poetic. This new collection is sure to please fans old and new alike.  

"A small book, but well selected from this most interesting of New Zealand's poets. Longish in the tooth, and looking like Ginsberg, the title poem is chilling “he claims the SS troops were more honest / Than the black hawks up . . .“ O'Leary has a piercing view of the world. 'Reality dreams' shows O'Leary's dedication to reality, “Little does O'Leary know / His world is not what it seems! / Reality is all dreams, all dreams.” O'Leary's dedication to Graeme Collins 'a man of our times' is expansive and loving. A footnote to that was my last telephone call to Graeme at the hospice “Hey man, do you know, when they bath me they lower the whole bed into the bath (giggle)”. Days later he died. I'm grateful to Michael for remembering him. I still have the piano transcription of Graeme's 2nd symphony. I wonder if it will ever be performed. This is a book definitely worthy of having. " - Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Make Love and War
(for Ani)

                        i

The last train is about to leave
In fact, has left . . .
The cradle of Western Civilization
Is under siege
As the Euphrates burns, a river of flames
Set alight this past decade
By the twin towers of a double burning bush
The new manifestation of Western Civilization
Is engulfing and eating its own parents
USA , teenager of the world
New kid on the old block
With raging hormones of revenge . . .
The last train has pulled out
From the stations of My Lai and Fallujah and Lidice
It doesn’t matter who’s killing ya
If you’re being killed
Talking to someone who fought in Vietnam
Who witnessed the murder of women and children
He claims the SS troops were more honest
Than the Black Hawks up . . .

                        ii

My love comes to me
And baring her beautiful breasts
Before my loving gaze
And soft caress
She gives me the gift
Only a young woman
Can bestow on an older man . . .
The strange healing, and holding up of a mirror
The touch of the goddess . . .
And no matter how humble
His or her beginnings have been
That gift of love, of aroha
Although tainted by temporal concerns
Cannot be lost, as the flow
Of life loosens itself
From its strictures . . .

iii

The doors after perception, open
As does the grave
The tomb beckons to . . .
            The hikoi of Hope
            The procession of Enough
            The long line to the Unknown Soldier
Wending its way through the Wellington streets
Like a river of remembrance  . . .
When its all over
The soldiers remind me of death
My young love’s breasts remind me of love
And now she is gone
And who will say
            “Did you miss me?” 
 

TITLE               Make Love and War
AUTHOR         Michael O'Leary
PUBLISHED    February 2005
BY                    HeadworX
CATEGORY    Poetry
FORMAT         Paperback
EXTENT          A5, 64 pages
ISBN                0-476-01367-4
PRICE              NZ  $20.00

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