Damen O’Brien – Philosopher’s Oil

Damen LE P&W 2 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024

Philosopher’s Oil, poems by Damen O’Brien.


Philosopher’s Oil

after a postcard of Moroccan goats perched in Argan trees

That other goat has not earnt his branch,
nothing goes through the brain of that old fool
that hasn’t first brewed in his gut. That goat
has no grasp of the major philosophers, nor
that other goat, or that goat. None have earnt
their vantage. They probably think Kant is just
refusal, or Spinoza an Italian pasta. Not this goat.
It was not all for Argan kernels that first time
I climbed this tree, it was for a principle and
these other goats followed, sheep that they are.
So now the farmers raise us up with cranes
and cherry-pickers and tether us to branches
so that wide-eyed tourists can rumble up in dusty
buses and buy postcards and believe that we
each made our climb here for a purpose. But only
this goat had a purpose, pure as the white horizon:
the demonstration of a principle. Something ineffable
which I’ve quite forgotten. But my bondage here is
also the illustration of an eternal rule that governs
all goatkind: if a host of angels mustered for the
first time here beneath this tree, proclaiming the
return of some hairy goat-footed God, you can bet
the farmers would clip their wings and spike
their feet and stop them from leaving, and they’d
put a kiosk just around the corner near the shed.
That’s goats for you, and none of these other goats
here and there amongst the scrawny branches would
have anything clever to say about it. Only this goat.
I would crap refined Argon oil upon their heads,
for that is the essence of philosophy and truth.


The Fraud

Have I written this before?
This morning’s sun has plagiarised the sky
and each second’s pinching seconds from itself.
Every bird’s a parrot of the birds
that came before it, nothing’s new.
The cats that stalk them, copy other cats.
So what if there’s a pattern to it all:
some grand colour scheme of the universe’s design,
some unified theory that will explain
why every cockroach resembles other cockroaches,
why when I kill them, they never seem to die,
how men and women are ceaselessly engaged
in producing poor facsimiles of themselves,
why this morning’s sunset is ripping off Van Goh?
I wonder have I written this before?

Witchfinders, old lady sleuths, inquisitors,
I’d beat their analytics, cheat their clues:
the man who matches times, who compares
Facebook photos, who saw a burly viking man
racking up a personal best in a woman’s race;
and even that bloke, that reattributed the poet’s
‘centos’ to their authors. I’d settle into the victory lap
like Rosie Ruiz, scant metres from the finish
not out of breath, without a sweat, having
run the Boston Marathon in near record time.
What was she thinking? Make it look hard,
improve gradually, or nobble all the field,
work hard at not putting in the work,
crawl to the end, come third at first – that’s what
will fool witchfinders, old lady sleuths, inquisitors.

If I’d have run the race I could have run,
I’d have Ben Johnson’s bulging thighs
and Marion Jones’ husband and his syringes,
I’d ask for Maradona’s hand and Cronje’s
balls, Lance Armstrong’s manifest destiny,
Mike Tyson’s teeth, Tonya Harding’s friends,
Fred Lonz’ chutzpah and his chauffeur,
all the pantheon of sport’s superstars, but
most of all, I’d ask for the presence of mind
that encouraged the Spanish Paralympic Team
to steal a gold with able bodied men. Things
are done within the fog of war, or just a fog, like
reining back a horse in Louisiana’s Delta Downs
to re-join with fresher legs and win by two laps. I’d win
that too, if I’d have run the race I could have run.

I’m repainting the Old Masters, not for fame
nor immortality, nor as the restoration of Ecco Homo
by someone’s mom looks like Jesus done in crayon.
I’ve glossed with ancient arsenic and older canvases
to put the extra syllables in verisimilitude
but I’d bung the whole lot from the back of a van,
as easily as hang it on a wall for cash.
My Picasso for your Vermeer, my enigmatic
Mona Lisa won’t tell you where she’s been
or if she’s real and why should she? She’s a lady.
It’s the ones that get away with it that I live for,
sold in Sotheby’s and Christies with a certificate,
that simpering fools will walk past and praise.
I’ll be long dead but my frauds will still be hanging,
so I’m repainting the Old Masters, not for fame.

I’ve let my mirror copy me, and more:
I’ve successfully passed myself off as me,
but older, and though I thought I muffed
a line or two, I mostly got away with it.
It wasn’t jealousy or desire that made me cheat,
nor base reproduction we call a life or pointless
end or flattery though that accusation’s often said.
I just wanted to trace the same lines down,
take the same footsteps, experience the same moments
that briefly made other men and women seem
like gods. There aren’t miracles for such as me.
You can line them up, and though they look the same,
the firstborn always gets to be the king.
I always knew I’d be flung out of heaven for a fraud,
so I’ve let my mirror copy me and more.

It’s always possible I’ve written this before.


Eastern Double Drummer, New Year’s Eve

A cicada steps out of itself to sing.
This is its trick: it shells itself
like lace edamame, pinches each
branch with bladed legs and
soars across the stave. The sound
climbs out of the cicada and
with soft skin, makes each sine
and cosine rub up against each other.

On the occasion of the anniversary
of an arbitrary date, day dies into day
and we do not mark it. So cicadas
abandon their body, like rusty Holdens
driven into a culvert, lacquer soldiers
shucked from battered suits of armour
to peel back the spine of themselves for
faith. The day is sacred, cracked in two.

We have finished counting to midnight,
but cicadas are prising from their packets,
shaking out twelve years of empty drums
to pour themselves a solid sheet of sound,
thunderous fireworks to mark the edge
of one day keened from the next, unzipping
the back of their old life, celebrating with
wet lungs, new moments wrung from new days.


© Damen O’Brien

Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning Australian poet. Damen’s prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Writing Award and the Café Writer’s International Poetry Competition.  In 2024 he won the Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition, the Fingal Poetry Prize, the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize and the Grieve Hunter Writer’s Centre Prize. His poems have been published in the journals of seven countries including Aesthetica, Arc Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Southword and Overland. Damen’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. His latest book of poetry is Walking the Boundary (Pitt Street Poetry, 2024).

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