Grady O'Corn

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Some Musings
Grady O'Corn

For years it has been the bane of Ireland that despite it’s green fields, renowned whiskey, and abundant leprechaun, the tiny Island which lies off the coast of its great friend and paternal-figure, England, had yet to produce a single literary figure of note. Now, it looks as if things may be changing for the better in this year of our Lord, 2008, with the discovery of the lost works of a little known bard called Grady O’Corn. It appears now that while the vulgar masses of his contemporary Irish were reading comic strips, simple provincial children’s stories (“The Dubliners”, by J. Joice) and the ruddy but unsubtle limericks of Yeats, there was a man—a great man—whose devotion to sophisticated literature and what he began to call “Symbolism” was falling on deaf ears, deaf mind, and whatever other deaf parts of the anatomy are required to neither read nor comprehend.

Relatively little is know of O’Corn’s early life. What is known is that he was orphaned moments after he was born. His mother had suddenly gone into labor at a place where two country roads met. The father had assisted and it is said he did so with steady hands and a complete confidence that things would turn out alright. The birth indeed came of splendidly but a cart came speeding down the road in the opposite direction that his parents were facing. Quoth O’Corn late in life in his only known comments on that day, “I could see it coming and I tried to yell out ‘watch out, watch out, a cart be approachin’ from behind you!’ but I was just too young”. He was adopted by the cart-owner and given the single moniker “O’Grhadeekairn”. As his literary ambitions grew, he changed his name to Grady O’Corn because “you can’t get famous as O’Grhadeekairn, you just can’t” and because O’Grhadeekairn “isn’t even a name, it’s just mock Gaelic doggerel”. The few living witnesses to the bard’s early life whom we at LBS were able to interview all agree on two things: 1) O’Grhadeekairn did not speak his first word until he was a full eight years of age, and 2) he could sing at age four.

His middle years were the years filled with that lust for language that we can now discern in his poems. From his early attempts that were overly marked with vulgarities (“I’m in my c*nt period / pun perhaps intended / I love a good swear in print / and watching girls get rear-ended”, O’Corn developed rather rapidly into a sophisticated poet of nuance. Ironically, though, nuance was not what the Dublin public craved and he never made a cent off a poem. Occasional outbursts appear sporadically amidst even his mature work. In particular, one little fragment that has been recovered rails against the Dublin public in vulgar, almost sexual terms: “like a man pent up for months / then finally given release / my meanings were aimin’ for her chest / but ended up up in the trees”.

During the latter years of his life O’Corn was forced to take on odd jobs that wounded the poet’s great pride. However, he faced the cold winds of fate and the torrents of minimum wage labor with an acerbic humor, once quipping that he was living on “the shit side of an allegory” and insisting that there was another and much more meaningful significance in his relegation to the sidelines of the canons of literature. No one was sitting next to him at the bar when he made that quip, but O’Corn dutifully wrote it down on a napkin and wired it to a contact at the daily paper. When O’Corn finally passed away violently in his sleep at the age of 106 in New York City (far from his beloved homeland) there were, against all odds, people at his funeral. Now, perhaps, with the surfacing of some of his dense and enigmatic masterpieces he will actually be remembered by those people—the employees of Neidhart’s Funeral Home—as more than just another body to feed into the crematory flames… but as a body of work.

Now the leprechaun are gone forever, victims of a neglected environment in the myopic economic rise of the Celtic Tiger. But in their place—are these—the once lost works of the First poet of Ireland:

O Ruddy-Headed Dick

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 by

Wrap yourself in rubber, O ruddy-headed Dick
As soon as the surface you tread becomes slick
We all like the touch of a texture wet like dew
But even the warmest precipitation can bring sickness unto you
You may feel constricted, you may feel less free
But it is nothing like the inconvenience of when it burns when you pee
And remember, anon, when you protest that your pleasure in her it does diminish
That without your rubber she may grow full with child, her beauty eternally finished

One Trick Ponies

Friday, February 20th, 2009 by

Though she may be beautiful, though she may be tall
A one-trick pony will always be left in the stall
Keep that in mind, little Nellie, as you lie on your back
Let another do all the work, you’ll only get yourself sacked
For every finger thrown at you, you’ll pledge to pump a fist
For every tongue that wags in your direction, you’ll offer your own pair of lips,
And should someone really try your mettle, saying he’d like to think outside “the box”
Don’t give in to such a sly, silly fox,
Don’t let him see you blanch or cringe
or see your nerves he’s caused to singe,
Roll over fearless and free, little Nellie, show him you don’t mind
swallow your pride and offer your behind!

One in the Hand, Two in the Bush

Thursday, November 20th, 2008 by

A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, little lass
Remember these words t’ be true
For though they both may fit, though tightly, in that sodden grass
In the morn’ you’ll be black ‘n blue
Nay, sweety, one in the hand is the way t’play
Even naughtiness has degrees of class
So although you have two boys with whom to pass the time away
Make ‘em form a single file line for your *ss

Oh Symbols, Oh Mystery

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

In youth I dreamt, yea, that I saw two rising mountains
And to the South a cave whose walls were dewy wet
As if by the spray of some great fountain
And yet I confess I know not what these dreams mean
I knew only that I must explore and climb upon them
See what sighs would rise up from them
And when I’d penetrate to their depths
From somewhere North I would hear quickening breaths
And yet I do confess I know not what these dreams could mean
If some psychologist could look upon these visions’ doors
Study their shape, their locks and simply hand me the key
Then, then could this throbbing and longing cease within me
But until that day I can only sit in agony and repeat
Oh Symbols, Oh Mystery!

Toulera-e

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

Why would I steal it
When you’ll give it to me for free
Toulera toulera toulera-e

Why would I grab
What you’ll hand over to me
Toulera toulera toulera-e

I’ll do the dance
I’ll wait in the line
I’ll only take it by force, my dear love
If I think it will ne’er be mine

They Touch Your Face at First so Lightly

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

The moon is rising yonder, and the night it’s drawing nigh
So get down upon your knees, little Beatrice, look upwards now and sigh
For your age it is tender and your lips are but in first bloom
Fear not the world’s pleasant but painful lessons
You will learn them one by one in the comfort of your room
For there are two balls that shine above you
One at night and one by day
And they touch your face at first so lightly
With their long and awesome ray

No Lad or Lass an Island Can Be

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

No lad or lass an island can be
This rule also holds true o’er the birds and the bees
We cannot be fulfilled if forever alone
So come, come together everyone
Until our ever crevice be known
For tho we enter another only briefly before coming back out
We must repeat these steps rapidly and often
Until the rhythm of life is established
And pure joy comes pouring out

Molly’s Song

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

Molly, can’t I mow your lawn
Molly, can’t I please
Molly, can’t I plough your earth
While it’s wet with dew and the grass is green

Molly, the time is both right and wrong
To plant these wicked seeds, whose sprouts are long
On your fallow hills I scatter them under the summer sun and breeze
And new life will spring from their hearts like a song
and possibly a disease

Release is Necessary

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

Release is necessary, sweet girl
For if you kept a juggler in jail
Would not his balls turn blue
And so you should go pay his bail
For in thanks he’d splatter purest praise all o’er you

Th’Rogue of Killarney & Cork

Friday, September 19th, 2008 by

From Killarney’s shore to the bays of Cork
There rode from town to town
A handsome lad, whose looks were of the roguish sort
That seemed to loosen every gown
And as he winds his way around
He’s followed by what to th’eye appears a cloud
But not of the mist and rainy sort
But upon closer look, a flock of storks
They called to him from on high
We have your fifty unborn children, m’lord
But he didst take one look upon those crying babes and simply sighed
Dismounted, and fell upon his sword