The Poet in Afghanistan
The War Reporter Paul Watson after the Opera
The War Reporter Paul Watson on the Silent Apocalypse
The War Reporter Paul Watson on Wednesday's Chemical Weapons Attack
The War Reporter Paul Watson Dreams of Freedom
The War Reporter Paul Watson after Aidan Hartley
What do you say, my friend? All that’s required
is the coin for Charon’s fare. To Kabul
if Kandahar’s too far. Why not reserve
your seat online? a window if like me
you enjoy your scenery. But steer clear
of Afghan Air. Tears in the fuselage
reveal a Mediterranean blur
blending into olive then khaki scree
howling into the head. The breaking news
from Kabul spooks the poet. The Inter
-Continental Hotel penetrated
by Haqqani transfiguring themselves
into dervishes of light that engulf
weddings mid-song, mid-step. Journalists jump
out of windows. While the poet schmoozes
a diplomat in the Nations Cafe
on Second Ave, the East River snaking
between brick face. Reminding the poet
of jogging past Bellevue, the smear of bone
in that Indian summer dusk. Advice
about Afghanistan? the speechwriter
asks the poet: Don’t go. The best hotels
are colonial, the war reporter
writes to the poet. Kevlar vests laid out
like terrycloth robes, helmets like roses
or chocolates on pillows. A cellar full
of new wine. Where we’ll hold court like David
Nivens in wicker chairs, ornamental
grasses between us. Ceiling fan ticking
like history. Interviewing Najib
for our next work of art. The breaking news,
writes the poet to the war reporter,
is we’re expecting. Hard to imagine
myself as a father. And my wife’s friend
just died of cancer. Hard to imagine
she’s gone. Which is all to say I don’t know
if the timing’s exactly right. Congrats!
writes the war reporter. And anyway
Najib won’t write back. Maybe he’s escaped
to Pakistan? or had his hands hacked off
for interpreting me. But have no fear,
partner of mine. We’ll find our new story
elsewhere in the meantime.
The War Reporter Paul Watson after the Opera
—’s a big difference between facts and the truth,
slurs the buzzed Tenor. On the hotel porch
campy with Tiki torches. The courtyard
bloats our vowels, the pool glowers. A clutch
of show-folk beneath the palms. While countless
Somalis festered outside the frame, booms
our Basso Profondo. I don’t want to
get too personal, the Tenor’s protesting
too much, because I performed You and You
are sitting here right now! —I don’t even
like my name! laughs Paul. And we were singing
like, Paul! Paul! all night long! the Soprano
pierces the throng. Can I get anyone
anything else to drink? the Mexican
waiter mumbles. Last call. I’ll have one more,
says Paul. Make that two. The busboy finger
-spears a chorus of empties. And pardon
the French, says the Tenor, cause I’ve fucked up
my life too, but when you called that soldier’s
mom, I’m like, What? —You see? says Paul, that’s fact,
but your performances told us the Truth
outside the frame! Ha ha ha! modesty
gushing from singers. O believe me! O
believe me! I’m sitting there watching Me
and thinking, You ass! If only we’d known
you were coming tonight—boo! spews the Bass
languidly. We thought we had another
night, the Countertenor translates. I wept
for myself, Paul confesses. You wanted
to be forgiven, soothes the Baritone
with gravity. No, I wanted to be
elevated. Transfigured. And fact is
that’s conceited. That’s pathetic. That’s art,
whispers the Soprano into her glass
of ice. That’s true, says Paul, as the waiter
brings our final round.
The War Reporter Paul Watson on the Silent Apocalypse
You can literally watch it happening
in newsrooms all around the world: where once
there’d been like these feeding frenzies of men
in vast, cacophonous pens, now you see
coffee-stained carpets and huddled masses
of mourners wishing farewells to colleagues
quitting or fired, amidst the grunts squealing
desks on dollies towards elevators,
and what was once Empyrean has been razed
like some mud-bricked bazaar in Pakistan,
where toothless grandmothers duck and cover
children from the circling drones. Gone are shouts
of, you know—Stop the presses! and all that
golden-age lingo dwindling to ticking
fingers on smartphones. Cluelessly searching
for scissors my first day, someone pointed:
Copy desk, Einstein.Where they’d been soldered
to a chain. So I asked the copy boy,
Do journalists steal them? No, journalists
stab each other in the neck, ha ha ha.
Is that funny, Dan? Or sad. All I know
is that lately I’ve been missing our kind
of dedication.
The War Reporter Paul Watson on Wednesday's Chemical Weapons Attack
My editor attaches photographs
he says he can’t publish. From the suburbs
of Damascus this morning. How I wish
I’d been there! to interpret this family
scattered like oracle bones on the tiles
of their kitchen. The dearth of furniture
is somewhat suspicious. A toddler’s skin
turns, Father’s chest bare, Mother spread-eagled
out-of-frame. Through the yawning window green
palm fronds and feathered ferns arrested mid
-breeze. Contemplating the crime, a stricken
man grimaces at our intrusion while
another’s inhaling a sunbeam while
a third like a shadow blurs from the room
with hand to mouth. Or maybe he’s smoking
a palliative cigarette. This picture
made me think hard. But my editor should
publish it anyway. And I plan on
telling him why.
The War Reporter Paul Watson Dreams of Freedom
Here’s a JPEG of the boat I’ve christened
Uhuru I, Uhuru II being
40 feet long, with a gourmand’s galley,
hot-water head and a beehive of beds
stowed below. But Uhuru I is all
I can afford now, this dingy dinghy
like scum in a flashflood. Benching in time
to slip another howler. Which I’ll take
as a good sign. Huddling in the cabin
built with my one hand. Electricity’s
in our future, with any luck. Water
sings leaping from the squeaking wheel. Ocean
-grit grinding clean a salvaged floor. Fire pit
downhill from a door I’ll sometimes secure
with a combo lock. Seems like every time
I’m here it rains. But I’ll bring you with me
when we sell our TV pitch. We will write
beneath the pines, drinking exclusively
Canadian Cabernet. And we’ll have sailed
Uhuru II, which translates as freedom
in Swahili, by the way. Tomorrow
I’ll be home. In the hands of a new wind
I still have hope.
The War Reporter Paul Watson after Aidan Hartley
Why don’t you plagiarize somebody else
for a spell? Once upon a time wizards
hammered an obsession into the tree
of my mind. Via photograph. Implies
Watson in retelling Hartley’s feature
quoting Gerald Hanley’s classic memoir
of Somalia called Warriors: the swirling
sand and demonic heat amidst furies
of flies. Calling from dunes like bloodied hands
around the chalice of the sea. White mosques
as if sketched by pre-Raphaelites, the light
-house beams spanning Djibouti to Rome, light
-skinned iterations of slave traders. Poems
in Swahili. Sandalwood pheromones
and halwa meats sweetening the sandy streets
of Barawe. So unlike the carcass
of Mogadishu, where the wind still flutes
through ruins like reefs. I swam and I slept
in a mansion, writes Hartley, canjeero
baking in the yard below. Hoisted up
to me with lamb’s liver, sesame oil
on oval copper trays, pulleys peeling
a coconut rope. Why didn’t I stay?
learn Chimbalazi, fish for yellowfin,
purchase a deed from elders in the Isle
of Dogs, or Minneapolis. I walked
into the sun instead, a man bewitched
by his dream of truth. SEAL Team 6 launches
another midnight raid, slinking away
with the sinking tide, while the sons of God
whet their father’s knives, then slice out the tongues
of the innocents of Barawe.
Dan O’Brien’s third collection of poetry, New Life, was published by CB Editions in London in October 2015 and will be brought out by Hanging Loose press in the US in 2016 . His second collection, Scarsdale, was published by CB Editions in 2014, and in the US by Measure Press in 2015. War Reporter, his debut collection, was published in 2013 by CB Editions, and by Hanging Loose Press in the US. War Reporter received the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Foundation’s Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. O’Brien’s poems have appeared internationally in journals, magazines, and newspapers. O’Brien is a playwright and librettist who has received many awards most recently a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actor, writer, and producer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughter Isobel.
