It's not a great time for great literature. Our libraries are potted out with dustbins for a good reason. But there are a few writers who are on the offensive, who are making words dangerous, exciting and readable again. Amongst that lot stands a poet... You'll spot him by the eye-brows: His name is Tony O'Neill.
Tony writes about junk. That's the blurb anyway. He does, kinda, but more than the junk of smack, Tony writes about the junk of modern life: those who are left behind with the free Nokia phones, and the fucked diseased livers. The kind of new age grime that limps into the linoleum waiting rooms of methadone clinics... that finds itself entwined in dirty sheets... that's coughing blood before it's even thirty years old. The junk that wakes up in crumpled blood-splattered suits... that goes to Las Vegas to lose... that marries into hell... that escapes one ghetto for another.... that is surveyed by airport security... that flings dead cats from apartment windows... that masturbates to celebrity doctors... that Hollywood cannot make worse... that rehab cannot make better. McDonald's, Methadone clinics, Sunset Boulevard, Murder Mile, piss drenched stairwells, underpasses, alleyways, waiting rooms, healthcare, deathcare, no-care, porn shops to pawn shops, sodomy, overdrafts, lobotomies, botox, detox ... all shot through with rotten, broken dreams and .5ml of amber coloured hope. A mix of the real and the hyper-real-surreal. A black comedy of the truth, and so not a comedy at all. When you read Tony O'Neill, that is what you get... that is the real junk of the junkiest writer in town.
Still, for all of the above it doesn't make anyone a writer. At the very most it can just give you something to write about. And many people do. Pens for syringes is not a new or original escape plan. There are untold crappy authors out there who spend their days writing about injections they took twenty years ago, boring us to death with the history of how they almost killed themselves, trying desperately to rework the mess into something huge, coherent and meaningful. It's almost as if they think that their story alone will sell them. But it's never really the story that sells, it's the words, and even more – the poetry of the soul: that which cannot be bought, taught nor stolen. And it's there where Tony rises with the greats: his words become bigger than his subject... bigger than the influences that are forever mentioned alongside his name. So today, just because somebody has to, I'm going to be blasphemous:
Fuck Burroughs!
Fuck Bukowski!
Fuck Dr Hunter Thompson!
Things have changed, and things are changing. Smack's the same but the world we escape from when using it is a whole different place. It has come about that there is more to be said than even the greatest could say... That voices do get old and tiresome once a new one makes itself heard. Tony O'Neill is a new voice, and he is saying new things in a new time: our time. A time even more fucked up than before.
So do yourselves a favour and go and track down some of Mr O'Neill's work. Buy, borrow or steal his books... it doesn't matter... it's that urgent. This post is not an advertisement and is even less about selling hard copies. It is about passing on the word. And the word is Tony O'Neill. And the word is out.
War Every Day - Songs from the Shooting Gallery
Down and Out on Murder Mile
Sick City Signing
Tony reading at the KGB BAR
Tony O'Neill Wikipedia
Two short shorts: 'Hammersmith' &'Live bed Show'
Short Story: Notes from a shipwrecked harbour
Tony O'Neill books on Amazon
PS: For those of you who are already familiar with Tony's work, please take a moment to leave a small review over on Amazon (or some other like place). Just saying "Fucking Brilliant!!!" would be enough... You can even copy and paste if from here.
Take Care All, and a new Memoires post will follow shortly...
Shane. X
