THE HELICOPTER POEM

Toy helicopters? During the Celtic Tiger period in Ireland, the thing to have was a helicopter. It was a toy for those who had made an awful lot of money during those boom years. And of course, if one had a helicopter, one had to have a helicopter pad.
It was nice to be able to say, 'Go round the back, past the helicopter pad, and you'll find us in the conservatory.'
There was a story about a man who used the roof of a building as a helicopter pad, without permission, and damaged the building's structure.
"Keeping up with the Jones's" reached new levels of insanity in the Celtic Tiger era. I try to capture this surreal situation in my poem The Copper Mines of Peru, to show the effect it had on the relationship between a fictitious teenage son and his father, and on the whole family.

THE COPPER MINES OF PERU

A sullen-faced youngster

is getting into his father’s car.

He’s had a bad childhood.

I had a bad childhood too

but I got over it. Look at me,

I’m going through the cycles

of eternal recurrence.

Unlike my father did on me,

I never laid a hand on him

and yet what his eyes are saying

every time I look at him

is that I have failed him,

that I embarrass him,

that my very existence

was the cause of his bad childhood

What he needs is a good funt

but you can’t get away with that 

nowadays. I’m driving him to school

but he doesn’t want to be driven to school,

above all, he doesn’t want me

to drive him to school,

and if he must be driven to school,

it should be in a Merc or a Beamer.

But what he really really wants

is to have his own Merc or Beamer

and drive himself to school.

Would he be happy with that?

No, there’d be something else

biting him. Some day one of his pals

would descend to school in a helicopter.

Then he’d want a fucking helicopter.

And would that take the perpetual sulk

off his face? Would he get a life then?

You can be certain he wouldn’t,

because I’d buy him a shit helicopter

having mortgaged the house to pay for it

and sold my wife into slavery

and sent his younger brother and sister

to work in the copper mines of Peru. 

While other fathers would buy his classmates

brand new classy twin-jet-engined helicopters,

his would only be second hand

with a single piston engine

and not one of the girls in the school

would ask him for a lift.

And if I tried to reason with him:

‘Son, you can take it from me...’

‘Oh Jesus, not that again,’ he’d say.

‘Let me talk, you little fucker,’ I’d say

and he’d throw his eyes to heaven,

heaving a petulant sigh.

‘You can take it from me,’ I’d say,

‘that if a girl likes you, really likes you

she won’t care if your helicopter

is shit. It’s you, not your helicopter, 

she’ll want – your personality.’

‘Tell that to the Marines,’ he’d say.

‘Anyway, I don’t have a personality.

I had a bad childhood –   remember?’

And this is how it would finish:

we’d settle down in our sleeping bags

in the cabin of the shit helicopter

parked on a flat rock

on the top of a mountain.

‘I miss Mom and Billy and Frida,’ I’d say.

‘So do I,’ he’d say.

‘Fuck you and your teenage angst.’

‘Fuck you and your shit helicopter.’

‘Night, Son.’  

‘Night, Dad.’ 

SEE A VIDEO AT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PsdkRgVPGI of a reading I gave of this poem at 'On the Nail' Readings in Limerick March 2016.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2012