IRON AGE
Phoenix rises
Cobbled together
By a compendium of pyrites
Forged to link all destinies
Shaped to gird our worlds
And outreach Babylonia
Igneous intrusion
Metamorphic rock
Freed from your sedimentary bed
White heat in the crucible
Running now
Red ingots of desire
Ladled to all requirements
Manacled by steel
This shining age
Rusts towards a new millennium
ANTIGONISH
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door…
Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there,
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…
“Antigonish” is an 1899 poem by American educator and poet Hughes Mearns. It is also known as “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There”, and was a hit song under that title. Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, the poem was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed which Mearns had written for an English class at Harvard University about 1899. In 1910, Mearns put on the play with the Plays and Players, an amateur theatrical group and, on 27 March 1922, newspaper columnist FPA printed the poem in “The Conning Tower”, his column in the New York World.
A very simple poem, yet a very effective one, and a clear example of how ‘plain is sometimes better’.
Text[edit]
SILENCE AT THE BAR
The old man grimaced and silently imbibed his pint
His withered wife glared her whole life at him
And pointedly moved to a seat
At the far end of the joint
Two sons, forty and finicky,
Silently contemplated the following day’s races
While the daughter and son-in-law,
Long run out of things to say,
Blew smoke in each other’s faces.
Only the children were living;
The girl was chandelier-swinging
And the boy was table-top walking.
“Shhh!” said the mother,
“be quiet you two rascals,
We can’t seem to hear ourselves talking”
from my collection of poetry – ’67’, now available @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/67-Poetry-Tom-OBriem-Book-ebook/dp/B00JVBLM9C/ref=la_B0034OIGOQ_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412338420&sr=1-8
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SEPTEMBER IS THE LOVELIEST MONTH
September is the loveliest month.
The sky is on permanent fire
The trees painted many colours
Burnished, it seems, with pure desire
In the park, ducks glide silently by
And the always busy seagulls
Resemble sea-planes
Coming in to land from on high
Whilst near the dozing oak tree
The squirrels nutmeg each other
Each acorn hoarded
For the soon-to-come cold weather
Your arm in mine
We stroll through the park
Heading towards the sunset
Home before dark.
ENTRANCE B
Why are they so nice to us
Those denizens of the DHSS?
Oops! – wrong image,
It’s now the Employment Service…more or less
Raymond sported a badge which identified him
As ‘a member of the clerical support team’
I wanted to ask him what position,
But he was already away
With his ‘back-to-work’ scheme
I had to have a plan you see
That got me ‘gainful’ again;
What occupations could I list?
How much, where, when?
Well, let me see now;
I was a brain surgeon till times got tough
Then I tried circus strongman
Till my back cried enough;
Later, it was alligator-taming
Till I lost my bottle
Now I fancy Formula One driving
At full throttle
Raymond scribbled; the audience had ended
‘No inclination – benefit suspended’
What has happened to the barricades;
The litter-strewn floors,
The ‘them-and-us’ confrontations,
The glass partitions, the bolted-down chairs?
Open-plan dole-queues and carpeted floors?
I think I will get myself a job
There’s no soul in this place anymore.
GONZO MOMMA
Too weird to live, too rare to die
I guess that’s a creed
Old Hunter would swear by
Though he would have a drink first
Or maybe three
Then try to figure out where
The action might be
Before smoking some ‘stuff’
‘Cos he knew plain whiskey and gin
Would never be enough.
Then, perhaps like you, he would
Upheave everything and pack
Screaming all the while;
You can kiss my ass
I ain’t never coming back
ANON
Clubbed by kindness
I sit here stunned
By the knowledge that
You loved me once
Possibly.
No room for any doubt on my side
But you were forbidden fruit
About to fall from the tree
Trouble was
I never tried to catch you
Not really.
And now I have fallen further
Than you ever could
And there you are
Somehow
To pick me up
I AM RED
I am red like burning fire
I am covered with a glowing down
Alight with pure desire
I am glistening ochre, gleaming red
All to light a path to your chamber
And subsume myself in your head
It is time for us to forge
A loving union beyond your bed
I find the further back I go, the better I remember things, whether they happened or not.
Mark Twain
THE WALL
I stopped by our wall again today
Staring
Just staring
I saw an image of you
Fleeting
As you hurried by
It was like somebody
Had stood on my grave
You in all your finery
Mirrored on a blank wall
Blank
Just like your face.
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