Friday 3 October 2014

WRONG FOOTED BY MY MOUTH

Two poems this post that I have excavated from my notebooks, as I have said many times before, distance grants perspective. I had obviously not thought the poems worked, but now feel that they do.
First here is a little observation from yesterday. Pretty self-explanatory, but I'll tell you anyway. I noticed a builders van stopped at the lights and the guy in the passengers seat was fast asleep. The van had a Bridgwater telephone number on the side.

the glass transforms his sleeping face
muscles relax are reshaped by the flat pane
too much beer last night means he
can doze in the passenger seat all the way from
Bridgwater the lights change the driver mindful
that this sleeper can be a proper nark
slowly pulls away from the lights

Now for the notebook gleanings.

wrong footed by my mouth
no chance to change
events careen forward
I must play my part until
one of us cries
tension cracking
we see each other over the wreckage of the evening
For those of you not familiar with the examination system in the UK A-levels are the qualifications that enable you to go to university and night school is what it sounds like. 

Shakespeare was right, the old bastard
knew a thing or two about people.
Problem was I could never cut through those
words, until it was too late.
When I did him at school, too briefly, meaning
was an eel slipping through green fronds in murky
water. Even night school A-level left me
unmoved- so your man has left you, there are
plenty more, just go out and find one.
All this time I was stoking the fires
of my own downfall, not that I saw it like that.
These days I read read the plays, make sense
of that language, feel for the predicaments the people
find themselves in, all much to late to be of any use to me.

I liked the idea of realising far too late that Shakespeare holds advice that could have saved you if only you had been able to understand it in time. In the tragedies we can see that the participants flaws hold the seeds of their downfall and I was playing with this.

I leave you with more Anna Trenheim.

No comments:

Post a Comment