Last week I wrote
about how I had reduced the first poem in the post by a third as I typed it
onto the blog. Well this week I revised it again, though I still haven’t got a
title. Any ideas gratefully received.
Buzz and Neil are on the moon, it’s that July,
We watch them on the evening news,
my mother smokes a woodbine, unmoved,
my father is at work,
my brother understands the science,
I assume we will holiday in space next year.
My Grandmother, who now lives with us
watches the telly uncomprehendingly.
The lesions are forming in her brain,
she’s losing her own space race,
memories jumble, the present is confusion.
I come to dread visiting her in hospital,
on a ward full of old women
whose bodies have outlived their minds.
It will be years before I truly understand
just how sad all this is.
What do you think
of the differences? Does it make the poem more effective? I think it does.
This next poem I so
not think I have posted before. It is a story poem. The only thing I will say
is that Oxleys’ was a department store in Widnes when I was a child.
Wild John
John was
wild,
kinetic
with the drink,
bouncing
off the walls.
Out of
the house,
across
the gardens,
down to
the row of garages.
Where
better to shake off your clothes?
To caper
round the car naked.
When that
proved as pointless,
he sat on
the cold concrete and he cried,
drunk in
the darkness,
unable to
see the joist or to tie the knot.
His wife,
a martyr, (we all knew this),
would
have fifteen more years
of going
out, of other men,
Before
the dementia claimed her,
Left her
on a locked ward,
one room
to ask her questions in:
Where is John? This is not my
house, is it?
John
would have five years
before
the heart attack,
outside
of Oxleys, by then a pool hall.
John
would have five more years
And three
more coaxings:
Come off the clammy bonnet John
Put your clothes on, please John.
Three
more mornings
to pass
you on the street,
as if the night had not happened.
I would be
interested in your thoughts on both them.
 |
| My old cat refusing to join in playing Mah Jong |
Have a good week.
I agree, I do think the first poem is more effective--the words are tighter.
ReplyDeleteLove the contrast between what is to come and the present in the second poem.
Both very powerful poems (maybe Lost in space as a title for the first?). 'kinetic with the drink' is exceptional, but as a whole it flows well to draw you effortlessly to that last stanza. Good piece.
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