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.