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Of Night
A city
mouse darts from the paws of night.
A body drops from the jaws of night.
A
woman denies the laws of night.
awake and trapped in the was of night //
Something I haven't seen in poetry for some time / rhyme. I'm a natural. And
true undiluted AAAA rhyme, which continues:
A young man
turns in the gauze of night
unravelling the cause of night:
that days extend their claws at night,
to re-enact old wars at night /
Scheme AAAA - AAAA - Aaaand the rhyme continues over the page:
The Happy Diary
A man on a train feeding grapes to his son.
Tossing my shoes in the trash one by one.
The smell of tomato sauce. Square of sun
The boy slipped the grapes in
his mouth one by one /
Are you getting a feeling for these poems? And the rhyme continues but
becomes more sophisticated - partial rhyme on the next page:
The Silver Arrow:
With your fifteen percent chance to survive,
marriage seemed a doomed possibility,
yet melanoma taught us to live,
on two tracks with two new velocities /
It takes a brave poet in these experimental days to throw caution to the gail
and stand up for their poetic beliefs. One might even think this is fool
hardy verging on the insane. But fair play to Molly she's standing on the
burning deck and saying to the world 'I don't give a toss about what's hip
and what's not hip - I'm a poetic person and you can ram it where the
experiments don't shine.' And this attitude I admire: that confronted with
five hundred years of hard won poetic advancement that you op for a modi
operandi that found light in Shakespeare's lodging house.
She like's her cat does Molly - but it dies:
Fellini the Cat
He bit me before he died, then hissed
at the vet who shaved his paw for the prick
of
the euthanasia needle she'd stick
into a vein while we held him. Then she kissed /
Molly ratchets up the rhyme sophistication with a white heat ABBA. No not the
pop group!
Then the cat becomes a ghost:
Ghost
Cat
why isn't he there?
Only the clocks. Only air
Check the windowsill. The sunspot bare.
By this time I'm in tears: I don't know if its the capricious blow on blow of
the astute melody or the gripping nature of the muse but:
I'm filling up
and I have to stop
I can't go on
and on and on and on and on full stop.
Sorry.
© James McLaughlin 2010
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