Best Canterbury Poems
The west winds of springtime
Brought forth April showers
That rained on the pavements
Of Southwick for hours.
It was standing room only
And full to the brim
As people sought shelter
At the old Tabard Inn.
A man with a top hat
Sat staring in space.
There was illness and sadness
Etched deep in his face.
A man with a fob watch
Was seen swapping gold
For a bottle of whisky
Before facing the cold.
A woman sighed deeply
Then laughed with a guest
While sipping tap water
And winning at chess.
There was no chef so no food
Since that dark violent day
When the innkeeper watched him
Being stretchered away.
So the sailor (being followed)
Missed having his tea,
And drank five pints of real ale
Before leaving for sea.
If I had time enough to climb
this Everest of rhythmic rhyme,
I’d find my mind is wandering,
meandering through desert clime.
Each ancient word seems so absurd,
countless of which I’ve never heard.
The ear may hear, though wondering
and pondering what just occurred.
If days had space to ever trace
such epic poems of our race,
long hours of ours lost squandering
time, blundering one can’t erase.
Confine the lines under the bonnet
of sweet brevity's lean sonnet -
levity and glee arise!
These eyes will sing and smile upon it.
written 28 Mar 2020
O to be there again
Little boys dancing for calypso dimes
And the US marines, angelic in white
White rum frolicking in the chapel of their brain
Laughing like water on the ships grey side
Sons, fathers, husbands
Finding respite in the sedulous arms
Of intinerant lovers
Milking their wallets with sugarcane charms
Not that significant fact
That stalled my hunger many days
Is my longing now
But the friendhsips we share then
Bees swinging sibilant songs to tease
The honeyed flow from orange blossoms: hookers of the breeze
We fragment of a frantic civilization
Marginalized by the necessity
That sent us pirating sea shells
Selling purple throated conchs for breeze
Of charity satiated with alcohol and disease
And trees for white flesh of almond nuts
And a safe place to sleep
Above the coral theatre our clouds
Meandering like eyes over the city's
Barren breast in delicious idleness
I long for friends again like those
That made time's calcite hands beautiful
As a stalagmite
In our oppressor's concrete heart ...
My best imagination then
Was our racing kites tugging at clouds
For white puffs of affection.
Canterbury Cathedral Cant
Cold silence
On that stony floor
No man or woman walks where he was killed
brother of your heart
Murdered by your careless slip of speech--
rash threat
Uttered by you-- brother of blood since childhood
Lifelong friend, Harry,
king -- raged a childish rage
brought your world crashing
murder plots by wife and children
you had no will to resist without him
you buried peace within his tomb
threw yourself face down and wept upon that place
blood and tears turned into stone
His blood never washed--nor your tears--
a thousand years away
David and Jonathan reborn
you werer
Bond that grips the spirit
Lives entangled in struggles beyond compare
mighty passions within mighty spirits raged
surpassing friendship lost
men equal
genius is inborn and not forgotten
it tears my heart
it tears my heart
Note: Thomas was Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Tudor--his best friend, King of England. They were drinking buddies and lifelong best friends. In a rabid discussion over politics and theology--Henry stormed off muttering curses. In his bad temper he wished his best friend dead to be rid of the problem. two thugs took up the challenge---to gain a place of power--and they stabbed Thomas to death in the cathedral. The rest, as they say, is history. It was a tragic story of friendship lost and interesting to read about if you are so inclined.
When we retired we were so inspired:
To live free and rest from our labors.
This mobile home park has lived up to the mark,
But oh, goodness gracious, the neighbors.
Jay the old peeper can snoop through the creeper
And tell if the ladies are bathing.
At times he's been caught and the women have taught
him new curse words in language quite scathing.
Denny got back from the hoosegow and that
is the end of his meth lab's production.
He'll have to report to the man from the court
with his pee to avoid re-induction.
Jen basks in the sun and we all see her bum
Though we tell her it's not necessary.
In England alone she's seventeen stone
And her armpits are ever so hairy.
A lady name Myrtle we call snapping turtle
(You never know when she'll attack you)
keeps her trailer quite clean but she's viciously mean
And if talked to she'll snap right back at you.
There are neighbors with tone, who have made themselves known
And we're so glad to know they reside here,
But an odd PhD and a master's degree
Can't compete with the felons that bide here.
- Readers, I hope you forgive me.
I’m retracting some words I once said:
I'd planned to write just five of these tales
But I've added a sixth tale instead..
Night
The preacher was searching for Duchess
Also known as 'The Tabard Inn Cat'.
Scared by the storm she'd run out of the inn
And knocked over his drink where he sat.
That event brought an end to his chess game:
The first he had played in a while.
His worthy opponent who sipped water had said
That his comforting words made her smile.
The preacher had stood from the table.
Looking scared and somewhat distraught.
He felt for some reason there was trouble ahead
And proclaimed that the cat should be caught.
He'd opened the door of The Tabard
And was met by the sound of the rain.
A sailor pushed past him and into the bar
As the preacher limped off down the lane.
Later That Night
The last person to see him still breathing
Was sadly not sober at all.
A 'top-hatted' man who was heading for home
Thought he saw someone scaling a wall.
He swore that he saw something smiling
And eyes that stared back and looked weird.
It was all very dark and his mind wasn't right
Then the shadows he saw disappeared.
The Morning After
The preacher was found dead the next morning
He had fallen it seemed from a height.
Whispers and rumours were swirling around
Like the wind from that wet stormy night:
- "He had feelings for a woman who's taken.."
- "Their love was just dead on the shelf!"
- "He was burdened by guilt with his faith and all that"
- "That cat was the devil itself!"
Later That Week
A sermon revealed at his service
(That the whole town had turned out to see)
That the preacher was an animal lover
And had suffered with PTSD.
You see he was once a brave soldier
But lost hate when he lost his right leg.
He left to preach love and bring all things together:
..He was truly an all-round good egg.
85
Feedback comes to those who apply and post and expect to receive the same
when you place a silver dollar in your mouth you scratch it with your teeth to see if
it is real a man bites down upon it and then looks and frowns or looks and
smiles upon the quarter he has found not silver or even golden but just metal of
some kind its zinc and copper mixes made in Betty Crocker's Kitchens. She has
a tray of circles all lain out upon her divine divan the tails side up for luck she got
this from the JESUS man who tossed his penny in an arc and tried to hit a mark
a line drawn in the sand and made his feet go march to live a different plan a
lifetime being mended his only love he found she makes the things he feels
inside brand new. She stirs her better batter up with a long and spindly spatula
she marks each coin with edges with the cheese garter greater. She takes the
grater to the table and turns each coin by hand she makes four of them for every
dollar in this land. They asked her who is on the image of the coin she laughed
and dimpled smiling she said it must be Dollar Bill. The George Washington
Dollar is the image used for the quarter he gets to be on two. When yew become
the President Of America you can be their two. She stamps the quartered dollars
on the side that just says heads with the handy dandy stamper set she got from
her Uncle Jed for Christmas Past. She turns the coins at last and makes the tails
with her old eagle eye she uses her new leather set to scritch and scratch the
bird the lines formed from habit of making millions in a set in just one day she
filled the Island of Manhattan with 24 additional sets they said they needed them
to buy Manhattan again the previous treaty had run out from the statue of
limitations set back in Washington against the law must be obeyed by every
man. When eye am making a bus ride and eye find a lot of pennies eye ignore
them when eye find a quarter eye do a little more than dance in place eye jig eye
jog eye trip on every log in my haste to find three more it costs one dollar just to
Board the Tran. Betty declined to speak just to the press for she is very shy she
said she knoes now who the image is on the flip side of her coin and eye did not
keep a dry eye when she smiled at me and said without a tremor or a miss it is
Washington, D. C.
I use to hike through Flankers’ un-cobbled street
With easel and canvas hawking my mind
Sketching the apiary’s tenement
Dull gray boxes densely scattered
Through the Spanish needle blooming wild
The brimming bees thought of me sometimes
Like a pest … intruding their waist waggling contrariness
And chased me in their screaming hive
Yet I kept going back there, incessantly, again and again
Something about them I could not shake from my pain,
From my matted mind, merging mnemonics of visual antics
Something more than husking their honey songs, frantic anxieties
Before the reap nectar joy, in deep abyss of altered memories
The image tabernacles … perched precarious icons faultless
Houses like matchboxes on tendril feet
Crablike clings on clustered rocks defying defeat
I lived there safe from the menace of winds that wilted
Better structures framed from punctual plans that silted us
Dams unbroken we flowed …leaving trembling shack of dreams
Clutched tightly in mirthless mothers’ unyielding hands.
“An Addition to The Canterbury Tales”
By Nicholas Giro
There was also a CANDYMAN, a fine seller of his trade,
Who went along the countryside selling the candies he made.
He was a portly, jolly, and merry fellow
Who always wore red and blue, avoiding the color yellow.
With his short and spiky hair that was painted with smoke,
Many-a-child he did cause to become broke.
Opening his chest of delicious wonders inside,
He enticed the little children, though they didn’t know he had lied.
Oh, what an act he could put on for the sport
That he could have entertained in the king’s royal court!
He told the children that his goods could save lives,
Giving them invincibility so that they could even smack bee hives.
He carried an old sack that held his chest with the treats that could please
The children’s ignorant palates, giving them cavities.
For that was his goal – to rot each and every tooth,
Without expressing the much needed truth.
But he was an honest man who always held his head high,
Going by the motto, “A half truth is a whole lie.”
That bridge hanging precariously
Across the threatening gulf
Was the only escape to mortality
For we were safe then
Playing in the litter under it
Without the pretense of being
What others expected us to be
Living at the bottom of the social scale
Top and brimming with humanity
Innocense ... joy ... trust
Screening those
With polite smile
And eyes shadowed by fear
Or something more toxic to us
The scorn we wore
Poorly clad
in the rags of their appreciation
That we were children
Fallen through the holes and cracks
In their gift of a poor world
Innocent of decadent boundaries ... and yet
Brimming like a fountain with promises
Springing lilac blossoms in our dreams
... Another bridge
Different and precarious to cross
Because of all the rules and boundaries
Tha anxiety laden with false histories
The violated truth of memories
This bridge like hope
Thrown across a precipice deluged with floods
Our feet on the tight rope
Burning with desire
I remember us screaming against belief
To rinse the world with joy
Playing under rusted truss and pitted wood
Where the concrete flaked its crust
Posing a danger we never understood.
Yet so much, ponderous with the weight
Of all we became, almost unexpectantly, got across
Where we stretched our souls
So the world could survive ... leeching us still.
Write their names in better than the dark mud
Where they died; their life like the wasted sud
Of washed out things; they were the soldiers of the village
The warriors of a hidden war
They saved us from plunder and pillage
And wore with honor their stigma and scar
We had the worst address in the world paling Nazareth too
But we had love, cared for each other
Minotaur saw the weak and knew our brother
Wrap their names in flags of honor too.
Teddy, the short one, Galdys' son
Lascelles, the handsome one,
And Big Ben with muscles to lift a ton
The athletes were Little wicked, and Sonny
The fell like leaves one by one
And no flag flew at half mast in Canterbury
But look at the place, how each find its rank
And without order besieged the bank.
O Canterbury, I remember your sons
Your daughters, and the runs
Of formal power without justice to the rooms
Disshevelled like graveclothes in empty tombs.
For the benefit of any non-Middle-English
speakers, a literal, word-for-word translation
has been provided beneath each line of
the original:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote!
When we've already had enough! of April showers
Whan priketh hem Governeur in oure corages
Our prick of a governor locks us down in our garages
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
Ha, ha! Our goon squads are itching to go on barrages
And smale fowles maken melodye
And assault thine ears with foul-mouthed serenades
That slepen al the night with open ye
'Twill fershloft three far aye with mnemonic charades
~ A special thanks to Middle English translator, Barry Kanter
I saw Possu
And we stood beside the old Calvary church
Where the banks now run their business
From the old house of God
Two old men out of a place stitched with poverty
Remembering the patches
And how our noble heroes died
Before the slander of the state
Before the river of bullets rose in spate
Of lies, since their demise cover the lies
Of men in the figment of honorable lives
And in the callous up and down
Of evening crowd
No one saw the old man cried
Something in the past
His Canterbury had died
His pilgrim dreams were no more.
When I met Joe
There was nothing left to talk about.
Canterbury
So long ago, St Martyrs Field Road was there my home
There is the huge Martyrs monument of witch burning, oh
Forty-three names on the stone, mine will be the new one
I am the forty-fourth, yes, very famous my life of witchcraft
So many times I watched from my room’s window this monument
I had an ominous feeling, always, very often and it happened
Canterbury a beautiful city, historian, part of world heritage
High street, churches, the cathedral, old houses and buildings
Parks, rivers, everything, traditions, old culture, time traveling
St Thomas catholic church was there my favorite place to contemplate
Sixteen years ago. Time is gone. Life goes on and on, Past far on
I never forget the beautiful tall blonde English lady’s coffee. I loved her.
A time I will visit again this city in Kent
Kent, picturesque landscapes, fantastic
Garden of England, says the saying
I will visit again Canterbury
Secretly, like incognito
I hope we will meet
Oh, amazing heart
GEOFF: A Whet Pirouette Poem
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
furry, spry squirrel, Geoff
Chaucer he doth channel
"Come and 'whet thine whistle'."
"Poof! abracadabra!"
Really?
Now Georgie,
you're silly!
be smiley,
beguilely!