Best Flat Cap Poems
In legends of old when just a lad
Country farmers according to dad
Upon one’s head a flat cap
To face the sun crafty chap
Whence to tell one the time deemed the fad.
© Harry J Horsman 2020
The Minstrel
In a doorway, squatting, strumming out of tune
There sits a minstrel, gazing whilst he plays
A string of chords, discordant in their mix
Combining all his thoughts of better days.
Unshaven, threadbare, clothed as once he did
Before some unexpected fall from grace,
So now he plays life’s thoughts for all to hear
As passers-by avoid his careworn face.
A flat cap holds a few small copper coins
Reflecting those who understand his plight
And so I cross and place a token too
Acknowledged only by a nod so slight.
His eyes look through me, seemingly to say,
This could be you who's sitting here today.
When I was just a nipper
My Dad used to take me to the barbers
The Barber would put a board across the chair
so I was higher
and he could cut my hair.
It struck me
how the barber was as bold as a coot
shuffling around in his brown smock
barbers suit.
It was known as the army barbers
everything was painted army green
and adorning the walls
there was pictures of soldiers and tanks
displayed to be seen.
And a picture of a man with greasy hair
the advert read 'Brylcream'.
The smell of brylcream and tobacco smoke
filled the air
emanating from an old man in a flat cap
in the corner smoking a pipe
sitting in his chair.
The clink clink of the scissors
I didn't like how the barber would
push my head here and there
without a care.
I was fascinated by the array of bottles and potions
and various hair tonics and lotions
Then the barber took a brush
removed the towel
and brushed the hairs off my neck
and from behind my ears
It used to tickle like heck.
Then I'd be lifted off the chair
and the board was put away
ready for another little boy
wanting a haircut to come his way.
I'd walk out of the barbers shop
feeling really strange like I was naked
uncomfortable and really funny
A traumatic experience for a mere nipper
I'd been sheared like a sheep
chocked from the smoke
and he had the cheek
to take our money.
Peter Dome.copyright.2015..
_________________
LEAVING BOYHOOD BEHIND
White shirt 'n' school tie to blue-collar, dress-code is changing with age
From schooldays to pay-days, from homework to hard work
School bells and game playing to work's whistle and wage earning
With new mates, dirty jokes and smoking, oh where has my boyhood gone?
Seven-thirty start time to five-thirty finish, playtime is shortening with age
From footy-boots to work-boots, from school cap to flat-cap
Five hour days and school clock to nine hour days and time-clock
With clocking on, punch cards and overtime, oh where has my boyhood gone?
Sitting with the lads and a big mug of tea, some things taste different with age
From cream soda to warm beer, from tu'penny mix to filter-tips
Learning piecework rates and new skills, paying union subs and betting slips
***-packet backs, sledge-hammers and betting, oh where has my boyhood gone?
Working with Paddy in the oven's fiery heat, this is much too hot at any age
From cold iron bar to white hot, from straight angle-bar to boiler-flange
From the furnace to the big rolls and bend it, working fast before
Lift it out, knock it flat and weld it, oh where has my boyhood gone
In the Boiler-shop to learn fabrication, things mustn't drop apart with age
From marking out to Oxy-gas cutting from riveting to electric arc welding
Not much in the way of protection with no heath 'n' safety laws here
With air-hammers, no ear-plugs or goggles, oh where has my hearing gone?
Moving big metal sheets down the plate-shop, I must be getting stronger with age
From plate stack to marking out table from load stable to not very safe
Two tons of metal on the pulley, the chain slips and it's down with a bang
Metal crashing, men jumping and cursing, oh where has my life nearly gone
Day-release Thursday at college, lessons still needed with age
From going to Derby and back again, from going by bus to car driving
The Lacarno dance-hall at lunch-time, try chatting up girls for some fun
A quick jive, some posing and a coffee, oh where has my boyhood gone
Dating girls at the week-end and hoping, urges get stronger with age
From meeting up early to dancing, from front seat to back seat for fun
Babysitting her niece on a Tuesdays this gives us some time on our own
Snogging, heavy petting and much further... boyhood gone
If you want to keep money, then Panama's the one
Like a British Prime Minister or wealthy Baron
If you want all the riches, to be like a fat cat
Then throw your flat cap off, get a Panama hat
If you want bank accounts that no one can trace
Think like the Prime Minister, Panama's the place
For the rich and the wealthy, with a pay no tax think
A Panamatic paradise with no British link
One rule for the rich, one rule for the poor
We pay our taxes and they close that door
Tell the kids on the benefits, or on the minimum pay
£7.20 an hour with no tax to pay
A Panamatic paradise for the top of the tree
With the roots firmly planted for the you and the me
As the common masses, as the Hoi Polloi
No offshore accounts for us to enjoy
So put your clogs back on, put back that flat cap
For you would look silly in a Panama hat
An offshore account for the file and the rank
While under your floorboards sits your piggy bank.
Each time my Auntie Rosa went to shop in the High Street,
She’d bring us back a pink-iced bun; it was our special treat.
We’d take them up to Grandad’s (we preferred to eat them there)
We’d scoff them in the kitchen, in his big old Windsor chair.
And Grandad made us thick black tea, as thick as tarmacadam,
And carrots from the garden (if the rabbits hadn’t had ‘em!)
He tried, I guess, but honestly, his cooking was quite ropey,
And since he washed his plates in Daz, it always tasted soapy!
He kept rabbits out behind his house (some of them were tame.)
In the front grew antirrhinums – ‘bunny-rabbits’ once again.
Their soft and furry noses looked exactly like each other:
Each flower a tiny replica of its herbivorous brother.
His house was full of assegais, elephants and gongs.
He’d tell us of his voyages and sing us salty songs …
He always wore a waistcoat and a greasy old flat cap.
He still walked with a sailor’s roll, the nautical old chap!
When Grandad wanted 'baccy, I’d go down Kit-Cat Lane
To the musty shop in a wooden hut - ‘The Cabin’ was its name.
T’was just like in a cowboy film, with barrels and all-sorts;
But best of all was the real stuffed bear, moulting on the porch..
Sometimes we’d go to Gordon’s house. His garden had a swing.
We’d crawl under his veranda, and discuss Lee’s brother’s Thing!
Gordon did love swimming! He went in the sea each day.
He went in once too often, for he drowned out in the bay.
Those summers on the island seem so very long ago.
These days I can’t remember why it is I loved them so …
But sometimes, when a nasty pong comes drifting from a drain,
It smells just like the Canvey dykes, and I am there again …
I’m padding down a sandy path, between two slime-filled ditches,
My hair is wet, my skin tastes salt, my swimsuit rubs and itches.
I turn the corner of the lane; the graveyard smell is gone …
In Grandad’s garden, there’s my Dad! He’s come to take me home!
For the uninitiated (or simply younger!), an assegai is an African Zulu warrior's long spear,
and tarmacadam is the stuff you put on roads - blacktop!
Scabby knees and chimney stack smoke
Scabby knees and chimney stack smoke,
Short corduroy trousers, old flat cap bloke.
Wash lines of linen hang over cobbled street,
Holes in our shoes, dirty cold callous feet.
Make do and mend, hand me down clothes,
Ruddy dirt faces with candlewick nose.
Life much simpler in those days back then,
Times were hard for adolescent men.
Hard to believe this was in my lifetime,
I long to return to Bleak house and grime.
Written 27.9.18 for Silent One's contest
"What it was like back then"
At a lonely little village, on the 19th february 1857, nearly 200 men and boys, gave up their
souls into heaven.
Men like JOHN and JOSEPH GRIMSHAW,two unfortunate mining folk, who left for work, that
fateful day, laughing,or singing, or just too tired to talk.
Descending in the cage, at the start of their shift, then walking for hours, to cut coal they could
lift.
No bright light on their helmet, or safety boots that did fit, only a little wax candle, on a flat cap
did it sit.
Then!! at 12.15, a loud explosion was felt, as they dug out coal, hearts thumped,with a belt,
Next, came poison gas, it put them to sleep, not even a murmer, not even a peep.
But worse was to come, in the form of a fire. With no one to put it out, the flames grew higher,
and higher.
As men reached the pit bottom, they put up a great fight, as the scrambled into the cage, to
get out into daylight.
On reaching the surface, to raise the alarm, as down in the pit, miners were dead, some even
missing an arm.
At long last, a rescue party went down into the mine, but scenes were too horrible, with men
laid out in a line.
A decision, was taken, to put out fires with a flood, as the rescue party had tried, to search
on was no good.
Three months later, when the water had dried up and gone, they could retrieve all the bodies,
get them out, one by one.
They were all placed in coffins, lined up in the yard, but to identify loved ones,it was very hard.
ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY SEVEN YEARS, as now passed by, so dont forget our past history,
remember it, lets try.
I never found out the true fate of, JOSEPH and JOHN, but the fight for coal, and their
memory lives on.
Now, when you walk through fields, just stop!! close your eyes, try to picture the scenes
on the pit top.
Now, there is nothing, nothing to see, exept for MEMORIES, of descendants and ME!!
Whippet's in the wind
When greyhound
Gazed upon
Whippersnapper
Want to be
In the midday sun
Whistle of a woman
Calling canine back
Put him on the leash
Take doggy to the track
Flat cap Freddie motions
To signal his mut
Caught him by the collar
In the car he's shut
Outside, the sound of two children at play,
she pushed a pram, he kicked a yellow ball,
a van approached, he scuttled out the way
'scrap iron!' came the monotonic call.
My childhood, I remember on this street
the rag 'n bone man, cart pulled by a horse
my football clattered, bounced between its feet
like pinballs on their strange erratic course.
The old man took scrap iron, steel and lead,
would sharpen household blades and garden shears,
take them back to his workshop in his shed,
flat cap on head, pencil behind his ear.
With all his best intentions this pair's job
would never earn a living year on year
it seemed to me pin money, a few bob,
the greater need his cigarettes, or beer.
Did he consider packing it all in
his future at that age counted in days
four legged partner old and tired like him
so close that time when they would part the ways?
On the school building, sunset washed the wall,
their passing shadows cast answered it all.
For contest 'eight word challenge', sponsor Robert Haigh
14th march 2018
Well wobbling around in a pear tree dressed in a space suit can be very very dangerous. You might fall. And fallings are failings and failings flay the flesh from even the smallest atom that arrives in a puddle so never question the movements of a pond in the seasonal adjustments. Eradication of waste from slumber kitchen is hidden in an attic drawer. Once opened it slides away in a drip format akin to drizzling sauce onto a plate of freshly carved meat. Carved carbonated creations can carry carnivorous carnivals cleverly closing chasms. And a beetle in a flat cap was racing around wildly while the worrying worm was moving thoughts around and around like a windy day moves leaves through the pathways. Ever since a hill breathed the path was pushed and pushed and pushed. Then to place ones feet upon the tracks ignites thrones, fields, destinations, and a large variety of six foot jars of giggling gherkins. The wearing of aprons at this time is heavily prohibited and the sixty feet of micro beads in a line stretching in gymnasiums is rather like the time the electric elephant circus played a wild thumping trumpeting time to the seven arched breezes of the tea cloud. Ha hats having heated hollering havens. How heavenly. Ha the misted mustard mouse moving mousetraps. Ha the feather forming a giant wheel and going down the motorways with the suitcase on full beam because it is foggy but no frog. X desensitisations x at over a million keys, motors and cute little jumping juggernauts with tiny five centimetre wingspans. Z z z z z z
Interesting to note that a snail can move at maximum speed in the morning mists of moons .
I saw Sting in the lobby this morning, we were going out and he was coming in. Lisa nudged me, “Sting” was all she whispered. He was with a woman and a man. The woman was talking to the doorman. Sting was dressed all in black except for a long stark-white cashmere scarf, he was chatting and working a dark-gray French-flat-cap around in his hands. His hair is very short and white.
We wanted to walk in the snow, if only for a minute.
A gust of wind caught us as we reached the sidewalk. The two American flags, on either side of the entrance, went rigid, at 9-o’clock as if saluting us. “Jeeez!” I said, like the Georgia girl I am - or was. “Don’t be a baby,” Lisa answered, like a true, pittyless New Yorker but her cheeks had turned a child-like pink. She flipped up her collar.
I patted my pocket, relieved to feel my phone and know that if we froze to death the authorities could use “find my friends” to locate our bodies.
Leeza joins us a moment later and I can’t help but notice that she’s dressed like it’s a cool fall day. Back in the day, when my brother would dress like summer even though temperatures in Georgia had dipped cruelly into the fifties. Seeing him, my mom would say, “Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling,” but I don’t.
“Did you see Sting?” I asked Leeza (12). She gives me a blank look. “Sting”, I said, “the lead singer for The Police?” I add, as clarification. “I don’t know who that is,” she says flatly. “He was famous,” I say in surrender, “a long time ago, in the 90s.” Maybe the next generation won’t be as celebrity driven.
Thank God Lisa suggested I pin my artist-beret down or it would have blown away, like my resolve to walk in the snow. Still, I followed Lisa into the park like a cat on a leash - unwilling to be seen as any less Canadian. The show crunched like we were trampling over snow-cones.
Trees began turning away the wind as we entered Central Park, “I think we may survive.” I said cheerfully. Just because you're freezing to death doesn’t mean you can’t be ??affable.
Why don’t pigeons freeze to death - I thought birds flew south for the winter?
The Ings showed the scars of a dust blooded past
The heavy air clouds came in way too fast
A pool outcrop showed a shining light
The air grew thin on the Ings that night
Noises were heard, movement of men underground
Rumbles under feet, voices all around
We stopped and stared, in fright, in fear
These noises, these rumbles should not be here?
Train whistles over moving wheels on tracks
Smoke filling the air, the flaming tower out back
Bustle, rumble, roar as boots hit this track
Men underground returning home and being replaced with fresh new backs
Whistling tunes heard along the main footpath
You could smell the past, taste it in your mouth.
Scraping boots create dust all along the track
A boys voice is heard after beating feet ran past
'Dad, dad, dad....mum's not well, please come back'
Their movement felt as they walked right past
The pool of water glowed then sparkling lights sprung out
The lights moved around us and then went back
The air grew strong, we could breathe deep at last
The heavy air clouds disappeared in an instant flash
We watched the glowing lights sink in the outcrop pool
The train noises ceased, an eerie silence settled down
The smell in the air grew fresh with new surrounding gorse
The track dust settled, now Tarmac faced, of course!
The Ings now settled to the calls of meadow pipets and skylarks
The blackbird song stopped as he watched the canaries fly right past!
We held hands and found a seat to sit and see
The hills and valley fields around the old colliery sat so beautifully
As we sat in silence, as we sat in peace
We saw owls fly around the flaming tower now overgrown with weeds
We heard a whistling tune from a man and saw a figure at the end of the main footpath
His whistling stopped suddenly and then he turned to face us many metres back
He stood and stared in his boots, coat, blackened face, flat cap.
He raised his hand to acknowledge we were there on his ground, on his track.
We both waved right back not blinking as we stared
Then in an instant he was gone as he vanished into the cool, summer air.
The forearms ache after their long days make of glass into many forms of structure.
The back is tight and it’s muscles tough after working hard to earn a crust and earn it honestly.
The winds they howl and the rain it drums as the cold wet spray waits to be encountered. Overalls still warm, a flat cap on, woollen jacket over tired shoulders.
The dark it comes so fast at night in the months after the autumn sunshine.
The miles to walk lay out in front before the door home is opened with a kiss and welcome from my wife.
But these exposed hills and open tracks between the fields are the hardest and cruelest parts of the journey. If the ice is rock and the rain is sharp the wind with my luck will be horizontal.
It takes all the strength left in this old body to face the elements after working hard all day for not much money. The mind finds peace as it thinks of warmth and the crackle of the fire with a cup of warm mead to settle and gaze at smiling eyes that dance in flames of evening shadows.
The wind blows so hard, the body tightens and head faces down up the steep hill to my house of family. The cold it knows how to get to my bones as I arrive I’m truly knackered.
Rest in warm bed after being hearty fed and humming tunes to the dying embers.
The Shed
...was Granddad's before he died.
And now its loneliness reached out to the boy
from the shaded, shuffling shadows
that shushed the sheltered garden.
They pulled, they tugged at his guilt-filled absence
until he slink-slunked through the greenery,
standing to attention outside its wooded frame.
It had been Grandad’s domain, his citadel,
built from leftover bits of wood and insulation
collected, or purloined, from…wherever.. whenever.
Slowly, respectively, the boy sneak-peaked the door ajar,
slipping inside, stepping into the window’s filtered light
but he was unprepared for the shock that shook him!
Memories of Grandad unfolded themselves everywhere
his tools: ruler, chisel, plane, saw and his Swedish workbench,
the unfinished projects and most of all…..Grandad’s flat cap;
it angled from a hook like an ageing photograph.
The boy sensed his skin tighten, his breath narrow
as precious memories skipped into his head;
the alchemy of playfulness, tomfoolery, inventiveness
that forged and built those ‘togetherness’ wooden creations.
Then Grandad’s voice resounded inside the boy’s head,
“Aye well I’m a little bit different lad.
I like to imagine left-handed bars of chocolate
and he’d touch his nose and add, “The nose knows, you know!”
The boy folded up with emotion as he remembered
how his words were shy around others … never Grandad.
He encouraged, praised, sparkled a smile that polished you up
like a warming pat on the back, adding a phrase like,
“We’re two forks sharing the same plate, mate!”
And then all was well.
The boy now left the shed with a rucksack of renewed memories
and a resolve to undertake a new project in Grandad’s shed.
He touched his nose whispering, “The nose knows, you know!”
then remembered Grandad’s favourite saying,
“What do great minds do?” He could hear Grandad ask.
And this time the boy replied, “They think…… for themselves!”
And he smiled himself all the way down the garden;
Grandad’s creative essence would live forever in his thoughts.
Ian Souter April, 25