A yummy mother with pram is walking
to west Dulwich from West Norwood
The blind lady walks under scaffold
the gyrating lumps of bolts
gerates her white stick
and your plimsole beggar man asks for a pious 50p piece
what he can buy Lord knows!
Your street preacher with only pigeons as an audience
conjures a better day
until the expected gales up lifting
the tiles as an erstwhile punishment
for repentance
Categories:
dulwich, anxiety, appreciation,
Form: Free verse
Girl at a Window
Young girl at a window where do you stare,
What is it that fascinates you so much?
You smile a little, for whom do you look;
Whose are those beads your fingers touch?
Are they a gift, a token from another,
Is it he for whom you look, in the street
More enigmatic than Mona Lisa?
Is there some person you wait to greet?
What interests you as time goes by
Leaning, patient over the window sill,
Have you been there, watching, for long and
Will you wait with such attention until
He glances up from the throng beneath?
Pausing when he sees you gazing there,
Red sunlit ringlets and rose blushed cheeks.
And does he recognize the beads you wear?
From the painting ‘Girl at a Window’ by
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1645.
This painting now hangs in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, U.K.
http://www.dulwitchpicturegalley.org.uk
5/10/17
Categories:
dulwich, art, girl, longing,
Form: Rhyme
I wish I were a baggage to abandon.
I wish I were a hold-all to un-hold,
With no handle for some bloke to put his hand on
Or to plant a snotty kiss that leaves me cold …
I wish I were a parcel, square and string-tied,
In stout brown paper, not to be un-wrapped;
Inscribed in huge red letters, “DON’T PEEP INSIDE!
Till I’m dead and gone, and cannot be sent back …”
It might be rather fun to be left luggage;
To fashion most exquisite, boring days
With false teeth and umbrellas in West Dulwich,
Or to gather dust in Walton-on-the-Naze …
I think I’d like to be a Printed Packet,
Forgotten on some sorting-office shelf,
With nobody to notice I can’t hack it
And no-one else to hassle … Just myself …
I want to pass my private rites of passage
Simply wrapped up in myself, and “off the ‘phone.”
I really DO wish you would get the message …
Just like Garbo, dear, “I VANT TO BE ALONE!”
( I found the first line of this poem as a typing exercise
on a second-hand computer.
It just tickled my fancy! )
Categories:
dulwich, funny, imagination
Form: Quatrain