Completely inspired by (if not ripping off!) Freckle..
Money used to be mine
and went straight to the bank
with a satisfying clink
now there’s less to go,
sometimes less than a ten pound note,
and this may be swapped for a wooden toy
to hand to my little boy.
To see him push a car round
I don’t need a thousand pound.
Now there’s no mine, there’s ours
And the reason I work is to buy wooden cars!
So there’s never a moment I pine
for money that used to be mine.
Think it was this time last year that we had the big night out for Mr Armitage. That was a great success. I just read this - but not sure if I like it.
Oxymorons
Summer school, and jumbo shrimp, of course.
Friendly fire, famous poet, common sense,
and, until very recently, safe sex.
Blind date, sure thing, amicable divorce.
Also there's loyal opposition,
social security, deliberate speed.
How about dysfunctional family?
Eyes blackened, hearts crushed, the damn thing functions.
Some things we say should coat our tongues with ash.
Drug-Free School Zone? No way: it's our money
our children toke, snort and shoot up while we
vote against higher property taxes.
Want a one-word oxymoron? Prepay.
Money's--forgive me--rich in such mischief:
trust officer, debt service, common thief--
these phrases all want to have it both ways
and sag at the middle like decrepit beds.
Religious freedom--doesn't that sound good?
And some assisted living when we're old
and in our cryptic dreams the many dead
swirl like a fitful snow. We'll wake and not
think of our living wills or property.
We'll want some breakfast. Our memories
will be our real estate, all that we've got.
William Matthews (2004)
Last edited by Sunbeam Alpine; 19-05-2011 at 02:52 PM.
Hmmm...not sure either Sunbeam. However, it is true that it is almost a year since we met the man himself out on the fells in driving rain and hosted his brilliant readings in Dufton Village Hall afterwards. Here is one of his:
Map Reference
Not that it was the first peak in the range
or the furthest.
It didn't have the swankiest name
and wasn't the highest even, or the finest.
In fact, those in the know
ever had their say about sea-level or cross-sections,
or had their way with angles or vectors,
or went there with their instruments about them,
it might have been more of a hill than a mountain.
As for its features
walls fell into stones along its lower reaches,
fields ran up against its footslopes, scree had loosened
from around its shoulders. Incidentally, pine trees
pitched about its south and west approaches.
We could have guessed, I think, had we taken to it,
the view, straightforward, from its summit,
So,
as we rounded on it from the road that day,
how very smart of me to say or not to say,
what we both knew:
that it stood where its stood, so absolutely, for you.
Simon Armitage