Turning Up For Work: Me and Trump

"Inspiration is for amateurs. Professionals turn up and do a day's work." 

So here I am, a newly-turned  professional poet, showing up for work. Given that it's 12:39 pm, it's hardly a great start, but it's a start. 

The Poet 

I am given to self-parody. Many poets are, you'll find.

So, when I call myself the Coleridge of Culver St, you'll kmow

I am not being serious. 

Though - give me my due - if you're calling Donald Trump a President

It should be easy enough to call ME

A Poet.

Poem: Still Raining

 

 

Still Raining

 

My window looks in on me

Still raining.

OK, I like the rain, apart from it being cold and wet:

Those attributes I am not so fond of.

 

I like it's absence of colour and it's

Complete indifference.

 

The speckles it's makes on the glass and a memory of rain- drop races with Adrian.

 

Then.

 

Now:

 

None of my current crop of children would have the patience to watch a raindrop obey the laws of physics and meander down the pane.

 

I can conjure up excitement and laughter and

Small fingers tracing their favourites. Sometimes I called THAT cheating.

 

When I lost.

 

It's good isn't it? To have a cupboard full of moments. Mine is so crammed they spill out.

 

As for this one: I hold it before it goes. It's January 1st 2017, and right here, right now, I am happy.

 

Even

Though

It's

Still

Raining

 

Happy New Year

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Why I Will Live To Be One Hundred And Six

Being at a loose end this morning, and wide awake somewhat earlier than I chose to be, I opened the ghost of my kindle and started to read the bargain of the day of a while ago, which is called, 'The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window And Disappeared,'

I hazarded twenty pence on this book in honour of its title, and I have read three pages and was so inspired that I reached  for this blog and began tapping.

I am going to live to be 106.

Some years ago, I was suckered by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of  the Exchequer into buying  into a scheme that was almost guaranteed to enhance my pension. It doesn't. It went down with the stock market and delivers into MY exchequer the sum of twenty pounds a month. I have to live to be one hundred and six to get my money back. And I will.

Hence my interest in stories about centenarians. I am going to be one of them, and I want pointers on how to do it in style.

In the course of the three pages that I have read, the hero has climbed out of a window in his carpet slippers and headed for the bus station. He is uncrashing his 100th Birthday Party, thus avoiding the mayor, his retinue,  and a surfeit of iced cake. I am cheering him on as he stops to rest his knees in a graveyard.

I am liking this man more and more. I have knees, and a fascination with graveyards. I love where this is going....

All I can hear. ...

Is the ticking of the clock on the wall of my bedroom. I wonder at this, it's battery- driven:  no need for the  tick, but there you  are, and I am glad of it, a reminder that the clock is still telling time and is probably telling it right. 

Silence. 

It wasn't always so. For years on this morning our children would be bursting in ( in three minutes, 'not until eight 'o clock' was the rule!) faces glowing with excitement, my heart bursting with love  for them... ) 

Today all three of them will be sharing Christmas with their own children. They are delightful mothers with lovely husbands and beautiful children. I smile with deep, deep satisfaction. 

Job done.

 :)

Merry Christmas!

Amen.