Geoff Smith has by now been forgotten
Not remembered by his peers
– they’re all dead
He was a single, simple man,
A gardener who liked his life
Although he died never really
Knowing what it was all about
But there again
Neither did Copernicus!
June 29, 2010
Geoffrey Smith and Copernicus
June 28, 2010
The Waggon and Horses (1984)
Yellow, smoke stained walls alive,
Breathless, coughing back an
Evening’s abuse of much abused bodies
Shoulders hunch over enlargened stomachs
And half filled glasses; half empty
Promises of better times, unkept, uncaring
Sallow, time engraved carvings on
Faceless faces, well known but anonymous,
A collection of portraits
Hung for a lifetime then
Stored in dark boxes, out of
Sight and soon not even memory.
Factory II – Duet
This is a duet with both parts to be read simultaneously.
The soul destroying factory – buzzum click
Eats away at the brain – buzzum buzz
Like a maggot let loose – buzzum click
Driving me wild – buzz buzz buzz
Day after day – buzzum click
The same monotony – buzzum buzz
The same pain – buzzum click
The same dullness of mind – buzz buzz buzz
The routine – buzzum click
Even the tea breaks – buzzum buzz
Are boring – buzzum click
How do they break free? – buzz buzz buzz
At night the pub – glug glug
The freedom, drink – glug glug
The same every night – glug glug
– gets boring.
Factory 1 – Personality never was!
The moderns factory
No whirling cogs
Or cranking shafts
Clanking through steam
And greasy bearings.
I look around
Even the bins
Are clean but I
Can hide behind
The noise that shrouds
This place in silence.
I scream a silent scream
Desperate amid the
Degeneracy of progress
Impersonal,
Practical,
I scream.
Lazy Days In Deepest Summer
Under clear blue cloudless bowl of sky
Lay I, with sweet smelling grasses and
Wing-fluttered butterfly, accompanying crickets
Chorus in the meadow hedge
And small boys search and stoop to
Scoop them into jam jar summer cells.
Into the cooler trees I wander, though not a murmur
Of breeze to mop the August brow
And how at height of silver sun
I fall inert into the arms of one
Who cares as much as I and worries not
Of things to come, and time goes by
May 28, 2010
1984 – 1986
The 1984 – 1986 series of poems are ones written in those years. They have been in a book in one of my drawers since then and never looked at. I hadn’t actually realised that there were more than one or two but there are 23 in total and I will be posting them all in the 1984 – 1986 category of poetry.
Having forgotten all about them there is a little overlap in words and ideas with what I am writing today but I thought they were worth showing anyway. I was in my early twenties when they were being written and only a year or so out of college.
May 27, 2010
The Demise of a Co-Human
In scarcely a shelter of frost-bitten briar
A tramp slept soundly his last night of sleep
A bottle of whisky, last drunk of at midnight
Lay empty beside him poor company to keep.
Oaken boughs cracked and small ponies shivered
As the teeth of the wind and the ice made their mark
But this wretch was no wiser to wintery weather
And died in the gutter, alone in the dark.
No searchers came searching, no body was missing
In this soulless black of a January night
And the snow drifted deeper, a ghostly white cover
For the corpse of a brother who lost his last fight.
Sunday
Middle class suburban Sunday
Boredom, traditional and tedious
Black and white film on television
Followed by Dickens and religion.
Outside the rain falls steadily
Clouds closing sooner, a soon
Forgotten afternoon of Monopoly,
Tea and quarrelling with sisters.