Bonus Tuesday poem on a Friday
September 9, 2016
God I love this singer and this song:
I trust he’ll be singing in heaven (or, to put it in a slightly different way, to hear this is to be in heaven). In the mean time, here’s a wee poem I wrote about seeing Johnny Cash live, which was first published on Project 365 + 1.
Glastonbury, 1994
When they invent time travel,
whether DeLorean or phone box
I won’t go forward, but back.
There’ll probably be strict laws
about interference
and the paradox
as explored in science fiction
forever, and yet, a visit
to Glastonbury in ’94
surely wouldn’t be a threat,
or trigger Bradbury’s
butterfly effect?
(Unless someone already did,
and that explains the Trump.)
I’d blend into the heaving crowd,
a very happy, sunburnt piggy.
I want to see Johnny Cash live.
I want to watch the Man in Black
and hear him walk the line.
’69 at San Quentin
is out of the question,
but ’94 will do fine.
A simple time machine and off she went,
pausing momentarily to buy a tent.
P.S. Cottier
Notes: The ‘butterfly effect’ mentioned here refers to the short story ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury, in which the accidental killing of a butterfly in the distant past results in a very different future world, not least in political terms.
Apparently it was hot at Glastonbury in 1994, which I find hard to believe.
(King James Version, by the way.)
The poet I dislike is writing
He frowns, and two buttocks
appear on the outside
of the vertical line
creasing from nose to baldness.
He finds the word for the poem,
the exact right nugget,
and squeezes it from his head.
He wipes it on the paper.
A study in brown, he continues.
He strains towards immortality.
P.S. Cottier
Wistful and vicious
Now from Wednesday June 1st, I’ll be writing and posting a poem every day at a different site, called Project 365 + 1. Here’s the link. I’ll see how it goes for a month. But poetry will continue to appear here, usually on Tuesdays, even if I may lapse into egregious loveliness from time to time.
PS Cottier 