Jan 11
REMEMBERING COLERIDGE
"Ok! Can we have..."
my mind shouts
from its directorial chair
megaphone in hand.
"A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE
over here!"
BUT OH! THAT DEEP ROMANTIC CHASM
is still in her caravan.
"Ok...cue camera No. 2 &
where...
where are the SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
can someone please. . .
. . .get the ****** SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
please!
"We've got a Coleridge
moment
coming up on his next
footstep!"
"Are all you brain cells
following me!"
Memory goes through wardrobe
dressing each thought
in perfect Kubla Khan
costumes.
"Ok...cue footstep 2000 &
waitforitwaitforit....2!"
"Ok people..!" shouts my mind
"...he's going to remember the
Coleridge any second
. . .nOW!"
"Cut to...OH STILL UNRAVISHED BRIDE OF QUIETNESS!
wot...wot....cut CUT!"
"Ok...who pressed the Keats button!"
And so it is that a Keatsian personified urn
of Greek extraction
finds itself in Xanadu
as I cross the road
and almost get knocked down
by a ****** big No. 69
and a cursing cyclist
in spangled blue latex.
*
What it is like inside my brain as I try to remember the bits and bobs of Coleridge that bob up and down in the stream of my thought as I try to cross a busy road. The mind is more interested in salvaging the lines of the poem rather than coordinating the feet in order to cross the road still in possession of my life. I survived to tell the tale but...only just.
I guess I was remembering the old comic strip THE NUMBSKULLS that tinkled my pink when I was a young fella me lad and both comics and poems jumbled around in that little mind like so much bric-a-brac or emotional flotsam and jetsam. And so the lines like shipwreck sailors get washed up on the shores of my consciousness.
Our "myriad-minded Shakespeare" as Sammy said of Will and could have been said of me in this poem but not as successfully as either Shakespeare or Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The Numskulls is a comic strip in The Beano, and previously in The Beezer and The Dandy – UK comics owned by D.C Thomson. The strip is about a team of tiny human-like technicians who live inside the heads of various people, running and maintaining their bodies and minds.
The comic strip first appeared in The Beezer in 1962 and was drawn by Malcolm Judge. In this version they lived inside a man's head rather than a boy's head. The man was never named, but the Numskulls referred to him as "our Man". There were six Numskulls during this time. The 'Mouth Department' was home to two Numskulls, named Alf and Fred. Luggy (Radar) looked a lot like Cruncher, Snitch looked like Cruncher as well except Snitch wore orange, Brainy had no glasses and had no hair apart from around his ears and wore black, Blinky looked the same except he was bald and Alf and Fred had two hairs on their head and wore black and yellow.
"Ok! Can we have..."
my mind shouts
from its directorial chair
megaphone in hand.
"A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE
over here!"
BUT OH! THAT DEEP ROMANTIC CHASM
is still in her caravan.
"Ok...cue camera No. 2 &
where...
where are the SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
can someone please. . .
. . .get the ****** SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
please!
"We've got a Coleridge
moment
coming up on his next
footstep!"
"Are all you brain cells
following me!"
Memory goes through wardrobe
dressing each thought
in perfect Kubla Khan
costumes.
"Ok...cue footstep 2000 &
waitforitwaitforit....2!"
"Ok people..!" shouts my mind
"...he's going to remember the
Coleridge any second
. . .nOW!"
"Cut to...OH STILL UNRAVISHED BRIDE OF QUIETNESS!
wot...wot....cut CUT!"
"Ok...who pressed the Keats button!"
And so it is that a Keatsian personified urn
of Greek extraction
finds itself in Xanadu
as I cross the road
and almost get knocked down
by a ****** big No. 69
and a cursing cyclist
in spangled blue latex.
*
What it is like inside my brain as I try to remember the bits and bobs of Coleridge that bob up and down in the stream of my thought as I try to cross a busy road. The mind is more interested in salvaging the lines of the poem rather than coordinating the feet in order to cross the road still in possession of my life. I survived to tell the tale but...only just.
I guess I was remembering the old comic strip THE NUMBSKULLS that tinkled my pink when I was a young fella me lad and both comics and poems jumbled around in that little mind like so much bric-a-brac or emotional flotsam and jetsam. And so the lines like shipwreck sailors get washed up on the shores of my consciousness.
Our "myriad-minded Shakespeare" as Sammy said of Will and could have been said of me in this poem but not as successfully as either Shakespeare or Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The Numskulls is a comic strip in The Beano, and previously in The Beezer and The Dandy – UK comics owned by D.C Thomson. The strip is about a team of tiny human-like technicians who live inside the heads of various people, running and maintaining their bodies and minds.
The comic strip first appeared in The Beezer in 1962 and was drawn by Malcolm Judge. In this version they lived inside a man's head rather than a boy's head. The man was never named, but the Numskulls referred to him as "our Man". There were six Numskulls during this time. The 'Mouth Department' was home to two Numskulls, named Alf and Fred. Luggy (Radar) looked a lot like Cruncher, Snitch looked like Cruncher as well except Snitch wore orange, Brainy had no glasses and had no hair apart from around his ears and wore black, Blinky looked the same except he was bald and Alf and Fred had two hairs on their head and wore black and yellow.
