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William Leonard Jan 2019
Whiles I peruse the archives of the past,
Occurs a mental transformation fast—
As thru accounts I search, and journals read,
A bold mid-cent'ry impulse seizes me.
The words I write, in structured meters fit;
Infinitives begin to slowly split.
I have at last attain'd a style so grand,
It captures an Augustan poet's hand.
O what great writers we might have today,
If Dictionary Johnson had his way.
I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I will."
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distrest that I
Am such a busy man.

Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savour Swift I'll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I've no time;
Because I'm busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.

Chekov is caviare to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.

I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read.
Francie Lynch Sep 2014
I've a sinking friendship,
Torpedoed by the *******,
And listing.
The first mate mutinied.
Once a blood brother,
Like no other;
An intimate
At an imminent end,
An alter-ego
More than a friend.

I've been too patient,
Veered off course
With understanding.
I'm quite sure
This Pythias
Would run and leave me
Hanging.

I'm on a cliff
And won't hang on
To a blade of trust,
A fawning pawn.
He had my back,
I turn,
He's gone.

This partisan
Must part
A homeless homeboy,
A dissembling fraud.

No longer a mainstay,
He's insecure,
His equivocations
Make lines blur,
I don't believe
Him anymore.

He really needs a soul-mate,
Classmate, playmate,
But he's become a reprobate,
Lying prostrate,
Lying up straight.
I'll drown my Boswell
In my inkwell;
No longer
An advocate.

The laughs have left,
Yes,
I'm bereft,
But I'll catch the wind.
My course is true.
This friendship
Can't be salvaged.
It's scuttled,
And I won't
Sink with you.
the dirty poet Nov 2019
dreamed i was in barnes and nobles
trying to buy Boswell’s London Journal
the young clerk gave me a package
of diapers and baby powder
with boswell’s face stamped on it
"i don’t wanna wipe my ***," i told him
"i wanna read boswell’s london journal"
dreams!
Lawrence Hall Dec 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                A London That Never Was

The London of Boswell never truly was
And yet it is the truest London of all:
Coffee at The Turk’s Head, beer at The Mitre
Not much minding either bishops or Turks

A pipe and a pint with Johnson and the greats:
Oliver Goldsmith, Reynolds and Garrick
Hester Thrale, and Boswell, of course
Books and papers and arguments and poems

If we are going to visit London someday
We had better visit Boswell and Johnson first
Lawrence Hall Dec 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  A London That Never Was

The London of Boswell never truly was
And yet it is the truest London of all:
Coffee at The Turk’s Head, beer at The Mitre
Not much minding either bishops or Turks

A pipe and a pint with Johnson and the greats:
Oliver Goldsmith, Reynolds and Garrick
Hester Thrale, and Boswell, of course
Books and papers and arguments and poems

If we are going to visit London someday
We had better visit Boswell and Johnson first
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2017
oh! woe is me and woe is thee,

this noble, royal but blighted line,
this now benighted House of York,
its reign hath ended,
its famous, familiar format felled by an
enhancing, advancing Tudor technology blade,
and now lays bloodied in Bosworth Field,
both Richard III and
his Boswell biographer,
Sir Eliot of York,
no more,
unto history's flocculent dust of bones and
lost manuscripts
now forever
consigned

the lathe of mocking shouts of
"Long Live the King,"
cut the fingertips still searching too many
pull down menus,
all penned in a modern
faint hearted font

these guides,
some above and some below,
their exact location discoverable
only by the pain of new childbirth,
not worthy Maestro,
of the indignity
of trial and error

'pon my soul, these menus,
alas, give no guidance intuitive on
how to save this, my newest folio,
in the lady-in-waiting status of
draft

history is a usurping, scheming Mother Queen,
seeking power advantageous for her own issue,
but new bloodlines gain ascendancy inevitable,
but this focal turning point,
came upon us yeoman folk unannounced,
like a medieval black plague slaughtering
our poetic composure -
why were we not consulted?

hath England not taught us plainer folks,
the singular lesson of tradition,
the value immense of retaining
what has gone before,
that all hallowed must be kept,
and some changes
turned aside,
another cheek of change,
must be refused!
  
'tis no accident of fate
that the Crown Jewels
in the Tower
do reside,
the selfsame place many other
Kings and Queens
were Tudor dispatched to meet a ****** end

the smiling, soothing sayers
gentle the troubled masses,
with whimsy and whimpers of
"this too shall pass,"
and promises that the contempt of familiarity,
shall soon enroll and enfold
all untended and now untenured objections

but my memories yet mourn the loss of
simpler times and a simple place that welcomed an Ameddican
back in nought '13, and where he has placed his trust
in its servers and its Yorkshire servant to keep his
thousand plus poems pillowed safe

so no more changes,
by your leave,
do not forget the no longer mighty Tudors,
were themselves felled by times childless ravages,
no more emendations,
if you please,
lest these hoary hairs mine yet turn,
a whiter shade of pale

surely undesired,
yet one more revolution
from these formerly
English shores to come arising,
haunting thine
venerated palaces of poetry!
seriously, I like the new format though I must say finding my way around on a small iPhone is not trial and error, but trial by fire!
THE REST OF THE STORY


The dried up lake contrived to look both
surprised & embarrassed

like a lady in a bad dream wearing no clothes
whilst singing in church or doing the supermarket shop.

When I say 'lake' I mean the body of water
that lived up in the old quarry.

It always gave us kids nightmares.

Our parents always warned us not to
go there ...but go there

we always did 'cos it was dangerous.

And that was its attraction.
Danger barely tamed and still feral.

It would give us the creeps just looking at it in sunlight.

The police tape looked real pretty
fluttering in the slight breeze like an art installation

that everyone who was someone
deemed important without knowing its meaning

or if it had one.

But hey what do I know?

The lake wore its dead body
like a cheap glass ring pretending it was diamond.

When I say dead body I mean skeleton.

The skeleton wore concrete shoes
as if it had stepped straight from a corny gangster movie

riddled with cliché.

It just grinned at the police
flash photography as if it were a celebrity

famous for being a celebrity.

He still wore a heavy gold crucifix
on a thick chain around its neck

that shone in the sun.

The sun smiled down as if it were smiling down
on a picnic or an ordinary walk in the park

as if it were innocent of the things it seen.

'Hey, I'm Summer being Summer...! ' it seemed to say
'Dead guy eh...what a ******! '

The dead guy was alive in his death
as if he were soaking up being the centre of attention.

And yeah sure it was just another ordinary Summer
when I was 9 or ten or something like that

but this was just the beginning of the story...
...the rest of the story was somewhere else.


*


Guy told me this in Harry's Bar in Venice and all this just added up to how he came to finally live in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. I was fascinated by the pre-story and his way of telling the story by interrupting his telling by a quirky "...when I say....I mean...." It was worth buying him a drink just to get drunk on that story.

The story was fuel'd by many a Bellini. The guy was a blend between Orson and Ernest as if they had both reincarnated at the same time and simultaneously tried to claim the one body. His name was Sinclair...I had never met anyone with the first name Sinclair before...he was better than a book. È tutto pepe indeed! Wot a guy! Che figata! Che figata!

He was highly energetic in both body and mind and telling stories about their times of being 4 or 7 and 11. This story came forth from man who at 90 was full of zip and zest. I only picked up bits here and there and never found out where his there was.

I was enjoying his speech movements and characteristic tics with that defining "When I say....I mean..." The story went by at a hundred miles ah hour but totally enthralled me and 50 years later still lives on in my mind.

I wish I could have captured his essence and this is only a pale imitation of how wonderful  he was. All the imagery is his too and I merely a Boswell to his Johnson.

Once saw THE MERCHANT OF VENICE...in Venice. It bobbed along with several different languages taking up the tale and done in a Commedia dell'Arte style. If that wasn't enough...gondolas glided by with their sixpence worth of kitsch touristy songs whilst a gangster movie blared out of a window and two floors up from that a couple made mad passionate ***....everything blended with everything else....real life and Shakespeare all sharing the same outdoor stage.

The best bit was when she( of the mad passionate *** bit )threw all his clothes outta de window and told him to 'cazzo nel culo!' The real life bit I'm afraid by then was beginning to eclipse the Shakespeare bit( sorry Will ). It was almost as unforgettable as Sinclair's rambling tale of "how we came to live in Bet-LE-ham!"

Venice was almost too luscious for words but Sinclair and his tale of how we got from here to there and then "that" production of TMOV was all just too much for this tiny little mind.

Went back again but nothing as spectacular as "that" ever happened again....guess I was in the right place at just the right on time. The mind going "Heeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

This be an experimental prose poem letting the prose ramble on in the voice and characteristic stops and starts of the speaker. The whole point of the poem is that you are going to get the whole prelude to the story and then not be told the story!

The danger is indeed very real....the adults know that...the kids know that....even the dead guy knows that! There was a broken worn down sign that you had to get near enough to read and possibly fall in! So the danger could be feral and turn on you with one little mistake or missed step. Hence the barely tamed! The narrator is very fallible!

— The End —