7/23/2016 1 Comment Two poems by Barry Fentiman HallTHE BALLAD OF MICKEY TWO SUITS Mickey wore two suits to pass his happy hours One day he wore morning grey Another mourning black Bathed in frosted dust beamed from Mock tudor central casting A long afternoon light thrown Through stained glass On to stained cloth Showing hard won Marks of distinction And by 5 o’clock They burn a little brighter now - Mickey went on the road a while After the shit went down y’know But the white lines caught Up with him till he wore them On his black back like Magpie feathers Badged as thief and liar Blind curves brought Him back to where The smoke still hung Thick enough to hide his Burning very brightly now - Can in hand confident Mickey counts his days From grey to black to grey Songbirds murmuring on his tongue That thing that they would sing In the dark back then When he had painted eyes And she had painted wings They took it way deep All the way down to the roach And spat another shot in the fire to make it Burn a little brighter now - Grey to black to grey to black to grey Two suits Mickey wears away Measured twice and cut once One for the wedding One for the wake One for the wedding One for the wake Mickey bled away Coughing up her ashes In polite company, he’s Burning very brightly now - Mickey had to go away His name was on a list Of the damaged and the pissed The one’s whose stories didn’t fit The rising prices of the drinks Two suits grey black grey black grey Black the day he got his wings Half cut and measured And desperately wanting Something only he could see Heading down the aisle again To burn a little brighter now (My debt to Derek W Dick whose words partly inspired these words is acknowledged) DEAD CAT BOUNCE DOWN THE WHITE LION The fake plastic dancing girls Seem to have no knickers From this perspective They look a little stiff As they get their plastic groove on To Band On The Run while The TV plays videos of ABBA Before they invented the genre Of relationship gothic for the masses They are synching somehow Sailor Sam is harmonising with The drums of Fernando We are sinking somehow in a sea of magic eye carpet Me and the sad man and Sailor Sam Nameless and me are looking Over the edge for an hour in The afternoon to see how far The bottom is from Wednesday He don't care much now but It's nice to have some company The fake plastic dancing girls Have a faraway look in their eye They can see all the way to the End of the world and they will Take it on the chin when it comes Drafty as it is for them down South What with being underdressed And all the rest and they don't care either They've been expecting it For a long, long time If it comes, my word It's gonna happen here.... Bio: Barry Fentiman Hall is a walking writer based in Kent, UK who mythologises his travels and the people he meets. He hosts Roundabout Nights in Chatham and regularly performs his work in Kent and London. He has been published in City Without A Head (Wordsmithery 2013), An Assemblance Of Judicious Heretics (Wordsmithery 2105), and his first solo collection The Unbearable Sheerness Of Being (Wordsmithery 2016).
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Barry Fentiman
3/6/2023 09:57:35 am
I've never looked better but that ain't my photograph...
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