Your Attention Please : Friday Poetry Corner

[AlfredJPruffock]

The World today is absolutley crackers - with Nuclear Bombs to blow us all sky high ....


Your Attention Please by Peter Porter



The Polar DEW has just warned that
A nuclear rocket strike of

At least one thousand megatons
Has been launched by the enemy
Directly at our major cities.

This announcement will take
Two and a quarter minutes to make,

You therefore have a further
Eight and a quarter minutes
To comply with the shelter

Requirements published in the Civil
Defence Code - section Atomic Attack.

A specially shortened Mass
Will be broadcast at the end
Of this announcement -

Protestant and Jewish services
Will begin simultaneously -
Select your wavelength immediately
According to instructions

In the Defence Code. Do not
Tale well-loved pets (including birds)
Into your shelter - they will consume
Fresh air. Leave the old and bed-
Ridden, you can do nothing for them.
Remember to press the sealing
Switch when everyone is in
The shelter.

Set the radiation
Aerial, turn on the Geiger barometer.
Turn off your television now.
Turn off your radio immediately
The services end. At the same time
Secure explosion plugs in the ears
Of each member of your family. Take
Down your plasma flasks.

Give your children
The pills marked one and two
In the C D green container, then put
Them to bed. Do not break

The inside airlock seals until
The radiation All Clear shows
(Watch for the cuckoo in your
Perspex panel), or your District
Touring Doctor rings your bell.


If before this your air becomes
Exhausted or if any of your family
Is critically injured, administer


The capsules marked 'Valley Forge'
(Red pocket in No 1 Survival Kit)
For painless death. (Catholics
Will have been instructed by their priests
What to do in this eventuality.)

This announcement is ending.

Our President
Has already given orders for
Massive retaliation - it will be
Decisive.

Some of us may die.

Remember, statistically

It is not likely to be you.


All flags are flying fully dressed
On Government buildings - the sun is shining.

Death is the least we have to fear.

We are all in the hands of God,
Whatever happens happens by His will.

Now go quickly to your shelters.

[thunderlizard]

American Football, by Harold Pinter

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/american-football/

[cojak]

Hi Alf,

Is it me or have our Friday Poetry Corners been absent lately?

[northernladuk]

There was a man from Bengill
Who swallowed a gunpowder pill
His heart retired
His arse backfired
And his balls shot over the hill..

Boom boom...

Poetry wasn't exactly promoted in the cobbled backstreets of working class Bradford towns sorry.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Hi Alf,

Is it me or have our Friday Poetry Corners been absent lately?

Aye Kojak

It's been a wee while - but one thing is True
And the rest -a Lie

That the Friday Poetry Corner is Eternal
All else - must die

[Boudica]

Voltaire at Ferney - for shaunboy and my (now) disappeared mouse

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.
Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,
"Nothing is better than life." But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilize.

Cajoling, scolding, screaming, cleverest of them all,
He'd had the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups; and, like a child, been sly
And humble, when there was occassion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.
Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.

Night fell and made him think of women: Lust
Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool.
How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;
Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.
He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,
It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions: soon he would be dead,
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song

[Gibbon]

Poetry wasn't exactly promoted in the cobbled backstreets of working class Bradford towns sorry.

Oh Bradford, Bradford how I weep
But now your troubles, they run deep
Communal discord and urban strife
My fathers fathers earned their keep
By combing the blessed hair of sheep
The best, they leave for another life.

[Gibbon]

Oh I see you skulking in the lengthening shadows
You hateful deceitful beast that has no name
You stay away from the life giving windows
Staying in the dark, playing your waiting game

When all are gone, you will come closer
Whispering your persuasive snake oiled words
Tonight you hope to be my terrible disposer
And in ancient times would leave me to the birds

You won’t sway me with loved ones long since gone
Or with the impatient living that say I shouldn’t fight
It will be my victory in the rosy-fingered dawn
When Phoebus will bless me with warm life giving light

[oracleslave]

American Football by Harold Pinter

That poem is a bit like modern art to me as in "I don't get it". What am I missing?

[thunderlizard]

Well, on one level it's kind of funny because it's so stereotypically Pinteresque. The chips on his shoulders had their own chips on their shoulders.

I think it's interesting because his point - about the violent imposition of one mode of society (Western democracy) on another that doesn't want it (the Middle East in this case) is performed through the violent imposition of one mode of language (macho sports talk with pseudo-Hollywood elements) on a verse genre that isn't ready for it (anti-war poetry). That's my starting point anyway.