{"id":181,"date":"2014-01-30T15:44:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T15:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/wordpress_marcus\/?p=181"},"modified":"2024-08-19T16:44:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T16:44:35","slug":"poems-nominated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/?p=181","title":{"rendered":"Poems nominated for the Bridport Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcus has had two poems nominated for the prestigious Bridport Prize, which attracted 7,700 entries.<\/em><\/p>\n

SOUTHERN INDIA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Old people like me, Norton (I belong
\nto this category now) take practically
\neverything as it comes. If trains are missed
\nor running late, we sit with folded hands,
\nstaring in front of us, uncomplaining.<\/p>\n

That’s because we’ve come to terms with life,
\nwhich means: we’re learning to accept.
\nWe know <\/em>we’re old. That makes us
\ndifferent from the uncompromising young.
\nChildren laugh at the idea of time,<\/p>\n

don’t realize life is an overland journey,
\na slog of indeterminate duration
\nto be made as comfortable as possible.
\nOur feelings have never been more alive
\nbut nobody sees them. That’s the difference.<\/p>\n

We have been shunted into a grey siding
\non the edge of history, we are no longer news,
\ndon’t figure in the polls. What’s left to us
\nis a voluntary exodus into the forests
\nof Southern India, to start again from scratch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BLANK PAGE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knowing that war was coming soon
\nmy parents decided to have me
\njust in case – too early to be
\na Baby Boomer of the fifties,
\na Beetle Collector, a San Francisco
\nbutterfly. After all there was room
\nfor me on the schooner’s deck,
\nenough big-breasted Italian skirt
\nto milk me, British education
\nto be had for a thousand a year.<\/p>\n

They were right, poor sods. Little
\ndid they know I’d be awake alone
\nunder the falling bombs of Aleppo
\n(sorry, London, 42) while one worked
\nbehind enemy lines, the other slipped out
\nfor a whisky with the neighbours.
\nI know now they wanted the best for me,
\ndied with my name on their lips. But why
\ndid you<\/em> leave me and go to Ireland,
\nhoping Rita will buy a holiday cottage?<\/p>\n

Oh well, I’ll be seeing my granddaughter
\nin May. Just two more weeks to spin out
\nlooking at photographs before dawn,
\nspending money I don’t have in tearooms,
\nlosing the lotto, breathing, pushing myself up.
\nI was somebody in the nineteen sixties.
\nThey sent me to a conference in Paris
\nwhere I seduced an Indian tea-lady –
\nyour mother’s mother. I very much doubt
\nthis piffle will make my readers warm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcus has had two poems nominated for the prestigious Bridport Prize, which attracted 7,700 entries. SOUTHERN INDIA Old people like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-events","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}