Tuesday poem #598 : John Stiles : Vauxhall Bridge Blues

 

 

I wrote this after a few pints down ye ol Pimlico pub with Daniel
Dafoe, Samuel Pepys and
Catherine Hogarth nee Dickens
(Or so I imagined lying in a laser  tunnel being zapped by radiotherapy)

Wakefield was a man I associate with Australia and deportation, Pip’s benefactor,
A flighty blighty man
Or bellicose and verbose with a red nose I don’t know (I didn’t vision him)

So if it ails
And magistrates set bail
quivering, shivering and bent like an old tail
Eighteenth century slaves

Oh wretched undistinguished males!
Press ganged, stooped,
Poking ‘mongst scraps of mangy kale, a glimmer of hope (and no
mention of the C ward you old mope)
Durst you escape this torment?

Smugglers, pirates tromping with
Muskets, blunderbuss, rascals all, marched over moors and Yorkshire Dales,
press ganged, garrotted, gouged and glowering
These men
Unpardonable, unforgiven
in wintry hail
Out on the howling seas in harrowing gales

Up on masts of ships with Land Ho  hails
Emptied prisons and unlocked the jails
Wintered nights on beds of straw and beds of nails
Forgotten wives, children those mangy males

A life on shore, it simply pales
Lord and Lady Montague dining on quails
Ranting raving, life on the rails
Scurvy, dysentery, stowaways and rats, wrong uns, loosed like teeth and set sail

But to set back now to no avail
All for this for the chance to cheat the noose?
No just to get away from ol Blighty
To write this down in a message in a bottle

To catterwaul, swab the decks, in setting sun, to wail, not whale

 

 

 

John Stiles was born in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, Canada and currently lives in London, England. John is the author of the comic novel Taking the Stairs (Nightwood Editions) and is the subject of the critically acclaimed and award-winning poetry documentary: Scouts are Cancelled. John’s work has received praise in: Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, and his work has featured in The Literary Review of Canada, The Globe and Mail, New American Writing, CineAction and the Festival Della Lettura in Mantova Italy. John has received national coverage on The Documentary Channel, TVO and CBC Radio. An adaptation of a short story from Scouts are Cancelled (Insomniac Press) was a recent quarterfinalist in the Nicholl Academy Screenwriting Competition in Los Angeles, USA. John teaches English (and Canadian idioms for fun) in schools in London, UK currently. John attended the University of Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the former Atlantic School of Theology.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan