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
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