"Poems by D.I. Harrison"

Poems by D.I. Harrison

[davidhe6@hotmail.com]

Days Gone By

Gone is the past youth when I saw
Armies of weeks near infinite
And, childish in my faith,
Believed to win the fight
While killing thousands of my men
On bomb pocked roads. Then

Gone; lovers, old friends and pick ups
Whose address was lost in moving,
God knows the days giving up
The Holy Spirit
The last supper I was
In my cups.

There s no Mr. Universe to try
Dragging back the sun
From evening to morning post

Gone; the compliment ungiven,
The Kerouac and Ginsberg left unread,
With the people unforgiven,
They lie careless and downtrodden
Along my casually demolished track,
Strewn beside the seconds I now lack --

Killed months like slain soldiers
In whose death lies my grandest crime.
                      Gone now.

The Greeks and Miss Jane Austen

The Greeks invented civilisation
And correct pronunciation;
But, astoundin'ly, forgot th' invention
Of a good and workin' Miss Jane Austen.
So we waited more 'n two thousand-year
For true civility to get here.

She persuaded us to Mansfield Park,
Where we are marked on EMMA's card.
Pride was Mr. D'Arcy's habit,
Tho' sensible of Northanger Abbey.
Prejudice is hardly whence
We see Fanny Price's sense.
Designed to give rough society
The way to dance in company:

Manners, courtesy, politesse;
Miss Dashwood! Not that Scarlet dress!

****      ****      ****      ****

With regard to noble civitas
The Greeks may have invented this,
Yet spent the rest of their free time
Killin' each other -- tho' in rhyme.
Miss Jane Austen shewed the mode
To correctly slay through the social code:

The sword is weaker than the letter,
A dagger'd look and word, 'tis far better.
So when not knowin' how to behave
'Pon emergin' from their Delphic cave,
And despite inventin' most everything,
Greeks let Romans steal their ding-a ling.
Poor wee souls! they nearly had it all,
Yet 'twas fair prophesied they'd fall:

They could not properly drink tea;
Thus did the British rule the sea.

An Ordinary Bloke
for DBR

funny, he doesn't much look
like how I'd imagined the fourth
horseman of the apocalypse would --
where's his pale stallion?
his cape and hood? the white skull
                      of death

he carries this virus though
human immunodeficiency virus
he's developed the anti-bodies
and he's itemised -- HIV positive
official carrier of God's scourge

in his spunk as he came over me
and in his spit as we kissed,
It's in his blood, his sweat,
his tears, in his piss. It's
probably going to kill him.

who'd stop to think he has death
in him, walk past him on the
street, you wouldn't know. He just
looks like any other person
he's over fifty and has grey hair

he can cry on my shoulder -- if he
wants. Nobody ever died from tears (?)
the fourth horseman doesn't cry,
or spit, or sweat, or bleed, the fourth
horseman doesn't have sex

He's not death, maybe I believed
that once in some unlighted room
-- maybe still do, in a way -- but I
can see him, an ordinary bloke who
sometimes wears a black donkey
jacket and sometimes a flat cap
drives a mini metro and has a face.

Provocation

don't look at me
with such
provocative eyes

I'll use you
if you let me in
I'll break you

a stitch in time
will sew you up

I've lost a fortune
and you're just

a small coin
I'd throw
at a beggar

don't look at me
with such
provocative eyes

I'll spit you out
from the other
side of us

God's Lil' Fishies

i th' fish n' chippie,
ahtside it's bucketin'

wot u won', mate?

cod n' chips, mate, ta

u won' it rapped ...,

-- stop right there --

...or un rapped, mate?

'e seen God's sky
aht there? pissin' frogs
n' toads aht there...

-- sod it -- nah!

...don' bovver rappin' mate,
jus shuv it in me an's
cos if fish can't swim, what can?

Poems © 2001, D.I. Harrison, except the following:
  "An Ordinary Bloke" © 1990 D.I. Harrison,
  previosly published in Not Another Threesome (1990) by Oscars Press, LONDON (not in print)
  "Provocation" © 1990 D.I. Harrison,
  previously published in Take Any Train (1990) by Oscars Press, LONDON (not in print)
all rights for all poems reserved, appear here by permission

Author Notes

           "Days gone by"
           Written after another depressingly wasted year.
           "The Greeks and Miss Jane Austen"
           I've read and re-read Jane so often, I think she's fab. She is a comic genius, and makes me laugh (though she would have modestly demurred). During one of my periodic Austen phases, I was probably also going through a phase of Greek plays (not in the original I hasten to add). All their heavy, heavy death and betrayal contrasting to the death and betrayal which often is archly disposed of by Jane made me think that what the Greeks really needed was proper guidance.
           "An ordinary bloke"
           To DBR, my dear friend and lover, now dead.

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