Palfrey Park DH 1965

Which is the way to Palfrey Park? I used to know,

I used to go.

And under all weather conditions. Two by two we marched, under the watchful Kellys’ eye. Comb over and all. Boys for the football, no change, no kit. Our Football Boots were all that we needed.

On green grassy field we played the game. In that urban park, planted in the middle of nowhere. We were about nine years old.

Once when walking I heard my first shaggy dog story, told by my marching partner, Adrian Tams. It involves a mouse and a two tone white number seventeen London Transport double decker bus. I listened and remembered the whole story, for all the twenty one minutes it took to tell.

Adrian was killed nine years later, crushed under his car whilst fixing a fault, when it collapsed off the jack.

Copyright 2020 Christopher Thompson.

All rights reserved.

How Important Am I?

I have myself on the end of a stick, Not at the end of my tether you understand. Oh no just a pictures’ width. I have learned to glide and glance. That’s how it’s done I’m told. In the here and now this is a great idea. Having something to say helps. Though every picture may well tell a story, Where do you find the context? Is it in gesture or word? Is it on seeing or saying? Watching then discussion, Is it not both or more? I see myself at the end of my stick, The question now is Should I dare to click? Copyright 2020 Christopher Thompson All rights reserved.

Work, work, work station.

“Sticky mothers ain’t they”?

Escapism,
A summer escape read?
What is there to escape from?
The world or system or planetary orbit,
Or the sky at night,
Or the orange grove?
Life is more than Lipstick Rock& Roll.
It a grinding, hollowing out existence.
With a rule book made up
On the hoof.
Worse in one horse towns too.
Where sidewalk clatter drowns out the din
Of exasperation with your attempts
At eking out, and fitting in.

Your inner voice is never silent.
Team player in real life?
But again no one has picked you.
So how will that work?

Where is the world of contentment?
Where in this world is respite to be found?
How many of us drain a vein, are bled?
Where is there a place of concealment,
When we all live in our head? 

This is no Philosophical cause,
Diving into a pool of freshly spilled blood.
An on looker asks "who were they"?
Another questions "Will they ever be gone from us"?
Unlikely on this planet.
Someone distant answers with,
"I know, sticky mothers ain't they"? 


© 2020 Christopher Thompson 
All rights reserved

Ogden Nash

m.poemhunter.com/poem/look-what-you-did-christopher/

Awkward Awkward Awkward

This comes from a small square house,
Set in green rolling countryside.
Not quite alone, not quite home.
For I am from a conurbation 
Way "up-country",
I am very Midland in many of my ways.

How do other of the awkward do?
This is an entertaining question.
In their hunt to survive
How do they fair? 
In the relentless, jostle, jumble jungle. 
It’s a headlong dash, 
Toward forever and away from fallibility. 
Being forevermore late,
Mostly latent or deemed missing.
How can the pained cope
When their pain is so draining?   

With everyone else is speaking 
Others words serve only drown us out.
Our short winds seem to fall silently, 
Settling over the rest of us 
Gathered, unnoticed in the thin air.

Against the dark of the night 
Many are knelt, praying in pews   
There is no where else 
To genuflect
To press their point,
No button of hope for those 
Anguish soaked souls.   
Still the prayers rise to the rafters
And the penitents line up close to each other,
With their praise and their debts.

How the awkward struggle
In the dreary haze of living.
Who is there, 
Who is here to heal their bruises,
To meet their needs?      

No one gets given sight of
That virtual Cosmic benchmark 
With which to align, better to compare.
They have no vestibule, nor datum to measure 
No lever or anchor against which to rest.

These who constitute the awkward,
Walk everywhere on sods of existence.
Eventually these sods seep back to the soil
To disappear with no history.


©2020 Christopher Thompson All rights reserved.

email me directly on christopherthompson@pryderi.org