List Poem for Dad

I had the idea for this poem on the bus on my way to work a year and a half ago. I was so engrossed in writing it that I left my phone on the bus and never got it back.

Dad has always written, some of his poems and short stories have been published and I have always thought there were great. We talk a lot about poets and the way they write. One of our favourite kinds of poems is ‘list poems’, such as ‘love is’ by Adrian Henri. ‘I want to paint’, by the same author, is my favourite poem of all time. Both are from ‘The Mersey Sound‘ supposedly one the most influential books of British Poetry since 1945.

So here is my little effort:

List Poem For Dad

 Dippy eggs. No escapes

The bus to Boro town

“cleaning the kitchen floor’

making pasta

breath dragons in the cold

 

CND. The Ambulance drivers.

Pole Tax and the miners marches

Maggie aggie aggie out out out

 

Resipol

North York Moors

Lairns table and the

stag so close we could see him breathe

 

South Bank Concert

Circular breathing

Mice and wizards

2 am pasta and the last tube home

 

coffee/tobacco/sweat/warm(brown)wool

badteeth wolfsgrin

limegreen cardigan and a terrible shirt

 

long elegant yellowstained fingers

that shake

cold on nape of small neck

gesticulating

 

Poet

Communist

Revolutionary

Anarchist

Capitalist (Bastard)

 

Ryde-Ventnor in 20 minutes

(‘don’t tell your mother’)

 

The words ‘fuck off’ as adjective

 

Mingus/Davis/Frizell

Springbean and Van (the man)

inlove with the voices of

michelleshocked/chrissiehynde/rickieleejones

and

laurieanderson

 

manic

depressive

red leopard print tights then

three months in bed

 

wierdinstrumentalmusicfromabovethearcticcircle

japanese skwaking women

eels/pavement/REM

Cohen/Dylan/Reed/Cale

(razor blades with that?)

 

The three times I’ve seen you cry

(neither tarchovsky nor dirty dancing count)

 

Ferlingetti/Buckowski

Patten/Henri(thanks Adrian)/McGough

TS Elliot/Ted Hughes/Spenser/Milton

Auster/TH White/CS Lewis

 

A thousand other voices from my childhood

all in your rumbling base tone

 

boxing day blues band

burned fingers on drunken fry up

Feckless Mansell Bastard Saturday mornings

birthday obstacle courses

 

cause you’re my

 

Guru. Sensei

(anti) Hero

 

Dad/john/’your father’/armstrong

 

and I’m

 

petal(dust)/froglet/light-of-your-life/daughter

 

always