The Expendables 2 - Sam Riviere

The airport where all movies end:

the scenery’s mobile, the people too

(the people want to be moved),

and the rounded stairways join set pieces

like farewells in a series arc. I don’t

understand how you write good scripts

without knowing there are gods. I’ve

learned the same things we’ve all learned:

when a man runs through my hotel suite

I can expect another half a second later.

Also, tell me why I keep two keys,

one of which unlocks something.

Also, I know, we know, that you (hell-o)

will have vanished before I finish saying this

and turn around. “You’ll do that,” I’ll mention 

to the night, and spin my swivel chair,

perusing the moment’s sunkenness. Meanwhile

my antivirus angel is checking every file.

We both know there’s a place you touch

when your plane lifts off (I won’t say where),

a little bolt that takes the plot apart,

so closure is dismantled, because from here

you can admit that nothing’s ever ended well.

You have queued to show your documents.

You have left behind your possessions

for the kind scientists. The stairs have spun

away and sunk, and in losing your itinerary

your position is confirmed. Like, the first time

a woman sees a diamond she just knows.

Retirado daqui.

The Blue Book - Owen Sheers

The Blue Book

“Blue Books, The (3 vols., 1847). Reports published by the Government on the state of education in Wales…the Commissioners reported that the common people were dirty, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, deceitful, promiscuous and immoral, and they blamed all this on Nonconformity and the Welsh Language.” – Encyclopedia of Welsh Literature

Lingen, Symons and Johnson,

Their names give them away,

holding thumb-cornered text books,

not a word of Welsh between them.

Page or man.

They found their God spoken in words

that ran unnaturally in their ears,

and they wrote their decree.

Rather silence than these corrupt tongues,

the words of the father shall not be passed on to the sons.

                                          

                                          *

Because this is how an empire is claimed

not just with stakes in stolen land,

but with words grown over palates,

with strength of tongue as well as strength of hand.

                                            *

And now another blue book

this, my brother’s school book

(bill – postered with bands, but blue beneath)

and inside, the Welsh in his and his teacher’s hand.

It has fallen open on a half written page,

the space beneath his work shot across with red pen:

“Pam nad yw hyn wedi ei orffen?”

“Why is this not finished?”

Well, maybe it is now, if not in me, then in him,

my brother, ten years younger,

but a hundred and fifty years and one tongue apart.

The Blue Book ©  Owen Sheers , 2000

Mr Punch in Soho - Jonh Stammers

You would recognise that hook nose anywhere,
his hump and paunch, the shiny pink erection of his chin.
Withered, crossed legs on the barstool
dangle like transplants from a much smaller body.
He could have found his ideal slot in the Gestapo,
been a dab hand with a blinding iron.
And the scold’s bridal would have been right up his Strasse.
He has, they say, killed seven police:
old-time rozzers on the beat
more deserving of a saucy come-on from the street girls
than the last rites down a back alley.
And two wives. Poor old Mrs Punch finally copped it
one night after he’d done a few dozen barley wines
and as many double gins. She fought fiercely
against an assailant or assailants unknown
the Pall Mall Gazette reported.  Never caught.
Never charged. And pretty little Mrs Punch
number two won’t be taking a bath
in those bubbles again. That’s the way to do it!
Just picture him afterwards, cock in hand
like an old chimp with a hard, green-tipped banana.
And the baby, where’s the baby?
It’s something to make the Devil into the good guy:
how children cry out for him
to drag Punch down to hell for eternal punishment.
But he’d throttle Lucifer when his back was turned
and be back on that stool for closing time.
Or maybe that’s where he’s been all these years
of grown-up sleep, peaceful and free of nightmare.
It’s what you can’t see in the stare of his wooden yellow eye.
Don’t look, there’s his stick, the awful stick!

Jonh Stammers. Retirado daqui.

If I'm Early - Hugo Williams

Every other day I follow the route
of the Midland Railway
to where it cuts through
St Pancras Old Church Cemetery.
I might go into the church
and heave a sigh or two
before continuing via a gate
set in the cemetery wall
to the Mary Rankin Wing
of St Pancras Hospital.

As a young man, Thomas Hardy
supervised the removal of bodies
from part of the cemetery
to make way for the trains.
He placed the headstones
round an ash tree sapling,
now grown tall, where I stop sometimes
to look at the stones
crowding round the old tree
like children listening to a story.

Retirado daqui.