Sunday, December 30, 2012

Statistically Significant Happiness.




'Face wiz trippin' the loat ae um...' - Pedestrian.


The graph curves
into
a
frown
of
disappointment.

There is a weather beaten rock were you sit
with your back to the wind trying to light
a hopeless cigarette.

A bus stopped dead at the lights
sealed with young mothers, folded buggies,
and cantankerous soured faced history lessons.

If they took a slice of orange
on the head of their beer
they could enrich their lives
with some vitamin C.

You oil yourself on whiskey
and tough boy humour
and varnish old wounds.
You sure know how
to lighten up a swollen cloud.

A geriatric ward
with fourteen year olds
going on eighty
year old cynicism.

Statistically our laughter
doesn't stand
a chance against
the wall of the cemetery.

There is not enough
sun through the sky 
to cheer up this Nation.

Happiness
is a
dish
best
served
in the
Mediterranean.

2 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

Not sure about this one, Colin. There are pluses and minuses. I kinda like the ‘smiles’ in the first and last stanzas. At least I’m looking at them as graph/smiles. Great punch line too. And the concepts presented are interesting and thought-provoking. But it’s a bit prosaic and disjointed. And by ‘disjointed’ I don’t mean that there isn’t a thread running through it because there is but it reads like a slideshow as opposed to a film. I felt I had to pause a little longer than necessary between each stanza. Having read this over a few times now I can do a bit better apart from the penultimate stanza. It doesn’t feel right. You might think about dropping it or reworking it. To my mind it flows best when I read it: 1 pause 2-3 pause 4 pause 5-6 pause 8 giving it a kind of palindromic feel and using stanza 4 as the poem’s pivotal stanza. On the whole I like it. I’m just being my usual picky self.

McGuire said...

I agree Jim.

It is disjointed. I've been editing it for a week or so now. Not quite coming together. Work to be done.

I will consider your changes, shifting stanzas about might well be the answer.

thanks.

colin