Unspoken word

neither rhyme nor reason

I have been going to spoken word poetry at Bar Oussou for a couple of months. It’s strange! I really still don’t know much or appreciate much, but it’s warm and welcoming and it reliably makes me feel like writing. The first of these I wrote in the bar, after someone read a poem on Melbourne Cup Day called ‘confessions of a racehorse’. The second is a mad kind of response to a poem written more than a century ago which happens to be one of two poems I remember hearing as a child.

(confessions of a chick that won’t lay)

Don’t have a name not even a strange one dreamt up to sound good on radio
Not really around long enough to be worth it
Not cruelly ‘broken in’
just superfluous
After one day the first day they look at me and they know
Not laying an egg not growing big enough to be battered
Into the grinder
Gone

(Mother or, Mutiny — after ‘Disobedience’, A.A. Milne)

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me.”

I had this boyfriend once - was he a boyfriend?
A guy, anyway, who liked to call me ‘babygirl’
And as he fell asleep he’d coo nondescriptly
About how he’d always look after me and I didn’t need to worry

As if I was worried! As if I hadn’t paid for everything
Which is just men, I suppose, but I did at least think that these days —
No boyfriends, just the child with the regrettable trail of names —
These days I’d be free of the pointless urge to protect and smother
At least while he’s only three.

James James
Morrison’s Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison’s Mother
Said to herself, said she:
“I can get right down
to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea.”

I think I meant it at first - it’s not like I wanted him to starve
And although I always found his stare a bit grave, for a toddler, a bit beyond his years
That is not a substitute for actually being able to cook
Or even being tall enough to reach the water crackers

And I can drive — you wouldn’t know it from the way James James looks at me mournfully in the car
Like I’m committing us both to an early grave
But literally what would he know!
I can drive and nowhere’s very far, it’s a small town
So yes, I put on a nice dress but that’s not a crime, it really was my plan
To be back in time for tea.

King John
Put up a notice,
“LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES MORRISON’S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN
TO THE END OF THE TOWN -
FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!”

The notice riled me. Actually that was the first time it occurred to me
That I have no idea where “the end of the town” is or what it even means
It really is the concept of a three year old - the ends of, the dark hollow, there be dragons
And that’s okay, he is three after all and it’s almost reassuring to see him act like it
For once, with clueless concern about some imagined peril

But then to see it blasted out to the world in print — within a few hours! — I had not even ordered a second martini and there it was
King John - what the fuck does King John have to do with this!
Putting the royal seal on the delusions of a child
Describing me, officially, like a lost cat or a toddler which — again — there is only one toddler here

Stolen? Strayed?
Wandering Vaguely?
I tore the thing off the wall
I’m going to stay down at the end of the town
And block all James James’s calls.

James James
Morrison’s mother
Hasn’t been heard of since.
King John said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
“If people go down to the end of the town, well,
what can anyone do?”

There are a lot of us here now.
I must have looked good on the notice —
Golden gown, eyes brimming with freedom
Nobody here really called it ‘the end of the town’ before but we do now
We have royal decrees writing us off to the consequences of our fecklessness
But we don’t, at least, live under the baleful stare of children

And James James
Morrison Morrison?
Probably fine, I’d say
King John will find him a babygirl
I’m sure he’ll warn her
Not to stray.