TALKING POETRY

Peter Griffin

Peter Griffin lives in New Bombay and writes for a living. He has worked in advertising, journalism and website development, and now does all of them for whoever will pay him. He helps run and moderate the writers' forum, Caferati, and has co-edited Stories at the Coffee Table (2007 Caferati Creative). His poetry is usually introduced to unsuspecting passers-by here.

Haflong

The clouds here aren’t lonely.
They caress hillsides, embrace trees, play with leaves.
They lounge on the roads, rising lazily to let a car pass
Settling down again even before the tyres go around the corner.
They talk to the flowers, and play with the dogs
        And, I hear, in partnership with campfires,
        Disorient the birds in nearby Jatinga,
        So that tribesmen can club them out of the air.
They laze, cradled like pet cats,
In the laps of high valleys.
Damp with promise, they leave traces of their passage
In the grass, and in the smell of the carpets.
The clouds wander here,
But it’s only me that’s lonely.
© Peter Griffin 2005

 

You, who are restless tonight

Your heart beats to marching rhythms,
your breath is a travelling song.
Tamed and maimed are synonyms
to you. I knew this all along.

I’ve travelled far myself, you know,
And I know you must wander too.
So I’ll offer you this as you pack and go:
A future rendezvous.

When you’ve done what you must do alone,
And you’re ready for company,
Perhaps we’ll meet at a lone milestone,
And you’ll travel a while with me?

We can walk some roads together,
Perhaps share a meal, or two,
Shelter each other from bad weather,
Or, just for fun, walk through.

And as the miles and the sights go by,
Maybe, then, you’ll see
Not the jailor from whom you fly,
But the fellow traveller in me.
© Peter Griffin 2004

 

Older – 2

He won’t wear a hearing aid.

He knows her refrain by heart;
The recriminations about a life
That didn’t live up to expectations.

And the children whose first words
Had made a new man of him
Now growl at his inability
To keep up with the times.

And they don’t play the music he knew.

And there’s way too many car horns.

And the news isn’t that great.
       The newsreader looks good though.
       Yes, old men can lust

And the men who knew him
when he was a boy
Are too far away to call
And, like him, don’t understand this web thing.
Or they’re dead.

And the memories of sound
Are the sweetest things he hears.

No, he won’t wear a hearing aid.
© Peter Griffin 2005

 

Older – 3

It used to be
That too far away from home
Meant a few thousand miles or more.
Perhaps a continent away
Or even the other side of the world.
Now, a few steps away
from my front door,
I hesitate:
What if I stumble here?
Lose my balance there?
What if my breath gives out?
Am I too far away from home?
© Peter Griffin 2005

 

St Valentine’s day massacre

(And other bestial tales)
Couplets for St Valentine’ Day
Can I use your heart for my Valentine?
(Signed) Doctor Victor Frankenstein.

* * *

Would you mind awfully if I should poke a
Little hole in your neck and sip? – B Stoker.

* * *

I sit here, holding her hand in mine—
A souvenir from my chopped-up Valentine.

* * *

Alas, the hapless porcupine, his heart really bleeds, poor chap.
The quills on his fair valentine turned metaphor into a mishap.

* * *

Pity the poor mantis, when he’s in his Valentine’s embrace.
When the lady says Oh God! she’s merely saying grace.

* * *

On Valentine’s Day, in the water sport the hippopotami.
It’s the only way to support their entwined anatomy.

* * *

Snails are strange creatures; hermaphrodites every one.
On Valentine’s Day, the bastards have twice the fun.
© Peter Griffin 2005

 

Results 1 - 5 of about 11

I have never asked anyone about you
But today,
three years
five months
and fifteen days
(but who’s counting)
later,
on an impulse,
because I was shirking work,
because I needed a break after reading 35 bad CVs,
because I saw a blog post about a guy who’d done the same thing,
because I’d never done it myself,
I asked Google whether it knew you.

You’re in another country now
(you were always a rolling stone),
your CV’s much expanded,
you’ve worked there a while,
you did a course
(yay for you! I knew you’d do it eventually)
you had to drop out, though, because you were broke,
(and I was sorry to see that)
you are—or were—searching for a job...

But there’s no indication of whether
you’re still with him (your name is still the same)
or if you’ve changed your mind about having kids.
No word about whether you’re happy
Or if you ever—

                do you ever
                do you never
                do you ever

                             —Search for me.
© Peter Griffin 2005

 

The old blogger’s comforts

You are old, father Zig, the kid made a moue,
     Your face is almost all forehead.
Yet you wear your hair long and tied into a queue—
     Is that proper for someone so near-dead?

When I was young, Ziggy said, (after kicking the lout)
     I visited the barber’s quite often.
But now that my keratin’s rapidly running out—
     Why, I'll take all that’s left to my coffin.

You are old, said the brat, forgetting respect,
     Your hormones are a memory, God bless ’em.
But yet at the Altar of Love you genuflect—
     Why do you persist in writing love poems?

In my youth, said the sage, grinning into his beard,
     The point of the verse wasn’t futile.
What’s the point now? Why, haven’t you heard
     Of that diamond-shaped blue pill, Sildenafil?

Said the stripling, Your playlist is years out of date—
     You diss the pop music of this nation.
You tell us how your music was so bloody great—
     But aren’t you the—heh—disco generation?

Quoth the fossil, I was easily influenced as a child,
     I will admit I knew all the lyrics—
But surely you’ll grant this: disco never defiled
     The ear as much as Bollywood remix!

You are old, said the youth, yet you still write a blog—
     Why waste what’s left of your life?
Your fingers are arthritic, your mind is a fog—
     Wouldn’t you rather spend time with the wife?

I have answered three questions, now kindly fuck off,
     Said the ancient, looking hunted and harried,
With blogposts to write, trolls to be shook off,
     Who the hell had the time to get married?

The original poem is well-known enough to not need a reference, but just in case.. This is based on Lewis Carroll’s delicious You are old, Father William, which, in turn, was a parody of Robert Southey’s rather sanctimonious The Old Man’s Comforts and how he gained them.
The Zig in the poem is an abbreviated version of my pen-name on my blog, where this poem first appeared.
© Peter Griffin 2006

 

Sunset at Bundi

A cold evening
Drifts down from the Aravallis.
One ear is warm.
Science would insist
That it’s a cheap phone
heating up.
I know what it really is:
You called
To share the sunset.
© Peter Griffin 2006