The Oldie: Competition No 116
 

This looks promising, don't you think?

A poem as a dialogue, please, between you and a photograph of a younger you. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to Competition No 116 by 25th September. email comps@theoldie.co.uk. Don't forget to include your postal address.

The bonus prize is a Taylor's of Harrogate tea and cake set. I wonder what that is. All prizewinners win £25.

Oh, this could be very interesting. What's the deadline, John?

While I'm here, belated thanks for your kind words in the Cautionary Tale thread--there's an awful lot going on here and I have to keep moving! I haven't been sending in to most of the contests lately, but I might try this one despite the fact that it requires a certain schizophrenia...:rolleyes:

Sorry, Teresa. I've put it in at the top.

"Behold my thick and lustrous hair,
my skin, so fine and wrinkle-free;
Now look into my eyes and swear
you wouldn’t kill to be like me!"

"Would I trade all I hold within,
the strength, the wisdom, if I could,
for the perfect hair and skin
of callow youth? You bet I would!"

Marion, I haven't looked at this more or less since I put it up. I'm going to have a bash at it. meanwhile, your bash is a good one. Andrew Marvell's the one for dialogues. No harm in aiming high eh? I also remember a remark of Auden's. hed was an inveterate editor of his own poems, changing them and drpping them because he no longer approved of the sentiments 'the necessary murder' and horrid commie stuf like that, but he did remark that his younger self would have felt horror at the idea of an old fart beinglet loose to ruin his poems. When I was a little boy the idea that I might actuallylive to see in the millenium filled me with disbelief. And now.... What I need is GRANDCHILDREN. My daughters had better look to it.

What you need is another stanza or too. Think tea-set.

Well, the cat and me have sat up for an hour or two and we've come up with this, more depressing that I had expected. But the cat is even older than I am (in cat years anyway) so blame it on him.

Competition No. 116: Dialogue

Speak up, my boy. Don’t think you can’t.
Though you may seem as good as gold,
I know (who better?) that you aren’t.
It’s just that you’re so old.

Too true, alas, but young at heart.
Don’t stagger back and look appalled.
I have much wisdom to impart.
It’s just that you’re so bald.

Good Heavens! You were balder once.
We really ought to have a chat.
Speak up! Don’t sit there like a dunce.
It’s just that you’re so fat.

Old, bald and fat, alas, you’re right.
I am the ruined shell of you,
So pert, so pretty and so bright.
You’re not. It isn’t true.

You sat before the mirror, and practiced with your eyebrow
To get that Marlene Dietrich look, hoping to seem highbrow.
These days, when your mind’s blank, and even when you frown
Your perma-tinted highbrow eyebrow’s up and won’t come down.

Ah Seree, there's NOTHING to be said fo getting older, is there? Wisdom? Huh! Actually there IS something. Watching the jeunesse doree (where does that accent go?) of one's youth ageing and looking JUST AS BAD!

Closer to Heaven though. Why does that idea fail to grip?

OLD PHOTO

My younger self who's pictured here
looks up as if to say,
   "I'm full of promise, and you know it,
    older self, so don't you blow it,
or there'll be hell to pay!"

I look back at my younger self,
that snotty little kid,
   and answer, "I am glad that you
   died years ago so never knew
that that's just what I did."

another utter silliness -

.
T’so cold without. [Whew]. So hot within.
I pause. Oh man, the truth sinks in.
They’d called me ‘cool chick’ – they’d meant hot
but the hot I was then is not what I’ve now got.

John's Cat Replies

Don't gloat too much, my dear friend John,
that I've got five years to your one.
For though your life may outlast mine,
Remember, I've got nine.

This is not a funny one, but ...

Dialogue With an Old Acquaintance

A photo of the way I used to be
sits on a shelf and often talks to me.
He peers across the dusty glass to say,
“Remember how I’d practice tirelessly,

learning piece after piece? And then I’d play
for mom and dad and brother, sis, aunt Kay.
“I do. They thought you had some talent.” “Yes,”
the picture says, “but I felt like the prey

of some great raptor when, in formal dress,
I’d get on stage. I couldn’t bear the stress
of all those eyes and ears. How they would peer
into my core of jelly!” “What a mess

you were!” I say, “fear ruined your career.”
And then I walk away. Year after year
he endlessly complains through the veneer,
his gripes like dulcet airs to my old ear.

Worth a tea-set, Martin. A tea-set? What's with this tea-set?

Marion, we calculate cat years as times seven, but your calculation is better. By your reckoning he's only eighty-five, a mere slip of a thing. But I have to say he's gone crazier than me. AND he pisses in the utility room. I don't do that yet.

Yet, John, yet? You have plans for the utility room? :D

I haven't spent much time at The Oldie - do they want humor only?

Thanks, John. I always wanted a tea-set.

But you're planning on it?

Martin

The Old Mutt Converses With His Puppy Photo

“Hey, you,” the former snapshot of me yaps.
I woof to the young whippersnapper, “Pup,
what’s up?” “Remember all those snarly scraps
I used to have? Eugene would break them up,
but not before I’d wup the shabby cur.
Remember how I’d snatch a scrap from dinner
when Gene would leave the room a minute?” “Sure!
You clearly were a peerless canine sinner.”

“But now,” my photo barks, “you lag behind
and pant like a steam engine on a trail.
You beg instead of steal. You’re nearly blind
as an olm. I’m glad I’m still a pup!” “My tail,”
I bay, “wags often as it did for you,”
then walk into an oak just out of view.

Mary, they don't say, but the feel of the entries in the last two numbers is much the same as in the Speccie, quite a few of the same names, even my own very occasionally. I should treat it in the same way.

Re utility room. I don't think the cat was planning it. I think it was raining outside. I don't have the same hard choices in that respect. In this regard I might point out that it was commonplace for Oxford students of forty years ago and more to use the washbasin because they didn't fancy crossing a wet quadrangle at night to the only comfort station. Auden did it. Not me of course. I was made of sterner stuff.

And while I'm here I might suggest that some of you glance at something called The Plough Prize (poetry) to be found by googling The Poetry Kit. There are, beside the usual Open competition, categories for children's poetry and short poems of ten lines. Not as many prizes as I could wish but a single judge, Alison Brackenbury, who is a proper poet who rhymes and scans herself. Entry forms are downloadable and the deadline isn't until 30th November.

Yep, John, seven years. We live longer than dogs. Maybe because we meditate. And pee where we choose.
--Tiger and Jessie

There you have it, John. They talk too. And they help me write. (A piece by them was recently published in Light.)


Back to the matter at hand:

"The acne, the hormones, the angst--"
"Don’t you miss feeling sexy and flirty?"
"Be your age again? Well, no thanks!"
"Me, I’d rather be dead than turn thirty!"

"The ardor of youth swiftly flies,
but the spirit grows wiser and deeper."
"Yeah, but who wants to be deep and wise,
if it means looking like the crypt keeper?"

DIALOG

When someone took this photograph
my age was somewhat less than half
my current age, perhaps a third.
"Young Me, may we two have a word?"

"What is it, Old Me? Make it quick.
Don't give me geezer rhetoric.
I see that we survive. That's great.
There's no need to expatiate."

"There is, I tell you!" "No, you're wrong."
"I promise you, this won't take long."
"What is it?" "Listen. Do not whine!
Sell all of our stocks in ninety-nine!"

Not Me


Well look at you! Those glued on lashes
make you look like Dusty Springfield.
Don’t you know that real panache is
effort hidden, not revealed?

Listen sister, in the sixties
no one bothered with good taste.
On the stage these little tricks ease
stress where dress is all two faced.

You looked older then than I do
now with only half the paint.
You were young and fresh so why do
all that being what you ain’t?

Swinging London made me do it.
PVC and Mary Quant'd
set the style and if you blew it
you were not what casting wanted.

That's the goods, Janet. I was a bit puzzled by 'Quant had' Perhaps you'd make it easier for the reader (they're not all as clever as thee and me) if you write 'Quant'd'.

Thanks John. I was already tempt'd.

Moi?


What a fake your French provincial
print, and clogs from Dr Scholl,
bought in King’s Road, a vestigial
country costume for a doll.

But I felt so free and pretty
when I clattered with my basket
going shopping in the city.
All a game, so don’t unmask it.

Now I’m country top and bottom
all of me the real Mackay.
Marie Antoinette forgotten
underneath a Queensland sky.

But your clothes are drab and boring
and your face, if truth be told.
Something we are both ignoring,
I am young and you are old.

Chewing the Fat With His Photo

Look at your balding pate, it looks as grey
as storm clouds, whereas mine’s linguini-sleek.
Look at the duds you’re modeling. Today,
if you marched round in those, people would shriek
or snigger, gawk, or try to get away.
Where I am, folks consider me quite chic.
And, anyway, I have all of my teeth.
That’s true. But I am wiser underneath,

as knowledgeable as a man my age
should be. I’ve learned that money isn’t all
there is in life. I’ve learned one mustn’t gauge
such things as joy by how one’s acres sprawl.
In fact, the place I live is a mere cage,
a studio. You mean you dropped the ball
on my investments? Don’t be so irate!
You’re just a photograph. End of debate.

"The way you sneer when you say thirty
as though the very word were dirty!"
"You're one to talk, old friend of mine,
when each year you turn thirty-nine!"

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/sp...013/733979.jpg

One of us better win that tea set! (where are you, Bill Greenwell?) If for no other reason than to see what it looks like.
(it sure sounds classy, though).


Could this be it?

http://www.taylorsofharrogate.co.uk/item.asp?itmid=1660

Maybe the cake comes separately.

Bloody Hell, I don't call THAT tea-set. Also it appears that only I can win it (and Holly and Ann D of course) since you have to be within the UK to get it. So Marion, if you win, you can gift the thing to me.

They call it a "tea box set."

I didn't see anything like a "tea and cake set" on the Website.
:confused:

So they won't send it here, huh? Maybe they don't want another Boston tea party!

It sounds like the things I tried to refuse tactfully from my mother. She was surrounded by bone china.

http://www.potteryuk.com/shop/images...TEASET%203.jpg

I always suspected that I had a long-lost twin, and it appears to be Janet, as we seem to have had the same mother.

I wrote this but didn't enter it. Now I'm asking myself why.

Mary, Mary, fairy child,
Perched on Santa’s knee,
Do you feel beloved or wild,
And will you talk to me?

I do not like this shopping mall,
But I’ve been very good.
Why are you so big and tall
And lost in Brier Wood?

In this regard I might point out that it was commonplace for Oxford students of forty years ago and more to use the washbasin because they didn't fancy crossing a wet quadrangle at night to the only comfort station. Auden did it. Not me of course. I was made of sterner stuff.

John, what strange memory-jogging by-ways you send us down. Washbasins? You mean with taps and hot and cold running water and not just a ewer and basin set for shaving water brought up by the scout? Such luxury! Now at last I understand what those long yellow streaks were under an upstairs front quad window in a certain classically-facaded college in the early 1960s . . .

Shaving water brought up by a scout! My FATHER had that at Cambridge. I stil have his little brass shaving kettle - though that rather argues the water was NOT brought up, doesn't it? Nope, at Merton we had washbasins but you did have to cross the quad for a bath or a pee. My room prevously belonged to Alan Brownjohn the poet, and previous to that by T.S. Eliot. Not that I knew at the time.

Or maybe it was Louis MacNeice.

Did you ever meet Max Beerbohm, John?

No, but the Duke of Dorset was always popping in and out - that was before his unfortunate accident.