[Jayne Osborn]

Our John has gone and done it again: the top prize, with one of his two entries on the thread for that comp (they were the only ones on it, as it happens!). Our hats are off to you once more, John. Many congratulations.

Jayne

(Next comp on new thread.)

Poetry Competition & Results

Report by Deputy Editor Tom Fleming

This month’s subject was ‘down and out’. John Whitworth wins first prize and £300; Alison Prince comes second and wins £150; and Noel Petty and Fay Marshall win £10 each.

First Prize
Down and Out By John Whitworth

My Dad was born dirt poor and he was poor when he was dead.
He lived in cardboard city in a corrugated shed.
You say your life is tough but, hell, our lives were so much tougher.
You draw your weekly benefit. We had to sit and suffer.

We hadn't got the wit to steal nor yet the brass to beg,
But Dad would dance the Highland Fling and shake his wooden leg.
You haven't got a bean but, cripes, we hadn't got a prayer.
It's not enough to bugger off, you have to be a stayer.

A rainy day it was when Dad was put into the ground.
He left his empty sea chest and just thirty-seven pound.
You say you're penniless but, Jeeze, we were much pennilesser.
We lived on crusts and fag-ends that we found behind the dresser.

Dad sold Mum to the slavers in a dive in Buenos Aires.
That was unkind. He lost his mind. It vanished with the fairies.
Mum danced on bar-room tables in her knickers and a hat.
You may think the world's your oyster but it's fishier than that.

Yes, he sold her to the slavers for his thirty seven quid.
A man does what he has to do and that was what he did.
It's the poor that play their hearts out but the rich that run the game.
If things had turned out different then they wouldn't be the same.

It's the rich that get the pleasure and the poor that get the curse.
The truth is sad. The truth is bad. The truth is worse and worse.
You say you're down and out but, shitehawks, we were down and outer.
Dad sold Mum to the slavers so we had to do without her.

Second Prize
Down and Out By Alison Prince

‘Once I lived the life…’ She sings as though
she, too, has seen how fine friends disappear
when you’re broke. Caught by the slow tempo,
the bar falls silent. Most of them well know
there will be tough times in the coming year.

Her voice is close and wry, and every face
is rapt. She works shifts on a Co-op till
but sings now of another, older place
where poverty meant hunger and disgrace.
Nothing has changed. The blues speak its truth still.

She drank no bootleg liquor, no champagne
as they did in Bessie Smith’s great song.
While New Orleans was warm, wind-driven rain
in this cold coast town adds an extra pain
to being skint when you’ve done nothing wrong.

She moves into the chorus. ‘Nobody
knows you when you’re down and out.’ The band
backs her to the end. The crowd is free
to clap and yell. The generosity
of music grabs them. ‘Give her a big hand.’

Any Change, Guv? By Noel Petty

The old dilemma: drop this chap a pound?
Or mime a lack of change; perhaps pretend
Deep interest in some object on the ground;
Or cross the road to greet a phantom friend?

The word is that they’re all as rich as Croesus.
Looking at this one, though, I find that strange.
Others say giving merely greases
A system ripe for fundamental change.

Such gifts, they say, will disappear in drink.
Sam Johnson, though, maintained that was well spent.
He’d sally forth with pockets all a-chink,
And if it gave some ease, he was content.

I can’t stop now, I tell myself. I’m late.
But still the question hovers in the air.
Maybe I’ll leave the final word to fate:
On my way back, I think, if he’s still there…


Underground By Fay Marshall

We do not want to see the man who plays,
his greasy cap, the splatter of small change.
His face is gaunt and lined, his eyes are strange –
some former maestro, fallen on hard days?
The next train thunders in. Commuters spill
along the cheerless platform, anxious-eyed –
the subterranean depths are gaping wide,
while the relentless, white-tiled tunnels fill,
drab passing concourse without pride or pity.
A flute across the fields of asphodel
would be a fitter setting, not this hell
of labyrinthine coils below the city.
Silence returns, charity’s course is run;
the song is ended, and the music done.