[Douglas G. Brown]

Thanks, John! You are the expert on all things British. It must be late at night, or the wee hours of the morning, over your way.

[Lance Levens]

Comrade Ivan Speaks
(Moscow, 1968)

The Kommisars are irked at all this hair!
They want to pluck'em, shave 'em, cut and clip.
They're looking for a creamy upper lip,
Yul Brynner cue balls, skin that's smooth and bare.

In boiling vats we'll sizzle off the beard,
The ponytail, the hair that's five feet long,
Whatever gives offense. No country's strong
When everybody's hirsute and acting weird.

And the new thoughts? Smooth as a baby's face,
A sleeker math, a clean geometry,
Hairless parabolas from sea to sea.
A beardless logo for the soviet race.

Semitic types? Must check them at the gate.
We're after leanings, winks and wicked hints,
The furtive follicles of malcontents.
Unfettered hair will spoil an electorate.

That lunker on the bottom of the lake?
Clip him!--trawling for his Nietzchean crumb.
He may spout "love!" but he's basically a bum,
Drooling his tantras, a gnu-ru on the make.

Thus, we won't permit the stuff to grow.
Thus, will we snip: the hair has got to go! .

[John Whitworth]

This might be a winner, Lance but some of it scans less smoothly than it might. They love a smooth scansion at the Lit Rev. Check out stanzas 3 and 4. The first line f stanza 5 is a foot too long. I don't like to encourage winners where I have a very hopeful horse in the race, but art is Long, don't you know.

[Lance Levens]

Thanks, John. We'll put on our counting hat.

[Graham King]

I love John and Douglas's above; and yours, Lance, is a novel notion I'd not come across! (Is it your playful fancy, or did the Leninists really view the leonine-locked as alien and with such a-leniency?)

However as a neophyte (I may be reading clumsily) I offer that:

S2L4 is a syllable long (could use "everyone's" instead of "everybody's"?)
S4L4 ditto (could use "spoils" instead of "will spoil"?)
S5L3 ditto (I trip up on "he's"; could it maybe be left out?)
S5L4 ditto (maybe instead "A tantra-drooling gnu-ru on the make" ?)

Your "gnu-ru" I like; an imagination-catching and concise coining!

[Graham King]

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

My forehead is expanding but it’s not by growth of brain;
My hairline is receding, that is all.
Hair-washing’s less demanding and to dry it is no strain.
I find no need for combing it at all.

When autumn comes I feel the chill far sharper than before.
Snug woolly hat is very necessary;
A haircut (bristly-short) aids its adherence all the more,
Like Velcro, though wind be e’er so blustery.

As if in compensation, other hair-crops grow apace -
Ears Midas-tufted, nose-wires, Brillo brows.
My beard is most conspicuous: a bramble-tangled place –
Or ‘barbed wire-’ maybe? Steel-grey, anyhow.

Do I regret the loss of locks of yesteryear? Why yes;
I’ve dreamed I run my fingers through them – true!
If sleep’s The Great Restorer, my hair may grow back, I guess -
If I should dose with doze, day and night through.

I find no fright hair-raising now - that cliché has worn thin;
Too scant my pelage to substantiate it.
And if I were a Samson, I’d be far too weak to win;
My baldness, Philistines would celebrate it.

I’ve heard our days and hairs too are celestially numbered –
God knows where Heaven keeps each person’s tally!
Is some guardian angel with each follicle’s care cumbered?
I guess I may find out… eventually!


(I realise the repetition at the end of S1L4. Would
"I find the need for combing it is small."
be better? or sound less natural?)

[John Whitworth]

I think your second line 4 is better. I love your by-line Fife. For the benefit of our transatlantic friends let me explain. Fife is what Macbeth was thane of and is just over the water from Edinburgh. A fine place.

[Brian Allgar]

Actually, John, it was Macduff - Macbeth was Thane of Glamis. But perhaps Graham also has a holiday home in Cawdor? I see that he is already King ...

[Brian Humeniuk]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Ah, I knew about this a couple of days ago and got myself a head start.

Hair

As eunuchs praise the love they never had,
Bald as an egg, I sing my TRICHIAD.

The hair that gave the Spartan warriors power,
The hair Rapunzel tumbled from her tower,
The hair that sprouts unbidden under arms,
The hair that grows on masturbators' palms,
The buttered hair of the ferocious Tartars,
The holy hair of Jesus' Saints and Martyrs,
The raw, red hair of vagabonds and bad men,
The hair that grows beneath the skins of madmen,
The long, blonde, braided hair of New Age cuties,
The hobbit hair that turns their feet to bootees,
The hair the sirens combed upon the rocks,
The pallid, hairy legs of kilted Jocks,
The hair Porphyria's lover wound around
Her neck to murder her without a sound,
Crisp, curly hair Lord Byron mourned the loss of,
Heroic hair Delilah proved the boss of,
Soft hair hot walnut shells scoured from the thighs
Of Roman boys,or else Suetonius lies,
Harsh, hideous hair of devils, rank and rough,
Light lamplit hair on girlish arms... enough!

Though finer lines Tom Eliot never penned,
My TRICHOMANIA here must have an end.

Hello John. Love it! Love it! Love it! I love the way this all rolls off the tongue. I read it and was instantly taken back to my puberty with....."The hair that grows on masturbators' palms", I wonder how many male readers quickly looked at their own guilty hands(just to make sure) whilst reading that particular line? Your poem started to fire me up, but while reading it, I also came to the conclusion that you'd covered all the bases. That said, I could only come up with,
Hair today, gone tomorrow,
youthfully hirsute, then bald with sorrow
the comb is discarded for lack of employment
but kept anyway, for periodic rememberance.......I'll come back to this again I think. B.
Just read it again John with regard to the line....

The hobbit hair that turns their feet to bootees,
would it not flow better with....
The hobbit hair that turns their feet into bootees, just a thought. B.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Brian Humeniuk

The hobbit hair that turns their feet to bootees,

would it not flow better with....

The hobbit hair that turns their feet into bootees, just a thought. B.

No, I'm afraid it wouldn't. John's line is an iambic pentameter with a feminine ending. Your suggestion would simply destroy the metre.