dannyboy

PROGRESS:

Somewhere
amongst the debris
of tattered school books,
rotten bananas
at the bottom of smelly school bags,
grey shorts with torn pockets,
and never tucked in blue shirts
the child I was
still runs
despite the large front tooth chipped
when feet tangled
and mouth hit hot tar.

That black-tanned and blonde hairs
on skinny arms and legs
lad with the big smile
and a voice
that just squeezed in
to the wide, wide outside,
calls out as loudly in the night
as he did before man ever
touched the moon.

I’d like to meet him sometime,
shake his hand and
say thanks
for all those endless times
of laughter, reckless abandon,
of searching for frogs and fighting
each and every despot or miser.

School tried to eradicate that lad
and usher in the adult
but he was a brave one; courageous
in the face of conjugated fire,
a hero regardless
of the true value of pi,
that apples that fell upon his head
were eaten without a thought
for the why.

His truth lay
in the slapping of feet upon ash vault,
the climbing of trees, the capturing
of bright green caterpillars.
He understood that though culture
had moved on some many years
the brain was still the same
as the Neolithic hunter
that ran the savannahs
fifty thousand years before
an atom was ever manly sundered.

silverwriter

despite the large front tooth chipped
when feet tangled
and mouth hit hot tar. - heh. been there, done that, split both lips open in about three places.

absolutely love the third stanza. such wonderful sentiment.

and the fourth - also quite lovely. the inner child resisting the too often conformist way of the adult


a lovely piece and quite enjoyable to read. i looked at it and thought perhaps i might stumble over a few things given the breaks and whatnot, but i didn't. good work very well done.

jaime

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Blackhawk_t

I liked this. I prefer poems that have a rhyming scheme, but this was good.

dannyboy

ta jaime, you are not meant to stumble so i am glad you didn't (with the poem that is, the other stumble is just part of being a kid).

Thanks Blackhawk - an audience always has preferences so the artists job is to sometimes reach them despite those preferences.

J.R. MacLean

This is along Wordsworthian lines. Not as lyrical of course, but much of the same feeling. This is Romantic poetry and I like it. A nice counterpoint to your school daze ones. cheers j.r.

dannyboy

yep, that was what I was after J.R. Thanks as always.

danny

Pawn

I celebrate myself, and sing myself...

Enjoyable as I found this, I did find myself craving something of that English lyricism, or if not that some of Wordsworth's fire. Surely somewhere in your childhood lurks the knife under the cloak...

Yet perhaps I am simply insatiable in my hunger for tragedy. My thanks for the read.

__________________
C.A
Carpe Noctem
superlatenight.com

dannyboy

the childhood knife lurks in other peoms, for this poem the knife lurks in the adult mind that thinks itself 'civilized' because of its 'culture' forced upon the children yet is possessed of the same brain as any 'savage' primitive hunter.

Jimbob

Nice poem Danny. It reminds me of one I wrote several years ago about my own child self. Enjoyed it.

Jimbob

dannyboy

ta jimbob why don't you - and anyone stick your 'childhood' one in here and give us a geeser at it.