http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Readers often ask why I publish a poem only to revise it at a later date, more often than not a much later date .Feedback at the time suggested that many readers could relate - in part, at least - to the image the poem projects, but something about the poem itself failed to engage them.
Hopefully, a revised version may help restore a meaningful balance.(Feel free to let me know one way or another.)
TICKING OVER
He was leaning against a lamp post, flickering,
almost dead. He demanded a cigarette.
I said I didn’t smoke. I’d have walked on,
but then he asked the time. On impulse,
I confessed I’d left my watch with a pawnbroker,
times were tough
By now the light had all but died as he confided
that he had no money or place to go since
his wife had discovered his appetite for other men.
She had kept their house and kids, taking care
to get all the locks changed and have a good lawyer
plead her case
He was now working all hours to pay the mortgage
keep the 'ex' happy, their kids through university,
a mother-in-law in clover who had never liked him,
thought daughter could do better; not a bad father
but, so what? Daughter taken in by his lies, for better,
for worse
Worse, as it happens. Nothing for it but to make
a clean break, no matter how life may turn out
for a cheating a husband and dad so long as society
(finally) seen to do right by a family let down
for being left to live a happy-sad lie - and (nobody?)
any the wiser
Street lamp died. He became no more than a shadow,
a light in the eyes telling me all I needed to know;
A family man he may well have been but now, like me,
he clearly hungered for that intimacy long since
short changed him by a society that needs must preserve
its integrity
I took him back to my place for much more than tea
and sympathy. By dawn, he's gone. Lonely sheets,
reminding me how men cruising invariably wear faces
reminiscent of watches in a pawnbroker’s window
asking to be redeemed, get a life well worth (more than)
its ticking over
Copyright R. N. Taber 2007, 2020
[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears under the title 'Living Over the Pawnbroker's Shop' in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]
Readers often ask why I publish a poem only to revise it at a later date, more often than not a much later date .Feedback at the time suggested that many readers could relate - in part, at least - to the image the poem projects, but something about the poem itself failed to engage them.
Hopefully, a revised version may help restore a meaningful balance.(Feel free to let me know one way or another.)
TICKING OVER
He was leaning against a lamp post, flickering,
almost dead. He demanded a cigarette.
I said I didn’t smoke. I’d have walked on,
but then he asked the time. On impulse,
I confessed I’d left my watch with a pawnbroker,
times were tough
By now the light had all but died as he confided
that he had no money or place to go since
his wife had discovered his appetite for other men.
She had kept their house and kids, taking care
to get all the locks changed and have a good lawyer
plead her case
He was now working all hours to pay the mortgage
keep the 'ex' happy, their kids through university,
a mother-in-law in clover who had never liked him,
thought daughter could do better; not a bad father
but, so what? Daughter taken in by his lies, for better,
for worse
Worse, as it happens. Nothing for it but to make
a clean break, no matter how life may turn out
for a cheating a husband and dad so long as society
(finally) seen to do right by a family let down
for being left to live a happy-sad lie - and (nobody?)
any the wiser
Street lamp died. He became no more than a shadow,
a light in the eyes telling me all I needed to know;
A family man he may well have been but now, like me,
he clearly hungered for that intimacy long since
short changed him by a society that needs must preserve
its integrity
I took him back to my place for much more than tea
and sympathy. By dawn, he's gone. Lonely sheets,
reminding me how men cruising invariably wear faces
reminiscent of watches in a pawnbroker’s window
asking to be redeemed, get a life well worth (more than)
its ticking over
Copyright R. N. Taber 2007, 2020
[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears under the title 'Living Over the Pawnbroker's Shop' in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]
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