poem
WRITTEN:
1984, 17 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I'm very fond of this one as it's one of the best serious, D&M and yet still intelligible pieces I wrote while still at school. It's about three separate things: my father, my then-boyfriend and an Australian insurance ad.
My father was deaf, or at least, claimed to be, but he could read lips when he wanted to, and he could also hear what you were saying when he wanted to. So thinking about this gave me the initial inspiration and I started to play with words. I was influenced by Dawe's Life-Cycle (for Big Jim Phelan), which we were studying at the time, and this is where the unusual cadence came from - unusual for me, anyway.
My father was keen for me to play chess against him, but not very interested in playing the games that I was into (basically, Scrabble and Monopoly - he would cheat outrageously to make me abandon the game). I don't think I ever won against him, nor even had a "good" game - whatever move I made he'd be telling me it wasn't a good one, and trying to control my moves as well as his (just like he did the rest of the time, too). Refusing to play was not allowed, particularly because I was an only child and there were no siblings acting as a buffer to his conditional love.
The boyfriend, CJM, was 3 years older than me and a transplanted Yorkshireman. He was 85% responsible for my carnal education. The more sordid lips reference had to do with him and my dissatisfaction with our relationship, which was very one-sided (more conditional love, wouldn't you know it - though it wasn't love, either).
If you are about my age or older, Australian or were in Australia in the mid-80s, you might remember an insurance commercial where a woman leaves something on the stove while she answers the phone, then suddenly shrieks, "Oh my goodness, the chips!" At the time I thought this was pretty typical of how advertising saw women - easily distracted and too stupid to think of possible consequences. In a way this ties in with the other two contributions to this poem: my father was always on about contingencies, and CJM expected me to take care of any and all possible consequences (of anything).
He walks in, all nonchalance
and Grace
throws her hands to High Heaven
Oh God, the kitchen's on fire!
eyes smouldering
He walks in, all confidence, and bets
You Can't Beat Him In A Game!
And you can't resist the challenge
and you play
and you lose
He walks in and all talking ceases
Don't Dare Say A Word!
He's deaf, yes, but he can read lips
Yeah, he likes lips
I should know, I've
Been There, Done That