poem
WRITTEN:
1988, 21 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This is a multi-themed poem along the lines of Been There, Done That, this time involving a superficial reference to the "regular" Man Upstairs (God) and a literal one, to the chap who was the previous head-of-household where I was living at the time, who'd occupied one of the upstairs bedrooms. My bedroom was on the ground floor and I had no reason to ever go up the stairs, so initially there was a great sense of mystery about the upper floors.
I was trying to capture the feel of living in a house where a mad violinist was in charge of major things like getting the rent paid on time. (I guess this is an intensely personal thing, one of those "you had to be there" things, so perhaps this is not a good poem for public consumption.)
Several years later I modified this poem somewhat as part of the eulogy (a non-hypocritical and therefore non-flattering one) I contributed at my father's funeral, but I like this version better.
It's the man upstairs
You see
Causing dissention
Splitting infinitives
Fine-tuning the atmosphere
To create exact levels of tension
For purposes of his own
Then sitting back to watch it all happen
It's the child upstairs
You know
Old and young all at once
Naive and knowledgeable
As it suits him
You get pretty sure you
Have it all worked out
Then he does something thoroughly unpredictable
And you're in the dark again
It's the other half of a house I have never seen
Hunched in dim shadows
Protected by invincible vines
From the substance of daylight
Waiting patiently for the revolution
It's the ghost of our guilt
Flickering
Tantalising
At the corner of conversation
It's the thrill of a mystery
Feeding us information in miniscule pieces
It's the heartache of loss
Torturing consciences where fear looms large
It's the plunge of a diver
Into the cold deep waters of mass conformity