Well, Emerging Writer is driving, and I've had to thumb down a Reliant Robin in a valiant attempt to catch up with the other riders! Hence my arriving on Wednesday.
The prompts can be found here, http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/driving-poetry-bus-my-turn.html and while mine is not quite a fit for any of them, I think it's nearly a 3) with a teeny-tiny bit of 1) thrown in. Kind of. Hey, I was on the 21:12 out of Glasgow Central on Tuesday night and this is what happened, OK?
All of the other beat poets can be found here: http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2011/01/poetry-bus-get-on-board.html
Hope no one else did find a double bass.
Now, I am a potty-mouth. I swear easily. From about the age of five, every second not spent 'up the yard' - ie in the slaughterhouse and fat plant - was a second wasted, as far as I was concerned. And up the yard it appeared to be a rule that every sentence should contain the word 'fucking'.
The men also utilised the big gun, 'cunt', on a pretty regular basis. And all the 'buggers' and 'bloodys' and 'gits' and 'bollocks' they could muster, plus 'poxy' and 'piss' and 'prick' and so on. With the usual sexist and racist stuff too. It was the late 60s and 70s.
But just as if there was a line drawn in the tarmac, once you got past the butcher's shop and were therefore within 20 yards of the house, it all stopped. My elder brothers never swore in the house. My father only did so when he was having one of his regular explosions. Swearing was not for the kitchen table, or ordinary conversation.
As I grew, I had my spell of school and student sweariness, and then went to work in what was a very male-dominated environment. At work I was surrounded by swearing, but only in the station, and only to those of equal rank. Whilst just about acceptable in front of a Sergeant, you never in front of an Inspector or above. And you did not swear in public; you never swore at the public, even in the midst of a fight whilst trying to arrest drunken men using choice language at 2.15am once the clubs had kicked out. Offensive language in public is still a statutory offence in England and Wales.
From all this you learn, as no doubt many of a certain generation did, that swearing was something you did in certain places, at certain times. And so I do not swear in public and in conversation with obvious non-swearing friends and acquaintances. I do not swear in front of other people's children, and try very hard not to swear in front of my own, although I have had a now-legendary 'bugger' slip when driving the car, with the boys in the back. (You know how it goes - 'What's bugger, Mum? What does the word mean?')
But I do swear, really, really, easily; probably too much with friends that I know swear; and I use swear-words as emphasis in general conversation when alone with my husband. Even the really bad ones. And some compound ones of my own invention.
Which is a rather long, rambling introduction to the poem. Which contains swear-words.
So I was on this train on Tuesday night...
On Swearing In Public
So the boys on the train
are drinking from glass bottles
with murky spirits inside
and they’re boys because they ask
for half fares, but they look over 18 to me.
The conductor is not a challenging man.
And they swear. Oh, how they swear.
Their only adjective is fucking,
every exclamation is fuck
and the word serves too, as a noun.
The extended dialogue on one of their number
being a registered child sex offender is offensive
even to me. And the cunt word is utilised.
I look around the carriage.
All eyes are down, the man closest
feigns sleep.
So it’s me. My preferred course of action
would be to walk over and declaim
loud (very loud) in their faces
Shut the fuck up.
This is a public place,
and your language is offending me
and other people in this carriage.
You are not fucking big. You are not fucking clever.
You are behaving like pricks, so just shut the fuck up.
OK?
But I do not. I walk over, smile,
and say
Lads, could you tone the language down a bit?
It’s rude and offensive and not really right, is it?
Two, in fairness, look a bit shamefaced,
one barrages me with some words of choice;
he’s the drunkest.
It works for five minutes or so,
then we’re back to sexual conquests
in graphic detail.
Probably only as far as Kilmarnock,
or Kirkconnel, I console myself.
I am not angry with the boys,
this is what something has made them.
No, what I really want to do
is walk up to every suited, respectable male over 40
in that carriage, and say,
What the fuck are you playing at?
Is that acceptable? There are women,
older women, in this carriage,
and you’re subjecting them to that?
Get off your fucking arse,
and do something.
But I do not. I bury myself in
'Men’s Health', and wonder if the advent
of an obsession with abs and lats and gluts
has emasculated modern man.
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