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Flotsam and Jetsam

~ Assorted odds and ends

Flotsam and Jetsam

Category Archives: Poetry

The (Lonesome) Lockdown Blues

22 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Covid 19, Lockdown, The Virus, Zoom

30-DSCF2673

Poems of Place: At Southridge, Horspath

Another day of staring blankly in this room?
Even my glass of rosé fails to lift the evening gloom
There’s been too little bandwidth and just too much Zoom,
I think I’ve got the lonesome lockdown blues…

Are you getting bored with all those virus metrics?
And there’s nothing left to watch on Amazon Prime or Netflix
My ennui extends to even You Tube’s pet tricks
I’ve just got the lonesome lockdown blues…

My iPod has just finished its final rotation
The playlist had too many songs of un-splendid isolation
But it’s time to lift the spirit of the Nation
Gotta get out…
Gotta get out…
Gotta get out of the lonesome lockdown blues!

 

NB Some chords could be used for the full lockdown experience:

Am Dm7 E7 G

Am Dm7 E7 G

Am G Dm7 E

Am E Dm7 Am
April 2020

Fifty Shades of Blue

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Poetry

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In Memoriam

 

Blue blood, of course, not collar,

A king of cats, an Oxford Blue

Who loved our terrace

And after-snack sunbathing.

Or looking nonchalantly at Charlie,

Pawing an errant wasp,

And stretching languidly,

Musing on the important questions like ‘what’s for second dinner?’

 

Blue maybe, but never dull and gloomy,

We loved the raffish wiggle in your stride,

The aristocratic belly marked a destiny

For contemplation, not the drudge of work.

Your gourmet palette tuned to modern tastes,

You loved the smell of barbecues

And those who cooked them.

When stakes were high, they win who dare

It’s Blue by name but always medium rare.

 

September 16, 2013

A Love Song to a Merry Wife of Waitrose*

04 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Brands and the Management of Meaning, Poetry, The Language of Voice

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Burrata, The Merry Wives of Waitrose, Waitrose

images-1

Entranced by the elegance

I found amidst these shelves

I stand burrated:

Your beet-rooted servant

Who contemplates the promise

Of a kimchi smile.

Let’s picnic now!

I long to dance the tapenade with you

Clink glasses at the golden hour

Sip Miraval

And partner with appropriate toasts,

Beachcomb for salt and seaweed

To crust and bake our love;

Let’s merge like tagliata

And rocket parmesan,

Before the blowtorch sun retreats

To burn the sugar and so hide

The cream of deep affection.

 

 

*From the collection: Brand New Poetry

 

Cynicus Historicus @Oxford and Yuste

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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I The Party at Brazenose

Poured house white from green bottle

Onto slaked lips

In the fizzle

Forgot the effects those

Sips would force

 

Liz and Pete

-Enthusiasts!

Danced like drunks in the rain

The bitter sweat of seduction

Increased the pain

I smiled –

But they looked rather mystified

At me

And my green shadow.

 

II Charles of Ghent

Charles of Ghent,

Dubbed by successive men

Of little wit and less sense,

Failure –

Sits in a parched glade at fifty

How pointless his struggle with

Valois, heretic and Turk seems

Compared to this

Unfathomable, but no less

Fundamental act.

 

New Inn Hall Street

Hilary, 1976

Poems of Place: 60611

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Tags

chicago, Chicago Cubs, Deep Dish Pizza, Fat Tire, Lake Forest, Lake Michigan, McDonalds, Nordstrom, The Gold Coast

IMG_1695 

When I think of you, I think of food:

That first steak – huge and bloody,

The chophouse brown ambience

Haunting the bridge;

The cheesy Wheel of Death

That defeated even Brian,

The Filet-O-Fish and fries we ate in Oak Brook and enjoyed,

The ribs we sucked and gnawed on Sheffield’s garden walk

The Fat Tires we swilled

To debrief and to decompress…

 

When I think of you, I see the Lake,

That seems not to be a lake,

Deep frozen, or mist-bound beyond the lighthouse

Arctic still even on dog-days.

I see my love braving the cold and

Apparently bound for Canada.

I remember late-night emails at the W,

Preparing for the deal that

Changed our lives for ever

 

When I think of you,

I see Lake Forest luxe

And Gold Coast widows,

The mid-western smiles,

The summer vibe

The caps and Cubs at Wrigley Field

The early morning chugging of the L

The forest of your architecture

And all that jazz;

I think of Wabash and the Wackers

The Magnificent mile

The palace of heels at Nordstrom

The smell of books at Powell’s

The shady avenues of the park,

The laughing with the friends we love,

I think of all these things you mean

And the moments you made for us,

Chicago.

 

June 13th, 2018

Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Brands and the Management of Meaning, poems of place, Poetry

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M&S, Marks and Spencer

Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall

IMG_1502

 

Sitting amidst the rich and zingy,

Zesty feast of flavours that is

The Marks and Spencer Café,

I think of you and me.

 

And as I scan my ebbing latte’s tidal art

I think of places in this town, our town

Where post-school, we met

To court, hold hands and play.

 

I wrote you soppy poems,

Buttressed with pilfered fragments, yet in homage,

Treasured the hour before our haven closed

And the moment came to walk you to the ‘bus

 

Back in town today, ours – but not,

I’m close to where we sat and laughed

Not knowing nor imagining then,

The rich and zingy zesty love we’d share.

 

 June 2nd, 2018

 

 

Another Job for Cyril (1925 -2018)

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Poetry

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elegies, In Memoriam

Who’ll scan my job and scout

The strategic challenges that lie ahead of me?

Who’ll be my hanging wing-man

And place the pencil cross with laser touch?

Who’ll choose the tools and chide

My lax preservation of lithium cells?

Who’ll patiently banish rust from contacts

And soon revive the power-tool’s insistent torque?

Who’ll select the bit to bite the wall’s recalcitrance?

And guide my angle of attack and steady, steady it

Against the white emulsioned concrete?

Who’ll be the matchstick man

To plug the mortar of my unreliable first attempt

And safely hang the artwork from its helix thread?

Another picture sorted in the gallery of life!

But one job you left undone before you went,

Was how to fill the hole you’ve left us with?

 

Poems of Place: The Halt, 1967

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Dolgellau, Dr Beeching, Dr Williams School for Girls, Railway closures

Revising on railway line, post Beeching Chris Sheffield c 1967 c Chris Davies (2)

 

Dr. Beeching arrives at Dr. Williams’ School in Dolgellau

Somewhere on the Mawddach, excavating

The sedimentary layers of my youth

I found your smile.

In sepia, framed transgressive

And lounging between

The empty parallels of stark infinity,

You spoke:

Confident, optimistic and open

Even at a point of closure.

Full of possibilities,

You signaled encouragement and hope

Amidst the dissolution,

And with that look, advertised

The essence of youth’s big adventure

Which fifty years later I savoured once more.

 

October 3, 2017

I am grateful to Jennie and colleagues at Dr Williams on the web for permission to feature the photograph from the website which inspired this poem.

Please discover more at http://www.dwsoga.org.uk

 

 

David Bernstein: The Philosopher of SPIV

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Poetry, The Uselessness of History

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David Bernstein, In Memoriam

DavidBernstein2-20170829060151191

Lines written in 1982 to celebrate the award of the Mackintosh Medal to David Bernstein – being also a brief exposition on the theories of Advertisement Effect in one canto

Nil posse creari de nilo. (Lucretius)

Lucretius wasn’t always right!

 

Sing, O muse of modern epic themes,

Of selling soapsuds, and of selling dreams:

Behold that world of commerce set apart,

An inexact science in a bastard art!

And in this nexus, let us list with care

Those philosophies which are practised there.

With surgeon’s skill and knife we will dissect

All admen’s Theories of Effect.

That sacred word, enough to make the client pay

His artwork and production bills with less delay.

First, in this field, the keystone of the arch

We sing, with pride, of Doctor Daniel Starch.

“All ads to be successful”, he nearly said,

“Must of course be seen and read

But more than that, before your chance has gone

It must be remembered to be acted on”

Great sage, O Starch, your greatness sits

In teaching us, good puff persuades in bits.

Another chap (Anon) reworked Dan’s law

And summed it up with letters four.

“Let our darling AIDA take her bow,

To gain attention and our interest now;

But after, when desire is raised in lieu

Her call to action entices you”.

Of all the men whom darling Aida met,

There stands a group especially in her debt.

The men of Procter, so the bards do tell

Liked her rubric and loved her well

Too much, in fact; consumed by lust

All Aida’s wisdom has been ground to dust.

For all the best becomes the worst at last

When madmen play the rules too hard and fast!

Day-after-recall’s not the best of tools

Except for client knaves or research fools!

Too much!

Let us sing of greatness once again:

Of Joyce and Channon, of Segeula’s men!

Of Rosser Reeve’s USP

Of charming, wily David Ogilvy

“At sixty miles an hour, all you’ll hear

Is the sound of chasing taxmen coming near.”

And last of all, we sing of D.E.B

(Who, it must be said, as yet employs me)

In his book, (so the one who’s read it said)

“All art, with science, is nice ‘n’ neatly wed”

And so, all admen who seek out effect,

With page one five five your eyes connect:

“All ads to convince must visible be,

And pregnant stand with identity

But without simple promise, they’ve far to go

Along that line to positive cash flow”

With words like these, he won old Tosh’s crown

So was it then for this,  that David wore that gown?

 

September 1982

 

Post Scriptum:

David died in August 2017 aged 88.

He had a profound effect upon so many people, especially me.

PCW

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems of Place: At Shotover

10 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bluebells, Easter Sunday, Hope, Loss, Shotover, Thomas Tallis, VaughanWilliams

Inspired by the Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis: Ralph Vaughan Williams

IMG_0518

Sunlight scouts the forest’s weak points

And glints through dark birch parapets

Across the late morning,

This late Easter morning.

We came looking for hope,

To pause our dissertation on sadness and despair

For those we have lost;

To smell the Spring, all sweet and fecund;

To see the evidence of resurrection.

In the clearing, a process and a place today,

We hear that chord: strident, promising

Flattened and incomplete,

Then, from somewhere deep within the earth

The baseline heartbeat canon,

Which pulses strong again as if from nothing,

And shows we can indeed rise up from beds of death.

Then I see the bluebells, boisterous, on the march,

In rampant progress across the forest floor.

Thus re-connected to my optimistic self, I smile,

Past, present, future are in communion once more.

 

Easter Sunday, 2017

← Older posts

Categories

Recent Posts

  • The (Lonesome) Lockdown Blues
  • Fifty Shades of Blue
  • The of Power Place: A Seasonal Story
  • A Love Song to a Merry Wife of Waitrose*
  • Cynicus Historicus @Oxford and Yuste
  • Poems of Place: 60611
  • Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall
  • The Uselessness of History? Historian, Engineer, Brand Man
  • Another Job for Cyril (1925 -2018)
  • Poems of Place: The Halt, 1967

See Also

  • Artful Strategy
  • BA Business Life Brand Poetry
  • Côte Poets and more
  • Marians on the Mawddach
  • The Value Engineers

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