Concrete and iron replacing the old smooth stone.
The only familiar thing is the name.
But no! There is the bookshop.
I remember the happy hours ferretting around in the dusty racks,
drinking in the heady aroma that can only be found in a cramped space with thousands of books that have passed through so many different hands.
Feasting on the titles.
Each shelf a meal
Each rack a 12 course banquet.
The well remembered names like the good old home cooking of earlier days seasoned with the rich foreign spices of the unfamiliar names sunk into fading spines.
I approach the new glass doors and they woosh apart.
A far cry from the awkward ancient weighty wooden ones that gave yeoman service guarding the treasures within.
I enter and there is a half familiar figure like a British Budha in his fading woolly waistcoat sat behind an incongruous counter.
All around are neat straight shelves full of neat uniform spines of standardised, sanitised paperbacks. offered up with all the gastronomic goodness of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Like literary fast-food.
The place of dreams become the home of nightmare.
Sadly I make my excuses and leave.
Woosh!
Woosh!
I look around me for the old cafe with little hope of success.
But, reborn in glass and steel, there it is.
Or is it?
regardless I am cold and depressed and in need of an old fashioned cuppa.
Filter, Latte, Mocca, Americano Capp and Espresso more modernisation.
There is tea -- in bags -- and plastic cups.
The only redeeming feature is the music and even that is on a CD!
Author notes
Walking round Liverpool looking for some of the sites I used to enjoy on previous visits.
In a list
Please tell me what you think. Is it a poem or prose?
Comments
1 - 13 of 13
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This is great. Your style is great - seems very developed and comfortable like you've been writing for many years. As to whether it's prose or poetry, I think it's a poem, one that just flows outta you. I love the circular nature of the poem, that it centers and then swivels out in no direction in particular. I love the conversational nature of this poem. The end is a little weak in my opinion and choppier than the rest of the poem, but overall, a marvelous poem!
-Samuel
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Thank you for your comment Samuel. I have only been writing poems for a few years out of my 50+ and am fairly firmly set in the rhyme and metre school. This was a deliberate attempt to do it different and was actually written on the day in question in the tea shop I mention. I avoided polishing this to see what others felt about the spontaneous offering but actually I agree with you about the ending. Maybe I will rework it one day.
Jim
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I found this to be absolutly profound. It was perfectly put together. A joy to read in the sense that it had no dead spots,
Great right my friend.
Don -
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Thank you for that glowing comment
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OK is good to see you around again.
Jim
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Appreciated
I appreciated this, but why "nightmare"? A bit strong for a book-shop, I'd say, though I guess it depends on what it's selling (Mark you, I really did have a literal nightmare about a bookshop once - full of evil people and evil books, so perhaps it's the right word after all). But I know what you mean - it's a horrible feeling to find places of loved associations ruined.
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Thanks for your comment whitewitch.
The nightmare was the descent of literature and language from the level I knew and loved to the levels it is now. Compare Kipling's Kim to Rowley's Harry Potter and see how the language has been devalued. As for the predominance of wizardry (white and black) and the open display of vulgarity and profanity even amongst the juvenalia to me nightmare is THE word. -
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I too love Kipling but Harry Potter seems the best available now - there are things indescribably worse. At least the prose in HP is clear and workmanlike. Though another Kim would be something!
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drinking, woolly, incongruous, success, Regardless, there are some spelling mistakes... typos... etc
Nevertheless I enjoyed it. It can't be read easily because of the long sentences and because of that I think it is more prose. If you payed attention to the sentence stops and made sure there was a rhythm then it could easily become poem.
LXx
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hi my dear uncle
A wonderful write which portrays your nostalgia for the old days very well.
Wish you the best.
Shahrzad
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A joy to read,you make it very easy for the reader to tag along with you,although a serious write it still contains wonderful imagery,one could smell the musty books,shelves quietly gathering dust,you convey a sadness at this fadeing world of tradition,one I share despite my tender years.
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Superb Jim
Superduper, we call such offerings here. And peppered with real gems all over. Well-remembered names like good old home cooking...sanitised paperbacks...Kentucky fried chicken...literary fast food... and even the music is on a CD. I sincerely feel you should start liking those whithout rhyming skills too. This has a power that rhyming may sometimes dilute. Your poem took me to the old library in my hometown Alleppey, which I used to frequent in the old days and then to the air-conditioned British Library in Trivandrum where I go now. Great write and no hollow words these, Jim.
-- Venu.
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I feel this way each time I return to England there is someting else different. The shop sign might state Olde Worlde Tea Shoppe but nothing in there is 'Olde' - as you said Jim so eloquently.
Von -
very good ...i liked that its a shame when fings wot u enjoyed so much change but at least u have the memoires ..i visit liverpool often and i notice the changes but they is still alot of liverpool unchanged hope to much dont change for you ..smiles ~cheeky~
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