John Smith, what a man,
Lucky inverted horseshoe,
1,
2,
3,
4,
Pre-fuel,
And an invitation out to,
Jesters.
Standing at the bus stop,
An eagerness to usurp,
The free bus ride,
The seven-seater arrives.
A melodious drive,
And gentle conversation.
To arrive upon these hallowed gates,
And to be turned away,
Student inhibitions,
And financial conundrums,
To Clowns for an hour,
And a reward of Jesters.
Eight of us there were,
Each with different sobrieties,
With different amounts of skin,
Revealed unto the populous,
Fermented stench,
Quagmire floor.
Not long before the first cascade,
Double duration of the drinks,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
Discarded glasses,
Lined up in the unisex urinal,
Like bowling pins.
Outgoing and onto the dance floor,
A moving mass of one,
Coloured lights to be a kaleidoscope of grooves,
With debauchery darting on the dance floor,
And distorted sexualities,
A tripod of drunken support.
A hand on my posterior,
A man or a woman’s,
Hard to tell,
There’s a hand elsewhere too,
But not to worry,
My digits aren’t alone either.
Hey man,
What’s up?
A desire for calming serenity?
Not here, mate,
Purge back home, with an escort,
Then there were six.
My dear,
What’s wrong?
Receive my embrace,
And the rest of my drink,
And another,
Then there were four.
3:00am,
Funds non-existent,
An excess of fluid,
Escaping out of our eyes,
To depart for dubious nourishment,
Greasy enough to fall through the Earth.
Taxi number two,
Three snoozing and I,
Uncomfortable conversation,
With the stoned man,
60 in the 30,
In control of our lives.
A hurtling slide,
My head bashes against the car frame,
Corners like the straight,
And to pay,
Five minutes,
When we discover we have no money.
50 pence short,
Have a nice evening, mate,
I’ll try,
To enter back to the Hall,
The floor of Jesters,
Transported back here.
I set down on the bed,
With psychedelic disillusions,
The norm,
And tuck the trashed,
Into the bed already occupied,
By the oblivious unconscious corpse.
Finally the kettle goes on,
Red light signifying the boiling,
I don’t know the brew,
But it’s the same colour as everything I’m seeing,
Hot liquid like an anaesthetic,
As the next waterfall commences.
Now I am lying down,
Wrapped up in my duvet,
My trainers are a different colour,
My jumper a different smell,
Ready to recite the script once more,
Tomorrow.
Author notes
I have to explain this poem because 99.99999% of people out there will not understand it!
Jesters is, excuse the colloquialism, the shittiest pub/club in the entire country. That is actually official (used to be second to worst, but the worst got shut down). However, it is also the haunt of nearly every student at Southampton University, despite the fact it isn't actually that cheap and is a cess pit.
This poem is the only one of its type I have ever written, and are ever likely to write! It tells the account of the average night out at Jesters. I'm not a particularly heavy drinker, compared to other students anyway, but I like a few! This usually adds up to a repeatable night out, with plenty of gossip the next morning.
Some of the lines in this poem I think accurately describe the place:
"Discarded glasses,
Lined up in the unisex urinal,
Like bowling pins."
I don't think any detail needs to go into this.
On a more serious note though I really wanted to give clues to the sort of binge drinking culture that resides in Britain presently, and how easy it is to get sucked into it.
N.B. Script for a Jesters Tear is an album/song written by Marillion, I've always thought it to be a wonderfully moving song...and by convenient coincidence bares the same name as the club...hence why I copied it for the benefit of the poem.
I have proof-read the poem for spelling/punctuation errors but that is about it. Other than that this is about as raw as it gets so is probably isn't very well written, I've made no effort to edit as of yet.
Again, just to be sure, this "poem" is absolutely nothing like the stuff I usually write, as such I am totally inexperienced at writing in this sort of more casual style!
What do you think?
Comments
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Nice job. I usually do not read poems this long from poets I do not know. Some are appallingly bad. I like this one alot,perhaps because I can relate to the episodes of binge drinking. I think that it is both raw and very well done. Great job.
Mike
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Thank you very much, it is the first sort of more "contemporary" poem I've written, where the emphasis was on some of the issues surrounding clubbing and what have you. Nor did I want to write a rambling rhetoric about how bad it is etc., there are newspapers for that. Thank you again,
Sam
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