"Bounce and Rhyme,"
the handbill reads,
"FREE for
Babies under Three!"
So we bring ours.
We arrive at the library
ten minutes late,
The Reading Room
filled with noise,
Cleared of books,
Smoke,
An ocean of mothers
cross legged
on turquoise carpet,
Gurgling parcels
Dangled in velour lap.
Thank god, I am not
the only man in here.
There is one. Two.
I am possibly the oldest.
But freshly shaved.
We double park
the buggy under a
Frieze
of grazing elephants,
and waste no time
in squatting down,
"Wind! the Bobbin in..."
a guerilla battalion of
Mothers
well versed, armed
to the teeth,
with loaded gesture.
"Pull, Pull, Clap, Clap."
The rhymes are more
or less
Uncharted territory,
Forgotten,
I might have been
Schooled
in another country, a
Dialect modelled on
Quite the wrong note.
Our son leers up off my
knee with hobbled
optimism as we busk it,
grumbling,
Mincing over intricate
patterns,
Drawn in the air,
an orchestrated handclap
or two
to startle
an eye gone over to sleep.
What's that ?
he might be thinking,
You stitched
me up,
What happened to those
scratches
of Sesame Street we've
been busy rehearsing ?
The Count.
The modal jazz.
It's not my fault, kid,
I covertly sign,
We have to work with
what we've got,
a clouded palette,
Don't hold it against
me,
there's still a chance
we may
make it through.
"Wind! the Bobbin up..."
His mouth turned down.
And looks straight through
me, teary, crestfallen,
Lets go loudly in
his new corduroy suit.
9 comments:
Great stuff!
I will need to practice some of these rhymes if we are to attend this workshop on a weekly basis. Everyone appeared quite friendly. The regulars - most of them under 2 years of age - seemed a pretty hip crowd. It was an okay gig, once Milo got his nappy changed.
Aw shit,man. Thats great. I read your blog backwards today, like I've lived most of my life, and that's a wonderful poem.I bet Milo will eventually speak of the sounds you expose him to. Patrick listens to electronic trance disco no soul shit just because I like Wilson Pickett and Lucinda Williams. But he's always, always watching and listening. He is extremely proud of the fact that I don't care for the music he likes, so I refrain from digging it. Although I find my foot tapping sometimes, I keep it hid.
I like the "ELEPHANT ON CRAPPER" motif. I say send that to the WOT cheesedick and tell him it's a statue of his mama. Alright.
The elephant taking a dump took me some time to piece together. In the end, I probably spent as much time on it as I did the poem.
I was walking from the library to the art galleries with Milo and my wife when I started setting it down in my head.
The art galleries here a great place to bring very young children. A huge old cathedral of a building surrounded by park. Flooded with suffused light the moment you set foot inside. It was those long shafts of light which appealed to him, I think. The way they fall across the paintings and make the whorls of paint dance on the varnished canvas.
Anyway. It seemed the perfect place to spend an hour or so winding down from the rhyme.
Sounds like a great Japanese Library, Putting at least 4 clues to the great rhyme master himself, George Clinton, into the flyer:
BOUNCE to This
Rhythm and RHYME
FREE your Mind...... and Your Ass will follow
Electric Spanking of War BABIES
The Infant Funkateers may learn lines like this:
I pee in the Fountain then I claw, clutchin' the cliff
Cause I got to get higher
Not funky with a P on it but Funk with a Three on it
What you gonna do George?
Whatever it takes - whatever the Party calls for!
G Clinton: President of Funk - 4 Life!
Greatly observed Ib - brought back memories of sweet perambulator times
a non y mo use
Nanny Moose:
The Clinton haiku passed my by. Until I read this and thought Bill instead of George. A kind of herecy. With saxophone, and from there to Lisa Simpson and Crusty the Clown before war babies sent me hurtling back to Bush then Nixon - Kissinger - and the circus of Parliament turning full circle.
Bounce and Rhyme. Perambulate.
We have a session pencilled in tomorrow. We have been practicing, loosely. Stric'ly free style.
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