Thomas's Monday Morning Poetry

Good morning all!

Today’s poem is a classic. Women reading it may remember a film that featured this epic. I clearly remember looking around the theatre at the end of the movie and witnessing many women crying onto men’s shoulders, into their tissues… oh the emotion of it all. The movie was Dead Poet’s Society. Robin Williams played a part that didn’t require him to be funny and there were many young men dealing with their adolescent issues. The one young man was having such problems with his problems that he committed suicide. Obviously he had not been schooled in the many manly means of dealing with one’s problems:

Top of the list is alcohol (rather be a drunken, depressed idiot than a dead one).

Second on the list of all- American prep school favourites is killing things, whether they be quail, duck, deer, moose or religious dissidents (rather kill than kill yourself). Don’t do yoga: when you are sitting in the pub indulging in sour mash whiskey and telling stories of bravado it just does not sound macho to proudly announce that you finally managed to get your ankles round your ears. Far better to proudly announce that you massacred a flock of migratory geese with your favourite pump action and that your Labrador delivered every fallen one to your feet.

Number three on the list: engineer a hostile take-over. When at school you practice this priceless skill by stealing other pupils’ girlfriends. It involves the same principles: step one-the covert approach. Step two- announce your intentions to party number one without letting party number two know. Step three-‘concluding the deal’ without number two’s knowledge. Step four- letting party number two know that his property has been ‘taken over’ and gloating about this achievement over some sour mash whiskey with your friends. Step five- asset stripping-the best part of an hostile take-over- strip down the subject company’s assets and sell them off, thereby leaving just a shell that has no value. The poor girl. Step six- look for another ‘company’ that is prone to an hostile take-over.

Number four on the list: anti-depressants. Get them from your mother and look as zonked she does. She can describe all the beneficial effects of this condition. Ann added bonus of this condition: it’s accepted practice in the US of A.

I feel the makings of a good movie in this script.

Enjoy the week.

O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman


O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores accrowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


Tootle pip,
Thomas