A fusion of pop culture and classic literature

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Sitting behind a big red truck

with Whitney on the wireless.

She’s singing about some sort of love

The kind she calls the greatest.

 

It’s not for me you know

I’ve had my fill and died.

But others need it like that man

in the hat. That man just passed me

he sighed. Where is she when I

need her I heard his eyes exclaim.

Whitney reaches the high note

he knows she’s not the same.

 

It’s terrible when you get like this

with only three miles to go.

Then Gene Pitney singing “Tulsa”

on the radio.

 

And there is a helicopter there

waiting for my luggage.

Personal stuff I’ve carried round for years

but it’s going nowhere.

 

The luggage and the chopper

Both are tied down so

An allegory is just a story

no one says it’s true.

 

And a poet is only one

to his own thoughts then

Shakespeare and his dark lady

stir in their rest.

 

Are they together ever

I’d really like to know.

His sonnets were beautiful but

are they a requiem for lost love

 

a eulogy for hopes that death claimed.

Whitney’s gone now and missed opportunities.

The hat man thinks so he

shaves off his beard to lose or loose

 

the painful reminders. Of course

tussock grass can grow anywhere

but is frequently uprooted.

I’m suited to the task he says.

 

Again the radio is on

and the news is bad.

Terrible tragedy that fellow Macbeth lost.

Pomegranate stained hands he’s wrung them

 

but the stains no one can see

are still there. Perhaps this is

his reformation or is it inquisition

purifying himself to be without spot.

 

I don’t think so, blameless even

no not even that maybe the change

is beneficial maybe artificial. I wonder

what Duncan thought, fickle that he was.

 

By JH Jones

From: New Zealand

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