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    The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems
    The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems
    The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems
    Ebook86 pages38 minutes

    The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems

    By Anthony White

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    About this ebook

    'The Deathbed Poet' is a collection of sixteen poems about death, deathbeds, funerals, graveyards, memories and memorials and poetry itself. 'Other Poems' includes pieces about otters, seagulls, a long-distance love affair, lockdowns and isolation, a drunk poet, as well as translations of two of Horace's Odes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMislove Publishing
    Release dateJun 1, 2023
    ISBN9781739881740
    The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems
    Author

    Anthony White

    Anthony White is a spoken-word poet. Born in London in 1954, for most of his working life he was a nurse. Now retired, he lives in Folkestone (Kent, UK), where he writes and performs his work, mostly with Poets' Corner Folkestone, of which he is a founding member. He has also performed solo shows at Faversham Fringe Festival. His first collection, Miserable Love Poetry and Other Poems, was published in 2022, followed by The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems in 2023.

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      Book preview

      The Deathbed Poet and Other Poems - Anthony White

      ANTHONY WHITE

      The Deathbed Poet

      and

      Other Poems

           To Kathy, whose idea this was

      1

      The Deathbed Poet

      Somewhere in this drum of ashes

      Is who I used to be.

      A man scarred by a thousand lashes,

      That was me.

      Somewhere you will strew this dust,

      But don’t expect to learn

      Anything of the man they burned.

      Keep the urn.

      Comeback

      Did you see anything?

      The people cried

      Did you see anything

      On the other side?

      I saw the heavens and the heavenly host

      The saints in all their glory

      The angels and the archangels

      Christ triumphant on his throne

      And after that

      Nothing

      The Deathbed Poet

      The deathbed poet

      Reads a couplet

      Softly, clearly,

      Leans nearly

      To the dying ear,

      Unconscious of fear,

      Making sure the words

      Cannot be heard

      By the bored,

      Tired, snivelling

      Bystanders welling

      Up from time to time,

      Reassuring each other: It's her time.

      The deathbed poet

      Does not do assessments.

      The poems have lines

      About ancient heroes, today's headlines,

      The pleasures and the anguishes of love;

      Lines about sky, trees, leaves,

      About dogs and neighbours,

      Children, ice-cream flavours,

      The undertaker's polished hat,

      About this-and-that.

      The deathbed poet

      Does not know if

      The ear so close

      Hears or knows

      What is meant,

      Who it was who sent

      This visitor, this stranger;

      And the wetted sponge

      Will not unlock the lips to brood

      On what was not or what was understood.

      It is in the tiny space between

      The poet's lips and the single ear,

      Held for a moment and then gone.

      Complaints Department

      They say I gave no comfort to her.

      It is a simple misunderstanding.

      They should have asked for a priest,

      For palliation, painkillers;

      Poetry does not promise suchlike things.

      My literature makes it clear

      That I do not promise comfort.

      My concern is for rhythm, rhyme;

      Anapaests, iambs, punctuation, semi-colons.

      The Viking Funeral

      i

      It’s the way I tell 'em

      Says the fellow with the throat-beard

      Whose name I have already forgotten,

      Who had told me a joke I didn’t understand.

      (The one about asking them not to close the coffin

      Until he had found his contact lens.)

      Was making funeral jokes what we were here for?

      The way Don Ryan was laid to rest

      Is, as people say, another story.

      He was fifty-eight or fifty-nine I guess

      When his rotten lungs began to kill him.

      Sooner or later I heard about the weird

      Fantastical funeral they had planned;

      Though ‘planned’ is wrong- they couldn’t plan for

          toffee,

      He and Bronwen (Bronwen once the singer in

          the band

      And Don’s lover; all too often

      Ill herself and crazy)- no, they couldn’t run a whelk

          stand

      Or a piss-up in a brewery; but it cheered

      Them to think how they’d sail him out to sea

      In a burning ship- a Viking Funeral

      For Don the Viking; more glorious in his death

          than in his life.

      ii

      When Don died a sister we’d never heard of

      Appeared, established herself as next-of-kin

      And had him cremated before you could say knife,

      Before poor Bronwen had got herself out of bed.

      What will I

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