John Whitworth: Three Poems

Little Chris in the Garden

This is the boy in the sun in the garden and

These are the sights and the sounds of the summer,

The sighing of grasses, the tinkling of water,

The murmur of flowers, the creaking of beetles,

The buzzing of bees and the flutter of butterflies.

These are his sisters and friends of his sisters and

This is the song of them singing, the song of

The wheels of the bus going round, going round, going

Round, going round, going round, going round

In a sussurant pattern of sound all around in a

Sussurant pattern of sound.

This is the boy in his shadowless summer and

This is this sight and the sound of forever,

The boy in his garden of gold.

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Morlocks

O my children, ware the morlocks.
Shut your windows, lock your doorlocks,
Lest when you are soundly sleeping,
Morlocks should come creeping, creeping,
Up your drainpipes, down your gutters,
Crepitating on your shutters,
Crouching in your mossy niches
Like a parliament of witches,
Shrieking spells and chumbling curses
Muttering filthy scraps of verses
In your blameless little lugholes,
Slithering through the bathroom plugholes,
Boiling, buzzing in your brains,

Winding in your counterpanes,

Pallid bodies, seamed and sweated,

Rancid breath, fermented, foetid,

Huddling in your cribs like babies,
Giving puppy dogs the rabies,
Fashioning a hangman’s noose,
Pissing in your orange juice,
Pissing in your breakfast milk,
Sliding, gliding, smooth as silk,
Shimmering, glimmering everywhere,
Hovering in the heavy air,
Inundating every part
Insubstantial as a fart,
Till at last they reach the heart.

Children, should you meet a morlock,
Grab him by his greasy forelock,
Whirl him round and round your head,
Bash him, smash him, kill him dead.
Then you can go back to bed.

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Talking to Dead People

This is the voice of the boy Cole Sear from the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’.

I see dead people walking round.

I talk to them. They talk to me.

They leave their houses underground

And try a second time to be,

But just to me, yes just to me.

I am a child, a little child,

And other children think I’m odd

Not meek and mild but fierce and wild

I sometimes think I must be God,

And that is why they think I’m odd.

My mother cannot understand.

I did not ask to be like this.

She tries to take me by the hand

And calm me with a mother’s kiss.

I did not ask to be like this.

I am not right. I am not whole.

Better to be a little fish

Swimming round a little bowl.

A little fish is what I wish,

A little gold and silver fish.

The Dead are good. The Dead are wise.

I am an ordinary boy.

I see it in their shining eyes.

They long for peace. They long for joy.

But I am just a little boy.

Like sentinels they come and go,

Like shadows locking out the light,

Like footsteps in the melting snow,

Like shadows locking out the light.

Show me the way to make it right.

Show me the way to make it right.

John Whitworth