The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164389 Message #3932961
Posted By: Jim Carroll
24-Jun-18 - 02:57 AM
Thread Name: BS: Going to embrace it why fight it
Subject: RE: BS: Going to embrace it why fight it
This says it for me Jim Carroll
“Warning” by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired, And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells, And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain, And pick flowers in other people’s gardens, And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat, And eat three pounds of sausages at a go, Or only bread and pickle for a week, And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry, And pay our rent and not swear in the street, And set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised, When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Or this
Let me die a youngman's death not a clean and inbetween the sheets holywater death not a famous-last-words peaceful out of breath death
When I'm 73 and in constant good tumour may I be mown down at dawn by a bright red sports car on my way home from an allnight party
Or when I'm 91 with silver hair and sitting in a barber's chair may rival gangsters with hamfisted tommyguns burst in and give me a short back and insides
Or when I'm 104 and banned from the Cavern may my mistress catching me in bed with her daughter and fearing for her son cut me up into little pieces and throw away every piece but one
Let me die a youngman's death not a free from sin tiptoe in candle wax and waning death not a curtains drawn by angels borne 'what a nice way to go' death Roger McGough Poems by Roger McGough