20190624.0430

I only managed to post five times previously on this date, 2014 though 2018. Most of them have been poems; the one that wasn't (2015) is commentary on the 2014 poem, and it runs with the metaphor of tending a garden by fertilizing it abundantly. (I'm reasonably happy with it, and with the poem it references.) The 2018 poem, again, is one of the limericks I thought to write in something resembling a heroic narrative. The project...did not go quite as well as I might have liked, which is my fault and none other's. But the 2016 and 2017 poems might do with a bit of attention, if not as much as I give the 2014 poem in the 2015 prose.
The 2016 poem is a reference to Brexit, since the referendum that started the still-ongoing-as-of-this-writing process of Great Britain leaving the European Union happened the day before. I do often write topical poetry, though I'll admit I do not always do so well, and I often comment that I ought not to be commenting any more than many do who still make comments about the events of the day. John Bull and Marianne are national emblems; I was not able, in the brief research I remember doing as I wrote the poem, to find the parallel figure for Germany, but that is my failing. The child of John Bull is, of course, Uncle Sam; he is explicitly named as an uncle, and there is a prevailing notion of America and Americans as crude and money-obsessed. (I embody it more than is perhaps comfortable. Again, that is my failing.) Neither of the reactions from that figure are good ones, honestly, though I saw enough of both--and still see them, in fact.
I wonder if I might put together an addendum to that piece, something to the effect of

The music jerkily plays on
And dancers still crowd the floor
Sleep-ready Michel still twirling with Marianne
But John Bull lingers at the exit
Looking back with sadness and anger
Demanding that he be able to hear the music
Drink the drinks
And eat the hors d'oeuvres
Again and again
Without paying for a membership in the club
And the fattest of his children
Whose hands seem small and hair seems thin
Anymore
Still sniggers in the corner
Unwilling to stand on feet that show spurs unmerited

However that may be, as I read the brief 2017 poem, I am glad of it. Short though it is, it still rings true; I am glad to look to my side or behind me and see my wife there, supporting me as I try to make some sense of the world and to find a better place in it for her and for Ms. 8. It is gratifying to have such faith placed in me, and I continue to hope I may someday come to merit it.