Anthony J. Langford- Three Poems

A Marriage made in Haste

 

He is 53

She is 47

He was once married for 3 years

29 years prior

She had been married for 22 years

Beginning 27 years earlier

He had 1 daughter

She had 1 of each.

 

When they met

100 years of sparks showered

Within 5 months they were engaged

Despite some (polite) concern

From loved ones

In 11 months they were married

They bought a large

Single bedroom apartment

At 293 Split Avenue

And shared 4 months of bliss

192 days of contentment

93 days pondering

And 15 months

Trying to undo what was already done.

 

Finally he left

Her the apartment

Though he claimed 35 percent

She took the same percentage

And the lawyers got the rest.

 

Now they’re back where they began

Approximately 42 percent worse off

(finances are complex)

Though at terms

With being alone.

 

The question is this:

 

An expensive exercise

Or a justifiable expense?

 

 

 

An ingrained grainy institution

 

The tie is the shield

And the pen

And the desk

And the mountain of academia

On which they perch.

Backed up

By millennia of regulations

The history alone

The armor

And despite the basis of your argument

A pointless struggle

Against the unyielding

The righteous

As the rules do not bend

For you

Or anyone

As the University

Is its own

State

Country

Entity.

Don’t you know.

 

And while you move through

They remain

Solid

Stolid

They will never capitulate

And ensure, by the end

That your only way forward

Is to conform.

Meanwhile your individuality

That curse of progress

Is sapped dry.

The machine only operates

With all the cogs

In their right functioning place

Hence the ocean pool of references

As it’s all been said

And documented

Long before.

Not by people            

Such as yourself

But by texts

And doctorates

And abbreviations of sorts

Following names

In texts.

 

So pay your fees

Return to your class

And do as you’re told

As that is what they expect

While they disarm you

With Carpe Diem

And other such

Illustrious clichés.

 

The magician’s modus operandi

Has always been

Don’t watch what the other hand is doing.

 

You will discover

After sufficiently spent boot camp

That those who prosper

Never questioned

And those who don’t challenge

Are rewarded.

 

 

 

Bar flying

 

I sit on a bar stool

Against a wall

Hoping to find the type of people

That the décor promised

Low light

Wood paneling

Cartoon art

Seventies posters

Large worn couches

Morrissey

And a couple of top quality ales

Albeit Fox Sports on the TV

Beef pies in the warmer

And shitty green carpet.

 

The bartender is more interested

In his own muscles

Than conversation

So I let it slide

But the table of three

Next to me

Guffawed rather than laughed

The louder the better apparently

With an aggressive blokey edge

That made me question

Whether I was in the wrong venue.

 

I flicked through the Drum Media

While peering into corners

Discovering more T-Shirts

And blanket coverage tattoos

What happened to less is more?

 

A couple sit without conversation

Maybe they’ve been there too long

Though I suspect they had

Grown tired of one another

Long before.

 

Something doesn’t sit right

Like a train off its tracks

And maybe part of that feeling

Was simply my presence

So I walk out

Finding it hard to believe

I’d fallen sucker to

That most worn of clichés

The deception of appearances.

 

 

 

Anthony J. Langford is a 2014 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He lives in Sydney, writes novels, stories, poetry and creates video poems. Recent publications include Five Poetry Magazine, Forge Journal and The Glass Coin. He works in television and has made short films, some screening internationally. A novella, Bottomless River (2012) and a poetry collection, Caged without Walls (2013) are out through Ginninderra Press.

Much of his work at www.anthonyjlangford.com