Jim Barton
Little Boy It's Time You Learned
To respect your elders and their cherished illusions.
You pointed your finger at me and shouted,
‘There’s nothing there; he isn’t wearing anything!’
Well, do you take me for a fool
That I don’t know the difference
Between the rub of a good bit of stuff
And the wind stroking my backside?
If it wasn’t a warm summer
I wouldn’t have done it.
I’m a shy person really
But it was worth the embarassment
To see those fools of weavers
And their tatty miming with imaginary threads.
I had to suspend my disbelief
To the point of nincompoopery;
And in the street, with all the women
Eying my genitals and cheering!
I smiled at one of them and I knew
That she knew that I knew, so I winked
And she smiled back at me so I sent
One of my serfs to promise her
That she could come to the palace
And model a dress of the same material.
When the weavers asked for their cash
I said that first I wanted them to make
A hundred cubits of rope from their thread
And when they brought it I said
That would do very well and made them use it
To abseil down the wall of the north tower.
You can’t fool gravity.
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
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- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The