A few months ago I went to a choir festival. After I set to listen to a Male Voices choir I stopped writing on here as I felt my words were drained. I hadn’t realised I was stuck in anger. The recent death of a very important presence in my life has pushed me to express that anger.
This poem, the first I wrote since I was a child (when my Italian teacher was encouraging me to write poems every week), and it sounds like this:
Aftershave: a loud beep
Surrounded by aftershave smell
a phallic symbol hanging down their necks
a group of over seventy year olds
with their bright
white
expensive
teeth
singing, smiling.
And I couldn’t hear a single note
as all my senses were covered by
a loud beep:
the sound of anger.
All I could hear was the crackling sound of
privilege
and a scratchy noise
over a spotless crystal table.
I was there
witnessing their show
expected to clap at the end of
every badly performed song
like we always had to do:
witnessing their mess
with a smile.