It's like trudging home after <br />a heavy day at the workface, <br />you open the front door <br />and the house is rent with upraised voices - <br />all the children adding new wounds <br />to years of grievance; your eldest daughter <br />threatens once again to go live with her boyfriend <br />although she's under age; your eldest son <br />despairs of girls 'not being able to argue properly'; <br />the cry, 'that's not f a i r..' rings through the house; <br />the younger ones still seek adults to be on their side, <br />- for the moment - to dispense justice <br />to the aggrieved, comfort the broken-hearted... <br /> <br />Are you glad you came home <br />without your usual stop off at the pub? <br />It's all so familiar...dammit, you know very well <br />you'll miss them when eventually <br />it all goes quiet... but at least <br />they certainly know about justice <br />when it's not there for them... <br />they'll be vigorous employees, <br />trade unionists one and all, <br />if and when they leave the nest.. <br /> <br />Were the 18th century coffee houses <br />from which emerged those tracts <br />of endless literary abuse, <br />sharpening their language on each other, <br />just like this? 'A polarity of poets' <br />might serve for a corporate term.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-forum-2/
