Tag: Robert Nisbet

A Rustic Striptease, South Pembrokeshire, 1957 by Robert Nisbet


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Intent upon a wasted youth,
we prowled the fairground: boxing booth,
squint rifles, chips, the Wall of Death.
We then approached, suspended breath,
the striptease, where a one-eyed man
(one-eyed, believe me if you can)
intoned full clear, did not dissemble,
This will make your trousers tremble.

And once within his fiendish tent,
our every inhibition went.
Beyond a glorious mist of gauze,
the object of our hearts’ applause.
We gazed upon her plump pink youth,
ogled indeed (I tell you sooth),
until, about her seventh pose
(a side-on breast, I do suppose)
a sudden dopey interlude.
Some punter, well and truly stewed,
as subtle as a blunted rasp,
called, Watch out, there’s a bloody wasp.
(In Pembrokeshire, the humble wasp
is rhymed with Cleopatra’s asp).

But interruption comes and goes.
She came unto her final pose,
described as .. you’ll not think me rude? ..
a full, uncluttered backside nude.

We lost all vestiges of shame.
as punters bellowed, That’s the game!
But just before our queen retired,
the cheering stilled, but, less desired,
that punter, very worst of men,
cried, There’s that bloody wasp again.

(previously published in The Seventh Quarry and in the author’s Prolebooks pamphlet, Merlin’s Lane)

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet with over 200 publications in Britain, as well as a number of appearances in the USA, in magazines like San Pedro River Review, Constellations, Illya’s Honey and Clementine Unbound.

 

Bastard by Robert Nisbet


By admin

Interviews at Oxford, December 1959

The guide book phrase is dreaming spires, the facts
are pleasing too, the staircases and quads.
Train-loads of schoolboys shuffle in, disperse.
I’m bound for Jesus, for an interview.
Sounds pleasingly irreverent, that phrase:
“I’m bound for Jesus”. Then alas, ill-met,
here’s John the Baptist getting on the bus.

Who is this man, smile spread, grin grown so great?
He has the Bard’s Collected Works, and totes
this ammo to his holster arm, before
he fires in his first offence. Your school?

My glum, gruff Welsh response is slow:
It’s Milford Haven (‘Grammar School’ left out).
I do not ask his school. He tells me though.

His school spreads wide on England’s Southern coast.
‘Tis Beadles, Boodles? Rather good, he says.
Good little school. But so of course (he grins)
is Milford Haven. What a sizzling pratt.

And on we go. Next question. Do you ect?
Ecting? In sooth. My mind describes new views
of some foul practice known to him alone,
of buggery in Boodles, beastly boys.
And then he clarifies: In our place
we did King Lear. The monstrous grin now spreads
so far it seems to hinge half-off his head
(a large one) and he booms that he of course
was Edmund. Now, self-deprecating wit:
The Bastard Son of Gloucester. And I think,
Well yes. We read in Milford Haven too.

The bus conductor’s shout hails my release.
To Jesus. Ed’s for Queen’s. I leave him thus,
the Bastard Son of Boodles on the bus.

(Previously published in Prole Magazine)

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet with over 200 publications in Britain, as well as a number of appearances in the USA, in magazines like San Pedro River Review, Constellations, Illya’s Honey and Clementine Unbound.

 

The Lost Property Locker by Robert Nisbet


By admin

Dai the roadman takes stock after the town carnival

Two fivers, par, also the eight pound coins.
Small change, considerable. The credit cards
we can return, likewise two of the three
pensioner’s bus passes, but it’s tough luck
on Archie McPhee of Ross and Cromarty.
Five T-shirts this year: Hard Rock Café,
Gorseinon Rugby Club, U of Glam, Jesus Saves
and Little Red Riding Hood Kicks Ass.
With the smoking ban in pubs, we’re down
to just the one ashtray, a Watney’s Pale.
We have a cuckoo clock, a Nuneaton Borough
library card, a flour bag marked Bowker’s Mill
and a toilet roll. The knickers we could have
predicted, just one pair this year, pale blue,
medium to large. Two scraps from letters,
one from “Billy”, who sends condolences
upon his auntie’s flatulence, and one
from “Jazza”, who loves her Kev to bits.
Three photographs (two boring, Auntie-Gertie-
on-the-prom-at-Margate stuff), one though,
a very candid one, Katie, the Mayor’s wife,
taken surely thirty years ago. And wasn’t her
skin so soft and silky then? Wasn’t it just?
My oath.

(Previously published in the Prolebooks pamphlet Merlin’s Lane, 2011)

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet with over 200 publications in Britain, as well as a number of appearances in the USA, in magazines like San Pedro River Review, Constellations, Illya’s Honey and Clementine Unbound.