InitiateMe
New Member
Hi! First time I've ever posted on here. I wanted to share a poem I wrote inspired by Late Night, Maudlin Street and would love to read creative writing other people have written in response to Morrissey / Smiths songs.
Some background to the poem (I hope I don't bore you!)
Late Night, Magdalen Street after Morrissey
Michaelmas coming
Push on
So long
Moves on.
The last night on Magdalen Street
Goodbye house
Goodbye stairs.
Dean demanded exile
Beyond Oxford’s furthest shores,
Are the provinces prepared?
Love at first sight
Was our petulant plight,
I can still see that cat
A shape that was golden and crimson
Extending a claw to your open palm.
And I can still see the gladioli
Peeping out of the pocket of your jacket
Where there should have been a cigarette packet.
While I was there,
The classics faculty’s ugliest boy
Became what you see before you:
The empire’s ugliest man.
Those strange pills
Were never meant to hurt you;
The fever and the chills,
They were meant to chill me.
“Many people
May say you are attention seeking
But many people
Can be wrong”.
And so you made it into a song.
I take up the shield too late,
Wounded.
Your song, my error.
Do you remember
When the toaster blew the lights out
So a torch guided us through the park
Trespassing through back gardens
Caught in clotheslines in the dark?
I’m so glad we chose this
Over Wetherspoon's happy hour.
I look at myself in the mirror and gag
But when I am with you in the shower
Oh, it’s not that bad.
Back to the rustic
To late nights on Watling Street.
What of late nights on Magdalen Street?
Three times I fingered the doorway,
(We never fixed that peeling yellow paint)
Three times you called me back
You said that you felt faint
But I thought that was just a little pantomime.
You wanted to come with me,
College gives me my orders
But loyalty sends you to the borders
So you say.
Tristia Tristia
Truly I do love you
Wherever you are
Whoever you are.
Some background to the poem (I hope I don't bore you!)
- There is a street in Oxford where I live called 'Magdalen Street' which is pronounced exactly the same as 'Maudlin Street'
- I am a student at Oxford Uni. 'Michaelmas' is the name we give to Winter term.
- I tried to imagine the story behind what forced the narrator of Late Night, Maudlin Street to leave. I applied it to an experience of my own - being made to leave university because of an overdose I took. The 'dean' I mention is the member of staff at the university who deals with behaviour and welfare problems and he is the one who makes people leave uni if they are not safe enough.
- I am a classics student. I was inspired by poem 1.3 in the Tristia by the Roman poet Ovid which is about the final night he spends in his home, saying goodbye to his wife, before he is exiled away from Rome by Caesar. The poem and the song seem unmistakably similar to me. Ovid was famously exiled because of a 'song and an error' - he wrote a scandalous sex how-to manual that shocked Caesar, that was the song, but no one really knows what the error was.
Late Night, Magdalen Street after Morrissey
Michaelmas coming
Push on
So long
Moves on.
The last night on Magdalen Street
Goodbye house
Goodbye stairs.
Dean demanded exile
Beyond Oxford’s furthest shores,
Are the provinces prepared?
Love at first sight
Was our petulant plight,
I can still see that cat
A shape that was golden and crimson
Extending a claw to your open palm.
And I can still see the gladioli
Peeping out of the pocket of your jacket
Where there should have been a cigarette packet.
While I was there,
The classics faculty’s ugliest boy
Became what you see before you:
The empire’s ugliest man.
Those strange pills
Were never meant to hurt you;
The fever and the chills,
They were meant to chill me.
“Many people
May say you are attention seeking
But many people
Can be wrong”.
And so you made it into a song.
I take up the shield too late,
Wounded.
Your song, my error.
Do you remember
When the toaster blew the lights out
So a torch guided us through the park
Trespassing through back gardens
Caught in clotheslines in the dark?
I’m so glad we chose this
Over Wetherspoon's happy hour.
I look at myself in the mirror and gag
But when I am with you in the shower
Oh, it’s not that bad.
Back to the rustic
To late nights on Watling Street.
What of late nights on Magdalen Street?
Three times I fingered the doorway,
(We never fixed that peeling yellow paint)
Three times you called me back
You said that you felt faint
But I thought that was just a little pantomime.
You wanted to come with me,
College gives me my orders
But loyalty sends you to the borders
So you say.
Tristia Tristia
Truly I do love you
Wherever you are
Whoever you are.
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