Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
Jenny Had it Coming
("Girl with a Guitar (Daydreams)" by Richard E. Miller, 1916-17)
JENNY HAD IT COMING (Peter Jakobsen ©) A play in two acts CAST (A disparate group of thirty / forty-somethings) Alicia Harold Penelope Raymond Seth Sid ——- ACT ONE [Scene One: A dingy, untidy hospital waiting-room is set some degrees off centre-stage. It contains several seats, a low coffee table with magazines, a broken clock on the wall. A lavatory door and vending machine stand as sentries at the back. A Thomas Cole print, “Desolation”, (or similar, perhaps something apocalyptic by John Martin) is prominent on the wall, along with the inevitable public health notices. Swinging doors give onto the waiting…
Continue Reading →Africa Screams
This cradle of man, this voracious climbing vine, Done-up like a salad bowl, posing as a mine, We don’t sing but complain melodiously; Never given anything we now expect for free. Sun-treader comb your morning hair, sweep private roads in anger; What of other highways? Go tell King Mwanga The Royal House is empty, the servants all abroad, Scattered to earth’s corners, a tuneless monochord, Their hearts a lute for strumming, diseased the ebb and flow, Sad cypress; unfulfilled watercress – what’s to know?
Continue Reading →Death Finds a Way
"Will somebody just kill us? Please?" (1936 gathering of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legislation Society, Leicester - photo c/- Wellcome Images).
An earnest fellow cringed guiltily Because his elderly kin Lingered on in life so painfully, Before oblivion. — He craved leave to administer A coup de grâce to the man, And so approached a Minister In order to detail his plan. — If there was a rule a relative Could decide to throw the switch, No more in pain would a victim live And hug doom without a hitch. — Such murders are compassionate And lovingly boost the feelings That the victim was asking for it, Ceasing strife and other dealings.
Continue Reading →An American Deity
Young he was and sound ‘in wind and limb’, Fit and tanned, bareheaded, toothy, slim, Rich he was of vocabulary and purse, Bore away he be in a wagon, not a hearse, Draped in a flag his form, of garish stripes and stars Followed slowly by lesser men in motor cars. It all began they say, in a killing frost, A cold replicated later when he was lost, Abbreviated poesy marked the spot On which commenced the reign of Camelot, Where a bogus royalty came into view As desideratum, thus embraced as true. …
Continue Reading →The Invitation
“Mors aurem vellens ‘vivite’ ait, ‘venio.’” (Virgil) — Looking back at it, the cause was indeterminate. Carol believed that she knew the people. Paula knew the place. Nestled in the crook of worn-down mountains, its gimlet, art-deco eyes glowed in the mid-winter murk, warm. and austere. Fog having delayed flight, delay having undermined their arrangements, the sun was already weak and remote when they set off from the airport. “It must be the sponsors who put-up the spa weekender for the lottery.” “So they punish us now? After all this time?” Dead tones from the dashboard guide the two businesswomen over…
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