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11pm Outsideleft's Big National Poetry Day: Jay Lewis Jay Lewis - The Starling 1976

11pm Outsideleft's Big National Poetry Day: Jay Lewis

Jay Lewis - The Starling 1976

by LamontPaul, Founder & Publisher
first published: October, 2021

approximate reading time: minutes

Jay Lewis - The Starling 1976

THE STARLING, 1976

It lay, like a crashed kite
Near the sports field
A cloud of marauding flies
Hovered above

the murdered starling.

At hometime
We dared one another
To poke sticks
at its stone smashed skull

During his lunchbreak
A boy named Porter
Rained missiles
on moving targets


Til, at last he scored

He coaxed girls to stare
At his artistic debut
Got turned on by their
Gasps and screams

We arrived before
The caretaker did
And swore for the first time
At the nagging insects

And I hid my sickness
laughed and continued to prod
At eight years old
my first death scene

That day I learnt of vulnerability 
From a murderous joke
Of precarious existence
And the corroding of innocence

Now I Iisten for the brawling song,
Watch starlings swoop beside me,
Their chirruping code
A foretelling

Of an oncoming shower of stones


By Jay Lewis

 


Something you should know:
Jason Lewis is a Birmingham based music, movie and arts obsessive. Jason's encyclopedic knowledge of 80s/90s Arts films is a debt to his embedded status in the Triangle Arts Centre frontlines back then. When Jason's not watching what other people are watching, and not listening to whatever other people are listening to he's taking the time out to tell people about it on his facebook page which is well worth checking out.

 


Joy to Enjoy today:
12.01am: Ancient Champion - Under Pressure »»
1am: Ade Crossen - Thoughtful Choice »»
2am: Jackie Stein - The Battle of Social Media »»
3am: Dave Pitt - Spiderman Brendan »»
4am: Jimmy Andrex - Festival of Brexit »»
5am: Brendan Hawthorne - We Are Here »»
6am: Ahmed Magare - We Cannot Walk Alone »»
7am: Emma Purshouse - Mermaid on the Number 3 »»
8am: Rue Collinge - That Year »»
9am: Deborah Alma - Mother of Pearl »»
10am: Steve Pottinger - Fatima »»
11am: Jay Lewis - Betrayal 1991 »»
12pm: Hollie McNish - Honestly »»
1pm: Emma Purshouse - Five Minutes on a Midland Train »»
2pm: Rebecca Stanhope - Take Your Hands Off Me »»
3pm: Michael Pederson - Here in a Glasgow Tenement - Not Asleep, Not Awake Either »»
4pm: Glyn Phillips - Doorways »»
5pm: PixieVic - Curious Choices »»
6pm Christian Present - Poeme »»
7pm John Robinson - My Reply To You »»
8pm David Benjamin Blower - 47 »»
9pm Emma Purshouse - Feeling Low? »»
10pm Steve Pottinger - Jam today: Mrs Veronica Blake’s manifesto for a brighter future »»
11pm Jay Lewis - The Starling 1976 »»

LamontPaul
Founder & Publisher

Publisher, Lamontpaul founded outsideleft with Alarcon in 2004 and is hanging on, saying, "I don't know how to stop this, exactly."

Lamontpaul portrait by John Kilduff painted during an episode of John's TV Show, Let's Paint TV


about LamontPaul »»

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