01-04-2013, 12:47 AM
Twentieth Year Anniversary of the death of John Miles Longden. Poet, friend and character beyond reason! Google him.
A'ard day at t'Onion
There was a man, John Longden, a raconteur and poet,
Who knew the world and had the words to tell it as he saw it.
Once there was an onion that had ten thousand skins
And the outermost was purple and the inner, most was him.
The Onion was a café, Purple Onion, Bottomley Street;
November nineteen sixty-eight, John in his corner seat.
Outside the rain was drumming down, John turned as we fell in.
We children of the sixties God were wild... but without sin.
John turned and shot a withering look, and we, no longer bold
Slunk quietly to the counter, ordered chips and something cold.
Ada, she who tended us, suspended operations
As bellows, most stentorian, came loud from John's location.
If I'd known then what I now know I would have paid attention
But even now I can recall his erudite intervention.
"Serve 'em now't, the rowdy louts, the've buggered up me thinkin'
Me chips are cold 'n so am I', 'n me coffee's not worth drinkin'.
I come 'ere for some peace 'n warm, 'am tryin' t'do me writin'
Then in you come with bloody cold 'n bloody wind 'n shoutin'
Ow's a poet going to pen when all 'is comfort's forfeit?
Bring me ower a 'ot chip bun an' wi'll say no more about it."
Those were his words, I wrote them down; it's nineteen ninety-three.
John Longden's dead, but not 'is words, and in my memory
I kept a place just for this man, oo' later was a friend,
An' others will remember 'im, aichless to the end.
Tom Kirby
December 1993
A'ard day at t'Onion
There was a man, John Longden, a raconteur and poet,
Who knew the world and had the words to tell it as he saw it.
Once there was an onion that had ten thousand skins
And the outermost was purple and the inner, most was him.
The Onion was a café, Purple Onion, Bottomley Street;
November nineteen sixty-eight, John in his corner seat.
Outside the rain was drumming down, John turned as we fell in.
We children of the sixties God were wild... but without sin.
John turned and shot a withering look, and we, no longer bold
Slunk quietly to the counter, ordered chips and something cold.
Ada, she who tended us, suspended operations
As bellows, most stentorian, came loud from John's location.
If I'd known then what I now know I would have paid attention
But even now I can recall his erudite intervention.
"Serve 'em now't, the rowdy louts, the've buggered up me thinkin'
Me chips are cold 'n so am I', 'n me coffee's not worth drinkin'.
I come 'ere for some peace 'n warm, 'am tryin' t'do me writin'
Then in you come with bloody cold 'n bloody wind 'n shoutin'
Ow's a poet going to pen when all 'is comfort's forfeit?
Bring me ower a 'ot chip bun an' wi'll say no more about it."
Those were his words, I wrote them down; it's nineteen ninety-three.
John Longden's dead, but not 'is words, and in my memory
I kept a place just for this man, oo' later was a friend,
An' others will remember 'im, aichless to the end.
Tom Kirby
December 1993
