Bar Sinister

[jisbell00]

Bar Sinister


Cack-handed, they may call me. When the world
divides, I take the left-hand side. A man’s
born into this life and at every step,
he leads with right or left. I couldn’t skip
when I was six, and to this day I dance
to my own drum. I now am growing old,

and take this world for granted. In the street
or in the kitchen, I’m askew. I flip
my glass to my good hand – my scissors cut
with difficulty – doors are roundabout
and handled wrong. It’s sinister; the lip
of my cup’s made for someone else. I eat,

but do so in reverse. And when a pen
is in my hand, I move across the page
directly over each new word. You’ll find
left-handers do things backwards; they don’t mind
playing guitar behind their back. An age
ago, they were called gauche by other men.
 

[Morpheus]

John, the penguin drawing on TBD was done by a little girl's left hand and she wants to be an artist when she grows up. Maybe she'll write left handed poetry too. They say the average IQ is higher for lefties. Plus they'd call me a droit, which doesn't sound particularly complimentary. Marine Le Pen might write that way.

Anyway, it must be sinister being dominated by a majority and I think you did a good job with the subtle slant rhyming that seems to suit the content well.

The left handed is well suited to writing Arabic at least.

[jisbell00]

Congratulations to the young left-hander! Left handers also statistically outperform in tennis and maybe hand to eye sports in general - I mad a whole frisbee career out of being left-handed. And then, Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix.

I'm glad you picked up on the slant rhymes - they mirror themselves, as left and right-handers mirror each other. Yes, a droit would indeed be a possible term! Le droit means the law, which is also basically true in Russian - prava. Also truth, pravda. Language gets pretty loaded in these waters.

Cheers,
John

[Macavity]

Like it John. For me it captured that world of rejection. Folk can be very tribal on defining 'norms' and designing a world that fits those 'norms'. Labelling is a nasty feature of such mindsets. Strange species humans!

Bw

Phil

[jisbell00]

Thanks Phil! I agree 100% about tribal norms.
Oh - Bar Sinister in heraldry indicates a bastard.

Cheers,
John

[Macavity]

Interesting John. I didn't know. Poetry is a great form for 'education'. I read a fab poem on another site about necropants! Unfortunately it's from a closed group on FB, but the context is here...


https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/o ... necropants

[camus]

I enjoyed this too John, some excellent cack-handed observations!

The title immediately caught my eye, as our very own M.E Smith (he of Prole Art Threat) created an album called 'Bend Sinister' I wonder if he had in mind "Bar Sinister in heraldry indicates a bastard" Probably...

Also whilst looking it up i found 'Bend Sinister' was also a dystopian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, no doubt where M.E Smith 'borrowed' it from. Funny the rabbit holes poetry leads you down.

Good stuff

Cheers
Kris

[jisbell00]

Thanks, Phil and Kris!

Phil - ugh, necropants! What a strange world humans have made it. An Icelander won the Nobel Prize for this brilliant novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_People

Kris - I suspect you're right, that Nabokov and hence M.E. Smith got Bend Sinister from the heraldic term. I first met the term in the great cartoon Underdog: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Simon_B ... edirect=no

Cheers,
John