Man’s laughter & Simples
Poems odd & even
Touched
Press, London, 1999
Stapled A5 booklet of 48 pages, privately printed in a limited edition
of 100 copies
The first production of the Touched Press is this bifarious booklet, realised with the help of Prontaprint on Borough High Street.
Man’s laughter runs from back to front, the ‘odd’ poems, ludic and cunning, . The ‘even’ poems, the Simples (a simple being the herbalists’ term for a remedy made of one plant) are more straightforwardly lyrical and run from front to back.
Or vice versa.
There’s one of each below, and a pair of pages here as a pdf.
The Loves of Rick Lime
I’ll tell you in a metaphor
The only thing he met her for:
A bloom draws a bee
Sure as A-B-C
But he’ll take the rose for a whore.
You bear me up as a great ship.
However long the storm, day breaks on us.
We lie with
our arms around
And sail down the river to sleep.
However long our day, night falls on us.
Birds in the
dark make sound,
Living on promises to keep.
However long our night, dawn calls on us.
A few copies of this first Touched Press publication are still available.
Buy
Man’s Laughter/Simples
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Man’s
Laughter/Simples
John
Gibbens
Touched
Press, London, 1999
(signed copy)
UK: £6.00 (includes P&P)
Europe:
£9.00 (includes P&P)
Rest
of World: £11.50 (includes P&P)
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