Genteel Messages - a sneak-preview

Poet-in-Residence's forthcoming publication 'Genteel Messages' has been assigned an ISBN number and has undergone a final scrutiny by the poet. It is now on its way to Martin Holroyd at Poetry Monthly Press, Nottingham, England, for some finishing touches and eventual publication. To mark this landmark step along the way Poet-in-Residence (Gwilym Williams) is pleased to publish here, for the world and his dog to read, the introductory poem.

Genteel Messages

The ostentatious
and their highborn canines
with old teeth in slack jaws
and loose mouths with oodles of flapping tongue
and twinkling diamante collars
around thin throats
seem suitably dressed
in un-chic coats and plastic bootees.

With ribbons
and gaudy accessories
in powdered curls, shampooed
and blue-pink rinsed,
they like to promenade and point
the way with sniffy noses;
toe-tipping over the common,
leaving here and there those
genteel messages that children
bring home
imprinted on their soles.

c-2008,
Gwilym Williams