16 April

Day 16

Two responses to prompts

1. A praise poem, of a kind

Who do you think you are?

Great Granddad

drank the Irish sea

He swallowed down the draughts of tides

They say He was a horse man and a moneyman

Stepped from Liverpool to Belfast

Stepped with a hero's big bold stride

Lifted ships, yawned, opened up His gob and swallowed,

stood, one planted foot on either side

His sozzled reasoning was this, 

He was the Buyer of drunken horses

He was the captain of the ship

He was the totter or the boneman

He was far too old for your new War

But He fed His sons and grief to it 

He was the giant and the best at being

His legend limbs, His whisky grin

His different Mary wives, His mistressing

What about your lily lily daughters

Would you sell them on, to us, they cried

Put em to work in the seamstitch fields

Put em to work as oven brides

I gamble, I’m a gambler, He  replied

I love em all, but I need me more

And there’s more ancestors inside

Great Granddad

Drank the sea all up

He swallowed down the draughts of tides