dead end

The nuts and bolts we cracked together
With petty passion, foggy eyes and messy hair
Under the bright light of high efficiency led bulbs
In the opposite of a hurry, in cozy laziness and despair

The bold assumption of a dream-like affair
Sudden tremor, the maniac soulless motion
Of turning gears shy of themselves, all spikes
Oiled and greased with scentless potion

Behold! The engine's roaring beauty
A thousand thunders, a gimmick
Looming in the dark thick air
Of that naked summer night in Brunswick

Deficit means I am not enough
Derelict means I am old and crippled
Do not disturb means I may be taking a nap
Download now means another record has been ripped

It was the end of the road, a dead end
The road not taken better remained that way


gavin thorpe (Whiston, Merseyside, 1978)

the dylan thomas quiz

the centennial of Dylan Thomas's birth is being commemorated with events, readings and exhibitions everywhere. the guardian chose to join the celebrations with a quiz, where you can test your knowledge of his life and work. take it now!

100 years of Dylan Thomas – quiz (The Guardian)

Further reading:

Remembering a Seducer (The New York Times)

Dylan Thomas Festival

Dylan Thomas, the official website

the mind of the mature poet

"[T]he mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of 'personality', not being necessarily more interesting, or having 'more to say', but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations."

t.s. eliot (St. Louis, MO, USA, 1888-London, England, 1965), excerpt from Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), as quoted in Mrs Dalloway and the Feminist Revision of Male Modernism, by Merry M. Pawlowski, published as an introduction to Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Wordsworth Editions, Hertfordshire, 2003


Further reading:

Tradition and the Individual Talent (Bartleby.com)