Monday, June 6, 2016

Peter Bollington writes



Tom Mad # 1



Tom Mad was always worrying
Thought he'd lose the moon.
Troubled his eyesight, carried his legs
In a crazy gear. Hadn't tried anything
Except cogitation: that went sour in a week.
Tom Mad took to drinking marijuana
Through a hose and seeing ladies.
His eyes trickled in a roll but still
It took him years until he found
There'd been nothing to worry about at all.



Tom Mad # 2



Tom Mad lay down gently with the sorrowing leaves,
While sun and moon fell studying near his face
And waste Olympia cans unwatered near his peace.



Tom Mad lay there bravely ignoring all who came
To scold and run about beyond his eyes they could not see;
It wasn't hope he'd done it for this madman on the lay.



Tom had figured winter would curve along his thighs,
He hadn't known what after that if blackness he'd avoid
Then something from within unpressed, erectly strong and wide.



From somewhere down, from far beneath the logos in his brain,
The sun was stirring flower within the seed and cell inside,
So Tom aroused and looked about, the crazies leapt into a fade.



He saw felt birds and mountains on the run
The green blue buds, the peach breeze tossed his head;
he laughed why not; the fingers in his feet began to throb.



Tom then went truly mad, he laughed at corners,
Spent nickels in the sand. His mind was like a tree,
He said. His tears had flown away to pears and doors.



Tom Mad # 3



Tom Mad went snively down
To Hambright, whirling slowly on a gig,
His new eyes dashed the old, undimmed
And all who looked felt smiling from within.
Tom Mad had changed, no doubt, they said
His pace and hair picked up a bit,
A jovial frown beneath his knee was something more
Than a piece of shoe. Nobody had seen
Tom Mad before, except in flank upon
His face, and now he was a trace superior
His grin so wide, his form trucked into grace.

 

2 comments:

  1. "Tom o' Bedlam" was an anonymous poem that was probably composed at the beginning of the 17th century. The term referred to mentally ill beggars and vagrants associated with the Bethlem Royal Hospital ("Bedlam").

    From the hag and hungry goblin
    That into rags would rend ye,
    The spirit that stands by the naked man
    In the Book of Moons defend ye,
    That of your five sound senses
    You never be forsaken,
    Nor wander from your selves with Tom
    Abroad to beg your bacon,
    While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    Of thirty bare years have I
    Twice twenty been enragèd,
    And of forty been three times fifteen
    In durance soundly cagèd
    On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
    With stubble soft and dainty,
    Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,
    With wholesome hunger plenty,
    And now I sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    With a thought I took for Maudlin
    And a cruse of cockle pottage,
    With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
    I befell into this dotage.
    I slept not since the Conquest,
    Till then I never wakèd,
    Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
    Me found and stript me nakèd.
    And now I sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    When I short have shorn my sow's face
    And swigged my horny barrel,
    In an oaken inn I pound my skin
    As a suit of gilt apparel;
    The moon's my constant mistress,
    And the lowly owl my marrow;
    The flaming drake and the night crow make
    Me music to my sorrow.
    While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    The palsy plagues my pulses
    When I prig your pigs or pullen,
    Your culvers take, or matchless make
    Your Chanticleer or Sullen.
    When I want provant with Humphrey
    I sup, and when benighted,
    I repose in Paul's with waking souls
    Yet never am affrighted.
    But I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    I know more than Apollo,
    For oft, when he lies sleeping
    I see the stars at bloody wars
    In the wounded welkin weeping;
    The moon embrace her shepherd,
    And the Queen of Love her warrior,
    While the first doth horn the star of morn,
    And the next the heavenly Farrier.
    While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    The gypsies, Snap and Pedro,
    Are none of Tom's comradoes,
    The punk I scorn and the cutpurse sworn,
    And the roaring boy's bravadoes.
    The meek, the white, the gentle
    Me handle, touch, and spare not;
    But those that cross Tom Rynosseros
    Do what the panther dare not.
    Although I sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

    With a host of furious fancies
    Whereof I am commander,
    With a burning spear and a horse of air,
    To the wilderness I wander.
    By a knight of ghosts and shadows
    I summoned am to tourney
    Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end::
    Methinks it is no journey.
    Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink, or clothing;
    Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.
    Mad Maudlin's Search

    ReplyDelete
  2. In response, another anonymous poem, "Mad Maudlin's Search" or "Mad Maudlin's Search for Her Tom of Bedlam," was published in 1720 by Thomas d'Urfey in his "Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy." ("Maudlin" was a form of Mary Magdalene.)

    For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
    Ten thousand miles I've traveled.
    Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,
    For to save her shoes from gravel

    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
    Bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air
    And they want no drink or money.

    I went down to Satan's kitchen
    To break my fast one morning
    And there I got souls piping hot
    All on the spit a-turning.

    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
    Bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air
    And they want no drink or money.

    There I took a cauldron
    Where boiled ten thousand harlots
    Though full of flame I drank the same
    To the health of all such varlets.

    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
    Bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air
    And they want no drink or money.

    My staff has murdered giants
    My bag a long knife carries
    To cut mince pies from children's thighs
    For which to feed the fairies.

    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
    Bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air
    And they want no drink or money.

    No gypsy, slut or doxy
    Shall win my mad Tom from me
    I'll weep all night, with stars I'll fight
    The fray shall well become me.

    Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
    Bedlam boys are bonny
    For they all go bare and they live by the air
    And they want no drink or money.

    Hambright is derived from the personal compound name "Heim-Bracht" (Home-Bright). In Anglo-Saxon England, it became the name of Haneberge (Hana's hill"), now Handbrough parish in Oxfordshire, and Hanbroc ("brook by the stone"), the village of Hambrook in Winterbourne parish in South Gloucestershire.

    ReplyDelete

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