Sunday Morning

Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar;
Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,

And you may grow to music or drive beyond Hindhead anyhow,
Take corners on two wheels until you go so fast
That you can clutch a fringe or two of the windy past,
That you can abstract this day and make it to the week of time
A small eternity, a sonnet self-contained in rhyme.

But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Open its eight bells out, skulls' mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures. 

Louis MacNeice

One Week

Saturday At The Canal

I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds
And be with people who knew more than three chords
On a guitar. We didn't drink or smoke,
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when
The wind picked up and the shadows of
This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car,
By the sway of train over a long bridge,
We wanted to get out. The years froze
As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water,
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town. 

Gary Soto

Friday Mourning

Friday mourning, I'm dressed in black
Douse the houselights, I'm not coming back
For years, I warned you
Through tears, I told you
Friday mourning, there comes a time
Before that breaks this very smug mug of mine

This dawn raid soon put paid to
All the things I'd whispered to you
At night time
And I will never stand naked in front of you
Or if I do, it won't be for a long time

Look once to me, look once to me
Then look away
Look once to me, then look away

And when they hold me down
And when they kick me down the stairs
I see the faces all lined up before me
Of teachers and of parents and bosses
Who all share a point of view
You are a loser
You are a loser

Friday, Friday mourning
Dressed in black
I won't be coming back

Morrissey

Two Thursdays

when the doctor came on a monday
he looked at my mother and said
there's something seriously wrong here -
she's had a stroke - she's almost dead

it must have happened on thursday
why wasn't i told before
the busy rest home shook its head
we thought she was drowsy - nothing more

she only came to us a week ago
she was angry and violent and bitter
we drugged her some and settled her down
then she started to joke and chatter

it was thursday when her husband came
with a daughter and a son
we've given her a nice warm bath we said
she's in her room with the tv on

we were busy and went up later
we were given such a long deep stare
the husband and the daughter were crying
the son - he was just standing there

the old man was showing his birthday cards
he was wanting her to recognise
her eyes were lost inside themselves
if deep pits can be said to be eyes

then the old lady began to mumble
like stones dredged up from a well
she was really a long long way away
but a stroke - how were we to tell

it was only yesterday we became alarmed
she seemed eaten away in her sleep -
it's too late now the doctor said
she's leapt where i cannot leap

my mother died the next thursday
as the new moon was borne above
her stroke had lodged a twig in her mouth
and her face was the face of a dove. RG Gregory

Hooray Say The Roses

hooray say the roses, today is blamesday
and we are red as blood.

hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
and we bloom where soldiers fell
and lovers too,
and the snake at the word.

hooray say the roses, darkness comes
all at once, like lights gone out,
the sun leaves dark continents
and rows of stone.

hooray say the roses, cannons and spires,
birds, bees, bombers, today is Friday
the hand holding a medal out the window,
a moth going by, half a mile an hour,
hooray hooray
hooray say the roses
we have empires on our stems,
the sun moves the mouth:
hooray hooray hooray
and that is why you like us. Charles Bukowski

Tuesday's Child

All the babies born that Tuesday,
full of grace, went home by Thursday
except for one, my tiny girl
who rushed toward light too soon.

All the Tuesday mothers wheeled
down the corridor in glory,
their arms replete with warm baby;
I carried a potted plant.

I came back the next day and the next,
a visitor with heavy breasts,
to sit and rock the little pilgrim,
nourish her, nourish me. Julie Hill Alger

The Everlasting Monday

Thou shalt have an everlasting
Monday and stand in the moon.

The moon's man stands in his shell,
Bent under a bundle
Of sticks. The light falls chalk and cold
Upon our bedspread.
His teeth are chattering among the leprous
Peaks and craters of those extinct volcanoes.

He also against black frost
Would pick sticks, would not rest
Until his own lit room outshone
Sunday's ghost of sun;
Now works his hell of Mondays in the moon's ball,
Fireless, seven chill seas chained to his ankle. 

Sylvia Plath