[In response to the 18th Finding Everyday Inspiration challenge prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/blogging-university/writing-everyday-inspiration/ I am reposting a little polyptych of anecdotal poems that was the first literary work that I dared air on this blog as part of another writing course back in 2014.]
Stuff Picked Up at the Supermarket
(A Triptych with a Kiss in the Middle)
(i)
Shop Girl Mopping up Eggs
The girl kneels dutifully in her uniform,
attempting with a single damp dish-cloth
to slop a whole half dozen broken eggs
back into their box. The sticky mess
of albumin, burst yolk and shards of shell
oozes around the chapped varnish of her
fingernails. She goes about it
with a clumsy, uncomplaining,
methodical sense of purpose. As if
omelets could be unmade,
accidents undone.
(ii)
Boy Rescuing Beads
A kid of about six in the burger bar
outside the supermarket
has just had a necklace bought for him
by mom&dad.
He fingers the multi-colored beads
excitedly, eyes filled with glee,
as mom&dad munch on Big Macs,
fiddling so frenetically at the string
of fake jewels
that it explodes in a cascading
rainbow of variously-sized hailstones
all over the shop.
First fat tears well,
then his face bursts suddenly
into full-blown tempest of grief…
Everyone near rushes to their feet
to help… The boy clutches at his mother’s inner thighs.
Sobs ebb and flow,
sometimes surging up again in a sudden swell of remembrance
or thanks, as his father and nearby strangers crawl around
on all fours after the scattered beads,
scooping them from the gutters
into a plastic cup,
like votive offerings…
Touched by this act of grace, the boy
is soon skipping down the escalator,
hot on the tail of one stubborn fleeing bead,
smiling, laughingly, as if it were a game,
*
All ends well.
As mom&dad traipse off into the dark,
son skipping happily between their held hands,
I spot the large pink bauble that was the center-piece,
left behind, being crushed under a heavily-laden shopping cart,
[Interlude]
Kiss
The chubby girl who works on the cheese counter
is pleased that her paycheck has come through
this month & her debit card is good for lunch.
She gives it a triumphant little peck of a kiss.
(iii)
The Contents of a Shopping Cart
The girl before me in the check-out queue
has crackers and coffee filters in her basket,
a single oven-ready meal, two bottles
of beer, cleaning fluid, juice,
and bread rolls. As if breakfast
were her main meal, or she were
preparing to wake up with someone
new and special for the first time tomorrow morning.
*
What would she do, I wonder, were these simple,
yet not so simple, pleasures to suddenly be snatched away?
Mount barricades? Storm Congress?
Fight riot police in the streets?
Take up arms—first bits of wood,
then Molotov cocktails, then Kalashnikovs,
then shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles?
Take over the TV station?
Bark out demands?
Poetry, Politics and Language 
I like the first and the last one the most, for some reasons. I’ve discovered that there is something about the way you write that reminds me of my favourite Scottish writers. Perhaps the class-consciousness, though it sounds like a negative thing. The miniature portrait of the supermarket girl is particularly powerful this way. The sheer determination.
Thank you for your kind remarks on this poem.
It is interesting that you note my emphasis on working-class characters. I hadn’t really been aware of that before you mentioned it, but, looking back over my recent work (which tends to be choric rather than confessional in nature), I can see that almost every one of the cast of characters hails from a working-class or under-privileged background. This was not a conscious or ideologically-based decision on my part. I guess I simply find it easier to identify with such people. After all, I am—despite my apparent erudition—very much still one of them.
My poetry—at least in the last decade and a half—has tended to be broadly political, but not party-political or ideologically slanted. In fact, though I myself veer in my personal opinions quite sharply to the left, the views expressed in my poems often verge rightwards.
I was myself shocked that 64—the long poem on which I have labored most over the years (and whose title bears the year of my birth)—with its motley cast of flawed underprivileged characters, turned out to be a sort of manifestation (if not a vindication) of the current wave of right-wing populism. The poem and the characters in it somehow took on a life of their own.
Expurosis and my first Propertius series are about the way undue comfort leads to complacency and frustration, and hence ultimately to violence and destruction. This essentially right-wing idea has become one of the main themes of my work and it is linked somehow to the other (apparently more left-wing) overriding theme of ‘redemption through loss,’ of which I intended the Supermarket triptych to be a sort of quasi-liturgical expression. It is interesting that you liked the outer parts of this triptych, whilst comments on my original posting of it preferred the middle. That somehow evens things out nicely and makes me think that all parts need to be there. The original triptych was, of course, a depiction of the crucifixion. The ‘thieves’ need to be there on either side; without them, redemption remains incomplete. Freud recounts a nice joke on this subject in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.
The Supermarket triptych gave rise five years later to Throwing the Postman out of the Pram—a more explicitly left-leaning poem on the same theme.
Thank you for this detailed explanation! Now, I filter your poems through my own experience and preferences, which resulted in me foregrounding the working-class aspects and ignoring others. For example, I totally missed out on the crucifixion motif. It’s because as a non-religious person, I lack the knowledge and awareness, so I don’t know what to look for and even when I see it, it doesn’t necessarily interest me the most. It’s funny: ultimately, each person will read your work their own way, and sometimes in ways you would never expect!
I could see all this so clearly in my mind. Really appreciate your work. I’m a new follower.
Thank you for following me and for your kind words…
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