Friday, July 23, 2004

Travels of a Poet (1)

Driving through the wet dark February evening looking for Hadrian’s Lodge Hotel.
Roll through the damp Tyne Toll Tunnel and out along the shipyards.
The room in the one star hotel is tiny with an awkward edge at head height, designed to make a trip to the loo in the middle of the night more interesting.
The room is more used to a half-corpsed hen night or stag night than an anxious poet.
Or does it all boil down to the same thing? That which a poet might dwell upon. The detrius of an inebriated evening. Bedclothes scattered like recriminations?
The left-over words that only make the bin.
And on the tiny TV there’s no football. Only the story of a disaster waiting to happen.

2 comments:

Wastedpapiers said...

Blimey! I'm glad I don't travel around the country with you Roger if this is the sort of place you usually stay in! It makes the Bates Motel sound quite inviting.

Roger Stevens said...

Well, it was like that. A little hotel on the edge of the shipyards. I guess it did a roaring trade once upon a time. Now it caters mainly for hen and stag nights, so the waitress told me. The food was pretty grotty, too.

The fun of life on the road. Although not exactly Jack Kerouac.