THE LOST WORLDS OF JACK WARNER

THE LOST WORLDS OF JACK WARNER

I adore lost worlds

I seek out those unknowable

Places once so familiar

Now only found in memories,

Or the black & white

Of old Jack Warner films

Where he grows begonias

That he’ll never see flower

Despite a further twenty -

Or more - years on the telly

Cut down by Dirk Bogarde

Because “This thing’s real!”

The tingle-ingle-ing

Of the bells in black police cars

Tracking him to the dog track

Caught thanks to the

Tic-tac-toe-ing of the

More honourable villains

And the children playing

In the craters made by

The wartime bombs –

Or Jane Asher playing

With her dolly and pram

Next to a ship-packed Thames

Taking time out from being dead

Jack wears a natty trilby

In that one – being all

Down to Earth – Like

Professor Quatermass’s

Rocket which crashed

Bringing something back -

Poor Victor Carroon

Had an absorbing journey

Merging with a cactus

Melting faces – but not Jane’s

In a long-lost London

On grey Sunday afternoons

In those vast high-waisted trousers

Not like the villains on seventies

Cop shows from America

Wearing ties, loud checked

Sports Jackets and combovers

Martin A W Holmes, Sept 2016