jamjar of apostrophes
On the mantelpiece, gathering apostrophes, stands the jamjar
Never seeming to get full despite
A steady stream of infilling punctuations
That claim to be the real thing,
Though they may simply be
Misplaced commas.
Whence it came we know not
Nor the jam contained
Within its glass rotunda,
Spread out on bread
And washed, long since,
From the sweet of communal consciousness.
Unlikely as it is, in the jamjar
Gathers the dust of failed scribes
And victims of progress,
Sentenced to be read by others
In the twilight of expression,
The false dawn of a new age.
As it slowly fills, so dies the light…
Tags: apostrophes, jamjar
This poem was written shortly after Birmingham City Council had announced that it was dropping apostrophes from its road signs, thereby creating an uproar regarding the dumbing down of the language.
That weekend we had dinner with Keith MacDougal who described how he was best man at the wedding of a friend (O’Brien or simlar) who had an apostrophe in his surname. The friend had had a new chequebook from his bank and they had missed out the apostrophe so he had called in to complain.
In honour of this, during his best man’s speech he produced a jam jar that his kids had completely filled with apostrophes cut our from newspapers.
I went home that night and wrote “Jamjar of apostrophes”