{"id":1147,"date":"2008-01-16T08:16:23","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T08:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2008-01-16T08:16:23","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T08:16:23","slug":"on-the-first-night-of-a-dark-moon-by-elaine-speakman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/on-the-first-night-of-a-dark-moon-by-elaine-speakman\/","title":{"rendered":"On the first night of a dark moon by Elaine Speakman"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the first night of the dark moon<\/span>
In Bolton,<\/span>
In a basement,<\/span>
In a tall black room with a hard black floor<\/span>
I listened,<\/span>
To a woman,<\/span>
To a tall dark haired woman dressed all in black<\/span>
Reading poems,<\/span>
Long dark poems,<\/span>
New Scriptures about God and a woman and a box and a Beast<\/span>
The Beast.<\/span>
I escaped the beast,<\/span>
Going forth alone <\/span>
Into the dark night<\/span>
Down long dark streets<\/span>
Where long black rats with long black tails<\/span>
Scattered before my feet<\/span>
Into the long dark shadows.<\/span>
Oh Lord my God grant me a box,<\/span>
A box,<\/span>
A box of matches<\/span>
And candles, <\/span>
Lots and lots of candles,<\/span>
Oh Lord I beseech thee,<\/span>
LET THERE BE LIGHT!<\/span>


\u2022 Elaine Speakman says “I am an 'overgrown' (50 something years old) student who has just started on the MA in Creative Writing with Jon Glover at Bolton University. All my life I been both a lover of and a scribbler of poems, but it is only in the last 5 years (since my supposedly mid life crisis) that I have begun to take my own work seriously.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the first night of the dark moonIn Bolton,In a basement,In a tall black room with a hard black floorI listened,To a woman,To a tall dark haired woman dressed all in blackReading poems,Long dark poems,New Scriptures about God and a woman and a box and a BeastThe Beast.I escaped the beast,Going forth alone Into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}