POETS Day: The Second Oxford Expedition by W.H. Auden

I looked left and was promptly hit by a bus.

I’ll get to that in a second.

The important thing is that it’s P.O.E.T.S. Day – that fantabulous recurring pseudo holiday in which we get to Piss Off Early because Tomorrow’s Saturday.

This week’s get out of work early scheme comes courtesy of the wedding registry. Sorry single people. Not your week, unless you’re divorced. If that’s the case here’s an opportunity to swipe right a few hours before you’re used to.

If you’ve been married, someone gave you something ceramic that you have never and will never use. It seemed like something you wanted when you were registering for gifts all lovey dovey, but you were distracted figuring out which bridesmaid should be seated at a table with the uncle most likely to say something untoward about the fact that you picked the bridesmaid most likely to throw herself at the least inhibited groomsman who just happens to be seated at the same table. That’s just fun. We’ve all been there. You thought for a second that you wanted it, but you didn’t really care.

But you have this ceramic thing. It has to be white or off yellow towards white, and it’s been sitting in the back of a cupboard for years. Smash it.

Take a hammer and have a blast.

One of those ceramic shards was a piece of your tooth.

Come in to work as the nice guy that brought rock candy for all. I don’t think I need to explain this any further. You seem like a smart set and can easily map out what happens next.

The best part is that this is a twofer and I get huge credit for not saying a toother. If you chip a tooth they patch you up at the dentist’s office but that’s just temporary. In three weeks, they have some permanent molded solution to replace the temporary fix, so you get a bonus POETS Day waiting on the horizon. And you get to not wash the suddenly defunct gravy boat.

There are real advantages to committed relationships and it’s not just the tax deductions.

But I did get hit by a bus.

I went to visit a cousin doing a semester in Oxford. The England one, not the Lane Kiffin one.

Before my trans-Atlantic flight, I had a layover in DC that gave me time to have lunch with my uncle/godfather and he told me that when I got over there to look right. I didn’t.

I looked left because that’s what you do and this bus that assumed it was on the proper side of the road smacked into me. Fortunately, I had this preposterously large backpack made by a company called Eagle or something like that and it took the brunt of the assault. I was spent spinning. I ended up on a sidewalk populated by British people alternately telling me how lucky I was and how quickly stupid Americans learn to mind the gap or something. The bulk of the crowd was on the kind side, so I didn’t make fun of their crumbling empire accent.

After my near death by mass transit, I got involved in the illicit British drug trade.

I checked into my B&B and found my cousin. We left to meet his friends. There were all these pita trucks along the way, and I was hungry, but he warned me off them and in no uncertain terms told me that no matter how drunk you get you do not go to a pita truck because you will regret it in the morning.

We wandered through some labyrinthine alleys to find this bar or pub or whatever that was strait out of Hobbiton. You had to duck to get in as the doors were built for the 5’6” giants of the medieval age. If I remember right the place was established, and the British like to note established dates, in 1246.

You would go into the tiny building and get your beer and then retreat to the open area with picnic tables and such.

My cousin and I were sitting with four or five of his friends at one of those tables and I sat with my ale and then I noticed a wad of cash on the ground under a guy at the neighboring table.

I have no idea how much money was there because it was pink instead of green and they don’t measure things the way we do but it was north of eight kilograms and a few half pence or something. It was a wad of bills bigger than what I could grip in one hand, so it was likely of significance.

I tapped the guy hovering over whatever kilometers of money was laying on the Shire floor and he was initially surly until I pointed and said, “I think you dropped something.”

Then he was my best friend.

He bought us a round of drinks and offered me some free hash. Never met me and he was just “Want some drugs?” It was a bold ploy. It became obvious that he was dealing to Oxford students and that sans that wad of cash there would be hell to pay.

I turned down the hash. Drugs have never been my thing. Tried them here and there, but no thanks. The dealer was really nice and then he was off.

After declining, I looked back at my cousin’s group of friends and there was displeasure. From my cousin’s friend Sam, “I’ve been here for four years and couldn’t find a hash guy. You’ve been here three hours and you say no?” Maybe not displeasure. It was exasperation.

Sam though. He was amazing.

After a night of exhausting the pubs that close at eleven because of WWII time rules – not kidding – we fled through a sequence of private clubs that were allowed to serve you if paid a membership fee of a ha’gram or whatever.

I made out with a British girl, and she called me a wicked Yank.

At around 3 AM Greenwich Mean Time we were in line at a pita truck and someone said, “Where’s Sam?”

We all looked around and there he was, two blocks away.

Oxford, and maybe the entirety of England for all I know, has these frosted semi translucent square traffic cones. They are pretty big, maybe two or three feet tall and lit from the inside and have a blue directional arrow painted on the appropriate side. At least that was the way in the nineties.

They bolted those things into the concrete, and I would baffled as to how to get one off the ground, but you know who wasn’t baffled?

That would be Sam.

We spotted him two blocks away carrying one of those traffic squares. He pulled it up somehow and tried to go somewhere, and I have no idea what his plan was, but he had two Bobby/kilometer/Constables or whatever they call the police over in there a half step behind and he got nicked.

What followed was the stupidest conversation I have ever had. I should note that I prevailed.

Our group had swelled in the process of pub to club to British girl I made out with so there were nine or ten of us suddenly pulling back to the frustration of the pita truck guy who was expecting us to order.

My cousin and I didn’t see the big deal. We figured Sam would get a fine and like an Alabama coed there would be a probation and done and done.

Apparently it doesn’t work that way over there. The English students among our merry tribe were concerned because an arrest could endanger Sam’s entire work at university. It didn’t make sense to us splitters, but Sam’s college career, and he was a week or so from graduation, was suddenly endangered.

An arrest could get him expelled.

We had a sidewalk conference. In the final consensus my cousin was pressed by students at the most prestigious university in the world to get Sam out of jail because my cousin’s father – his father – was an attorney. His response was to point to me and say, “Ben’s dad’s an attorney too.”

That was sufficient to send the two of us forth per the conference.

A bus hit followed by an ancient watering hole and three great beer halls followed by Scotch and many shots at various after hour clubs conspired to produce the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.

I didn’t point out that neither my cousin nor I were attorneys despite the fact that our fathers were. Instead, what fumbled out of my dipshit mouth was “Guys. This is a totally different country.” And I looked at them, probably sideways and not saying that I was not a lawyer or barrister or kilometer or whatever, “They have different laws here.”

Didn’t matter.

The conference of Albion drunkards pushed us forward and my cousin and I went into the nick and asked about Sam. The cop at the desk was wearing a sweater which I thought was a TV (television) thing that never happened in real life, but there he was in his woolen glory.

He told us that Sam was an asshole, but they were going to let him off and there would be no charges once he slept it off. Oxford education saved.

I liked that sweatered cop.

The great part was that my cousin and I got to walk out of the late AM cop shop to a waiting crowd of fellow travelers. It was tense, but the police were reasonable.

We didn’t let anybody know that.

We took a you have no idea how rough that was guys, but we made our case about how we argued for Sam and basked in the congratulations all the way back to the pita truck.

That’s Oxford to me.

Today’s poet is named W.H. Auden because his full name is Wystan Hugh Audan, and he should begin each line with a curse to his parents for naming him Wystan and then urinating on the ground they are buried in. Wystan? That’s just awful.

He taught at Oxford if you are looking for the connection. By reports brilliantly.

This is great.

He goes a/b/b/c/a/c. It’s short and brilliant.

Enjoy

Epitaph on a Tyrant

W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

This is an aside. Auden died September 29, 1973. I was born that year and that month on the 25^th. We shared the Earth for a bit, a brief bit. I don’t know why, but that interests me.