! The Forum Poem by Michael Shepherd

It's like trudging home after
a heavy day at the workface,
you open the front door
and the house is rent with upraised voices -
all the children adding new wounds
to years of grievance; your eldest daughter
threatens once again to go live with her boyfriend
although she's under age; your eldest son
despairs of girls 'not being able to argue properly';
the cry, 'that's not f a i r..' rings through the house;
the younger ones still seek adults to be on their side,
- for the moment - to dispense justice
to the aggrieved, comfort the broken-hearted...

Are you glad you came home
without your usual stop off at the pub?
It's all so familiar...dammit, you know very well
you'll miss them when eventually
it all goes quiet... but at least
they certainly know about justice
when it's not there for them...
they'll be vigorous employees,
trade unionists one and all,
if and when they leave the nest..

Were the 18th century coffee houses
from which emerged those tracts
of endless literary abuse,
sharpening their language on each other,
just like this? 'A polarity of poets'
might serve for a corporate term.