'You Should Have Used The Microphone' Poem by Len Webster

They made me have a microphone,
Said it was the way they did things there.
I hated that, holding the microphone -
Wondering about it -
Like a girl on a date she half-dreaded,
Curious all the same to see what happened next.

Of course, the first thing I had to do
Was tell them to shut up,
All six hundred of them
Who turned to face the canon - and the microphone.
But they never charged or heckled -
Too well brought-up. Civilised.

Six hundred girls, cross-legged on the hall floor,
A pervert's delight, but - for me - a nightmare,
Though I had that microphone and held it tightly.
Six hundred girls looking up at me, there on the stage
With nothing to say but having to say it
Through that unprotected microphone in front of me.

I switched it off. I knew what I was doing.
I'd let my voice boom out towards the back,
Just over the heads of the girls towards the windows,
Letting the words curl round the echo
That bounces with a life of its own
In England.

The whirr of the ceiling fans above my head
Never once disturbed me - I could roar above them.
They'd be no problem.
I'd embrace the echo and work with her,
Twisting my words around hers,
Clothing the passion beneath the deception.

I spurned the microphone and began.
And the words boomed from the depths
And rushed through the air
Just over the heads of the six hundred waiting there.
They didn't need to charge, just listen to Tennyson's canon,
One cannon booming out in Tanjong Katong by the sea.

But Echo had gone, obliterated by the opened windows
That joined with the fans in the ceiling to deceive me -
Open windows trapping me into isolation
With no Echo to comfort me.

I carried on firing, wondering if they were blanks,
Letting the words take on lives of their own
As they winged out into the hot, humid air of the Lion City,
Around the shophouses, around the concrete and glass hotels,
Seeds in the air, drying in the air,
And I was there, booming them out,
Letting them lead this life of their own,
Wondering where they would germinate
In a concrete city, in a park or in the centre of the island
Around Bukit Timah, which I'd often heard called a mountain.

And I've since wondered if any of those words
Ever made it back to England, or if not
Where they ended up,
And whether, like me, they've gone green
With age and wishful thinking
Or whether, just maybe, one or two never made it to the window
But germinated there, in the old hall
At Tanjong Katong by the sea,
Impregnating an under-age mind
With an idea or two
That would be carried over the years
And beyond that moment
Like the ripple that never quite ends.

All I can remember, though, is the sage advice
Given too late as a comment
That's taken years to germinate in me:
'You should have used the microphone.'