Brand New Ancients

Award-winning poet and spoken-word performer Tempest's latest offering imagines that people today are deities, just as the gods of classical times were based on human beings: "We're the same beings that began, still living/in all of our fury and foulness and friction./everyday odysseys, dreams and decisions…/The stories are there if you listen." Mary has an affair with Brian and gives birth to his son while married to Kevin, a happy new father. The boy, Clive, grows up to be a tough street kid whose only friend, Terry, is a lonely boy who is seriously burnt in a fire set by Clive. They become menacing toughs who finally attack a strong young woman as she is closing a pub. "If you see them, hoods up,/prowling the pavement at night/you'll walk quickly away,/skin prickling with terror/but they know love though,/and they know laughter,/know each other as brother,/friend, father." The lives of adults and teens living sad, unfulfilled existences are depicted in the spare words that capture a lack of hope. Only one young man, who likes to draw, succeeds in finding a way to make his creativity a career. If this were a novel, readers would want more details and plot development. However, this story is convincing as verse.