Using form: Songs as poems: Duncan Gillies MacLaurin, ‘But At Least I Had A Ball’

I’ve always loved to sing an’ dance.
I’m better at the first.
An’ given even half a chance,
I’m bound to do my worst.
I’ve struggled sometimes with romance,
succumbed to alcohol,
but at least I had a ball.

I liked to smoke a lot of weed
an’ hash while in my prime.
I’d barely write an’ hardly read,
just wasted space an’ time.
I didn’t think that I’d succeed
with anything at all,
but at least I had a ball.

I did some LSD an’ coke,
but didn’t dare touch smack.
The people on it weren’t a joke.
I’ve never sampled crack.
I still enjoy a drink an’ smoke.
Like everyone, I’ll fall,
but at least I had a ball.

I wasn’t any good at jazz.
I tried it on trombone.
I’ve stayed away from razzmatazz.
I’d rather be alone.
I’ll never be as famous as
that guy from Montreal,
but at least I had a ball.

I found myself in poetry,
then turned it into song.
I see it as my destiny.
It’s here that I belong.
I may end up in poverty
with nobody to call,
but at least I had a ball.

*****

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin writes: “I’ve been wanting to do songs like Cohen and Dylan for years – ones that have a repetend at the end, and I’ve finally achieved that.” This poem was published in the current edition of Snakeskin.

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin is a Scottish poet who was born in Glasgow in 1962. He studied Classics at Oxford, left without a degree, and spent two years busking in the streets of Europe. He met a Danish writer, Ann Bilde, in Italy in 1986 and went to live in Denmark, where he teaches English and Latin. His collection of 51 sonnets, I Sing the Sonnet (2017), is online at Snakeskin. He blogs here. His experiences as an ex-pat poet are described in the first issue of the e-zine, The Chimaera.

Photo: “We Had Some Wild Parties” by lyndawaybi3 is marked with CC0 1.0.