{"id":2676,"date":"2019-12-15T07:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2019-12-15T21:47:30","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T01:47:30","slug":"inventing-the-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/2019\/12\/15\/inventing-the-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Inventing the Other"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">A walking question mark,<br \/>\neyes set on a dead Jerusalem,<br \/>\nhis right hand pumping<br \/>\nsome terrible piston,<br \/>\nup the lane, past the stagnant pond,<br \/>\ninto the Norman wood.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">We called him Ajax,<br \/>\nand no one knew why.<br \/>\nWe ran away in a mockery of fear,<br \/>\ndared to catch his diamond eye.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">Long, thick coat in summertime,<br \/>\ntoy sheriff\u2019s badge twinkling,<br \/>\nthe bearded nut loped along<br \/>\nthe lanes and bridleways,<br \/>\ndown through the seventies<br \/>\ninto obscurity\u2019s tuneless song.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">Some thought he stuck his willy<br \/>\nthrough the letterbox of a bungalow<br \/>\ncontaining Scottish children.<br \/>\nThe dads of the close<br \/>\nhunted the pervert<br \/>\nin their office shirts,<br \/>\nfound only rumour.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">He was pointlessly free,<br \/>\nwith a child\u2019s small-change freedom.<br \/>\nOnly locked into lonely.<br \/>\nLove: a sex-itch unscratched.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">I see him old now,<br \/>\nblanched in a bedsit in hell,<br \/>\ndrug-shocked and shaking a fist<br \/>\nat the endless Sunday smell.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: right;\">(image: Dolores, by Izidre Nonell, 1903)<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A walking question mark, eyes set on a dead Jerusalem, his right hand pumping some terrible piston, up the lane, past the stagnant pond, into &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":2747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sunday Edition Live, with\n\nInventing the Other | poem by Mark Mayes\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199,170,213],"tags":[225,221,223,202,198,224,222],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-care-access-to-care","category-health","category-poetry","tag-lost-lives","tag-mental-distress","tag-outsiders","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-scapegoats","tag-the-other"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DOLORES-Izidre-Nonell-1903..jpg?fit=458%2C600&ssl=1","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3276,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions\/3276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}