TOM FITZSIMONS 

 

Call on me

 
Call on me, storm. 
Ask me what I think of you. 
 
I’ll tell you: not very much. 
You’re just brash and 
 
full of piss. Call on me, 
call on me, bird. 
 
Ask me how you look: 
ugly is the answer, 
 
like you came out of 
a washing machine 
 
after a black shirt ran, 
all the way to your eyes. 
 
Call on me, call on 
me, God. 
 
Ask me what I’m going to do 
for you. 
 
Oh, oh, you’re afraid? 
Damn right. I would have told you 
 
you’re getting nothing from me, 
me who never asked for making 
 
and found you always breaking 
our appointments 
 
and watched you always taking 
your hand away 
when I went for a high five. 
 
But call on me, God. Call on me 
if you have the time. 
 
Call, call, call on me. 

Listen to Tom Fitzsimons read ‘Call on me

I meant to have done more

Adam Smith, 1723-1790 

 
My hands are weak 
as spectres tonight; so white 
they are nearly invisible. 
 
Here is my going, 
and still half of Edinburgh 
as mad as bees. 
 
Who of you will heed? 
And, if I’ll permit myself 
a little casting forwards, 
 
how will you heed? 
What will be the manner 
of your manufacture? 
 
How high will your factories 
be, and how dark 
their heat? 
 
Oh, I meant to have done 
more. Meant to have turned down 
the portman’s wage, meant 
 
to have thought 
through the wheeling to come, 
the cogs that have already begun 
 
to turn. 
And here is the French girl in my ear 
saying: let be, 
 
hush, let be. 
But ho, these hands are fading and 
not everything will have its advantage. 
 
Oh, I meant for more to be written; 
I meant for all 
to be well. 
 

Listen to Tom Fitzsimons read ‘I meant to have done more’

White Tuxedo

 
The day the aliens came, 
I was dressed all in white. 
 
This meant they missed me 
with their beam. 
 
My friend Scott, in his red cap, got 
pulled upwards slowly. 
 
I watched him with my white hand 
across my white eyes, accidentally disguised. 
 
Scott never pointed, never said a thing 
but I bet he was wishing 
 
he had bought himself a white tuxedo, 
like I had, just the day before. 

Listen to Tom Fitzsimons read ‘White Tuxedo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Fitzsimons grew up on the east side but now lives on the west side. Of Wellington. He recently finished the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. He writes most of his poems very late at night.