Today I am Wearing denim
and a cotton shirt
both are faded naturally
by sun and age and wear
The jeans are now for DIY
the front of the thighs
covered with finger wipe marks
not as many colours
as when I was a signwriter
and other substances too
grittily mixed in
The rips are fashionable
but not fashioned to be so
nevertheless my grandsons
have dibs on their genuine distress!
The grandfather shirt
collarless
also faded with age
to a soft, pale blue
is frayed at the cuffs
and relegated to work
rather than repair
too late to turn
these cuffs
I will walk to the supermarket
and I hope someone
will appreciate my look
like women who dress
their best
though not looking to pull.
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
This poem was not done to any prompt or challenge – I know – unbelievable! However, since I have been exploring AI (see previous posts), I decided to see whether I could produce a suitable image and below is the nearest to what I imagined. The prompt was “a gently smiling late middle age man seen full-length wearing a faded blue collarless shirt with frayed cuffs and faded denim jeans with paint marks and rips down the front shopping in a supermarket –ar 4:6” and I then cropped the image in Photoshop. As you can see, the AI bot didn’t understand collarless, and in this iteration did not make much of the distressing of the jeans. I guess it shows that in this case, a picture is unnecessary since the poem says it all and allows the reader to imagine their own image but I decided to include it as part of my AI exploration. And by the way, it doesn’t look anything like me – far more handsome…
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, Andrew. Vividly descriptive, liked the wander into your grandson’s fashion sense, and the last stanza wraps it up perfectly. I wonder how MJ would respond if you changed collarless shirt to a Henley shirt.
I wonder – I never heard of a Henley shirt I must try it – I have been so busy writing that I’ve done nothing on Midjourney recently…