Vicarious performance

Inspired by a 2-hour performance by Louiza Hamidi in Southampton, 26th April 2013.

Vicarious performance (mask)

I am scared and crying,
The slab-cold meat
Hangs cloyingly upon my face,
I sicken at its stink,
Its bloody mess
Will not let me see,
Out through the glass in front of me.

I am scared and crying,
I know the passers-by are staring,
In from the street, uncomprehending,
But I’m blinded by the flesh,
All I can do is stand, impassive,
A test of strength –
‘No reaction’ equals power
Over obstacles and fears
And any inability to access, connect, engage.

I am scared and crying,
But the rawness hides my tears.

NaPoWriMo day 30

Day 30 - here it is, NaPoWriMo done and dusted for 2013, over, complete, reached its terminus. Thanks to the admins for the inspiring prompts - I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and am pleased to have managed a poem for each, not to mention having my offering for Day 21 featured on the NaPoWriMo webpage - yay! The last prompt is to rewrite an existing shortish poem by changing words to their opposites and tweaking as necessary. I’ve gone for Stevie Smith’s Not Waving But Drowning.

Both still and surfacing

Everyone saw her, the woman who survived,

No more would she stand stoically:

You are no nearer than their imaginings

Both still and surfacing.

Fortunate lass, she never minded quietude

Later, as then, she’ll remain alive,

It will be warm enough for her, her heart will keep beating,

No-one will see.

Yes, yes, thrice yes, it will never be too cold

(The survivor will flee silently)

You’ll never be quite near enough

Both still and surfacing.

NaPoWriMo day 29

Oooo, it's NaPoWriMo day 29 - just one more to go - and the penultimate prompt is to write a poem including at least five words from other languages. I’ve gone for numbers as I’ve learned these and various other fragments of a fair few languages over the years. Here are the first six verses of what will be expanded into a rather longer piece…

Cheerleaders of the world unite

Two, four, six eight,
Do our words depreciate?
Three, five, seven, nine,
Not if we perform on time,
Speak the minute, second, hour,
Verses blossom, passion-flowered,
Cold black bile or sticky-sweet,
Angsty trick or tasty treat.

Deux quatre six huit
Does Baudelaire have Shakespeare beat ?
Trois cinq sept neuf
No chance ami, not on my turf,
The Bard’s just bought his ivory tower,
And skips stiff-ruffed ‘neath rush-lit bowers,
Soliloquys in Stratford’s streets,
Where airs and sonnets maidens meet.

Due quattro sei e otto,
Pay the piper, that’s my motto,
Tre e cinque sette nove,
Never mess with Kaiser Soze,
The Mafia have nowt on him,
Concrete-booted one-way swim,
Grist for King’s Pet Semetary,
Reanimated zombie - scary.

Zwei vier sechs acht,
Get your busking butt well-parked,
Drei fünf sieben neun,
Into the hat old pfennig coins,
Profits meagre, pickings slim,
Beholden to the punter‘s whim,
Though still enough to get mead-merry,
Ferment the hops, the grain, the berry.

Dau pedwar chwech wyth,
Stuff my face with bara brith,
Tri pump saith naw,
Off to eisteddfod, man of straw,
Poet-battles, kennings slam,
Metheglin drunk by the dram,
Flaunt your metaphor prowess,
Poetry, words‘ party-dress.

Tvö fjögurra sex átta,
Viking skalds and saga-chatter,
þrjú fimm sjö níu,
Sing ho and raise a longship crew,
Strike the oar upon the fjord,
Tie your bride‘s bright hand-fast cord,
Live your life by Havarmal,
Brief pre-Valhalla interval.

[to be continued...]

NaPoWriMo day 28

NaPoWriMo day 28 - a colour-poem – time to get the thesaurus out, plus a little bit of science…

400 nanometres (non-spectral)

Old Tyrian murex-dye
Stains the vestments of imperial nobility,
Royalty and piety,
They are born to it, so,
Peasant, no – you may not wear this
Colour of a wounded heart,
(We may permit it as a bruise)
Of Easter, Lent and Mardi Gras,
Look upon it, kneel and pray,
Or dance the carnival away,
See it in fruit and veg and bloom,
Like Cab Sav’s much sought-after grape,
In the vin rouge tasting room,
Plum and shine-skinned aubergine,
In the garden, mulberry,
The lilac and the lavender,
Orchids, mallows, fuchsia too,
Spring-petalled violet, delicate,
So many tints in nature’s palette,
Thistle, flower of the Scots,
And phlox, Jimi Hendrix’ fave,
Black-lit on stage,
At any psychedelic rave;
Mauve, from Perkin’s aniline,
Victorian synthetic
Found by serendipity,
Pizzazz, invented as a crayon,
Magenta (Hot and Sky and Haze)
Named for a battle, olden days ,
Steel Pink and bright quinacridone,
So many variations by Pantone,
Purple, purple everywhere,
Start wearing it for me.

NaPoWriMo day 27

NaPoWriMo day 27. The prompt was to think of a well-known phrase and Google the first three words, taking material from the top however-many hits to create a poem. I went for ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’, avoiding paraphrasing the original idiom or pilfering bits from existing works with this title such as ‘One Man’s Meat’ by E.B.White or the Deep Purple song lyrics. This is what appeared:

One man’s meat

On the brink of madness,
I am hopelessly infatuated,
Too personal for an almanac,
Too sophisticated,
Too funny and self-doubting,
Please notice that I'm not asking -
Menace just wants to pick a fight,
And it doesn't matter if there's no issue.

Giving reasons, I puzzled over why
The reasonable, truthful writer
Put an end to all this nonsense
Despite the glamour –
Something to do with the echo of threat,
Being ripped apart,
Chaos popularly expressed
As he investigates the body,
Treasure in the idioms, unlike death,
Remains mere speculation,
Agitation for autonomy,
Meaning, expansion, explanation -
I really hadn't expected this,
A domestic history I'm not good enough to enter,
Sad that a beautiful trip came to an end,
Stories without jargon and without too much weightiness,
Proclaiming this one of the best -
To my mind there is nothing quite so dramatic.

Across the world,
Come home to roost,
Cyclopean gods and monsters
Touch a raw nerve,
Spitting into a test tube,
Met with dread by most,
They have never (hardly ever)
Responded to the assertion
About the futility of a perfect example,
But let's face it,
One of us is missing and presumed eaten.

The strategic end of the New
Carries more weight than meets the eye,
All in a day's work when fleshing out
Any lingering doubts about
The obstacles it faces,
For, conveying the truth,
Few people seem to be rewarded -
It baffles me to imagine how
An imprisoned man is certain
Everyone seems to have at least one tune,
Picked with care and pampered for years,
I have a question for you -
What do you mean you don't?

NaPoWriMo day 26

NaPoWriMo day 26. A difficult one this – an ‘erasure’ poem i.e. taking words and letters away from an existing poem and keeping the remainder as originally paginated. I went for Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If----‘

I

I              can keep  our head 

                the n       blam

I  can trust you     hen         men doubt

But         all            their        doubt

I              can         it              red

Or            lie  about, do l       l 

                don’t give way 

                ok too good,  or    wise:

I              can dream – a      master;

I              can think -             our aim;

I              Triumph

And  eat                 impostors

I              can         hear        you’ve spoken

Twisted                                                  fool 

                watch     your life                 broken, 

                too                          worn-out 

I              make one              of            you 

                                one  urn of pitch 

                lo , an  art              our be     ings 

                ever        at a                         loss;

I              for you  hear         a              new

To           turn                         the          one, 

                so hold   her          not          in 

                the  ill                     the          old

I              talk with crow s and  you   r ue, 

                th ings – or lose                    touch,

If            the          f iends    hurt you, 

                men count  you,   one too much;

I                              the  forgiving        nut 

 it s          worth      a              run,

You        art           everything

And        i               a Man    !

NaPoWriMo day 25

NaPoWriMo day 25 is ballad-day – I’ve amended the traditional abab rhyme-form slightly by putting in alternate abcc-rhyming verses – kind of half way between a ballad and an ottava rima, and back to one of my fave topics - nature…

The Ballad of Woodland Pond

Lacustrine waters gladed,
Away from public gaze,
Kingcups burst unfaded,
Into golden sunlit rays.

Tadpoles hide enshaded,
In tiny hidden bays,
Confound the heron’s stabbing beak,
They’ll all grow legs before next week.

Sylvan pool a-shimmer,
Rippled by the breeze,
Surface-world pond-skimmers,
Dart beneath the trees.

Brimstone’s yellow glimmer,
Flutters past the bumblebees,
The pollen and the nectar sweet,
From flowers bloomed in April heat.

Sticklebacks swim figure-eights,
Between the cut-stem reeds,
To claim their patches, so to mate,
Amongst the silted weed.

Manic whirligigs gyrate,
Spinning black-shine beads,
Then, briefly glimpsed splay-footed newt,
Clasping yellow-iris roots.

Jut-jawed dragon-nymph appears,
Basking in the glow,
Unexpectedly it’s speared,
By Nepa from below.

Blade-legs grip and grasp and shear,
Spike-mouthed, deceptive-slow,
Above, a mallard pair take flight,
Into the air and out of sight.

So we leave too, our day is done,
Mere watchers of undine’s domain,
Her history told, her tale fine-spun,
When will we see her realm again?

NaPoWriMo day 24

NaPoWriMo's day 24 prompt was to take the results from putting your name into an online anagram-finder and use them to write a poem about yourself. I’ve tweaked this slightly in the light of the words that popped out and, after some umming-and-ahing, decided instead to plump for pure smut!

Anagram me filthy

A bidden velvet bush,
Shaved bulb evident,
Dubbed in the valves,
Stubbed vein halved,
Behind de best vulva,
Delvin’, have bust bed,
Vend thus, Devil-babe,
Lavish event dubbed
“Have duvets nibbled”

NaPoWriMo day 23

NaPoWriMo day 23. Another previously unfamiliar (to me) verse form – the triolet. These are 8 lines long, 8 syllables per line, rhyming pattern AbaAabAB with lines 1, 4 & 7 identical, ditto lines 2 & 8 which means the first and last couplets are the same. So, in a spirit of poetical rigour, here’s a ‘Trio of triolets’:

Verse me slowly and verse me quick,
Three poets weaving – speak, speak, speak,
Your words will show what makes you tick,
Verse me slowly and verse me quick,
Give my behind a verbal kick,
Let moth-light phrases kiss my cheek,
Verse me slowly and verse me quick,
Three poets weaving – speak, speak, speak.

Know you your place, systematised,
Pin through the back, left of centre,
Held fast in forceps, scrutinised,
Know you your place, systematised,
Described by parts, taxonomised,
Stroke the needle, feel it enter,
Know you your place, systematised,
Pin through the back, left of centre.

An epic fail was Pavlov’s cat,
However much he’d plead and beg,
And tempt with chicken, cream and sprats,
An epic fail was Pavlov’s cat,
Who, when the bell rang, simply sat,
And washed beneath uplifted leg -
An epic fail was Pavlov’s cat,
However much he’d plead and beg…