Wordy workshops and ichthyology

From yesterday's Archimedes Screw workshop on using social media (etc) to create poetry. One exercise was to find a tweet or facebook status update, then use it as a repeated refrain. BTW, Sphoeroides is a genus of pufferfish...

Homo sphoeroides

Platy teeth crush shells and carapaces,
tetrodotoxin awaits unwary fugu-diners
with diaphragm paralysis –
bite me, I’ll bite your lungs,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Hanging boxily in warm midwater,
unhydrodynamic, spines flat for now –
approach with caution,
spikes may rise like the sun,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Slow but manoeuverable, comfort-built,
achieving surprising short-distance speed,
OK – an acquired taste maybe,
floating relaxedly rotund,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

I sit at depth, playing in the sand,
making submarine crop-circles,
supposedly enticing new mates,
but spawning’s done,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

A thousand years after the Vikings...

The Havarmal, sometimes called 'The Book of Viking Wisdom' or similar, is part of the Elder or Poetic Edda and is a collection of how-to-live-your-life sayings attributed to Odin. Stanza 75 is one of the most famous sections and translates along the lines of:

"Cattle die and kinsmen die,
all men are mortal.
Words of praise
will never perish,
nor a noble name."

So, Odin tells us we will be remembered by our good deeds, long after we have died. Sounds OK to me...

A Modern Havarmal

Few now own cattle, fewer spears
Or speak of ‘kinsmen’
But still, ‘tis good to live a tale worth telling,
To waken new each day while still unwaked,
Live well
And in doing so
Free the Earth and Man from bonds
Of wanton avarice,
Of small-mindedness
And unenlightened dumb self-interest –
Repay at least a little
Of what we can not help but take,
Oppose by witness borne,
By passive lock and shackle,
Or carefully placed cyber-sabot –
Bring down the bad,
Let them take their shots;
Publish and be culture-jammed –
Fear not
The fear-mongers and the haters,
The sorrow-leeches feeding on
A dead man’s grief –
No words will hail them
In their dishonour,
But rain down hard
The mockery of tear-streaked clowns,
Of drummers, singers,
Lovers, dancers,
Readers, writers, learners,
Players and creators,
Gentle citizens and warriors
Steal the wheels from their bandwagon
By acts of mindful, kind dissent –
That’s time well-spent
When all is said and cited,
There is no life in spite,
And revenge is best kept off the menu
To avoid a world gone blind.

Four more modern haiku

It's hot today, so keeping things brief...

I

Fruit machine winner
returns to coin slots like a
dog to its vomit.

II


To infinity
and… there is no beyond, but
I guess that’s the point.

III

Power-mongers hate
renewables ‘cos Third World
has plenty solar.

IV

Climate of Hunter,
Tilt, Drift, Bish Bosch – progression
of music and mind.

Trying to avoid excessive use of superlatives

Inspired by yesterday's amazing ascent of the Shard by Greenpeace volunteers.

#iceclimb

One giant shard of city crystal,
six ants,
all queens,
skip security,
slowly swarm up
a thousand sheer-slab feet of protest,
an urban berg,
to fly the Arctic flag in clear skies where
actions
provoke a Twitter-storm,
hashtag, retweet, share
and feelings of vicarious adrenaline.

Outflanked,
Shell fume silently at the Trendmap,
suits, tie-tongued, mutter nothings about safety,
shuffle off to sign
more soulless polar drilling deals,
words
ringing in their shell-likes, change waiting on lines one, two, three…
after fifteen hours of hard-won history,
damn,
but it was beautiful to see.

de facto censorship

When the media decide what you should know...


No news is bad news

Iceland

Bankers jailed for gambling away
everybody else’s money on lame horses.
Government and economy reclaimed for the people
in a Norse perestroika.
Not in the news.

Brazil

Street protests dwarf those in ‘V for Vendetta’ fantasies.
Police driven into the sea,
police become refuseniks,
police stand with protesters,
tribespeople occupy logging HQs.
There’s more going on than football and beach-bums.
Not in the news.

Sri Lanka

Shelling of civilians, and summary executions,
soldiers jeer lewdly at the naked bodies of dead women,
war criminals pose for photos with corpses,
expressing their desire to mutilate.
Brown children press-ganged and killed by the hundred.
Not in the news.

United Kingdom

One whiteblonde child disappears,
a footballer hurts his foot,
a British tourist dies in a bus crash abroad (ignore the 47 others),
a Royal sneezes,
some Z-lister wears a new dress –
See the headlines scream and the column-inches multiply.
The news is full.

I tri to univocalise

ibid.

Bring crisps, chips, drinks in tins,
fight-night is nigh,
fit fists hitting chins, TV-bright –
Biff!
Spit split lip-bits, pink, thick.

I sit with misgivings,
sipping citric gin,
wishing it’d finish – tick tick tick,
minim-clicks.
I’m missing BBC’s rib-tickling skits,
sci-fi films, British fright-flicks.

Living with dimwits is shit,
six chimps igniting spliffs,
yipping, big-dicking,
swilling Pils (bits spill),
pissing Klimt-lit drips
(in mind: shivs, picks, flinging bricks).

‘Ring-ring, ring-ring.’
‘Hi’ – it’s Irish Jim with skins, trips,
limping,
flicking blim,
iThing whistling Limp Bizkit.
Inviting him in, civil-ish,
I skip-zip lightning-quick,
quitting this tip right-swift, midnight flit.

Kip in Tim’s Civic? Fritz’s Mini?
Siri’s ringing – it’s Jim, livid,
Tirpitz sinking in villi.
Dicing with risk, inciting plight - think,
climb in big bin,
flip lid,
piri-piri whiff,
filing piling high –
shitting it, chill-pills kick in,
silent, I rigid-digit Jim.

First thing, switch limits:
Hiding in hills?
Ritz?
Mississippi tipi?
Flight it is.
Sigh.

Perspectives

Scenes from a double-decker

Old lady with a black-dyed bouffant bald patch.
Roadside moorhen nest (punky chicks).
Ragwort growing from an upstairs window frame,
halfway to the sparrows living in the eaves.

Other top-floor travellers at eye-level
(if not eye-contact).
The little aerial atop a bus-stop
collecting estimated times of arrival.
The ubiquity of single shoes.

Some ummm… interesting views of cleavages.
The onrushing slap of twigs and leaves,
the approach of the next biro-jarring bump.
How the supermarket’s wall of greenery lies.
Men (only men) collecting train numbers,
shuffling like the walrus lumbers,
choo-choo-g’joob.

The texture of slate tiles and leadwork.
How people sometimes seem to know I’m looking
but not that, or what, I’m writing.
Teenagers smoking behind a hedge –
private privet.

The contents of that bin,
that drain,
that pram,
that garden.

Railway ballast, Hippo-bagged, Buddleia-hidden.
Scars on the head of a swaggering fool,
walks the monkey-walk,
talks the monkey-talk?

Sprigs of a green mohican
sprout like grass through cycle-helmet slits.
Cracked grave-slabs by a cricket pitch
next to where the ponies mooch
and crane-necked tradesmen
muse upon the old church roof.

Middle English satire

Carrying on from a few recent political poems, here is one that's proved humorous and popular at a few open 'mics lately. UKIP are almost (only almost) too easy to mock, but it felt only right to do so in the style of an icon of 'Englishnesse', Chaucer.

Prologue to the Bigot’s Tale

A BIGOT ther was, and an unworthy man,
That from the time he first began
In politicks, he most loved bigotrie,
Lies and dishonour, racism and discurtesie.

Ful foule he was in spreading spite,
At publick meetings, dailye speaking shite
Evere mocked, and rightly, for small-mindednesse,
Like EDL and BNP, though I digresse;

Yclept Niggle, sonne of Farage,
Spawn of madde alchemist, I hear, near Harwich,
Brewed of toade all warty, slimèd slugge,
Bowelle tapeworm, fungal bugge;

The Petri dyshe felle onto the floore,
Out spillèd purple UKIP spores,
Sprouting tinie bile-filled colonies,
Infectious scabbes of xenophobe-disease.

The alchemist packed up his garage,
Fledde the unholie gene-spliced marriage,
Niggle grewe like wet-rot moulde
At first slowlie, truthe be tolde;

Until came Cameron, face alle smugge and greasie,
With his meannesse, made the Bigot’s task so easie,
To demonise the poore, the sicke, the needie,
Caste them alle as scroungers, slothfull, greedie;

Blame alle those who come from other places,
Feare dark skin, those scary foreign faces,
With their funnie food and trickye speake,
Niggle thinkes Englande was alle white untill last weeke;

A crappe pretender, afeared of Brussels and the Frenche,
Pretending that he speakes for us of common sense,
In truth his mouthe drippes ignorance with stench of kippers,
Did you know he spent his MEP allowances on strippers?

His loathesome crewe rowe their shippe of loons,
Alle swivell-eyed and ranting lyke baboons,
“No, no euro, we wante the pounde or better, groate,
Facts are of no consequence uponne this boate;”

“We wille be over-runne by hordes from Europe’s easte,
Africa and Asia - they come to steale oure benefittes and feaste,
On our good Britishe jobbes, it‘s alle their faulte,
Excepte the ones we lyke if they are goode at sporte.”

Great weighte of grosse stupiditie sank their rotten boate,
‘Twas ironicke that though fishie, these kippers do notte floate,
But sinke downe drowned into the mindlesse murke,
Now thinking Niggle was a plonker after alle, a burke.'

But the Bigot, he didde neither cayre nor see,
Too busy stepping lyke a goose in hys worlde imagin‘rie
Seeking votes like Narcissus at hys poole,
Not noticing alle otheres poyntinge, saying ‘What a toole'.