Origins are not the only fruit

Here's the first-ish version of a poem that came out of Apples & Snakes/Adam Kammerling's fine Origins poetry workshop as part of Fareham Arts Festival. It'll probably get edited n times before I'm happy with it, or maybe not - who knows - and may even end up as part of the long 'Stingboy' piece I'm (still) writing - but it came from an exercise looking at listing places we've lived, things we've said, music that was formative and so on, with the aim of incorporating them into a poem. Hope you like it.

Untitled

I was born into a house of golliwogs,
spike-eyed toys,
soaps and sitcoms,
of throwaway laughs at 'Pakis', 'Micks' and 'nig-nogs',
of being dangled by one bony wrist,
a skinny meat piñata
hearing the repeated line
“if you won’t respect me,
at least you’ll fear me”,
a self-fulfilling prophecy,
all an inadequate man could offer me
bar processed pap
and welder’s-callus slaps,
driving home the message that
I wouldn’t like that foreign crap,
those raucous songs,
and anything beyond the grey-and-beige
is wrong, looks like trouble,
but doubled-up one school night,
snuck out to taste the flavour
of Iron Maiden,
so much sweeter than copper on the tongue,
a lonely lad’s first gig
well worth the late-back round of Dodgefist.

Fast-forwarding from ruddy rage,
riffling halfway through biro movies,
corner-paged,
I’m in Nai’posha, the Maasai’s cattle waterhole,
named for rough waters, ‘that which ebbs and flows’,
sun-drained then quenched
with rains and silty seasoning,
and it’s my inauguration by means
of shield and spear and knobkerrie,
story-telling,

quaffing nailang'a,

blood-and-milk straight from the gourd,

now I am a tribal brother,
clansman,
witness to the intimate cutting of others.

In the latest scene,
I say “I do”.

The positivity of migration

UKIP and others who whine about migrants are tiresome - here's the first draft of a piece about my own, more positive, observations about Polish people ('Polacy') in Southampton

Polacy w Southampton

I

Big man, crew-cut blonde,
baby in a biceps cradle,
gentle gorilla-father;
a second child plants conkers
in a newly tilled municipal flower-bed.

II

Zesty girl on the school bus,
alpha of her Year 8 peers,
climbing rails like they are monkey-bars,
open-mouthed surprise when I ask
‘excuse me please’ –
proszę, przepraszam
in English-accent Polish.

III

One of so many languages
spoken here and mingling in mid-air –
by workmen crowded onto lunchtime public benches,
discussing football, cars, sandwich fillings,
by gaggles of much-preened teens
gossiping between texts,
by students, shop-assistants,
phone-box users sharing news,
by friends and poets,
by people of the city –
multicultural and working,
the opportunity for something new.

Prompty goodness

Yesterday was spent at a 'first thoughts' workshop based around Allen Ginsberg's idea that 'the first thought is the best one'. So, numerous writing prompts and example poems were provided as inspiration to write pieces within short periods of time (6 to 14 minutes depending on the prompt/proximity to lunchtime) after which there were opportunnity to read and critique. This is what came out of the 'beach' prompt and is about a place very near my home.

The beach

Bishy Beach, roadside gravelled arc,
a magnet for shirtless, baggy-shorted teens
to splash, sunlit, where gypsy girls on ponies waded
while mallards, hunting bread-chunks,
dodge the swimming dogs.

Downstream, an angler,
hook-capped in waders and multipocket waistcoat,
grumbles about the frightened state of trout.

By night, a lone pubgoer
eats tinfoiled meat madras
with a plastic fork
as bats take mayflies from fishes’ mouths.

Ponds, rellies and makeshift tools

Reading my brother-in-law's facebook post about the weather and garden flooding from the perspective of an everyday family situation (and some DIY), I was taken by its almost prose-poetry style and the trio of trios found within. With his permission I edited it into verse form.

In threes

As I brush my teeth,
I look out of the bathroom window
then go back to the sink
as the minty foam is on the point of escape.

I've not been down to the bottom of the garden for quite a few days
but the silver of the sun-lit ponds seems to have become bigger.
Tom (my youngest son), Dad and I go down to check –
the top pond has burst its banks
and there is a stream running over the top of the dam
into the second
and leaking
into
the third,
and
out again –
water,
water everywhere.

The overflow for the top pond is easily unblocked –
the water flows freely,
whooshing straight into the other two ponds.
Also blocked,
the overflow pipe for the third pond is twenty feet long.
The longest things we can find –
a special spade,
a handle for something,
a stick,
are taped together
and we fight our way through the undergrowth,
bloody brambles, sodding holly,
into the stream below.

We feed in the long, unwieldy thing,
push-pull, push-pull,
then more whooshing –
on reflection,
it would have been more sensible
to unblock the lowest pipe first.

Benefits of autumn

It's that time of year again - yes, it might get cold and wet, but there are...

Benefits of autumn

Light the stove
with last year’s gathered logs –

watching it flicker,
lovers huddle under duvets
as trees turn to flame,
wych hazel red-margined
and camouflaged against
our rusted iron fire-bowl –

kicking through drifts of
lime-tree seeds, we collect
baskets of apples and quince
for pressing-day.

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 10

NaPoWriMo day 10; a poem not of love, nor of hate, but of ‘un-love’(here's another from a fellow NaPoWriMo addict)

Caring for the Unloved

Pick the woodlice from our firewood stack,
Before it’s set to burn,
And with a puff of loving breath,
Send tiny barklice floating,
Safely up and far from flames,
Alighting where they will,
Give house-spiders time to flee,
When hoovering away
The dust-hung dereliction of their disused webs,
After all they ate the mozzies while we slept,
But now those tiny carcasses must be swept,
Despite foot-waving eight-legg’d ire,
Fix me if you must with your many eyes,
You’ll not be squashed or flushed,
Nor go into the fire,
Nudge flies unharmed towards the open air,
(They are so helpful with decay,
But seem content to butt the glass all day),
Wasps as well, though with more care,
At arm’s-length with The Guardian,
Or from a postcard-cappèd glass,
And when outdoors at night please mindful be,
Of snails who might crunch underfoot,
Escargots now escar-gone,
Smeared on heels or ‘tween the toes,
Are ‘yuk’ to feel and sad to see,
While garden larvae, pupae too, stay free,
However pale and maggoty,
Who knows what they’ll grow up to be?
In this ahimsa-tinted urban patch,
Grateful for the good bugs do,
And not just the pretty-wingèd ones,
Or bright-striped fuzzy pollinators,
It matters less than just one jot,
Whether they are easy on the eye,
Move along - no lookists here,
Though slugs that come indoors must die!

First Fog of Autumn

Early one October morning,
Before my usual waking time,
Though diffuse through hard-closed drapery
The daylight differs – I look and see;
Rows of rooftops grey and hazy,
Behind them treetops almost vanished,
Islands in a misty sea,
And so the thought that there might be
One more late day of hidden summer,
Evaporates as does the fog,
Beneath autumnal rays of sunshine,
Boiled away in a few short minutes,
While I sit and muse and drink my tea.

A husband ill

Dressed in sweat and layered shirts,
My nose it runs, my throat it hurts,
Fuzzy-headed, steel-band brows,
Gravel-eyes, gritpaper sore,
Philtrum red, nose redder still,
Hanky-stuffed, I sneeze and cough.
Can’t stay awake, can’t lie and sleep,
Bring soup and tea – more soup and tea!
Hot stove, hot bath, then off to bed –
I have man-flu.