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”.

Polyamory - of a sort

From a seed sown on facebook...


The Prince

“How often do you fall in love?”
“Very”, I reply.
“How much is ‘very’? Tell the truth.”
“Every day”, I sigh,
with a book, a scene, a character,
a passing patch of sky,
a pleasing string of numbers
or artistic use of line,
with accidental patterns
that grab and hold my eye,
in marble-veins or water,
or window-frosting rime,
with songs of depth and solitude
whose singers make me cry,
a glance from someone beautiful,
and more so if they smile,
with the sway of wind-blown trees,
moments out of time,
and sometimes just with strangers
who might otherwise pass by.
“So, should you fall in love less?”
“I suppose that I could try”.
“But would you really want to?”
“No, my love is fine”.

Post-election and it's time to get spiky

So, Britain's gone Tory and it makes me feel physically sick. Why anyone apart from the uber-wealthy 1% votes for them I'll never really understand, but those who did are responsible for the evil that will follow - destruction of the NHS and loss of the Human Rights Act to name just two of their foul intentions. So, in the spirit of feeling very angry indeed, here's some taking-it-personally-so-making-it-personal doggerel. If you're reading this and voted Tory, you are unlikely to enjoy the experience, but that's nothing compared to the harm such ballot-box short-sightedness will end up causing countless others...

Blues

A Tory will not love you,
they think only of themselves,
no time to care for others
when they’re worshipping their wealth.

Their parents are just sources
of inheritance and coin,
and short-term gain even outweighs
the fruit of their own loins.

“Surely they love their own dear kids”
I hear you all exclaim,
but no they don’t, not deep inside –
the reason I’ll explain.

They throw away their human rights
and healthcare on the sly,
their own descendants’ futures sold
for a slice of selfish pie.

They care nothing for the consequence
of the cult-of-self they follow,
a quick tax-break this afternoon
and the world could burn tomorrow.

They’ll kick a cripple on the floor,
destroy the air we breathe,
for every vote placed next to ‘blue’,
lay someone else’s wreath,

So, if you love a Tory,
even if your heart is true,
unless you’re made of money,
they surely won’t love you.

Setting a benchmark

A work-in-progress... I'm mostly happy with it, but not sure about the last line. Should it end at 'replace' I wonder?


Exclusion principle

Stranger,
who, so the small plaque says,
loved this spot,
you could not have sat here,
for the seat was placed in your memory,
greatly missed by some friend or relative.
Did they share your view
over scrubby downs
and patchy woodland where coppicemen,
smelters and charcoal-burners
once fed those
hungry for iron.

I choose not to sit,
but stay to watch a hornet
scrape pulp for her nest,
taking papier-mâché mouthfuls
of you
from oak slat and upright.

If I return in a ten-year,
will weather, fungus, woodworm,
or vandals at play,
have done their work,
leaving just a level patch of grass
where council employees
tossed your remains into a flatbed,
for it is policy to neither repair
nor replace
deaths marked by furniture.

Passion playtime

Written to be performed at the Art House-hosted launch of Grant Sharkey's album Free Nuggets - the 3rd of 40 albums planned to be released over 20 years. The theme of the night was 'passion' and it landed around Easter...

Rhyme of passion

Passiflora edulis,
flowers' elaborate sex-organs,
botanical baboon-bums
on display for all to see
and sniff
and lick (that’s bees),
fruit split and parted
by deft fingers, practised thumbs,
sticky seed-mass probed with tongues,
while Easter Sunday mornings
are more fun
with tousled tumblings,
duvet bundlings
than Via Dolorosa sufferings,
a two-thousand-year old tale
used to summon church-roof funding
from ex-Brigadiers,
broad-‘tached and grumbling
that ‘eating’ wasn’t so messy in their time
but hey – pleasure isn’t guilty
and passion’s not a crime.

When love comes to drown

Something for World Poetry Day: relationships...

Flood

When you cry,
I try to hold on
but you are racked with sobs
so mediaeval
you could be a thousand years away.

When you cry,
I get angry
but I don’t know what at,
because I can’t see what’s upsetting you
so, for all my tools and skills,
I don’t know how to fix it.

When you cry,
I move in to hug you,
but my strong arms
dissolve in your tears –
my legs follow
and we both start to fall.

When you cry
my world floods
and I forget how to swim –
submerged,
all teardrops are lost,
indistinguishable
in the saltwater surrounds.

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.

Measuring or obscuring depth

People's depths are so often hidden... audio version here.

Bathymetry

You are the shifting peat-water mosaic,
the ripples
with bright-white reflections,
the iridescent swirls of petrol,
the severed ROV umbilicus,

you are the anechoic tiles
baffling to sonar,
the rope, knotted at intervals
and lost overboard,

the sepia squirt
of a retreating cephalopod,

you are crude immersion-oil,
the tattooist’s needle-gun,
the final block of a pyramid
fitting razor-tight,

you are the historical weight
of De Profundis,
the sediments stirred up by my movements,
the shallow angle of incidence,
the attenuation of blue wavelengths,

you are the slow and nourishing
accumulation of snow,
the silhouette of a leviathan,
the spawning of the multitudes,
the roiling baitball,
food for sharks,

you are the vent’s hot outpouring,
the well-cover, hungry for offerings,
the last thoughts of a sailor
dashed upon sharp rocks,
still dreaming of mermaids,

you are positive vetting
in a negative world,
the trapdoor to an oubliette,
the anchor snagged on coral,
dragging harm behind,

you are the printer’s forgotten thumb-print,
the falling storm-split spar,
the pitch-soaked bandage,
the gyroscope frozen in space,

you are the cataract,
eutrophication,
leaf-litter,
old horizons –
you are surface tension.

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.

Of corsair I will

The pirate d’amour

I am the pirate of your heart,
I'll privateer you, buccaneer you,
Haul myself over hot keels,
Walk the plank if I have to,
Dive into your ocean
With a double-twisting, double back-somersault,
Entering with just the right amount of splash,
Difficulty 3.4, execution 10s across the board
(Enjoy the applause);
I will capture for you
Spanish galleons laden with doubloons,
Tricornucopias of riches laid out in treasure-rooms,
Taken while swinging from a yard-arm rope,
Cutlass clamped between chipped teeth,
Though, like any other man,
I am no island,
And would not wish to be marooned,
Even if
I sometimes need
To wander from the archipelago.

Mollusculation

A little molluscan versery...

Kissing the snail

The lipless mollusc puckers up,
Rasping tongue withdrawn –
There’ll be no escargot-kissing today;
Its footgutface extends
A tentacle or four
To feel-taste-see
If you are reciprocating –
Don’t mind the slime,
What’s a little mucus between friends?
Gently cup the spiral shell, lean in,
Hoping for a flash-bang-twinkle,
To manifest a glittering prince or princess –
Sorry, but that’s frogs
And you’ve just kissed a gastropod.

Not forgot

This just called to me today - an old friend, gone but not forgotten...

Our friend Dickie

Our friend Dickie
Was tall.
Our friend Dickie
Was gangly and ginger,
His head was hard, his elbows bony,
He liked to cycle,
He fell off in a hedge or three –
Oh, how we laughed, but then –
He fell off in the road,
He fell off on the cycle-path,
He left his bike outside the pub
And fell down anyway.

You see,
Our friend Dickie
Liked a drink
And the drink liked company –
A quick one led to 3, 4, 5, 10,
He nearly disappeared but then
A fine, round, smily girl called Esther
Brought him back, gawd bless ‘er –
Love let him let the drink stay lonely.

They got engaged and all was tea and roses,
Chainsaws and posies,
Or would’ve been if only
A random passing fool,
All cheap-lager-sodden-cruel
And Saturday-nightly shirted-and-tied
Hadn’t picked a fight and hit him –
One punch, legs went, too punch-sober,
He fell,
Head smack-cracked on hard kerb-corner,
Brain-bled, he died –
It was all over bar the mourners.

Our friend Dickie
Wasn’t hard, but like I said,
We thought he had a hard head,
Our friend Dickie
Couldn’t be gone,
Couldn’t be dead
‘Cos he’d only just come back
From the soaked and rotten,
All-but-forgotten side of the tracks,
And if dead,
That’d be wrong –
He’d miss our wedding,
My Best Man’s wedding,
His own wedding,
But he is and he did –
A decade on,
He is still missed.

Small-town stuff

Another bit of relative lightness, with just a hint of something else...

What I did on my half-a-day (Eastleigh)

Posted a manuscript, Special Delivery;
Fairtrade rooibos, loo-roll and chat,
Bought a new (recycled) poem-pad,
Sat in a coffee-shop writing hard verse,
To the taste of Türk kahvesi and panini,
Next door, the museum,
New exhibition - ‘Then and Now’,
Saw how my local patch has changed,
In the last one hundred years,
For the better? I think worse,
Left my thoughts upon a hook-hung luggage-tag as asked;
Framed a wedding ode I wrote,
A gift for friends they’ll like, I hope,
Learned another magic trick,
Denigrated several kippers,
(You know, those purple people-cheaters)
Wowed my wife with an artistic bargain,
And an offering from a mate –
A fine new artisanal bake –
Then hugged her (she is busy),
Charmed goldfinches in the garden
With market-day-bought nyger seed,
Now I’ll watch them and sip tea.

What I writ on my holidays - Part 3

Continuing from here...

Hetty Pegler’s Tump

In the corner of a farmer’s field,
A green-grassed mound,
Five thousand years above the plough,
Elliptical and ancient –
Enter thou, by twin-horned crawlway,
Slab-tunneled,
Pitch-dark void beyond;
Walls part, vault lifts,
To permit a penitent crouch –
Proceed by touch,
Small chambers open to the sides,
Once bone-alcoves,
Reliquaries for remains
Of the skyclad dead,
Clean, raven-picked
And collected,
To what chants and drums
We can never know –
Mourned, revered or celebrated,
Now empty but for Neolithic echoes
And us.

NaPoWriMo day 21

NaPoWriMo day 21. The prompt was to rewrite ‘Lines For The Fortune Cookies’ by Frank O’Hara – here’s the original. My take on this was less ‘gnomic-cookie’ style and is in the ottava rima rhyming pattern (abababcc) from NaPoWriMo day 8. The repeated line-opening is not something I've tried before.

Predictive Text

You will ignore a tall, dark stranger,
You will find ways of making us talk,
You’ll toss your hair and laugh at danger,
You’ll re-popularise the old Lambeth Walk,
You’ll put a curse on Hermione Granger,
You’ll marry Jack and inherit the beanstalk,
You’ll cross the Atlantic by paddle-steamer,
And you will skip among the lemurs.

You will stray from the path whenever you can,
You will dance with the fairies on the head of a pin,
You’ll tour playing drums for the Wu-Tang Clan,
You’ll have a brief encounter with your unknown twin,
You will sleep soundly in your Citalo-pram,
You’ll find there’s nowt original ‘bout Original Sin,
You will be seneschal of your own grand castle,
And you’ll post yourself to Bali in an airmail parcel.

You’ll read the truth writ large in the stars up in the sky,
You’ll tumble with your lover on a sunny, verdant hill,
You’ll brilliantly discover the final part of pi,
You’ll learn to move a mountain with the sheer force of your will,
You’ll listen to the essence of a newborn flower’s cry,
You’ll spend a year a-surfin’, going by the nickname ‘Chill’,
You’ll make sure all the conquerors leave their bloody flags full-furled,
And you will save the world.