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”.

I don't write songs but I wrote this one

I write poems, lots of poems, and occasionally short stories. Songs, really not. But, information coming out of Palestine about what seem to be unquestionably Israeli war crimes (I'm not planning to discuss the issues here - go have a look beyond the mainstream Western media if you're not sure what I'm talking about, and visit the Palestine Solidarity Campaign), upsets me in a way that very little does. Angry, yes. Energised, yes. Rantsome, definitely. But proper, tears-welling-up, frustrated-at-the-sheer-brutality-and-injustice upset? Not often, but this does it. So I've written a song - it's a bit of a work-in-progress, but is easy to put chords to, and I hope you like it.

Free Palestine

The wall must fall, send the settlers home,
close the checkpoints, regrow the olive-groves,
doves over Gaza, not drones and jets,
missiles-v-fireworks is not self-defence,
Palestine’s unarmed, it has no armed forces,
like charging down tanks on cavalry horses.

Chorus:
Free free Palestine,
you can’t get to Zion by genocide,
Free free Palestine,
bombs on the beach,
dead kids on the strandline.

Netanyahu, like Sharon before,
stop your war crimes, close the door
on billions of dollars of military aid,
killing civilians with every raid,
tying children to the front of jeeps,
I hope it haunts you when you try to sleep.

Israel tear down the giant screens
broadcasting atrocities for all to see,
feeding your populace fear and hate,
dehumanised by a terror-state,
destroying hospitals, schools and homes,
is the devil’s work, built on bones.

Repeat chorus

So we boycott, march and protest
for human rights in a land once blessed
with sun, sea, milk and honey,
now blown away by guns and money
and the prejudice of politicians
who think extermination’s their God-given mission.

But on the streets of Tel Aviv,
ordinary people just want peace,
shootings and torture not done in their name,
warmongers and media steeped in shame,
refuse their propaganda, resist the lies,
show solidarity, and organise.

Repeat chorus to fade

A little more bro-etry

I was recently introduced to the concept of 'bro-etry' - poetry that speaks to blokes (they being a subset of 'men'). Here's something on this theme:

More Goldwing than Commando?

Old bikers maybe,
whose black t-shirts,
though sporting only the holes they were born with,
and not oil-soaked (or worse)
announce a liking
for Alien and Heath Ledger’s Joker
mostly unobscured by pony-tails
and heavy-metal beards.

Between sips and pots,
they reminisce about pool leagues past,
tut-tut dismay
at ale-stains on relaid baize
despite signs saying ‘no drinks here please’.

The louder one asks me what I’m writing;
it turns out he likes poetry
(even if he pretends it’s only
‘the-boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck’ variety)
and talks of folk-rock,
obscure bands and great nights out
in punky local venues –
it makes sense Blondie was his jukebox choice,
but INXS doesn’t fit
and as for Nickelback,
less said the better.

Recording them in biro scribbles,
I watch another frame fly by –
I thought they must be good
as, denims crisply laundered,
they brought their own brass-threaded
ash-grained cues in cases,
and at a quid a game,
it must be expensive
once you’re good at pool.

Free-verse texticonography

Following a recent workshop on using 'new media' to generate poetry, here's a short one using emoticons and similar, plus its associated explanation...

Took a dip in a \___/
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
\m/>.<\m/
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid
:p

Translates as:

Took a dip in a skip
 
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
 
[symbols indicating listening to metal - it's two hands raised with 'finger-horns' either side of scrunched-up eyes]
 
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid (mocking Craig David's uppy/downy, oversung-but-bland vocal stylings)
 
blowing-a-raspberry smiley

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.

Out of the oven

A poem triggered by a friend's prompt to start with the line 'He had his head in the bread' - so, here is the result, squeezing a metaphor for all it's worth - and a nod to the old Madness song 'Cardiac Arrest'...

Out of the oven

He had his head in the bread,
The 80s were kind to him, he thought –
Bish-bosh, more loaves of lucre,
Du pain, du vin,
Gold-plated-signet-ringed white-van man,
Now besuited, fake orange-tanned,
But it would soon forsake him,
An empty tin vessel,
Risen, bubbled, burst,
Half-baked and sourdoughed,
Yeastlessly listess and collapsed in the street,
Stone-ground down,
Too stale for even Paul Hollywood’s
Apricot-tinged brand of cheer-batta
To rejuvenate.

Strangers’ faces peer concernedly,
He’s kneaded awake –
“Can you hear us, mate?”
Time to face the whole grain of truth;
He’d been a good bake –
Hadn’t he?
A proven asset?
No - oh, F*caccia!

But surely buttermilk wouldn’t melt in his mouth –
His crusty little heart would for sure,
Coughed up,
Indigestible,
If he’d just leave the bread behind,
Switch off the Maggie-mix,
And dump the dough –

A true artisan would fix him.

Cheerleaders of the world unite

On day 29 of NaPoWriMo, I posted the first 6 verses of this multilingual piece - here it is in its now-complete entirety - undoubtedly a few slightly skewed pronunciation-rhymes and scans in there, but I prefer to see those as poetic licence, marks of a handmade product if you will...

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 otto,
Pay the piper, that’s my motto,
Tre 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.

Două patru șase opt,
Troubadour starts, the gossip stops,
Trei cinci șapte nouă,
Roma, take pride in who you are,
Dance round the campfire, dance in the streets,
Dance with the next stranger that you meet,
Listen to the fiddle, hear its tune,
Music is a measure of life‘s fortune.

Kettő négy hat nyolc,
Kiss me Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc,
Három öt kilenc hét
Danube-summer’s beach-hot sweat,
See Saint Stephen on his mount,
Steppe-men’s ancient victory-shout,
Stow away your spurs, your bows,
Watch the river as it flows.

Dva chetyre shest' vosem'
Black-earth fertile chernozem,
Tri pyat' sem' devyat',
Abandonment of Pripyat,
Orthodoxy dome-tattooed,
The Great, The Terrible, the shrewd,
From Rurik to the oligarchs,
Red Square, Kremlin, Gorky Park.

Iki dört altı sekiz,
Drowsing ‘neath old olive trees,
Üç beş yedi dokuz,
Gemlik, colour of a bruise,
Çatal Hüyük, ancient town,
Neolithic city found,
Before Stonehenge or Newgrange maze,
Old when the walls of Troy were raised.

Dua empat enam delapan,
Chew on fiery-hot rendang,
Tiga lima tujuh sembilan,
Orang pendek, myst’ry forest man,
Bathe in Kerinci’s sulphured springs,
Yogyakarta’s house of kings,
Komodo dragons fiercely slither,
Rafflesia bloom vast then whither.

Dō cāra chaha āṭha
Off to the east by followed star,
Tīna pān̄ca sāta nau,
Give way unto the Holy Cow,
Tiny shrines, bright pigment-smeared,
Mela-masses feast and cheer,
From mangroved deltas’ humid steam,
To mountain-tops of cloud-decked dreams.

Mbili nne sita nane,
Githeri beans and hot ugali,
Tatu tano saba tisa,
Naivasha lake, an evening breeze,
Hike through dusty-hot Hell’s Gate,
Mara river in full spate,
Maasai-village welcome-feast,
Watched by baboon and hartebeest.

Twee vier zes acht,
Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht,
Drie vijf zeven negen,
Anarcho-syndicalist pagan,
Cycle ‘long the polder-dykes,
Amsterdam a field of bikes,
Sunflower, iris, cypressed land
Witness Vincent’s star-night hand.

[For those who list factual lists (I do), the languages are - English, French, Italian, German, Welsh, Icelandic, Romanian, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Hindi, Swahili, Dutch]

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 17

NaPoWriMo day 17. Following the valediction/farewell poem on day 6, today’s prompt is to write a poem of greeting; I’ve gone a little louchely beyond a simple ‘hello’ to a full-on moustache-twirling ‘helll-oooo!!!’

The Bawd and the Belly-dancer

Glorious curves,
You send sparks ‘long my nerves,
With your shimmy and wiggle and sway,
To those arabesque grooves,
Oh, your sinuous moves,
As you jingle your jangle my way.

Diaphanous veils,
Kohl-rimmed eyes, jewelled nails,
Hips shake and bells ring out their tune,
An erotic alarum,
Evoking the harem,
An odalisque-dream that’s come true.

Keeping time with the oud,
And darbouka-drummed mood,
I’m not sure who’s more all-of-a-quiver,
But the mixture of wine,
And incense divine,
Makes me stand up and want to deliver!

photo (c) Hafla Dancers, Kappa Fotografia, Medieval Divas

NaPoWriMo Day 3

Day 3 of NaPoWriMo provides the prompt, 'write a sea shanty'. However, the prompts are meant to be pretty flexible which is handy as I have to be honest - I have no feel for sea-shanties, but here’s something I have been working on which has a marine theme of a sort, albeit a very different one…

The Eternal Particle

High basaltic mountain-top,
Ice-melt trickles through a crack,
Refreezes, elbows outwards - thaw-ice-thaw,
Until a tiny fragment splits away and falls,
Now the youngest flake in scree-slope multitude,
Slowly shuffles ‘til a cliff-edge looms,
Tumbling deep into the valley,
Where it’s carried in chill montane rills,
Saltating, towards the ocean,
On the way it spends some time,
As river-bank and sediment,
Silty bed and floodplains broad,
Until a rainstorm lifts it up,
Past meanders, estuary,
And out into the salted sea,
To settle just beyond low tide,
In shallows where it’s then ingested,
Passed through countless worms and other species.

Then, years on, it falls anew,
Spat from a polyp on a ledge,
An outcrop of the continental shelf,
A precipice at the land’s far edge,
So after long millennia,
It passes from the realm of light,
Into an eerie, inky night,
The last weak-blue vestiges of sun,
Replaced by blinking photophores,
Bioluminescent specks,
Glow from hook-fanged fish and firefly squid,
Tentacled coelenterates,
Ciliated swimmers with iridescent shimmers.

On it tumbles with its minute kin,
Settling gently ‘pon the abyssal plain,
Where the tectonic-slow shift starts,
World-plates’ inexorable crawl,
Relentlessly towards subduction ‘neath the crust,
A magma sphere-within-a-sphere,
Churning, roiling, heat and pressure,
Then pushing up through molten rifts,
White-hot chambered laccoliths,
Exploding back into the air,
To rain down ‘mongst the fire and pumice,
Upon another mountain peak,
Part of Earth’s fresh grey ash-coat,
Aeon’s cycle once again re-wrote.