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”.

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.

Of feathers beneath the moon

When I'm not a poet, I'm an ecologist, and can be found surveying and/or writing about wildlife - usually insects, but sometimes larger creatures. This poem is about working on the Arne Penninsula in Dorset.

Mapping nightjars

Daytime apes
out of time and place,
we walk the dark heather
beyond terse ‘No public access’ signs
on every gate and fifty feet of fence,
skirting regimented blocks of pines,
shuffling through sand and lichen
to listen for the chirr of males,
triangulating with ears and eyes and GPS.
Between calls, we pencil
rough boundaries by torchlight,
scrambling colonialists
interpreting territorial extent
from snapshots and soundbites
of reproductive intent.
A few make flapping silhouettes
against the last glimmer
or perch to survey us in turn
while silent females drop to the ground,
invisible, rising strident when we pass
too near a hidden nest,
wing-flashes circling low overhead
drawing us away from precious eggs.
Our allocated square kilometre complete,
we depart and night reclaims the space.

Remembrance when there's no-one to remember

Last night I performed a sequence of new First World War poems as part of Eastleigh Museum's WWI centenary exhibition. Whatever your feelings about the centenary events and remembrance, for many people it is a deeply emotional issue. So, when I was asked to write on this subject I knew it would be difficult, not because of my own feelings, but because (a) the audience was likely to care what I did in a way that probably isn't usually the case, (b) it would be a 'traditional' audience - not what I'm used to, and (c) it risked breaking one of the golden rules, namely 'write what you know about'. I was fairly confident I could take care with (a) and (b) - there are times to seriously challenge an audience, but this was never going to be one of them, so 'contemporary but respectful' was the tone to aim for. However, (c) was tricky. I don't come from a military family, my historical period of choice is early medieval, and 'the horrors of war' were covered by the poets who were actually there - Wilfred Owen and so on - and I have no urge to compete with them! However, after a bit (well, a lot) of thought I came up with the idea of everything being second-hand as no-one who experienced WWI is still alive. Everything we know is from books, recordings, film, photographs, eye-witness accounts, museum artifacts etc. This became the underlying concept for my writing and, even though my set was book-ended by Geoff from the Chameleon Theatre Company reciting a selection of well-known poems of the time (yes, those I didn't want to compete with), the positive reception suggests it worked and I'm happy with the way the set turned out. So, here is the opening poem from my set - I hope you enjoy it.


Spectres

What is left?
Now all the eye-witnesses have gone
everything is second, third, fourth hand
and so on. Black-and-white photos,
grainy stills from rare films,
clips of aerial reconnaissance
or TV documentaries,
interviews made just in time,
books and files of history and opinion
filling shelf-miles,
terabytes of networked drives,
and artefacts preserved behind museum glass.
Post-bombardment celluloid from Paaschendale,
Photoshopped and mashed up with
War of the Worlds tripods
ignites a YouTube debate about
what is dissing or respectful.
For this is ancient history to most,
something abstracted
on interactive whiteboards,
as homework,
in GCSE revision notes
and weekend battle re-enactments.
The era of slow massed ranks
encouraged by threats
and prods of officers’ revolvers
has passed unmourned
along with Haig and Joffre;
no more suicidal nods
over-the-top tugs
of a thousand, million forelocks,
for ‘our betters’ are passé,
and the post-traumatic
casualties of nerves and mind
have at least been pardoned, still
the idea of some sort of heroism lingers,
the echo of, for good or ill,
our martial ancestry,
all those who chose to fight and fall,
and as poppies fade at last from red to white,
what is left?
Remembrance, not memory, is all.

Rooms from my oeuvre

Something I wrote based on one of my mixed media pieces.

Hotel

Taking the penthouse, a three-room suite,
homage to that pickled shark,
once YBA enfant influent,
now can’t-paint-for-shit shock-conceptuality,
all dead butterflies and money.

Over in one wing,
crumpled biro sketch for a green man
wrought in silver fretwork,
now etched and hammered, chained
and put up for sale.

Brushed to one side,
an empty blister-pack of brain-pills,
each 20 milligrams
a bitter bite of sweet chemistry,
I'm such a neuromantic.

Tiger balm and beaded lizard
whisper nothings through wood-thin walls,
varnished with intent –
grinning, a brass-balled imp
sits sly on his stack of timber.

Paper-cut bamboo forest,
trees hold onto chainsaw blades,
while triplet queens lie supine
under a celestial arch,
contemplating their paradox.

Faded letters speak of old contests
and hints of science,
print-block songbird
calls the ink down from her serinette.

Fragments of ammonites,
pebbles once shiny and gleaming-wet,
but still interesting in the dry,
unlike childhood holiday gleanings.

Bar-room in miniature
touts ‘beer’ above its rug of ribbons –
next door, ransom-note wallpaper
proclaims the anguish and ego
of the artist.

Of course,
there is a lacuna,
always one empty
among a hundred others,
ghosts of occupants unknown.

This hotel will stay my own.

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.

Looking back over the summer

It's been over a week since my last post - the paid stuff has got in the way a bit, 'tis true, though I've been editing and consolidating what I've written over a busy summer of showcases, open mics and other events. New work is sat next to me waiting to be typed up and maybe lightly polished, but until then, here's a rare bit of video of me performing - this one's at the Archimedes Screw showcase featuring Susan Richardson.

First time into the breach

Last night was interesting - the first time I've read at a poetry competition, and in a huge, splendid mediaeval barn. Though short-listed, I didn't win (the band liked it!), but it was an interesting experience, especially as the audience were very different from what I'm used to i.e. much more 'trad' Shakespeare fans (unsurprising as it was part of the Titchield Shakespeare Festival) - not like the audiences for the more contemporary fare I tend to go for. Saying that, I am partial to a bit o' Bard once in a while and I still like As You Like It, despite being taught it for O-level (not GCSE) English Lit, *ahem* years ago. So, with the competition themes in mind, and inspired by the 'All the world's a stage...' soliloquy, this is what I came up with and it seemed to go down well...

’69 – ‘13

Last year, prime-numbered age held sway,
since then some extra throat-beard grey,
shirt buttons slightly more tum-splayed,
maybe it’s time I was re-weighed.
Oh God, I’m 44.

On average I am past halfway,
it takes less beer ‘til bladdered spray,
and if hungover lose a day,
my liver yells at me ‘no way’.
Oh God, I’m 44.

These days, more trespass than affray,
older than pre-prison Krays,
once Dangermouse, now Colonel K,
or tatty-eared old tom-cat stray,
will my hair fall out with mange?
Oh God, I’m 44.

Docked my first iPod yesterday,
with Paypal not quite so au fait,
watched vinyl’s decline with dismay,
hookers my age carry change,
I fancy Bellatrix Lestrange,
Oh God, I’m 44.

Just twitched a rare Siberian Jay,
rewatched the Darling Buds of May,
but please no cocoa on a tray,
against the dying light I’ll rage,
find my As You Like It stage,
at least men don’t go through ‘The Change’,
Oh God, I’m 44.

‘Cos I still wield a wicked blade,
so far no urge to dress more staid
in crimplene slacks of dun-tan-beige,
I’d fear that mournful colour-change,
rather weekends spent in adult play
than tussling with cheap underlay –
I’ve never felt quite so alive,
I’ll soon be 45.

Here I am performing at the Festival.

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.

The very big and the very small

Scale, perspective and stretching a metaphor until it begs for mercy...

The (ir)relevance of walking the Planck

Yeah, maybe I am just a speck
and so are you,
among billions of others, similar,
pop, pop, pop – that’s three more just now –
outnumbered by even tinier,
yet more indistinguishable, ones,
a mitotic swarm
living on what’s probably
also just one
of innumerable
spheroidal spinning grains,
orbiting in the infinite-yet-bounded
universal vastness;
who knows how many
in this single wispy arm alone,
galactically sweeping ‘round
its great event-horizoned core,
the whole spiral
(let’s jump up a magnitude or four)
a distant twinkle
when viewed, so remotely, from any far corner
of our local cluster,
and so on up to Lady Virgo’s
maybe-just-about-significant
great space-time-raminating super-cluster,
out to the far, far and afar
edge of our own little light-cone –
beyond that?
well, heaven
(and maybe Hawking or Penrose)
knows, but –
don’t start with that ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation;
it won’t wash –
there still ain’t another particle,
however quantum-mechanically small and entangled,
Pauli-exclusioned, superstrung-out,
or Heisenberg-uncertain
in the vacuum-energetic foam,
that’s quite like me
or, by extension,
with our so-symmetric
strangeness and charm,
quite like you.