THE GREAT OXIDATION EVENT

I  have been long distance writing with the Secret Poets. Annie supplied a photograph of a museum diorama of a Diictodon. It was a proto-mammal that lived millions of years ago. 
It promoted me to write this:

Diictodon’s Dilemma

they ate

and they fought

and they fucked on

tumbling into to an ecological niche

they could exploit until over population

we have even found their burrows

the now fossilised spaces they crawled through

drowning

as the hazards of flood plain living

became too apparent 

This set me thinking about mass extinctions.
I wrote this about brewing beer.

I think of the Paleoprotozoic extinction

every time I make beer

cheering on that powered yeast

to drown in its own waste product

excreting alcohol

itself a poison

I welcome

photosynthesis began like that

food for free

all those cells amazed at how easy it was

until the oxygen bi-product did them in

Essentially that's what happened. 
Here's the Larkin Poe.

Until next time.

ISOLATION BECKONS

Two poems about our present predicament. The first concerns the Babacombe Cliff Railway, which is now closed for the duration. 

The last ride on the Cliff Railway for the foreseeable future

we remain the safe social distance apart

smile but do not speak

for what is there to say

at least the spring has been closed

each person’s isolation beckons

This second poem was written in response to a prompt from Secret Poet Liz. The prompt concerned two people and a discarded Corona beer bottle.

once she would have picked up that corona bottle

the morning after the merry makers had left it there

along with any other litter

thoughtlessly scattered by the through traffic

wary of infection

she leaves it be

notes its seeming permanence

every morning now she keeps herself to herself

he concentrates on keeping his distance

no jane austin character was ever more precise

they pause they do not speak

he double checks the space between

Liz suggested scrapping the first two stanzas and on reflection I think she is correct. 
I'll let you edit it for yourself.
Here's Sean Taylor. Like all musicians he makes his living from playing live, which in the present circumstances is impossible. Please do what you can to help Sean and other creative people like him survive this crisis.

Until next time.

MY LIFE IN LETTERS

Here's a poem about dyslexia.

my life in letters

for me bs and ds were interchangeable

one letter and its reflection I could fit wherever

this practice hall marked me a slow learner

word blind and spelling remained a mystery

my mothers advice to break down difficult words

did not take into account

my long vowel northern voiced tendency

to sprinkle extra a’s and e’s about

the thesaurus became my life preserver

as I looked up words of similar meaning

and hoped what I required was waiting patiently

amid the ranks and columns with its friends

the spell check facility of middle age

enabled spellings to be puzzled out

different combinations chanced

until the red underlining went away

secretly I still suspect those people

who demand consistent sequences

who fear the world of bespoke words

tailored to suit that unique moment

I don't need to say much about it. I think it speaks for itself and keen readers of this blog may have already come to this conclusion.

Here's Anna Ternheim with a song I haven't heard before.

Until next time.

MAGPIE AT THE WINDOW

This is a rewrite. You can read the last version here.

Next to the surgery

which used to be someone’s home,

the bank [built in ‘31] missed out

on its century of service by fourteen years,

another high street casualty.

Note the sale boards have been removed

and the new signs proclaim wealth management.

But who’s? I wonder this Sunday

as I walk past the locked off parking spaces

where on public days like this one

the community used to park.

Their bin overflows and the gulls

have had their own wing-ding,

bursting the black plastic sacks.

Now the remains of their office party

clutters the pavement.

Optimistic, a young gull sidles up

to glean whatever is left.

I want to tell it not to bother,

that the wealthy don’t leave rich pickings,

but the bird is too young to know

that no meal is ever free.

The latest version came about because I stumbled over some of the words when I was practising reading the poem aloud. If you have difficulty consistently over reading a sequence of words then it needs to be changed. I wanted to read the poem at Stanza Extravaganza here in Torquay and it is always a good idea to have a read through.. 
The poem also lost its last line as I thought it was too telling rather than showing.

This poem was written at Marjons and is once again about the magpies that run the place.

magpie at the window

nano second hover

as strobing feathers

defy physics

the captains keep tabs on

each lecture space and office

oblivious we think we own the place

The world is more mysterious than we can ever know and birds have been around far longer than us monkeys.

Here is a new song from Fay Wildhagen and Ana Brun.

Until next time.