SOLO SAILOR ON A LIMITLESS SEA

I have been playing about with an idea for sometime now and I think I have managed to get it into a rough order. I think it's self explanatory.

If he was alone on a storm tossed sea

he would call out to Jesus

wouldn’t we he asked with certainty

[this was the place to pause in the lesson plan]

There could only be one way

fall onto your knees

and start to pray to your redeemer

It was all wasted on me

Stuck in a trough of towering waves

solo sailor on a limitless sea

how had I ended up there

Exactly what was my backstory

I could never make sense of the Trinity

and this latest example of faith

was totally beyond me

I refused to go to confirmation class after that

The metre isn't quite there nor I suspect is the ending. Watch this space.

Brian Wilson passed away last week so I shall leave you with a classic. Thanks Brian.

Until next time.  

WATERLOGGED RICE

Here's an autobiographical poem about food. I've been vegetarian since the 70s and the lack of preprepared food caused me to develop my cooking skills. 

MY COOKING ADVENTURE

It began with rice and veg, a suitably earnest dish, taken from the pages of a second hand macrobiotic cook book

The dense and contradictory Introduction defeated me and so I never completely understood the philosophy

What the hell, I just jumped in and started to cook

The serious food of 1970s vegetarianism gave way to obsession, to make the perfect souffle which in turn led to a pasta machine

Then the subtleties of the mezze and authentic regional dishes from the subcontinent

Now I am old, I have the moves, I can do it all from scratch without breaking into a sweat

and I’m a long way from the days of underdone vegetables and waterlogged rice

The poem assembled itself from the first line and I am not sure that it has the right ending. Over half a century a person should be able to develop their skills if they so desire. I wanted to capture how serious the food was back then. This is definitely a work in progress.

Pollyanna has just released a deluxe version of her ep Man Time, needless to say it's superb. You can listen to it here. I leave you with Diamond Ring.  

Until next time.

CIRCLED THE EARTH

I do like a sauna and I've been enjoying the new crop of seaside saunas that have popped up in the south west. I was sat in the Blackpool Sands sauna the other week and began to write this in my head.

The pop up sauna

is all varnished pine and dry heat

in truth it is a big barrel

laid on its side

near the tideline

I’m sat sweating inside

I look out the porthole

on what could be a moonscape

I think about Yuri

and Valentina

who circled the earth

in capsules the size

of a large washing machine

just to be the first

So the poem mentions Yuri Gagarin, as many of my poems do. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space and I saw her actual capsule in the Cosmonaut Exhibition in London. It was very small. I've not much to say about the poem. It's a bit too new to make sense of. Watch this space.

I leave you with a song about a spaceman by Bob and Carol Pegg.

Until next time.