I was in Amsterdam recently, it was the result of train tickets being on hold throughout the pandemic. I went to the Van Gogh Museum and wrote this as I wandered around.
Van Gogh Museum Tourist Statistic
she has her vision
he is directed to position her on the
screen
The Sunflowers on her shoulder
she is the centre piece
he presents the result
she shakes her head
two more attempts are needed
before she smiles
I continue to watch as
twenty other people photograph
the painting in their turn
all vying for the best shot
then I snake through the crowds
to catch glimpses of paintings
no one wanted to buy
when the artist was alive
Please do not think I am critical of the couple, I am not, I was just fascinated by their vision. I don't tend to take photographs of paintings because my efforts are no where near as good as the real thing.
Amsterdam was fun, it is a very beautiful city. I was taken with the illuminated trees as you can see.
Pollyanna is just presenting her labour songs project, sadly I cannot find any videos of it, but from what I've heard it sounds boss. Here's an earlier video.
I wrote this poem in my head as I drove along the A38. It started life as the locked room mystery but Raymond Chandler's essay on The Simple Art of Murder popped into my head and I ran with that.
Denouement
The classic country house murder mystery
disappoints.
The author may deploy sleight of hand
far fetched coincidences
then withhold vital information
until the final chapter
when we are gathered in the library.
It all smacks of desperation as we
characters
have our individual shames exposed
so the detective can dismiss us in turn.
How we squirm at the way we are written
at the outlandish confessions we must make
and you dear reader, as I gaze on your face
through the secret eyeholes hidden in the
e’s of my lines
sigh.
But hold on one minute
can you tell me if your life is any better
constructed
than I am out of my sentences?
It is a piece of nonsense. I always think, when I see any crime show revelation, how much I would hate having my life held up to scrutiny, especially as it is only designed to show off how clever the detective is.
On a more serious note I must say I am appalled at the overturning of Roe v Wade. It is always the womans choice. How dare anyone sit in judgement over another person's body? As Leonard Cohen said: I have seen the future brother, and it's murder.
Sometimes I have difficulty writing a weekly post, the words just don't come. As you read this I am away and this blog was written a week ago. This is the 646th post, so over the past ten years plus I must have produced over 550 poems, which does work out at one a week.
But not today however. Here is a poem I half wrote last year but at the time during the pandemic could not polish up. I am still unsure about the change in the point of view, as the first stanza is that of an observer and the second and third is that of the driver. Perhaps it does not matter...
an impossibly long mourning car
waits at the red light
side windows fogged with disbelief
the change to green offers hope
that the driver reflects
is lost on his passengers
he thinks of renewal
the advent of spring
his fifth job this week and its still
only Wednesday
Brian Pattern talks about the effect a good last line can have on the reader. How it can change the meaning of the poem utterly. That was what I was trying for.
The amazing Sault have a new album out. You can buy it here.
Recently I spent a morning walking round Plymouth. It was unexpected. A meeting I had to attend had been cancelled at the last moment due to Covid and I decided to have a look at the city centre. I had been a student in Plymouth, back in the early 1980's and I knew the place well. Like everywhere it had changed over time. As I meandered I could not help comparing the reality with the memory, perhaps this is nostalgia, but to me it seemed the nearest I'd ever come to time travel.
Practical Time Travel
this used to be a bookshop
that covered two floors
wall to wall books
now it trades for a charity he
has
never heard of
all that they can scrape together
makes constellations on the floor
next door had beenan Oddbins
he would buy the house red
to take to student parties
everything had
seemed so permanent then
today is an unplanned visit to Plymouth
which has him comparing now
to the city that lives in his head
and reality comes in
a shabby
second
The poem may not be complete, I think I need the Secrets perspectives on it. I am standing too close. I did, however, dash this off.
there is no way back
no magic door
no wormhole wardrobe
to effect the switch from here
to some romanticised past
this is where we live
so fight to change tomorrow
as yesterday’s stale bread is hard to
swallow
This is not going anywhere, too much tell and not enough show. Here's the Human League from the 1980's.
We live in increasingly interesting times. Our politicians seem intent on ignoring the scientists pleas for action to minimise global warming. Gove has changed his tune on the pesticide that is decimating the bee population, when part of the EU he supported banning it, now we flounder he is all for using it. And the war drags on.
Phew! Here's a poem about getting old.
his hands had aged
in this room
in the late afternoon light
there was no hiding
the pipework of veins
the dry wrinkled skin
and the liver spots
were the icing
on his old
cake
Not sure about the last line. I think it needs a different word to old, just haven't found it yet.
Here's a rewrite of an old poem. I have never been satisfied with the ending, you can read it here. Part of me wonders what the significance of the poem is, why am I drawn back to play about with the words? Honestly I do not know.
I used to long to hear the sound of copters
rotors thumping the compliant air
getting louder drawing near
there were times when
such a B-movie rescue
would have suited me
I chose to forget that after the credits
roll
the actors return to playing themselves
in the films of their own imperfect lives
bridges are a safer bet
you climb above the trouble
just walk away
I want to end on a positive note, Spring has arrived and this is Steve Ashley.
I have always maintained that the raw material for poetry is all around us but that most of the time we don't realise it. A poet is a person who sees the possibilities and who tries to respond to them. Last Saturday I had the idea that the air is teeming with poems, they circle like airplanes waiting to land. This is what I did with that idea:
Poems Are
Everywhere
a complex holding pattern
keeps the free range poems airborne
invisible they
circle the world
we are oblivious
every now and then
one of us may catch
a whisper in the
ear
a few may write down
the words they hear
and mangle
the streamlined form
a fewer still will claim to know
the secret
frequency with
which
they could guide any poem to the page
but he was sceptical
and simply gave thanks
for everypoem that chose him
It's a work in progress. I am unsure if free range adequately describes the natural state of poems in the wild. Also I am not sure if the penultimate stanza works- who are these people, hacks?
I suspect I took the word free range from the news that all free range chickens in the UK have been kept inside so long because of bird flu that they must be reclassified as barn eggs. Things fall apart.
Here is a song by the Mountain Goats that references another bird flu epidemic while lamenting the death of the reggae sing Dennis Brown.
I occasionally wake in the night with a poem half formed in my head. I usually get out of bed and write them down but do not turn on a light in case I disturb the household. The poem in this post came about when I was sat in the dark writing and yes I did see a man on a bicycle wobble by.
the muse calls me from my bed
to sit in the dark and write out my dream
in wide spaced words on blank white paper
its 4:30 am no car goes past outside
then wobbling in the tail end of the storm
a man weaves along the road
no lights on his bike I note
and from the way he steers
no exact idea of where to go
he
executes a sudden turn right
and
when I look up again
I take
in the emptiness of the night
I think it works as reportage, but I am unsure of the final line [although confident enough to use it as the title of the post...]. Your guess is as good as mine as to where he was going to or coming from.
Midlake have a new album out. Seems pleasant enough, though I've only played it twice, but I do miss their glory days with Tim Smith.
This post's poem is based on a memory that popped into my head the other week. It was about one of those rare winds that blows sand from the desert to our island.
certain days
the red wind from the Sahara
had blown a fine sand as far as Blackpool
depositing it all over the paintwork of the
cars
parked in the street of our boarding house
I traced my finger in wonder
through the thin rust red layer
on car after car
entranced that I was making contact
with somewhere so impossibly distant
now I know that happened once in a while
back when the weather could be trusted
Its strange how some memories just appear in your head years after the fact with no apparent prompt, no obvious connection to now. They just are there. The poem is straight forward enough. I like the implication of the last line.
Last Friday evening I went to a concert by Peter Edwards and it was excellent. Here he is live.
I am not feeling particularly chipper this week, the news is terrible. I honestly could run away and live with The Culture, if they'd have me, if they were real. A post-want, pan galactic society, sounds very attractive as we squander our last chance to limit the rise in greenhouse gasses and we murder people for territorial gain.
Enough! Here's a poem about a dream.
trying on dream clothes
that of course always fit well
and are
tailored to perfection
I talked jazz with the assistant
there are worse ways to pass a night
than buying threads
but you wake
unsatisfied with your tactile wardrobe
no matter how hard you try
on successive nights
the tailors shop eludes you
in that vast city inside your head
Not much to say about it, save that the clothes were very comfortable and well tailored. Threads is old slang for clothes. Here's a rewrite. You can read the previous drafts here and here.
the waiting room
lung wrecked in the wing back chair
my father was marooned in his house
he rewatched the programmes
he did not like the first time round
told me that there was a certain
safety in knowing what comes next
his neural pathways began to short circuit
left in him sleeping an assisted sleep
that brief whisper of exhalation
follows each creaking inhalation
until it is time to cast off
to
sail outward into the deep
I think it's finally there. Thanks must go to the Secret Poets for their amazing feedback and the suggestion of moving the stanzas about. There is a quiet satisfaction at arriving at the final draft [and a title].
Speaking of jazz, as I was in my dream, here's Emma Rawicz. She's got an album out soon. Excellent music.
It is some time since I wrote about the actual process of writing poetry. So today I am going to talk you through how a poem came to its final form.
The poem concerns my work at Marjons when I was note taking in an acting class. The aim of the session was to present a monologue. As the actors moved around the theatre space they spoke their lines oblivious of each other which prompted me to write this:
seven people the space move inside
their own words solo talk out loud the wall mirrors a silent audience
As you can see though it is rough there is something there. I left it for a week or so as I could not see a way forward, although my first instinct was to leave it as one long line with double spaces for punctuation [apologies but Blogspot plays about with spacing so you probably can't see it as I wrote it].
I was not happy with that and over the next week it changed to this:
the monologue rehearsal
seven
people the space
solo
speak out loud
move inside their own scripts
the wall mirrors
are
silent as an audience
I think it's about there. A simple observation of how actors inhabit their own spaces in a communal area. Perhaps it's a metaphor for how we all live privately in public view.
I was not happy with my last post. The poem was half formed. Here is a redraft.
lung wrecked in the wing back chair
my father was marooned in his house
he rewatched
the programmes
he did not like the first time round
told
me that there was
a certain
safety in knowing what comes next
that brief
whisper of exhalation
follows each creaking inhalation
his neural pathways began
to short circuit
left in
him sleeping an assisted sleep
until it is time to cast
off
to sail into
the deep
Some poems write themselves, others, like this one, require more work. I am happier with this version. No idea for a title. I think it should be something about a pause or a new cycle, but that would explain the poem before it is read...
Here is Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines with Weather Bird. This tune never fails to raise my spirits when I hear it.
I have been writing about my parents recently. I do not know why, there are no anniversaries immanent. Sometimes one thought just leads to another. It can be that simple.
my father marooned in his house
lung wrecked in the wing back chair
his focus
on the procession of his breath
the inhale silent
the exhale a brief whisper
he rewatches the programmes
he did not like the first time round
there is a
certain safety in knowing what comes
next
until the
wiring in his head begins to short circuit
leaves him sleeping an assisted sleep
until it is time to shake his body off
he kicks off from the side
pushes out into the deep
My father had emphysema, it dictated his final years, but did not kill him. He died of a number of mini-strokes. I miss him. This poem is about his end days.
I am not happy with the layout. It looks cluttered, perhaps it reflects life? This is definitely a work in progress. I suppose setting myself the task of posting a poem a week means there are going to be times when I am not happy with the draft. So watch this space.
Hurray For The Riff Raff has a new album out. I am eagerly awaiting the posty to deliver my copy. Here's Pierced Arrows.
The town ofRuncorn is situated on the River Mersey across from Widnes. I was born in Runcorn, next to the Manchester Ship Canal which is separated from the Mersey by a wall. There have been a number of bridges built between the two towns, the oldest being the Railway Bridge. This poem is about being dragged across the Railway Bridge as a child.
she dragged me snivelling across the Old
Bridge
my hand in hers my head not in her reality
for my Mother the wooden walkway was solid
immutable
older then her 42 years
I only perceived the spaces between the
boards
each held a view of the Mersey far below
and I expected to fall through every gap
somersault the thin air and be lost in the
tidal
race
cold swift and patient as I knew it to be
this
was not to be the last time we walked to Runcorn
Thanks to the Secret Poets for their invaluable assistance.
Here is a redraft, again with the Secrets help. You can read the first version here.
Witches
Witches want your empty eggshells
so they can sail to sea
and summon storms to drown the sailors.
This is a fact. I know.
I was born beside the water
in the shadow of the old Transporter
Bridge.
My uncles worked the Ship Canal
tugmen, exempt from The Call Up
free to drink each St Monday dry.
My mother was at war with them
the hostilities endless.
I could never fathom the reason
and she was not the kind you’d ask
even when I was grown and she frail
with aching hands of knotted oak.
Besides by then we lived across the river.
A word to the wise though -
always break your eggshells.
The layout has changed, as have a couple of words.I suspect this is possibly the finished article.
