MY FEET TOOK MY HEAD TO THE BEACH

 

I have been fortunate enough to be able to spend time at the beach recently. In Torquay you are spoilt for choice when it comes to beaches.

This is poem was written while I watched the world go by on Meadfoot beach.

gulls ride the thermals over the bay

spiralling dots in a blue and white sky

ever higher lost to my eye

It doesn't quite work, the metre is uneven but it captures the moment. I have often said that writing what you see is a good exercise for the poetic chops.

my feet took my head to the beach

when I saw

from the top of the hill

the low tide laid out before me

I could have cried

for the beauty of the moment

and walked that much faster

to stand on the tide line

be amazed by each successive wave

savoured each stolen second

gave thanks, gave thanks, gave thanks

The beach in this case was Goodrington. I think it captures the right mood, one of thankfulness. I believe that we are here to give thanks for the beauty of existence.

Here's a dream-like song about the sea side, Anne Briggs, off her second album The Time Has Come. 

Until next time.

CEARULEAN BLUES

Two poems today, but first some thanks.
Thanks to the Secret Poets for last weekend's Retreat. Very enjoyable, stimulating and thought provoking. I had a great time and was spurred to create some interesting poems.
I took one of the four workshops we ran over the weekend and the theme was buried treasure. I came up with this.

House Clearance

The enormity of it all just stops you

dead in your tracks,

one long life lived

and here you are in the hallway

wondering where to start,

wishing it were simply a woollen jumper

with one loose thread you could unpick.

Of course, it’s not that easy

so you walk through the rooms,

upstairs then down,

make a cup of tea

sit at the kitchen table to drink it,

black, because the milk has gone off.

This next one arose out of another workshop Liz ran. The poem just emerged over a half hour writing period.

Cearulean Blues

I’m painting my life in blues,

pretending it was by accident,

that I can’t control the paintbrush,

but I can and this is how

I express myself today:

topaz shoes; navy socks;

duck egg suit and a shirt I can’t describe

save to tell you that it’s blue.

Am I sad? You ask.

Less than I was yesterday

and more than I will be tomorrow.

A friend sent me a link to an Anne Briggs song this morning. A truly beautiful way to start the day. I leave you with it.

Until next time.

PAN-GALACTIC SEEDING PROJECT

Another poem about space this post.
I think it came from watching too many cheap science fiction tv series. You know the kind, where every planet looks like earth. 

They land on a new planet,

step out into a forest reminiscent of Canada,

because that’s the cheapest location

for American television series,

those epics shot on a budget.

Space travellers never offer

an explanation for this carbon copy of earth.

No vague reference to some pan-galactic seeding

by a god-like forerunner species,

that accounts for the parallel evolution

and absence of anaphylactic shock inducing

nasty little microbes,

that you would probably encounter on a world

teaming with its own take on life.

No, it’s just a convenient other planet,

ready to be plundered. 

I read at Torquay's Stanza Extravaganza on Tuesday evening. It was a lovely venue and standing room only. 
I read some poems I had not tried out in public before and one needed re-jigging. You can read the original here. 

Poem for C

Given the economies

of supermarket squash

and the cheapest of vodkas,

it had always been

how much could he drink,

in the shortest amount of time,

to keep ahead of blacking out,

to avoid the grey dawns

when monochromatic

migraine imitating aftermaths

immobilised him in a space

where he could do nothing

but relive it all over again.

I met him in the fragile truce of sobriety

he called it his jigsaw days.

He placed his pieces

into shapes that just might work,

into patterns that had eluded him on the drink.

Some events, he confided, never end,

so you have to find different ways of getting on with it.

It was difficult to read in its previous form. Sometimes you only discover this when you are performing.
I've been listening to Corrina Repp a lot recently, but I've already posted her superb album here.
Anne Briggs has also been on the turntable this week. I've just found this snippet of a BBC4 series Folk Britannia.

English folk music doesn't get much better.
You can watch the series on Youtube. Here's part one.

Until next time.

RAIN TATTOOS

A revised poem to start this post.
Thanks must go to Juncture 25 for helping me to make sense of what I had written. I knew that something in the poem wasn't right but could not put my finger on it.

In his head it is always summer,

he refuses autumn permission

to taint even a single leaf.

Across impossibly green lawns,

in high ceilinged rooms,

where fans churn stale words,

he replays his life:

driving that new red car;

dancing at his wedding;

pausing in the departure hall

surrounded by all those people.

Where are they now?

Outside his head rain tattoos the tin roof.

Summer has gone missing,

spring is eighteen months late

and freak weather has reduced his world.

All across the English Archipelago

survivors fear their neighbours,

eat up seed stocks,

worry about the sea level,

or that the water will rise in a moving wall

and sweep them away, once and for all.

There was that night some discussion as to whether you can have a two stanza poem or if it needs three stanzas to work. Not bound to the Hegelian Dialectic I am happy with two.

 A little poem that I've been working on for some time.

LIBRARY QUIZ

An improvised library lesson.

Old books, a random collection,

grown over more time than my life.

Yellow postcard, typed questions,

the e lower then the other letters.

All the facts we were told are in this room.

I couldn't find the answer I was looking for,

it was the books that were dumb,

I knew what it was as soon as I saw the question.

I walked up to Mr. Farr, all tweed and fag ash,

pointed in the direction of the nature books

and told him a bee dies when it stings.

I gambled on his laziness,

but not him stopping the class,

and announcing no one had ever found

that fact in these books before.

It was fair, he said, to give credit

where credit was due.

This was the start of my career as a liar.

It happened like it is written back when I was 11. Though I cannot remember why I wanted to answer the question in the first place.
Here's Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch with Blackwaterside.