TOMORROW WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the end of war in Europe, VE Day. I was going to repost a poem about my father in that day but I ended up revising it instead. You can read the last attempt here. 

8^th MAY 1945

The Ivy Benson band will not play

in the Alexandra club this evening

everyone is too busy celebrating

the end of the war in Europe

The conflict has taken Charlie

from Runcorn to Rome in

two thousand and seventy seven days

with many stops in between

Tonight is a little sigh

a brief respite in hostilities

Charlie parties with the band

tomorrow will take care of itself

The Ivy Benson Band was an all female big band. The story is true, they did not take to the stage that night but partied the night away in the Alexandra Club along with my father. Here's what they sounded like.

And I cannot close without a reprise of D-Day Dodgers.

Until next time.

THE DAWN WAS FRESH AND CLEAR

 A personal history poem first this post.

21^st BIRTHDAY POEM

Colours erupted in the wet sky

the fireworks arrived on time

as we toasted my birthday

in malt and Moroccan

Time started to leapfrog

a series of stuttering memories

that I could later never quite sequence

but the dawn was fresh and clear

I walked home

leaving a set of footprints

on the dewed grass

that eventually led me here

This is something I've been looking at for a couple of weeks and please regard this as a first draft. I think it's pretty straight forward reportage. The events happened at a festival back in the 70s and it did conclude with fireworks.

I don't know where this one comes from. It wrote itself and I don't know what to make of it. 

Elvis said to Elvis in the Clones For Hire stockade:

I’d never have gone and done it

if I’d have even had half an inkling this would be my fate

I’d have sacked that bastard Colonel for a start

Marilyn Monroe sighed:

You always say this before they retune your head

but you never ever act on the impulse

or think about the situation we are all in now

She was called away to another job

she was the most popular of the Heritage Clones

The other Elvis sighed

and wished he’d stuck to driving trucks

It did make me smile though.

Iron and Wine were excellent. Here's a video of him live.

Until next time

THE FIRST KISS OF THE RED GIANT SUN

 

A poem inspired by a firework rocket. This Bonfire Night I set off a packet of rockets at the end of our small display and that set me to thinking...

Escape Velocity

if gunpowder rockets never fell back to earth

just rose upwards consuming stick and cylinder

kissing the vacuum

to return their borrowed carbon to the stars

the dead in space on the other hand

who number more than you think

would look on in envy

tethered as they must always be

to the planet that birthed them

in various degrees of patience

they await release from

the first kiss of the red giant sun

that unmakes everything 

I am led to believe that in about ten billion years the sun will transform into a red giant and expand to engulf the earth. This will be the end of the planet. Not sure where the idea of the dead in space came from, probably an old Tom Rapp song. Thanks to the Secrets for assistance in the completion.

Annabelle Chvostek is touring, briefly, the UK in February, though sadly she is not playing the southwest. If you are able to catch any of the dates please do, she is always worth seeing live.

I leave you with a slightly out of sync video of Colin Blunstone singing a Danny Lane song. One Year the album this song was on Has just been re-released.

Until next time.

THIS IS HOW DOLPHINS NAVIGATE

 Another couple of revised poems this post.
The first was written last year after I watched a firework display for free.
I have changed the layout, it now has a line break that I think allows the poem to breathe. It is always worth spending time trying different layouts.

Gracie & Harry's Poem

5.11.15 Deal

percussion

it draws you outdoors

echoes across the houses

hollow

this is how dolphins navigate

in sonic sketches

we are drawn to a street corner

with other humans

to watch fireworks for free

to evaluate each blossom against our memories

it is over too soon

This second poem has had the lines moved around and I think it works better. If you find yourself with a poem that is not quite working move some of the lines about and see if that helps or hinders. That is the beauty of using a computer. A word of warning- keep all the different drafts.

Surprise

made in russia

my analogue watch

much repaired

by chance

this once

mirrors the digital time projected on to the wall

it will not last

gears and entropy

will do for it and for me

Entropy is a common theme for me. It probably comes from growing up in the 1960's and reading too much science fiction about the heat death of the universe. I blame Michael Moorcock myself!
I leave you with Lizzie Nunnery and Vidar Norheim singing Company of Ghosts in 2015 in Glossop. Any chance of a new album chaps?

ALL ACROSS THE ENGLISH ARCHIPELAGO

In true Magpie Bridge tradition the photographs do not match the main poem- but they do reflect the second poem, close but no cigar.
The title of this post is taken from below. But first a couple of lines on its genesis. 
I had the beginning of the poem rolling round my head for a couple of days. A man using his internal dialogue to set his life to rights. I suspect the trees changing to autumn sparked the idea. I left a draft of the first stanza for a week or so then as I revised it I thought it would be interesting to contrast his idealised internal life with a more brutal reality.

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's key events,

pulling his fat from the fire as required.

It is time for drinks on the veranda,

gin slings with friends.

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 their 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.

Not sure about that last couplet.
I had to loose some interesting lines along the way. At one point there were three stanzas, inside his head, his immediate environment and then the wider world. The second stanza ended with the line: He knows exactly how many food tins remain. But you have to be ruthless.
I was just looking for a decent gin sling recipe but most on line add sugar syrup- a travesty. Essentially a gin sling is 2 parts gin, freshly squeezed lemon juice [to taste], a shake of Agustora Bitters topped up with tonic water. Chill the glass and add ice before you start. 

A brief poem I wrote last Friday after watching a firework display.

percussion

it draws you outdoors

echoes across the houses

hollow

this is how dolphins navigate

in sonic sketches

we are drawn to a street corner

with other humans

to watch fireworks for free

to evaluate each blossom against our memories

it is over too soon

There is something about loud noises echoing off buildings that [for me at least] can confuse.
I was saddened to hear of the death of Allen Toussaint the other day. We have lost a very unique voice. here's a documentary about his life.

Here's my favourite of his lps Southern Nights.

And lastly here's the great Lee Dorsey singing Yes We Can.

Until next time.

THE LOVING CURVE OF THE GALACTIC SPIRAL

Each week I try to post at least one poem, either a revision or a new work. There are a couple of times when I have repeated myself-usually unknowingly.  That is unavoidable, since the 30.5.2011 I have posted 182 times. That it, struck me only today, is an awful lot of poems.

There is scattered over these pages most of my first and second collections and a selection of poems produced in workshops. I wonder if anyone has read them all.

This week there is a revision of a poem I posted early on. Initially I thought it worked and read it at a number of events. This past year I have been less satisfied with it. I realised last month that the two parts of the poem didn’t connect as well as I wanted them to. I hope this now resolved.

THE TEARS OF YURI GAGARIN

Last night I dreamt of long players,

Slept under shelves of staked albums

On a friends wooden floor,

Lost the labyrinth of the black vinyl,

the welcoming blackness that held such wonder.

The sky clouded as we reach your statue.

You stand held in the loving curve of the galactic spiral.

This is what I think;

we acknowledge you too late,

thirty three and a third years dead today.

Now we hug the earth, bankrupt and dreamless.

We have wasted your chance.

The next couple of short poems are part of an ongoing sequence that may see the light of day in the future, though I think they work alone.

IN THE SPORTS HALL

You end up in those places you never used to go.

Then the preserve of those posh, track suited oafs,

as I remember there was a miasma of male sweat.

Now it has the ambiance of an airport lounge,

but better coffee.

MONDAY MORNING EXPERIMENTS

submarine in its closeness, the heat room

mimics the tropics, a monitored man runs

the treadmill unfolds/swallows the miles

we record data on damp paper

There is a discipline in writing snapshots of events. They can give you an immediacy and if handled well a lasting impression of a moment.

Continuing the Cold War theme I am leaving you this week with an old song from 1982/3 by Liverpool band Lori and the Chameleons. 

METROPHOBIA

I guess you know this is a fear of poetry. I suspect if you read this blog on anything like a regular basis you are not afflicted by such a fear.

A number of poems about the moon today. I have had the first line of this one knocking around my head for some time. 

6am searchlight moon

illuminates the rooftops

early morning yawn

spark the car to more life than me

drive into the dawn

the atmospheric lens of night

magnifies the rising red moon

nearer – further

we play motorway tag

until the street lights drown the stars

I think it is a work in progress, what do you think?

This next one is a companion piece and wrote itself quite quickly.

washed out white disc

already worn away

shaving of soap

in the basin of the stars

I thought of distilling it onto a haiku but I rather like the way it sits on the page.

The last poem is rather different, a little sombre and definitely not complete. I feel that it needs to go somewhere. There is time for it to fully form itself.

we are in trouble

but there will be no rescue

we only have each other

so throw away the ideology

twentieth century thinking won’t save us

the problem is nearer than the next election

deeper than the budget deficit

we cannot go on like this

There is a fine line between describing a situation and hectoring people. 

I am going to leave you with some music. This is Pentangle live. 

MORE SERIOUS THAN I IMAGINED

The theme this year was the swinging 60's - wish fulfilment for some...

Purbeck was great fun. Highlights for me were the Bonsai Pirates and Carrie Rodriguez . Though MarthaTilston was excellent as well. I also read with a wonderful poet Carrie Aaron, who I am hoping to interview soon.

The Bonsai Pirates!

Carrie & Barry

I have to say that I was saddened by the news of the death of Seamus Heaney. He was such a stunning poet. He had the ability to conjure precisely the right word that would make the line resonate, the poem live in your head. I have not the words to do him justice. I only met him once, many years ago, at a reading. He was very generous with his time and was an inspiration to me. He will be missed.

This has been an interesting week really. I returned home to Somerset to be greeted by the news that the pilot badger slaughter was to start. As I write it is being carried out. There is no real evidence that badgers infect cows with TB. It is as inconclusive as real life. Still the government presses ahead. Why we do not simply inoculate the cows is beyond me.

Alex cooks a vegetable fideua

the bass player from Saturday Sun

a worm hole opens in the Long Barn

Alex's Festival Potatoes-they were delicious 

Then there is the fracking. The papers tell us that to protest is to prevent the poor from accessing cheap energy and they portray anyone who is not in favour as some sort of demented, eco freak.

The papers fail to mention that fracking is a short term solution, twenty to thirty years of energy at the most. That it will not bring employment to Somerset and that the people of Somerset will have to live amid the squalor and spoilage and a polluted water table for generations to come.

The Case for Fracking

Things have got desperate.

It’s that point in the evening when even the green liquid

You bought on holiday ten years ago,

tasted once and put to the back of the cupboard

looks enticing.

You know you should just drink water,

go to bed, await for the inevitable hangover.

Deep down you realise that this emerald liquor is not a solution

but that does not stop you,

experience does not deter nor sense call a halt.

You do not taste the first glass, so you pour another.

We will all regret it in the morning…

Not sure it works. But I think the only way to approach the issue is by metaphor – what do you think?

This post has turned out rather more sombre than I imagined. However, I shall leave you on a more positive note. Here are the Bonsai Pirates at last year’s Purbeck.

Have a good week.

POEMS PROVOKED

You could argue all poetry is prompted/provoked by something else, by something beyond the poem. Everything must have a stimulus, the grain of grit that irritates until the pearl encloses it. Well, everything since the Big Bang, who can tell what prompted that?

So some poems and their origins. Read and tell what made you write.

This first one I started last year when I was driving to the Fishguard Festival. When my children were young we holidayed around South Wales a number of times. Pembrokeshire is one of the most beautiful areas of this island.

I had not been back around there since my first wife died and as I drove memories came forward as I recognised the roads. I reflected on how different my life is now. I can recognise who I was then but I wondered if that past me could have comprehended what he would become?

You entered the car just after Haverfordwest, the signage evoking memories, now your ghost is with me. The further I travel forward the more the past superimposes itself on the landscape. What would that past self make of me? The kids are grown, I am a poet, driving to a gig, in love with another woman. You are all around me.

possibly the wrong season for the haiku

Haiku for winter sun

Now sun splashed red brick

The branches and birds casting

Flickering shadows

the church near my house has put up wooden doors to enclose the dry areas where people had been sleeping

                                        it is true the doors things of beauty the carpenters joy in his work echoes the skills of the church builders                                                           

                                                                                                    i know i would think differently if i needed a dry place to sleep

                                                                                               this is not the first time when i was a social worker at county hall they did the same thing to a space by the hot air vents

I expect there is a whole process in both cases that I know nothing about. It does not matter this is my reaction to the parts of the stories I do know.

This last poem’s origin was a photograph of a robin blue bowl, hand crafted with an irregular rim, that was white as bone on the inside. We were given the task of describing it in a workshop sometime ago and this was my response.

THE ROC’S EGG

Sinbad did not lie, he told his truth honestly,

Rode that big bird across the ocean,

Carried far beyond reality, into fantasy,

A story to beguile that murdering Persian.

The egg is real; I see its shell,

Blue, speckled black, bone white inside,

How large it is I cannot tell,

The photograph says much, but hides

Dimensions from my questing gaze.

I sense that this is the point in time

To grasp the thread, to leave the maze,

To embrace the world as if it were mine.

It always is what we hope it will be

Holy, beautiful and wrapped with mystery

What do you think of it? Could you see the bowl? I think we are blessed if we can see the mystery, for that surely is the beauty of life.