Here's a poem about meeting someone off the train late at night. I attended a workshop about trains last week ran by The Write Box poetry group. Thank you Bob and Sue.
we could be the three last people on
this earth
cold as the bone in this post midnight
chill
the station is as silent as sleep
then the light
rounds the bend
yawns to a stop
is this the carriage door
the one you will explode out of
telling tales of cheek by jowl
overcrowding
no seat until well after Bristol
of course it isn’t
we hug and walk home
The poem is pretty straight forward [aren't they all]. It is based on a real incident of collecting my eldest daughter from the station. She arrived on the last train and the place was deserted. It's not complete yet, needs a rewrite or two.
Here's a couple of revised poems. You can read the previous version of this first one here. I've changed the ending as I was not happy with the poem, to be honest after the first line I didn't think it flowed. Hopefully this is smoother.
just
like that the champagne went flat
we
were in the presence of a bigger mystery
one
that would carry us to a place of metaphor
and
consume a whole twelve hours
we
had been there before and would visit again
so I
watched as the bubbles fled from the pale liquid
sometimes
all
you can
do is
trust
and
watch the
seconds as they uniquely unravel
I wanted to project tranquillity, that a loss of ego can lead us to something wonderful. That there is no need for fear. This second poem is hopefully more show than tell.
the
anchoress dreams
sap
green spring leaf
her time again would be
to
sail as a dandelion seed
over
all man made enclosures
but
the bell’s toll wakes her
in
the half light same four walls
as
it has been these past ten years
the
sun takes its time
to
rise above the barred window
and
where she wonders
is
God in all of this?
I think the last version was an information dump. What I have tried to do is lead the reader to the same conclusion, but I am not sure that the final two lines are needed? At the moment I am working on a number of poems that are slowly coming together, they will appear in due time.
A poem that came to me in a dream this post. It was the kind of avalanche of words that makes you get out of bed and write them all down. It doesn't happen that often but when it does I obey.
HID
IN PLAIN SIGHT
false
flagged
the
car moved through the ranks of the oppressors
and
not one of them thought to check the identities
of
the smiling people who waved at their enemies
and
so did not discover the wounded man in the back
night
would fall in an hour
sanctuary
lay in the hills
the
demonstration had failed this time
but
nothing lasts forever
some
day one day they would win
So what's it all about? I'm not sure. The term false flag I suspect comes from Patrick O'Brien's series of novels. The poem seems to be about hiding in plain sight as the title states and escaping to fight again. Seems a positive poem. Your thoughts on this one are more than welcomed.
I always feel blessed when a poem arrives as I sleep, though I have no idea why one should turn up this night and not another. The muse must be acknowledged. Thinking back to that specific night I cannot remember anything but holding the words in my head while I searched for pen and paper.
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.
How this poem came about is told in the first stanza. I was taking down the Christmas decorations and I was reminded of an event from 1975. The secret in such circumstances is to have a pen and paper handy. Thankfully I did have.
Taking
Down the Decorations
Then
I am reminded of August '75,
a
cottage in Kerry, an invitation from a man,
probably
no older than I am now.
After
banana sandwiches and dirt brown tea,
he
showed us his parlour
made
up like Christmas Day.
You
won't remember '75,
eclipsed
as it was by the next year's heat wave,
but
it was a more perfect summer.
The
half closed curtains sculptured the sunlight,
bouncing
off those mirrored surfaces
with
an intensity I have never seen since.
I
take the angel off the tree,
box
up the string of lights,
pack
away the stray memories.
There really was man who brightened his house every August with Christmas lights and decorations. 1975 was a stunning summer, without the water shortage drama of the following year. 1976 is the one we always remember. I just wanted to capture the process of how thoughts blossom randomly.
Hurray For The Riff Raffhas just released a new lp, The Navigator. Here's Pa'lante.
I'm off to listen to the whole thing, as it's just arrived through the post.
I ran a workshop on Wednesday evening for Juncture 25. I organise one a month, it helps us keep our poetry chops honed. But this time I ran on to the rocks of artifice. Essentially I became so wedded to a conceit that my poem floundered. This is definitely a danger for me, and I suspect many other poets. I can lose my way trying too hard to work a theme into a poem. In this case I wanted to weave the colours of the rainbow throughout the poem and I stopped listening to my poetic sense and became all rigid left brain ordering. So what should have been a subtle pattern ended up dominating the poem and, as I say, stopped me listening to where the poem wanted to go. You will be relieved I am not sharing that particular disaster.
Instead this first poem grew out of a conversation I had with Richard Holt at CIC CIC here in Taunton. We were talking how politics can be an end in itself, politicians become too concerned with keeping all the plates in the air that they forget that there are more ways of doing things, or even that there are more rooms than the one they want us to live in. I was just thinking that this would make a good poem as Richard said that there was a painting in the metaphor. I have beaten him to it.
They would have you believe this room
is the centre,
and
the activity in the middle essential for all our well being.
While
you may be invited to admire an individuals skill,
you
must not question why the plates have to be kept spinning.
There
is combat here, bare knuckled words
exchanged
between the groups who vie to work the poles,
but
if it is expedient they will expect you
to
die to keep the plates in the air.
Maybe
this is too crude for you?
How
about the double bluff?
The
Eloi still rule the poor Morlocks,
it
only looks like sacrifice,
it's
their ball and their rules.
We
may be at the precipice
but
there is still a profit to be made from the dying earth.
They
would have you believe this room is the centre.
But
in my father's house are many mansions,
if
it were not so, I would have told you.
I shall leave you to judge how well I have captured the idea. But I shall mention the photographs. I have always been fascinated by H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. You can read another poem here. The world that the Time Traveller finds himself in has, amongst other things, a strange glass/ceramic museum and a pagoda in it. There are two types of humans, the Eloi [all vacuous fun] and the Morlocks [the debased proletariat, who harvest the Eloi]. Wells had his own take on the future to promote, but my sympathies have always been with the Morlocks. The word mansion also crops up in this next poem. I once knew a man who was in a position very similar to that which the poem describes.
He is a mansion, as are we all.
Over
creeping time,
he
has closed each room,
thrown
dust sheets over emotions,
backed
away from what he once could feel.
He
exists in his attic.
He
has opened the trunks that hold his memories,
subjects
each to the harsh prism of his guilt,
twisting
each recollection until it screams.
I had been eagerly waiting for the new Beirut lp to be released and I have to say I do not get it. Whereas Rip Tide was a beautiful album of strong tunes and excellent lyrics NO No No seems to be a collection of demos. Best to avoid I think... Here are Hooray For The Riff Raff in concert.
