CARRY HIM INTO THE NEXT INCARNATION

I started this blog in May 2011, fourteen years ago, and this is my eight hundredth post and I would like to thank all the people who have supported the blog over the years. I am not sure what I make of this latest piece. It is still in its early stages. An EMP is an Electromagnetic Pulse. An airburst would destroy all electronic equipment retendering everyone back into the analogue age.

The times uncertain

the power failed with a regularity

Rumour was everywhere

whispered talk of an EMP

That would kill every screen stone dead

and soften them up for the expected invasion

He had prepared for this

if they ever dropped the big one

He would go out listening to West End Blues

and its beauty would carry him into the next incarnation

I'm not happy with it at the moment as it feels out of balance. West End Blues is a tune by King Oliver. My favourite version is by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. I do have a 78rpm disc of the tune.

There seems no better way to end this post than with the genius of Mr. Armstrong.

Until next time.       

BRIGHT CURLED CRISP

Autumn has definitely arrived in Devon, it should have, you cry, it's November! Well, yes it is, but it's been unseasonably warm recently. Here's a poem about the season.

AUTUMN

The leaves were leaving

right angles in the wind

bright curled crisp

they fly from the branch

Then circle as if unsure

of what to make of this word freedom

only to fall

heavier than the thought

Briefly they will jewel the pavement

Nothing to say about this poem really. This next one is another in the long line of poems about writing poems. 

It comes down to the poem shouting at you

oi! over here!

As it mimes a metaphor

that you only half appreciate

You are just the hapless scribe

whose hands are full

Recording every word

as best you can 

Again it is just a little observation. I think I am in a period of writing miniatures. Small, self contained facets of lived experience. I hope they chime with you. 

Here's Ben Webster and Oscar Peterson.

Until next time.

 

EXPERIMENTS WITH BOREDOM

I don't listen to much classical music, just Bach and Shostakovitch's string quartets. I cannot really make sense of the classical orchestra, it just doesn't float my boat. Jazz on the other hand I adore. Horses for courses I suppose. This post's poem arrived while I was listening to a classical cd I had not played for years.

alone

in a new house

every other weekend

I experimented with boredom

I listened to those cds

you said would improve me

but I never got that music

it was a country I could starve in

twenty odd years later

I listen to one

discover I still cannot enter

I do not care

I hear meaningless notes

evaporate in the empty air

I think it works. It is a sonnet, though a pretty free one. Watch this space. 

Here's the wonderful Duke Ellington Orchestra. The featured soloist is Johnny Hodges- what a sound!

Until next time.

WHEN THE WEATHER COULD BE TRUSTED

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.

Until next time.

A VAST CITY INSIDE YOUR HEAD

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.

Until next time.

REAL TIME PROWLS

 

A couple of poems I started on a recent trip to London. 

the room offered two time zones

10:04 and 08:32

he stands in the centre

an hour rests on each open palm

outside

relentless

non-negotiable

real time prowls

waits to skewer you 

Yes, the room did have two digital clocks, each showing a different time.

There was a heat wave going on that week and it sort of contributed to this.

whatever, the furnaces are fed

it is only nine o’clock

and already the room is too warm

unbidden the hot wind from the sahara

brings the words of his mother

days like this there’s no talking to him

too much in his head for him to ever hear you

the sun shall brick bake the air

his voices will yell the louder

Pretty bleak eh? 

It was one of those poems that wrote itself, coming from somewhere deep inside. 

Here's an accurate poster. I am glad I am not the only one upset by the antics of the shameless and apparently Teflon coated advisor to what is laughingly referred to as the prime minister...

Here's someone of quality, which is more than can be said of the poltroons in the cabinet, the majestic Ben Webster from 1964.

Until next time.

THE SILENCE OF THE GREAT EXTINCTION

I woke up on Thursday morning feeling that I was living in the final chapter of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin. 
The bad people have won. The callous, mean spirited, utterly ruthless, neoliberal, careerist politicians have acted with characteristic disregard for democracy. Words fail me.
I can only see the situation becoming ever worse. We can prepare to wave goodbye to the National Health Service, the few remaining employment rights we have and get ready for the end.
None of these politicians have the gravitas [or the intelligence] to save humanity from catastrophe. Be that from the environmental breakdown, species extinction or the ever increasing greed of the few.

Here is a revised poem.

the silence of the great extinction

settled on the shoulders of the survivors

as if for the first time

they could see all that had been lost

and so set to refashion their world

shipping in from beyond the stars

mechanical birds to jewel their skies

and fill a space long vacated

by sinew and bone

feather and wing

having captured the thermal

see how their propellers idle

as they spiral ever higher

to spectrograph heaven with their metal tongues 

You can read the original here.
I have altered the layout [thanks to the Secret Poets for their input] and tried to make the final stanza flow more smoothly.
At this moment, if I am honest, I don't see our species surviving. We seem hell bent on making the situation ever worse. Hope packed its bags and left some time ago.
I leave you with John Coltrane.

 

TROPICAL PRESSURE 2019

Last weekend I was at the Tropical Pressure Festival and what a fab festival it was!
I ran a poetry workshop on the Friday that was great fun. I'd like to thank the people who attended for their hard work and wonderful poems. I also read on the Sunday.
My workshop was on finding treasure and involves imaging clearing the house of a person who has hoarded everything for many years. Here is the poem I wrote. 

if this room could find its voice

hidden as it is amid this sea of boxes

would it bother to speak

to spill its secrets to strangers

when its story is written on every creased surface

It is a jewel of a festival and the variety and quality of the music is superb. 
LA-33 a salsa band from Columbia were amazing on the Friday evening and Tetes De Pois played two storming sets on Saturday. They were my band to watch from the festival.
I'd like to thank Antonia and all her team for their hard work in making the festival so enjoyable to both work at and attend. Thank you.
Here's Tetes De Pois so you can judge for yourself.

Until next time.

A LETTERBOX IN THE EARTH

I have mixed feelings about musicals, there are some I really like [Guys & Dolls for instance], but on the whole I find them not to my taste. It's not that I do not love the Great American Songbook, far from it. I adore Rogers & Hart, Harold Arlen and Cole Porter. The lyrics of their songs are as erudite as anything you will ever hear and wittier than most. 
This is a preamble into this poem:

Oklahoma

It was their children who celebrated,

turning their struggles into a musical,

all bright tunes and stock characters.

Endless acres under a summer blue sky.

The script did not foretell of the Dust Bowl,

none of the songs mentioned the First People,

now imprisoned on reservations.

No. It was all technicolor gaiety.

It’s no wonder we have to fight

for our histories to be heard.

It's not that I object to the work, it is not to my particular taste but that's besides the point. I just think that history is a contested concept. There are many different interpretations of the past jostling and fighting to be the dominant discourse. I think we need to hear some of the other perspectives.
Every age remakes the past in its own image. We need to discuss our history more than we do.

Here is a revised poem. You can read the last version here.

SPACES

Sideways

through a letterbox in the earth,

then crawl on your stomach

and dive through a sump of dark water,

to emerge where?

Don’t ask me

I failed the first task.

When slithering into the fissure

the weight of the world was compressing

I was backing out apologising.

Extremes are not for me,

neither the confines of the cave

or the naked space of free air.

You see ten years or more before,

when I was first an apprentice,

I had to climb the cold metal ladder of the turbine hall

to inspect the integrity of the overhead cranes,

but when I emerged on to that tiny platform,

a speck in the industrial immensity,

I could do nothing but wait to be guided down.

Perhaps the secret of any life

is to find the places where you can thrive.

Essentially the last three lines have gone. The Secret Poets were of the opinion I was introducing a whole new concept. This is not a good idea at the end of a poem, a poem needs to be complete in itself.
I am leaving you with Ella Fitzgerald singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. Lorenz Hart was a total genius.

Until next time.

OPEN EYED WONDER

Here is a poem about people who cannot leave what they know. 
It was written quite quickly a little while ago and I am not sure it is ready yet.

He has never left his garden,

or walked beyond its boundary

to gaze with open eyed wonder

at what can thrive outside.

It is is true he tends his fields,

diligently kneels in the soil,

skin cut by sharp leaves

of plants he barely knows beyond

the names they give themselves.

Each holds its own promise:

protection, profit, status.

Everything comes at a cost,

in blood, in sweat, in time,

so he has never left his garden.

There could be so much more.

I'd be interested to know what you make of it.

Here is Bill Evans from 1965.

Until next time.

ALL YESTERDAYS TOMORROWS

I have been engaged in a project with a local art class. They have drawn/painted pictures based on my poetry and along with the wondrous poets of Juncture 25 I have been responding by writing poems based on their art work. It has the potential to be a long project.
This post's poem is a [very] rough draft from this project. 
There are a number of themes running through the poem. It is loosely based on a memory from my student days. 
Also I was rereading an old 1960's science fiction book recently, All The Colours of Darkness by Lloyd Biggle Jr. which was set in the then future, the 1908's, which, of course, is our past. The world was more like the 1950's than the 80's. It was fun to revisit the book though. It set me thinking about all those past tomorrows that never came about. 
This in turn led me to remember Karl's old  Zephyr Zodiac, not quite as cool as the big American cars with fins, but as near as the Britain got in the pre-Beatles early sober sixties.
I was also reminded of our shared passion for John Coltrane. The titles of two of his most famous lps are woven into the poem.

All Yesterday's Tomorrows

Karl drove drove a sky blue zephyr zodiac,

built before seat belt laws,

so big and bold with wings like rocket fins.

The urgency of Giant Steps spurs us up to Dartmoor,

driving toward A Love Supreme,

on the hunt for flying saucers,

with dreams of Adamski scout ships,

as cool as Coltrane is on this cassette.

We are on the moor, riffing off our dreams,

to see the earth from space,

chat with an alien, out there on a tor.

Or a cigar shaped mothership above us,

that would dampen all electric fields,

cause this battleship to halt.

Which of us though really believes?

Night descends. A clear, starry sky,

no strange lights,

we see no saucers.

Inside the car, mid note the music stops.

Tape ribbons in my hands,

then it's the death of jazz.

All the silent way home

we try to avoid blaming Trane

for its murder.

There is a perspective that the move towards free jazz killed it as a contemporary art form. I am not sure but thought it was an interesting way to end the poem.
I must leave you with the man himself from 1966.

Until the next time.

THE WHITE LINE

I spent an enjoyable afternoon yesterday discussing poetry with the other members of the Secret Poets. Thanks must go to the Secret Poets for their invaluable assistance in making sense of this post's poem. 

You may have seen the rough draft here.

THE WHITE LINE

Let's play along with the myth

of the over the hill gunslinger,

who's lost his nerve and is on one last job.

He stands outside a door wondering

if his death waits inside.

Taste his fear. See his hands shake.

He gathers himself, and kicks that door open,

outdraws the bad men

[though he is the one dressed in black]

and frees the farmers, as he was supposed to.

Absorbed in his own legend, he pauses,

is shot in the stomach, dies holding on to the wall.

Then there's me, in the dark,

right side of the white line,

Saturday afternoon films, 1961.

That scene has stayed with me since,

perhaps I was just the right age to be impressed.

I had yet to watch Vietnam unfold nightly,

or to see the American Empire begin to crumble.

What has changed? Well, it is now a shorter poem, ten lines have been removed and it is the better for this. 

One of the advantages of sharing your work with others is that you discover what doesn't work.

I also gained a title.

A word of explanation; when I used to go to Saturday afternoon films you had to sit below the white line. This was literally a white line running across the aisle demarcating where children sat in the matinee. I think it was to make cleaning up after the film easier. I was thrown out once for sitting at the back of the cinema. What a rebel.

Here is Jimmy Witherspoon and the late, great Art Pepper. I have just found this clip. Art is playing like an angel.