(Just trying out a new way of posting. This is a recent poem written quickly after listening to Jocylyn Bell talk about pulsars.)
travelling too close to a pulsar
at the start only a throb
like a lighthouse beam sweeping
the dark in narrow arcs beware
spaghettification as you get closer
you’ll find your head separated
from your feet your chest pulled
violently from your abdomen
the magnetic field will wipe
your credit cards clean
along with all your memories
Most writers and poets say a poem should stand on its own without reference to an image, if that is what triggered the poem. While I agree, I find this drawing so fascinating, I have no hesitation in posting it with my poem! No doubt my attempt doesn’t do justice to the drawing, but there you have it. The technical term for poems which re -interpret other works of art is, Ekphrasis.
On False Perspective
After William Hogarth
See how our concave faces confront contradiction,
we can never read what’s inside; each daily meeting
gouges a deeper groove. Lets face the facts
to avoid false perspective: from a mile away
a man lights his pipe from a candle
held by an apparition leaning from a window next to us.
Sheep grow as big as cows as they wander into the distance;
we stand still as the path beneath our feet speeds along;
a rock face descends as we cling to its cragginess;
horses stand while the bridge moves under their hooves.
*
Two-faced Phil folds into a clock tower; waits his chance to strike.
*
The moon in a dewdrop shows its full face
yet we can’t see both sides of a church
if we stand in one place. Two-faced Phil
jumps out and strikes his lover dead. The murderer’s
reckless act can only return to innocent reflection
in the moonlit depths of a puddle.
At our last Writer’s Group we took one of Bernadette Mayer’s prompts. Pick a phrase at random and let your mind play freely around it until a few ideas come up. Seize on one and begin to write. I took the anonymous poem ‘Sumer is icumin in’ and played around with representing bird song by using phonetic spelling which I hope is onamatopoeic!
Sumer
Apologies to Anonymous (mid 13th century)
Sumer is icumen in sing cuccu
cuccu summer is icumen sing
sing soprano nightin-gal nu-ipp
nu-ipp nu-ipp tweeeeeeeeee pi-oo!
Jug-jug-jug choc-choc zeeeeeee!
Summer is icumen in sing sing
cuccu cu-cucco cuccu cu-cucco!
It has been a while since I’ve posted here due to my working on my book. You can just make out some of us playing French cricket in the background! I had about twenty guests – not a bad turn out for a semi-recluse! The weather was sunny on Sat 6 August and it was good to see everyone enjoying themselves. Friends came from my Yoga group and Writers’ group.
The poem is a bit of intentional semi-doggerel, if there is such a thing! (I was rather pleased with the rhyme for ‘cricket’- in the last stanza.)
Birthday Poem at 70.
The day dawned like any other day;
I’m still standing and not yet lame.
Seventy circuits of the earth around the sun,
I hope I’ll never need a Zimmer frame!
*
My daughter asks what’s it like to be seventy,
I reply no different to being sixty nine.
A friend writes keep the child within alive,
keep writing poetry and you’ll be fine.
*
Lets give thanks and salute the sun today,
play French cricket in Saltwell Park
eat chocolate, Barack Obama and samosas
before our journey into the dark.
*
If I live to be a hundred, I wouldn’t want a plastic heart
In all honesty I don’t think I could stick it;
I wouldn’t want Botox or any replacement part;
I’d just like to be able, still to play French Cricket!
*
Note: Barack Obama is what I called barm brack cake.
I am busy writing a book for publication so will not be posting so often from now on. I will try and post something once a month though! ‘Weddings’ was the topic for my writers’ group this week.
I can’t remember any church bell
but imagine we drank many a toast.
You danced and pranced like a young gazelle
but I recall snorting candy the most.
*
I can’t remember giving you a ring
but can see your purple wedding dress.
You said you didn’t want a freaky fling
I said these days we couldn’t care less.
*
I admired your beautiful blue eyes,
you said you’d travelled fast and so far,
I wondered if you often told lies,
we sped home in a spanking new car.
*
I caressed your shapely malachite ears
but wondered how you saw with three eyes,
you told me you’d travelled ninety light years
from a world of terrible red skies.
An Extra in the Blaydon Races; a Painting by William Irving
This painting is displayed along with a key and sound commentary at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.
I’ll be reading this poem of mine as part of the Late Shows on 14 May at the Shipley.
*
I told him I wanted to be recognised, immortalised –
why he painted that bloke with his upside-down pipe
and starving whippet on his arm beats me.
He’s stealing my thunder, elbowing me out of the way,
I’m barely visible. I told him to paint my new hat
with the betting slips prominent but I’m too far away, more
an extra rather than a leading player. Surely as manager
of Spencer’s Iron Works I should be in the foreground.
My nether regions have gone; obliterated, why I don’t know
my legs and feet are up to scratch, I’m only half the man
without my twill trousers and brown leather shoes.
It’s just not on; he should have shown me his sketches
before lashing out in oils. Anyway sitting here isn’t fun
the bairn behind me’s bawling its head off; The Punch
& Judy man’s slipped in the mud for the third time.
That’s Nancy in the pink dress sitting on the grass
with her bairn asleep on her lap; hope she doesn’t
recognise me – she can talk the hind legs off
the proverbial. A newspaper’s handy that way – you
can hide behind the small print. Why did he have to
have so many bumpkins -look, there’s goggle-eyed Mally
and Fester the Jester doing a jig; centre stage please note!
There’s some right low life here, a pick-pocketers
paradise to be sure. I don’t trust that card sharper
or the Dick Turpin character on his horse. I wish
the Scots Piper would go and blow his bags
somewhere else or leg it back to bonny Scotland.
*
It’ll soon be time for the three o’clock – I’ve backed
William Irving three ways, lets hope I win some notes!
As a betting man you can bet your bottom dollar
I won’t be recognised in fifty years’ time; no I’ll just be
another extra – a portrait in oils my foot!
I don’t pretend this amounts to much as poetry – more of a rant? But I needed to get it off my chest. I think it was Carl Sagan who referred to planet Earth as being a dust mote caught in a sunbeam. Voyager took this photo as it hurtled away from the solar system. The image was recently chosen by Sky at Night as one out of ten iconic/significant images taken by telescopes/cameras.
What came to mind was the insignificance of the Earth on the cosmic scale and comparing its relative physical size with our triumphs of the spirit and our depravities – which of course were not recorded on the gold disc in the Voyager space craft! So although it is unlikely that any intelligent aliens will ever come into contact with it they would get a rather sanitised picture of what we are like. Perhaps I tend to be pessimistic about humanity but on the other hand I think it is important to acknowledge the dark with the light. That’s just being realistic!
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain a nightingale’s song
or the awful trumpeting of the last elephant?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain Michelangelo’s ceiling
or Bach’s Mass in B Minor?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain so much incinerator smoke
or the bits and pieces of suicide bombers?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain the nightmares of a million children
sleeping in the streets?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain the lobster’s quadrille
or the Cheshire Cat’s Grin?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain the watery dreams
of the last few cavorting dolphins?
How can a dust mote caught in the solar wind
contain Ivan Ilyich’s redemption
or weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in?
(Soon to disappear into deep space
carrying our triumphs but
leaving our depravities unrecorded.)
The topic for my writing group is to do some research and base a poem or piece of writing on it. Here is a short story of mine and a summary of the research at the end.
Mabel explained to the new waitress, Lucy – “Whatever you do you mustn’t stare. Just treat them as normal okay?”
Lucy nodded and resumed setting tables. She was seventeen and this was her first day at Mabel’s Restaurant.
Half an hour later a group of five servicemen entered quietly – the first customers. Mabel greeted them cheerily and showed them to a corner table where there was subdued lighting.
“I’ll come and take your orders in five minutes, but first how about drinks?” John, Albert and Tom ordered beers and Geoffrey and Harold red wine by the glass. As Mabel returned to the kitchen the men became more animated and soon were cracking jokes.
Mabel gave the drinks order to Lucy and said, “Remember no staring, just normal service!”
Lucy took the tray of drinks to the men and tried to avert her eyes by looking at the table cloth but it became difficult to keep this up when she was addressed by the men. She’d started by asking, “Now whose is the wine?”
“ That’s me.” Harold said with a lop-sided wink.
“The other one’s mine” Geoffrey added with a slight smile.
As Lucy put the glasses down she noticed Harold’s right hand was a lump of flesh with a stump for a thumb and another for his index finger. However he had no problem lifting the wine to his lips, “Cheers”, he said, “um that’s better, come on chaps lets drink to the future!” After the toast Geoffrey signalled to Lucy who had been about to return to the kitchen.
“What’s your name? You’re new here aren’t you? Lucy gave her name and tried not to look too directly at Geoffrey’s face which seemed to have a piece of loose flesh dangling where his nose should have been. Geoffrey was smiling and said, ”Oh, I’m new here as well so it’s nice to have you on board.”
Back in the hospital Geoffrey was lying on his bed; he was the new boy – it had only been seven weeks since he’d been shot down – over English land fortunately. Instead of re-living the horror of burning inside his cockpit he decided to re-run his hospital experience. While his face had been badly burned in the first few seconds of his Spitfire being hit, further damage was done with the tannic acid treatment he’d received. Dr McIndoe had explained it was the best they could do and Geoffrey was grateful that the surgeon had saved his eyesight. The tannic acid had eaten away his eyebrows but left his eyes intact which was a great relief. He had a special reason for wanting his eyesight saved. McIndoe was exceptional – all the men loved him – he was more than a surgeon; he was friend, counsellor and technician. He’d reconstructed Geoffrey’s face during two separate ops. Geoffrey now proudly sported a plastic nostril. He’d even had his fellow patients in fits of laughter one day when it fell out and rolled out of sight under the bar. He’d also had a pedicle of skin grafted onto his nose bone – this admittedly looked a little unsightly – some of the others called it a sausage as it was pink and soft like the skin of a sausage. Geoffrey didn’t mind – he was just grateful that everything was in good working order and that he could see. He felt a surge of impatience now as he thought about the future. If his eyesight had gone he would have been invalided out of the RAF – never again to fly a Spitfire or even a Whitley –those dodgy machines they called the Flying Coffins because sometimes one of the engines would suddenly cut out.
That was what kept his morale up, that’s what kept him going – he wanted a second chance to get in a cockpit and fly with his gunners.
Flying was very much on his mind as last week they had listened in silence to the PM’s Battle of Britain speech on the radio. Geoffrey wanted to be counted amongst ‘ the few’ – those determined men and women who would attempt the seemingly impossible: the defeat of the German war machine. He rolled over on his bed and reached for the photo of his sister Julie; the last he had heard she was somewhere in Normandy working for the Ambulance Service. As he put the photo down he suddenly had a vision of the hundreds of thousands of casualties of this war. His dream was that the Battle of Britain would save the lives of millions. He only had weeks in which to recover from his injuries and then be discharged fit for action.
Research:
My first port of call was a very moving account of the airmen who had been disfigured by fire and had their faces reconstructed by the surgeon Archibald McIndoe. The book is called McIndoe’s Army by Peter Williams and Ted Harrison. The details of the disfigurements came from this book; the characters based on those described in the book with names changed. Surgeon McIndoe seems to have been one of those remarkable people who do an enormous amount of good and leave the world a better place as a result of their lives. Here is one patient’s quote:
He was a god. Really. A remarkable man. Nothing was too much trouble for him when he was caring for the needs of the aircrew he was looking after.
The Guinea Pig Club was a formal club set up with Mr A. H. McIndoe as its first President. The guinea pigs were of course those airmen who had been operated on by McIndoe. They met regularly for social events after the war.
I had to check online to find the date of Churchill’s speech and so set the story in June 1940. Whether Geoffrey would get his wish and fly in the Battle of Britain is up to you the reader! No doubt further research would reveal whether this was possible with some airmen who had been ‘under the knife’.
The theme for my writers’ group over the New Year is ‘an overheard conversation’- this is my flash fiction response. The part about Foreign Aid is a conversation I’ve heard more than once!
Parvati stands in front of the frozen food compartments with her mobile phone pressed between her shoulder and ear. Her voice carries but she isn’t shouting.
“Do you want crinkle or chunky chips?” After barely a pause she leans into the iced chasm and fishes out a large bag of chunky chips.
“Can you check to see if we need more peas?” Another microsecond pause and she brings out a large bag of frozen peas which she dumps unceremoniously into her nearly full to bursting shopping trolley. As she pushes it to the next isle she becomes aware of someone trying to catch her attention by waving her arms from the textile section.
“Hi Parvati – looks like you’re nearly finished.”
It’s her friend, Helen who gives her a quick hug.
Parvati hurriedly drops her phone into her red handbag. Helen is speaking, “Have you heard the latest? River View’s flooded again – water’s about a metre deep in numbers 8 -20.”
Parvati nods and says she is glad she lives on a hill. Helen continues.
“You know what gets me – all that foreign aid – it’s ridiculous all those millions could be spent on proper flood defences. And guess what? The Flood Minister’s spent Christmas in Bar-bloody- Bados!”
Parvati’s face contorts briefly in empathy and she jabs her finger for emphasis –
“I’d stop most of the foreign aid – I mean for all we know it could be going to fund ISIS. Anyway, India doesn’t need Aid – there’s too much corruption there!”
“Exactly – and you should know, eh Parvati?”
The two friends push their trolleys between the Dairy produce and the Ready Meal isles. Parvati heads for the Asian Food section and Helen follows.
Parvati points to a jar of curry mix. “Have you tried the Tikka Masala Paste? – it really does the job.”
Helen smiles and spits out a few more nuggets.
“I thought you’d be more authentic; why choose Pataks all the time? You should try the Bangalore Biryani Mix – look it’s on Special Offer.”
Parvati reaches for a jar of the Biryani and places it in her trolley.
“Well that’s me finished. See you Helen. Let’s hope the storms pass and we can get back to normal.”
Parvati heads towards a checkout while Helen continues her weekly shop.
I’ve been rummaging through files of old bits of writing and found this parody of Wordsworth’s sonnet, The World is Too Much with Us. It is just a bit of fun, or is it?
The Cyberworld Is Too Much With Us
The cyberworld is too much with us – now and soon,
Texting and messaging lay waste our hours;
Much we see online that is ours;
We use our mouse to click into a room!
This cyberspace that takes us to the moon;
The netiquette that gives a newbie powers;
It’s Mother’s Day so send some cyber flowers.
On first of April you can play the goon;
Embed a virus in your message to mankind,
And hope to access every PC in the land.
Google or cybersleuth will not find
The worm insinuated by your hand;
If you love power you will not mind;
You are a cybernaut with one command!
All Things Creative 