Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts

Tomato

In my drive to self sufficiency
Indoor gardening appealed to me,
So I hung them in the windowsill,
Ingredients 3.

I knew it was a risk to put
The basil with the rosemary
But I figured one would thrive
And which didn't really matter to me.
What I didn't figure on, though
Was the overgrown triffid tomato tree

It started as a sturdy branch,
Hopeful, healthy, heavenly scented,
Enjoyed the cyclical drown and parch
Of a suntrap windowbox well vented.

Past the window and round the corner,
The tentacles claimed the wall.

And now a fruit is dangling, heavy
Promise-green of future feast.
Tantalising, tempting beauty
It grows each day and whispers “eat me”
As I wash the dishes underneath.


Psalm for Motorcyclists

TT is here

The wheel of prayer roaring
Thirty seven and three quarters
Of energy embedded in
Sacrificially sanctified soil.

This is how new ley lines are formed.
This is where heroes are born.
This is why leather is worn.

The pillion-pilgrims return
With acolytes of their own
And pass the passion in their turn
To new generations grown.

Sacred speed, courage, endurance,
Gladiatorial battle with nature's forces
South sea sounding gulls wail a chorus
Heralding the arrival of thousands of tourists
The islanders take a breath.
Let us pray.

Slack Lining

Heel to toe, heel to toe.
Stepping carefully, stepping slow.
Each foreshadowed print a potential mine;
choose between conflicting signs.
This way, that way, u-turn, short cut,
tunnel, bridge, no through road, shut.
Tight rope, slight hope,
but no sign of safety net.
Height choked, dry throat,
not even half way over yet.
The depths below, glow.
inviting inverted flight, one way,
skimming with fluttering skirts,
nirvana visage no longer concerned,
diverted from diurnal concerted
effort.
The glow below, expects.
Lava monsters, demons, mummies,
Terminator 2, crocodiles and slurry
await you moaning, reaching, grasping.
Sulphur-breath and curses rasping.
Tentacles, tendril, terrorists, Thatcher,
Count Olaf and the Child Snatcher,
Gagamel, Skeletor, Mumraa, Blair
welcome you and take their share.
That glow is far beneath.
Let it remain so.
For now furrow of thwarted thoughts
form saline irrigation forks
and roll into the watering stalks
of eyes stress-blade sharpened to
hunting hawks.
Feel the breeze on your face.
Pick up the pace.
Purposeful placing of heel-toe-heel-toe race,
miss-step apprehension with mistaken nonchalance replaced.
Almost indifferent to the threat
you split and curtsy, pirouette.
Amaze with your ability
to juggle responsibility
while dropping things that they don't see
into the depths below.
Heel toe. Step. Heel toe.
Along you glibly go.
Wider sections provide reprieve
from constant pressure. Ironically
it's from this bit you'll likely fall,
when you paid  attention to the ground
at all.

Vacationcy

Suitcase castors skitter-clattering
fights the
cloudburst pitter-pattering
battering
homeward jetlagged smattering
of tourists in the dark.

Taxi tyres swishing
hitting
pedestrians with mists
of filth that were
puddles
moments before.

The roar and whistle
of the storm’s winds bristle
hairs on necks
suntanned
and long haul sore.

Cash for taxis crushed in numb hands;
plans of walks on sunset shores
are splattered monumentally
with clarity of fact.
You’re back

from your holi-bobs, your jollies,
back to bills and job and worries.
Scurry soggily, fog clogs
your vision and windscreen.
Familiar roads pass under you unseen
as fatigue erodes last run of sinew keen.

Tinnitus eardrums
numbed
to thrum of engine’s
 singing
lullabies
as hedges echoes follow behind.
The drive has never been longer.
wringing wrench of
muscles hunger
to feel some
relief
from cramps.
Angry clamp
stamping angles
into ankles.

Damp hats doffed,
clothing off
and duvet down.

As sounds recede, your thoughts
of pastures greener, all sorts
of golden reveries consort
themselves freely.

Home.

And comfort.

                                                                                                                                         

I had the honour and delight of running a workshop on the Writer's Day of Manx LitFest 2016. This is an event in which budding authors attend workshops, Q&A sessions and panel discussions with authors, publishers and agents. They also have the chance to pitch their idea to a publisher. 
The workshop I was running was all about the use of sound as more than the obvious. It's all a bit complicated to explain here, but is based on the Kiki/Booba experiment and resulting inspiration. It leads to very meta-rhyme and form. 

The point of it is to recognise that sound is almost as evocative as smell. That the sound of words affects you more than their actual meaning. The poem above was inspired by sound and written using the principles of the workshop. 

This style of writing is why there are so many tongue-twisters in my poems. 
Xx

Home and Hospital for the Incurables

Gothic institution, high on island hill.
Oceans of ink. A sky entirely of quill.
The Warden’s keys jangle alarmingly in the lock.
She punches in, signalling day’s beginning on the clock.

One by one along the stacks
the strip lights buzz and yawn.
Their dust dilated haloes are vesperturnally forlorn.
Muffled footsteps on threadbare shuffle
and distantly a hushed kerfuffle
whispers through still air.

The Warden sighs and rolls her eyes
at the metronomic morning mantra
as the echoed mouthfuls materialize:
“You can’t make me get up if I don’t wanna!”

This is Gulchik. Every day
she wishes that the night would stay.
She likes to moonbathe. It helps to soothe
her erratic solar-stifled moods.
The Warden pays her little mind
but checks the email, flips the sign
on office door from “out” to “in”.
Another day at work, for her sins.

A shadow flicks across the door
trailing a wake of intense intention.
Lamps flick on. Decisions are made.
Coffee brews.
Its olfactory serenade draws others to the room.
They are gathered in a foyer of a library of sorts.
A refectory of writings and of reactionary last resorts.

The people here aren’t free to leave
but purgatorially persist.
Endlessly refining their flaws
as three dimensional as a Moebius Strip.

The self-appointed Head Librarian is a very jovial chap.
He wears a suit of sepia wool and a shiny brass-badged cap.
Perpetual cup of half-drunk tea
in hand. You’ll find him at his desk.
Any scrap of thing you want to know
he’ll give upon request.
He has it all neatly filed away,
it’s hidden in the stacks.
Taped up dusty cardboard boxes
labeled “Synonyms”, “Sources”, “Syntax”.
BUT.

He really

loves

charades.

The Simpleton Sphinx has found a way
to turn easy admin into frustrating play.
He will answer all you care to ask
in cryptic clues an interpretive dance.

Gulchik tries to help the situation along
offering answers so painfully, blatantly wrong
that Warden orders her to read
and get the education so clearly needs.

As she strops away we catch a glint
deep in the murk. If you squint
you might just see a figure slim,
locally known as Tin-Foil-Tim.
This is a name the others gave to him.
He will not reveal his own for fear
of hidden cameras, tracking devices conspi-
racies and the mere
acknowledgement of his presence
scrambles him like a startled pheasant.

Thompson or Thompson,
(It’s not clear which)
twinkles his eyes
and gives his moustache a twitch.
“Only 3% of pheasants live to be age 3”.
The bowler-hatted figure grins charmingly, broadly.
His lapel-pin draws the gaze
in pompous-fonted letters the phrase
‘Keeper of Ephemeral Wisdom’ is engraved.

Bouncing his cane he turns with flair.
And all returns to the still, silent air.

A distant light fades into view.
A pale coral comforting hue.
The kitchen with its Aga and its well worn table top
is host to existential debates that never really stop.
The sisters here go on and on about the nature of truth.
One’s called Anna-Nostalgia and the other is Memory-Ruth.
Steaming tea-pot, pink wafers biscuits, cross-stitch and knitting.
The only thing they agree on is which chair the other should sit in.

This little room is haunted by the wraith of poor Miana.
She hisses now from shadowed corners.
She was drowned in raucous laughter.

While this cosy little picture may well warm your oysters
there are secrets to be discovered in the dark beyond the cloisters.

This monochrome stone is Daemenzia’s domain.
Her most terrifying weapon her glaring disdain.
All angles and German modernist lighting
she is used as a guard specifically to frighten
others to stay out and one to stay in
the padded devotional cell that she’s in.

Through the door-grill she may be glimpsed.
The disheveled, wide-eyed Mistress of Mince.
Hunched over paper, desperately scratching.
Her dress is so well worn its mostly just patching.
Bare foot and grubby she tremors with breath
for if she ever stops writing it would be sudden death.

The Warden sees the Mistress but they rarely interact.
How can a rock hope to understand the notion of the abstract?
For Warden knows what others don’t, by virtue of being the carer.
The Mistress’s powers are transcendental. What Warden discovered had scared her.

All the books in the library were hand written not typed
in identical scrawly pea-green swirls on identical pages striped.
New volumes are forthcoming at an ever steady rate
but the oldest book in the library is sealed inside a safe.
For it describes in detail the ink washed island hill
and how the Mistress had created it through the force of pen and will.
The sudden death she fears isn’t her earthly own
but everyone that’s placed in the Hospital and Home.
For although they cannot leave and are prisoners of her construct
she has grown accustomed to their distracting disorderly conduct.

And so she goes on writing
above ink sea on island hill.

In a gothic institution

where the sky is made of quill.