Showing posts with label live. Show all posts
Showing posts with label live. Show all posts

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

If you like the theatre,
or going to live shows
there's a whole cast of characters
who to you are quite well known.

I'm not sure if they're real
or some sort of rent-a-crowd
but where ever there's a view to obscure
you'll find them gathered round.

It doesn't matter if you book seats
or turn up hours previous
to guarantee your front row view.
They're cunning and they're devious.

First up in this parade of pains
is the Giant Head-Geared Horror.
Whether hat or hair it doesn't matter;
its mass is a thing of wonder.

You crane to the left,
you strain to the right
attempt to secure
uninterrupted sight
of all the stagely treads afoot.
You finally find the best place to look
and now the 3 rows behind you's view's hidden.
As you hear them all shift you're a bit guilt ridden.

What you don't realise in your angsty little quest
is that now you've taken the entire armrest.
“That ignorant bloody space invader”
is how you'll be remembered.
But this about-to-be-a-bad neighbour
is of an individual standard.

He's invading space on the other side!
He got quite claustro when he tried
to avoid to being touched or crowded or crushed.
Now it's becoming apparent he's the Great Unwashed.
The stench started as just a whiff
the woman on the end wasn't sure so she sniffed.
It made her eyes sting and her nose hairs burn.
She gagged and the woman in front of her turned
and over glasses chastised a “hush!
You're ruining it for the rest of us!”

Gagging woman sees her chance
and joins the crowd at the front to dance.
And just as she's found a great view of the feature
enter the Four Legged Staggering Crab-Like Creature.
United at the shoulder, mutually supportive
but with feet and legs at war with each other,
attempts to walk are abortive.
Everyone they stumble into spills their drinks in shock
but from their own never-empty glasses they don't waste a single drop.

Another multi-organismed beast
makes incremental attacks and never retreats.
It's starts in on your peripherals,
usually embodied by a group of girls
who over time push their way into the space
that previously was taken by your arms, or your face.
They never tie their hair up
and it all goes in your mouth
when you try to light your cigarette,
then try to put it out.
Their bloody hair's on fire!
They use so much spray and mousse.
You put up with it for so long but in the end it's just no use.
You sidle to the sidelines and go for a quick wee.
At one point one of those girls ended up sitting on your knee!

Upon returning to the scrum,
sweaty, dancing, joyful.
Your space has been taken by a man
wearing a coat half-duvet, half-hairball.
A firm-fan-favourite song begins
the surge forth irresistible
and you fall forward into him.
As least when you land it's comfortable.
His po-faced wife or girlfriend is leaning over the railings
looking bored and slightly offended by these audio assailants.
I don't know why she came along,
it's not like it was free.
I think her space would be better taken by
a fan. You know, like me.
Upon closer inspection, you recognise these two.
They're the one's that annoyed you earlier
by pushing in the queue.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't cricket
But you 'd never say anything,
you're far too British.
And besides, you've been waiting a third of your life
for this very gig, for this show tonight.
So you put up and shut up,
choose the obstruction least offensive
and if you can learn to live with it
be an audience attentive.

So if by some lucky twist of fate your eye line's unimpeded,
you're comfortable and the toilet queue's non-existent when you need it,
check you aren't just pushing in or obscuring others' view.

Because you might be unaware that the annoying bastard's you. 

International Women's Day 2015

Yesterday was International Women's Day.

To mark this occasion I was invited up to Manx Radio to take part in a live challenge as part of a Women Today special program.  This year's theme for Women's Day is "Make it Happen" and the challenge was to Make something Happen in the two hours we were on the air.

The challenge was to write a poem.  In two hours.  With specific items. And then, half way through the challenge, extra words were added to be included.

(I don't know if any of you guys knows Triple J in Australia and the Song in an Hour challenge with the group Tripod, but it was a bit like that. Those guys are absolutely hilarious. If you don't know them you should check them out.)

The items:
The Venus symbol.
A ring.

The words to be included:
Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

I had a whale of a time and can't wait for the next challenge. Pressure calls the muse wonderfully well. The resulting poem is below. Huge thank yous to everyone on the Women Today team, but especially Kate Holland for being a star. Xxxx


For International Women’s Day
I’m sitting here on Women Today.
Challenge set and yet I find
confusion in these female signs.
Venus: lollipop with cross
since renaissance thaw of cultural frost
has meant the 51%
in shorthand for illiteracy’s argument.
Distaff, mirror, domesticity,
spinning the fabric of life through history.
The Norse Gods though, gave Freya this power;
Spinning the clouds while from raindrops men cowered.
The archetypal figures of fate-
Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos make
us realise the strength held within
the masterminding of the tangled skein.
And if life’s a tapestry as sang Carole King
What now do we think of the gilded ring?
The fourth finger on the sinister hand
Has a vein to the heart, or so folk understand
In times gone by... (Look, I know, I tried.
My tenses are out, but time’s not on my side.)
Miniature yokes of marital oppression
Or religious symbol of soul felt confession
Or one to bring them, and in the darkness bind them
Or heirlooms passed down with memories inside them.
What change do they make, these circles of fidelity?
Do you wake up one morning and believe in eternity?
And if you do, don’t you think you should start
on the immediate world making your mark?
We’re talking today about Making It Happen
in reality, not just in worlds we’ve imagined.
The movement was started in 1909
by New York socialists supporting a strike
of the Union of Ladies’ Garment Workers.
Great shouts will grow from grass root murmurs.
The advancements we've made in society over all
in a century of campaigns, of fighting, of appall -
- ing misdeeds and practices we’re trying to assign
to yesterdays. To the unenlightened times.
To change the world there’s a secret trick
that I learned while working on a cross-stitch.
It’s that tiny actions eventually make
tomorrow’s reality yours to take.
Even one step is one step closer.
Take your time, keep the faith, retain your composure.
You won’t believe when they all combine
how far you can go, one step at a time.
Identifying lacks is all very well
but unless you do something, don’t bother to tell
me you’re bored, you’re unhappy, there’s nothing to do.
This is opportunity.  It’s up to you
to fill in that gap; to give your life meaning;
to refuse to do anything you find demeaning.
The theme for this year is most motivational.
Look out for figures unassuming and inspirational.
How much did your mother give up for you?
And those people doing what you want to do
have just accepted the greater timeline.
They don’t give up in the face of bad signs.
So Women Today celebrate femininity.
Embrace your power.  Salute your divinity.
Do that thing you've always wanted to do.
Make no excuses, just steps to the new.