Showing posts with label zapparoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zapparoli. Show all posts

Anti-Shanty

We all sing the songs of souls lost at sea
and preserve in musical amber memories.
But what of the land-bound in fishermen’s towns,
Now the fish are all dead and the industry’s down?

These boatmen more solid on liquid than land
on coal-littered beach front at sunset they stand.
Watch while their mistress is tossing her waves.
Greying and gloomy. She resents what she gave.

Now she casts off the covenant and keeps all the catch
and the sails in the harbour are folded or slack.
Lobster pots line up, empty in the sun,
while their salted-faced owner silently burn.

For it’s pints they are downing
to tribute the drowning
of another in whiskey not sea.
For they know where they’re going,
it’s their own path he’s showing
a way out of their own misery.

The swallows that flit through the cherry blossom trees
know the sea demands her tithe ev’ry fifteen years.
She lowers the pressure and hitches her skirt.
Swishing them wildly unbuttons her shirt,
booming with laughter she rolls on the shore
and demands that more businesses pay her, and more.

Her revenge for her rape is undeniable and savage
for hell hath no fury like an ecosystem ravaged

The touch of the hull on her skin is well met
but behind these caresses is an anchor of debt.
She gives life and takes life; some later, some soon
changeable as wind direction, reliable as moon.

People flocked to pay homage in sunny days gone by
but they’ve mostly stopped coming since the monkeys learned to fly
and now the town relies on hand outs and the landing stage is closed
and they’ve paved over history with a red brick road.

The people left land locked pay their dues in installments
of barometric infirmity and camphor-based liniment.
Crippled by ozone and scattered by squall.
They yearn when they hear the Wind Maidens call.

It’s a lifetime of hardship and internal fights
when the wind’s from the West and the bells ring at night.
But the Goddess takes all, every bit in the end.
Either swallows with love, or starves and contends.

And if
you ask if in this contract they willingly took part
They’d say

They’d give it all again. Body, soul and heart.

Lyrical Living

So I’ve been to all these gigs
and listened to the bands
and heard how nobody understands
the loss they feel,
the heartbreak, the pain.
It’s the same old story Sam,
sing it again.

I’ve heard all the fills, like
“Oh, baby, yeah”
Did you run out of words to fill that space there?
Am I getting old?
Or just getting pickier?
Or perhaps, with experience, cynical and bitterer?
It’s just that all this monotonous crap
as about as profound as clickbait video soundtrack.
Calculatedly sentimental,
as irrelevant as Blockbuster video rental
to the age we are living in and the way I experience
emotional ambush and unspoken inference.
Blandy McBlanderson.
Selected generic
when we lives in such interesting times.
LED screens on with lightshows mesmeric
to distract from the mundane straight rhyme.

That’s not to say I don’t love it.
Dancing is pure bliss.
Eyes-closed-bass-pounding-through-my-chest-my-arms-a-twist.
Exchange of energies intense,
connection of rhythm and chord and cadence.
Dance for sorrow.
Dance for rage.
Dance for anxiety.
Dance for tomorrow
belongs to those that can see it coming.
Dance because knowing what’s going to happen isn’t always a blessing.
Dance when you feel powerless. In
some small way you’ll feel better.
And whether you know it or not
the shot of joy I feel,
knees buckling after a night on the tiles
is the same depth of smile
I get
from poetry.
And so, although I seem
ungrateful
I’m really not.
I’ve had a summer of music never to be forgot.
And from my depths, thank you
for you’ve all heartily moved me.
It’s just that if I’m honest


I’d rather be at poetry.

                                                                                                                    

This was one of my entries for the Manx Lit Fest Poetry Slam this year. One young man mistook my friend for me. He asked her at the interval what her problem with modern music was. To him, I say two things: 1) Wrong tall dark-haired girl. and 2) You've totally missed the point of the poem. 
Much love. X

Devon to Stafford

Brace for re-entry.

We are on the journey back
from days of beautiful denomination.
Microcosm Utopian of idealistic civilization.

On this Monday there’s a lack
of colour and common consciousness.
A frustrating thrust of others’
sense of self in faces
gladly grubby,
creased, greased, glittered, refitted
with natural smiles.

Hold on to that happiness a while.

Block out the brash blast tablets
of the crass consumer classes.
Transport yourself with memories of
Redwood morning walks.

Swaddle cloaks invisible
protective and permissible
with expectations reasonable

and feet at one with earth.

Where's the Justice?

The debutante floats down the stairs,
gloriously made up dead-eyed stare.
Hand rests light on banister.
can’t grip too tight for tendon’s tear.

Fabric flows over fragile frame.
Shawl on shoulders hunched with shame.
muscles mangled, marked and maimed.
Blindly believing she’s to blame.

These daughters of a generation
grew to dream of degradation
and aren’t presented to society as they ought
but instead face their attackers in days in court.
Boys who play at being tough.
Punch-bag girlfriends painted as sluts
by advocates paid by tax payers’ pounds
to let violent criminals walk around.

“Service the community,
pay your fine and you’ll be free.
Legal aid with pay my fee.
You can put your faith in me”.

How dare they show their face in the street?
Hold it high and smile and meet
supposed friends who go and treat
as heroes boys who girlfriend beat.

200 hours, some cash, no bars,
while they walk about bearing your scars,
sometimes bear your babies too
‘cause they can’t afford the boat fare to Liverpool.
Meanwhile back in those same courts
other battles are being fought.

15 years for importation
of a herbal medication.
Sole carer of his wife, for saving
his son from men who wanted to erase him.

This justice is a fallacy.
It’s all misjudgements I can see.
Don’t say they need help mentally
when she needs reconstructive surgery.

These boys who never do hard time
perpetuate their life of crime
and become the kingpin slime
of empires rotting communities spine

who drag us all down to slum-like homes.
Curfews, flood-lights, no-go-zones.
Locked in for safety. Don’t go out at night.
Don’t walk down dark alleys. Don’t wear clothes too tight.

Don’t’ stick your head up, don’t have any pride.
Let these happenings go on island-wide.
Say nothing and just keep it inside.
Brush under the carpet that she nearly died.

The law is an ass, not a donkey, an ass
and since I wrote this more miscarriages will have passed
and the new Chief Minister will be raising a glass
and we’d better see things changing.

Fast.

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