In response to another of Jo Bell‘s NaPoWriMo prompts. Some Blackout Poetry.
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I had no idea such fun could be had with scissors, a black marker pen and some newspapers.
Check out this link too…
Tag Archives: poem
Valediction
A poem in response to today’s prompt by Jo Bell.
It’s probably not what she had in mind. Probably not what I had in mind when I started out either, but these things (poems) sometimes have a life of their own…
Follow Jo on twitter/facebook if you’d like to join in.
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Valediction
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I care not one jot
that you’re gone from this world,
flame snuffed out,
frayed wick caught in a spittled pinch.
My night will be not one watt darker––
your light never shone on me.
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To think, my friend, I pitied you
the stretch-marked thighs,
the cellulite,
the meals for one,
the shallow mind,
before I knew where you’d set your sights.
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Yet still there are times
when I think of you, with him,
travelling to places I’d longed to see,
the rooms with balconies, the stolen hours,
the diamond ring
too large for me.
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A poem in response to a gauntlet thrown by both Nick Laird and Wayne Burrows
Cum an ave a go if yer think yer ard enuff
Jo Bell drew to my attention to an article by Nick Laird via twitter: Genius. Wayne Burrows cocks a triumphant snook at Nick Laird’s Guardian article yesterday, breaking all his rules.
Read Nick Laird’s article here
Read Wayne Burrow’s snook here
And you can also read David Clarke’s post about it here
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And so, in honour of NaPoWriMo which I intend to make a concerted effort to keep up this year, and after the suggestion from Mr Burrows that I take up the gauntlet thrown by Nick Laird, I had to have a go.
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The words one is supposed never to use in a poem according to the Laird:
Be careful with words such as whence or din or guffaw or russet. Also, contorted or caress or ochre. Or clad or crave or pale or engorged. Or gossamer. Don’t write about things frosted with dew.
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As you will see, guffaw got the better of me and I didn’t quote La Plath, but I did manage to get in a quote, and a footnote, and the all important mis-spelling…
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The Constant Gardner
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The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus
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John Gardner craved a garden.
Wanted to plant an orchard in their small back yard.
Mavis said he was stupid––it would be futile, hopeless,
the trees deformed or barren, what with the incessant
din of traffic and the brickwork clad in carbon
from the engorged arterial, the inner city grime coated
failure yet another reminder of where they’d ended up.
Plus, it was north facing––no sun till the evening
and even by mid-morning the double-glazed window
of the downstairs loo, always frosted with dew,
still hadn’t cleared.
But her view on the world had always been skewed.
He bought two for starters, mail order, bare-rooted,
special delivery from the Reader’s Digest,
an Egremont Russet and a Cox’s Orange Pippin
chosen for no other reason than a liking for their names.
Since then he’s planted four more and learned more
than he ever learned about anything before––
The Cox’s skin is russet but the Russet’s more an ochre.
Russets are named for their texture, not their colour––
skin as rough as the dry caress of a cat’s tongue
or the rub of a Gardner’s thumb.
Shakespeare calls them leathercoats in Henry IV*
but they are sweet and can always be peeled.
Egremont Russets smell of unshelled walnuts.
Cox’s Orange Pippins smell green, clean, of Spring.
They’re white fleshed, juicy and crisp. When cooked
they turn to frothy mush, but make great applesauce.
It’s important to prune before new growth appears.
Late winter/early spring is the optimum season.
All varieties of apple require cross-pollination.
A fine sable paintbrush is the best tool for collecting
pollen from anthers of one, then brushing
the gold-dust over pistil and stigma of another.
A honey bee’s gossamer wings beat between
two hundred and three hundred times a second.
More than a dozen species of bird visit an urban garden.
Half a tonne of leaf mould and good irrigation
seem to make up for a lack of sunshine.
Time pales to nothing when working outside.
The contorted face of Mavis as he serves another portion
of applesauce, crumble, fritters or tarte tatin
makes the back-breaking hours worth putting in.
A small quiet rebellion can be a good thing.
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* In William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2,
Davy says to Bardolph––“there’s a dish of leathercoats for you.”
A small thought…
The lovely folk at Kumquat Poetry have been good enough to post another of my poems from a collection I’m working on called DressCode.
This is a series of sonnets, numbering 45 so far, all about clothes. They were originally inspired by a workshop with the fantastic John Gallas for Leicester Writing School.
Over many cups of coffee, fags and the odd biccy, John helped me kick some of the early sonnets into shape. Finding this wonderful quote sharpened my focus.
There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us,
not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast,
but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.
Virginia Woolf
You can read the featured poem, Shoes, here…
Newstead Abbey, gazing at cobwebs lit up by a chandelier
Night’s most diligent
creatures string fairy lights, wait
to scintillate us.
A small thought…
Homage to a Government
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
*
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
*
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
*
Philip Larkin
From ‘High Windows’
I read this today on John Siddique’s blog Black Coffee and a Glass of Water and was saddened by how relevant it was. Does nothing change? Do we never learn?
