Category: poem a day (Page 1 of 2)
I had never heard of this acronym until my mate and fellow poet Neil Fulwood revealed it to me and a poem (pretty damn good one) too.
Basically the UK Poetry Society being about ten years behind evrybody else has copped a write a poem every day in April meme from the rest of the world. (figures totally). They then have haphazardly and with their usual acumen and professionalism spread it about half-heartedly on the web.
Brewery / piss up meme….
So being a cynical pensioner with time on hands I thought I would give it a bash and here the first two results. ( I one behind the daily upload and I ignoring all prompts except Moniza Alvi’s as she a good poet and I know her brother).
Self-regarding
Self-effacing
Selfie at 65
Eyes – scarred
Piles- fixed
Hernia – fixed
Ears – Tinnitus
Brain- forgets names
Hands – scarred wrinkled
Feet – chilblained
Hair – grey thinner
Optimism – constrained
Politics – centrist was left
Artwork – little
Writing – occasional
Music- listen not make
Income – pensions
Abode – secure and flawed
Outlook- slow depreciation
Partner – tolerant
Cat- poorly
Family – a way away
A selfie at 65
I will do another at 70
I have a plan
The taste of salt on the tongue
Kids gone to uni now empty nester
Husband in marketing doing well
Always wanted to write
Met a small press woman
Now I got a pamphlet
Next year a prize
Discovering a new poet every day
over coffee in Waterstones
Elizabeth Bishop is amazing
I really struggled with words
But now I have so much free time
To devote to my passion
Words come easy
Over a prosecco in the garden
Wonderful thing is
There hundreds like me
It a real movement
Lovely to meet so many like me
Ever read Virginia Wolf?
She’s amazing
Never thought I could do it too
I voted for Brexit, regret it now.
THUNDER CIRCLING
He needed to talk to someone.
It happened to be us.
His rolled tobacco slipped from his fingers
as he went over events fifty years before.
The harbour, Singapore, thunder circling
and lightning flashing across the sea.
A merchant navy man,
sitting on deck with his mates,
watching a free show.
‘lf they’s could only ‘arness that energy’.
The same bar two hours later.
Someone else who wanted to talk
but blocked by E’s, drunk,
it came in staccato bursts, the sense,
mouthed through a vocabulary
borrowed from rap, rave and T.V.
Eighteen, jobless, staring through glass
at a wet car park, he rocks gently
like a ship stuck in harbour.
Outside, flashing lights, sirens.
1993
HAWKER SIDDLEY ARGOSY
Improbable squares, steel-framed frogs
hopping from aerodrome to aerodrome
through an emulsion sky, wool clouds.
You could hear them from miles away
before they’d flash over the barn
and into my wide open six-year old eyes.
Other times they dissolved through
the outhouse plastic corrugated roof
into distorted birds that rattled
like boxes as they headed south
travelling so low and slow
as if weighted down by air.
Sometimes two would appear together
flickering through the tall roses
as I clung to the wooden fence
head hung back, off balance.
l tried to read the letters and numbers
painted on the dull grey fuselage.
I imagined them picking up our house.
Slotting the wooden walls, corrugated
plastic, roof slates and felt, windows,
my mother washing clothes in clouds of steam,
even our spaniel and me
and spinning us all into whiteness.
From Landmine: Poems 1992-1996
Read more here: LANDMINE
My first six years I lived in a wooden clapboard house on top of a hill near Wittenham Clumps. We were under the flight-path of Benson aerodrome which is why these aircraft had a profound affect on me.
Arteries
“Never knew what hit them ,
the impact must have been tremendous
to have left that much blood on the road,
looked like it had exploded”.
My father talking about the accident.
One side of the car had caved right in
and there was a bloodstain twenty yards long
across both sides of the road.
“What was left of the deer was laid on the grass
like a sack of bones”.
Ten days later.
In the same kitchen he is gingerly fingering
row upon row of tiny pink pills.
“Everybody’s on them these days”
My mother says, trying to lighten the road ahead.
But we could all see what he could see.
Moving through the trees.
His mother heart failure 65.
His mother’s father heart attack 65.
Right now I prefer not to look too far ahead.
But I can feel movement deep in the forest of arteries and veins.
Something unseen and unexpected pushing out..
Toward the lights.
Addendum: This poem was written in 1991 my father remained in good health until 2002 when at the age of 70 he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and died in 2004.
Another poem from my back pages.
From an overall collection called
The North Field
You lying exhausted in another room, me taping,
trying to drag some of the past with me.
Three stories up in West London
I think of old friends, forgotten journeys
and the cracked ceiling reminds me of ice
and cars swish beyond the stained curtains.
You say I never talk, never explain things
clam-up, freeze-up, a tight-lipped Englishman.
You should have tried talking to my father
and his step-father, stood in a field mid-winter.
Tried catching a word as snow blurred the hills
and kept the rooks clinging to the high trees.
Cold as winter cattle, boots white with frost
they’d say nothing, just stamp chilblained feet
and whistle the dog back to the track they knew
lay under six inches of fresh snow.
Their maps were in their heads.
Now I clear mine and stumble on the edge of a new path.
Forgive me my sullen silences, my outbursts
at years of missed chances, frustrations, laziness.
Tonight there is no spate water froze across meadows,
no fields buried under six foot drifts,
yet I can feel the words tugging at me
wanting to arc a white half-acre
unleased.
Another poem from my back pages. London 1992.
From an overall collection called Landmine Poems 1992-1996
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