Poetry Forum

Apr 16th

I...


...was on the grassy knoll with an ice cream. I
was on the watch for agents hanging round
and I for one... saw no second gun. I
also in nineteen forty-seven came down
and with, I will admit, less care than I
habitually take, in New Mexico
outside Roswell. So I can state that I
saw nothing like a crashing UFO
and furthermore it has been mostly I
who crept into the bedrooms late at night
where various World leaders slept and I,
although busy inserting a device,
can say for certain they're not lizards. I
will swear, as solemnly as anyone
that nothing that you think you know is wrong.

Apr 18th (falling behind again...)

Storage solutions


All old things demonstrate a strength
still suitable for useful tasks
after the days of normal usage pass.
My Uncle Bernard
loved such things in depth.

Here's a case
for things which never can be fixed
behind another: the keys to locks
which I no longer have. His life's shown here

on shelves where storage options bloomed: the bags
for seeds I can't identify; and jars
absurdly labelled label lost. So much
we threw away, the angle brackets, rags...
the symbols for a life recently done,
in a world just slightly better than our own.

In a world just slightly better than our own,
the symbols for a life recently done,
we threw away the angle brackets, rags
--absurdly labelled label lost. So much
for seeds I can't identify and jars
on shelves where storage options bloomed: the bags

which I no longer have. His life's shown here
behind another: the keys to locks
for things which never can be fixed.
Here's a case

loved such things in depth:
my Uncle Bernard.
After the days of normal usage pass,
still suitable for useful tasks,
all old things demonstrate a strength.

bodkin wrote:Apr 14th -- (yes, I've skipped one, I'll come back to it later...)

Speciality of the house

[center]Ask us about your special function!

Notice on:
The Sportsman Inn
Lodge Moor, Sheffield

16/04/2016[/center]


Tell me indeed about my special function...

Is it to do
with being the watcher
the constant observer
the one write-only server

which makes all the quantum wave functions collapse?
Is it more, perhaps, that I'm a reference
a point unspecial, save only in its label:
we measure everything from here?

Or is is something less clear? Does the maths
of human interaction come as a net
of one-way arrowed interactions
where some point must come first?

Or last? Is it something vast
in economics? Am I the bellwether
and if I don't buy a taco,
the feedback takes it's time,

but basically that it--
the economy, stupid, in decline?
So, tell me about my special function, do I bisect
some angle? Is it something about sex?

Excellent idea. Loved the last two lines.

Really like this Ian.
The reflection of uncle Bernard's life.
His way of labeling things.
Putting stuff in order.
You identifying and acknowledging his strenghth in this simple act.

Jars labeled "able lost" speaks volumes.
All old things demonstrate a strenghth,
They sure do.

Wow. I think you're doing fantastically well. I particularly like April 16th, but April 18th is very clever.

Cheers

David

April 19th -- an untitled fragment this time

that will larn 'im, comes the cry
the barrow trader's wit run dry
the low cloud hands back sodium light
and there will be a frost tonight

and that will teach him what it is
to shiver in some small shop's door
and count police men passing

as a way of marking time not moving on
until night begins to come undone
the city centre early with the cloud all torn
but very long before he's feeling warm

It seems impertinent to make suggestions about these, considering my admiration for the consistently high quality of them as a whole (and for how prolific you are), but I think April 19th needs to be in the same metre as S1 throughout.

Impertinent cheers

David

David wrote:It seems impertinent to make suggestions about these, considering my admiration for the consistently high quality of them as a whole (and for how prolific you are), but I think April 19th needs to be in the same metre as S1 throughout.

Impertinent cheers

David

You're probably right, I hadn't realised how consistent it was apart from those couple of lines...

April 20th

April 21st

Exit line

He has packed each and every thing he owns
into the space between zero and one.
It's relatively soon now he'll be gone
into the vanishing point. His four touchstones
of home and work and pub and car will not
include this place and memories will fade.
Where is he going after this? He's made
the decision: it's anywhere but here. He's got

to get out of this place and it's the thing that he'll
do next. To hang around this house is hell.
It is a shell of what it ought to be,
there's nothing here, no hearth, no family--
ironic what the winding years have wrought.
He's happy for release; content to come to naught.

April 22nd

the year

daffodils stand proud
and so much for subtlety
wind and rain, hail, snow

April 23rd, having to resort to metaphysical blithering now...

Transactional


What then, of folk like me, a touch
aloof in uncool sweaters. If you knew me better
-- or we, as I should say -- perhaps you'd like
the way we stir our coffee, too intent;
or fail to clearly speak and consequent
from that... I'm sure we give ourselves away?

What then, of how we misplace all our lives
to long-run TV drama shows? What time
are you on? Why do show you out-of-sequence --
this episode's from Season One, when Joe
was not yet dead, and Lisa not yet gay.
You seemed happier then, so you also

have given yourself away? Oh let me take
you hand in mitten, and let me buy you coffee,
from the van beneath CCTV camera. I watch
your eyes behind the steam? I dream sometimes
of one like you, tight-sweater ghost on a past
your writers won't provide. And you dream too,

perhaps, of lives like mine, or ours -- as I
really should learn to say: ambiguous;
not telegraphed with what to feel; not healing,
albeit imperfectly, between one story
and the next; not sent the text by courier
before each scene begins; of -- beyond all else --

not being the one half-dressed upon the poster
whom we -- not so aloof -- always return to
through moments in our desperate night. We treat
it as our right, and maybe that is fair
you are repaid so many ways, and I'm always
your loyal customer, when you give yourself away.

April 25th

The naming of sisters


Little utility as it is, his elder sisters remain:
Faith, Love and Hope. His bedroom is on fire
and Faith and Hope conspire
to explain how if he merely waits
things will improve, the flames abate
and he can always purchase
a new roof. Hazy as usual Love processes
the news. She warms
her hands before the blaze; chews
her hair, and says: you must know this
changes nothing between us
you always will be in my heart.

The kitchen is now well alight and all
is looking grim, but then the younger
female brood rush in. Charity, exhausted
from the shelter kitchen,
wipes sweat from her face, says: you can
crash at my place, brother and ever practical
Pragmatism asks: have you phoned this in?
However,
it is tiny, autistic Complexity, who
grabs the fire extinguisher and kicks
the spare room door, shouting:
we have to save the comics!

Transactional is fascinating. No idea what it's about, but it's great.

Thanks Ros! Maybe we can have an "Interpret Bodkin" competition?

April 26th - approaching the corner into the home stretch now...

Inappropriate remembrance of times that never were


It was in the queue in Tesco's when Becky's Mum
started having flashbacks. Sir Richard's men
are encamped just by yonder ridge, my Lord.
She declaimed at the checkout girl. At least
it isn't Vietnam this time, Rebecca
reassured herself. The vision of a grey-haired
and slightly plump, old lady swearing like
a marine sergeant and screaming Medic! Medic!
in a garden centre is one that gives young Becky
the odd flashback of her own. She wasn't sure,
would have to consult the usual suspects:
historians, psychiatrists and George--
the local re-enactment nut--but...
it sounds much like the Civil War this time
or possibly the Wars of the Roses. Becky
supposes that every ageing parent
brings some measure of embarrassment, but feels
she's been sent some sort of bargain bumper special.
Not that live tales of Spring-heeled Jack, and other
Victorian adventures in the fog
did not lull her to sleep when she was little.

April 26th: excellent. And sadly topical, as we seem to be having a sort of Becky's Mum interlude in our life at the moment.

she's sent some sort of bargain bumper special

- been sent?

And Not that?

Not that it isn't great anyway.

Cheers

David

David wrote:April 26th: excellent. And sadly topical, as we seem to be having a sort of Becky's Mum interlude in our life at the moment.

she's sent some sort of bargain bumper special

- been sent?

And Not that?

Not that it isn't great anyway.

Cheers

David

Thanks David!

Corrected those two typos, thanks as always for careful reading.

Sorry this is topical for you. I don't mean I regret the poem has relevance to real life. I mean I'm sympathetic for you going through something like it right now.

For me these sorts of experience are still in the future, but not so far in the future as they once were... my parent's parents generation is beginning to look less like a crowd and more like a queue

Morbid now, will go write the next poem to recover...

Ian

April 27th...

To begin at the beginning


Let's stand upon the hilltop in the dark
and wait for him. Let's see how slim he is
in his first easing of the day. The slightest
grey sliver pushing on one certain point
of the horizon. Let's not shout out and wave
like the deranged school children we once were
but for myself, I would prefer a calm;
the pause before no storm, but to see the light
wax slowly stronger until... yes! He's up
and dressed in clothes too bright to look upon
and then we'll make our slight accepting nod
to just say: welcome, Sun. We knew you'd come
along and now the solstice dawn is done
we turn and walk, quite strangely reassured,
to breakfast. I guess he had his hours ago.

April 29th

The attics of the dead


I no longer dream the attics of the dead
but I recall the qualities of dust
and light and wooden shelving where I pass
my unshod sleep feet silent on the boards.
There are always more: more boards, more boxes,

suitcases, cabinets and old wardrobes...
more attics. Up some turning stair, or through
a low door, a further shelfscape, hatches
in the ceiling through which unpainted ladders
climb higher still to attics which by rights

should be much smaller than the floor below.
They're not, of course, there's always more and I
will wander rarely distracted by a beam
of skylight cutting through or a corridor
window through which I peer to see forever

roofs and tiles and access ways and never
a hint of any world below. Through windows
sometimes I will glimpse another distant pane
of glass though which, enticing, I'll see the backs
of other shelves all filled with such exciting

packages, but which I know I'll never reach.
There isn't any lesson for this place to teach,
I am not lost, or trapped; I'm just aware
that granddad knows of every item there,
but still, somehow, my exploration
does not posses an end.

A poem about men if you are a woman or about women if you are a man...

This whole damn gender thing, says Annabelle,
sealing her outer solvent lock, fucks me
so many different ways. She bobs her head,
cutely, so that the sensors sway and John
has always loved her; and John will never say.

She pulls another packet from the stew;
cracks the casing; probes with her tongue; grimaces.
Phenols again, we just don't have a market
for this crap, she sighs, I'll have to crack it back
to short-chain feed. She starts deploying kit.

You see the bit that gets me...remember how
they showed that vid: two pink things on a bed.
She bites her alloy thumb. For me
the only sexy bit was how they'd come:
their car I thought was someone I'd enjoy.
Oh well...

...let's try again, but this time you're the boy.

Just read the fish one..........excellent

Deeply envious that you can do poems this good day after day
..

Ros wrote:Deeply envious that you can do poems this good day after day

Me too