Something which from a distance appears to be a blessing
may easily turn out to be a curse. The reverse is also true.
Sometimes they go unrecognised. Sometimes they are
invisible. The good fairy isn’t always good, or competent.
Sometimes walls crack and dandelions grow in the spaces
that are left. Bread runs out and isn’t often replaced by cake.
Daylight hours are not enough. One day you’ll hold my
hand and wonder how it got to be so old. Time is both
a curse and a blessing. So is love.
Today’s prompt was to write about the experience of live music. I think this will be my last of this year’s NaPo – I’m lacking energy and inspiration. But it’s been good while it lasted!
Somewhere several rows back I’m there, in
black Doc Martins and a blue dress (probably)
my long hair plaited to my waist (definitely). I’m standing in
mud. We’re all standing in mud. I don’t know these
people and they don’t know me but we’re there
to see the man with the hazy brown hair and the
electric guitar. Bob Dylan. Glastonbury 1998.
I’m wide eyed and half starved and I had to wade
to get here, and now I’m standing in a dirty dress in a
flooded field surrounded by strangers and
I’ve just watched Nick Cave belt out Do You Love Me?
We did.
Now Dylan’s guitar is chopping through
Just Like a Woman. A dark, muddy sound.
I’m as happy as I’ve ever been.
The rain doesn’t stop but nobody cares.
The guitar, acoustic now, plinks a rhythm
and Dylan’s voice starts to creak out Masters Of War.
Later I’ll remember listening to Forever Young in that field
and it’ll become a self-defining moment, my Woodstock.
I was young. I thought that would last forever.
He never played that song.
Let’s write a song together. We’ll soak
the world in a feathery blue dye. You strum up
a riff steeped in They-Might-Be energy
and I’ll scribble out some words
with a Giants vibe.
Let’s write a song together. We’ll build
something new that clacks and jumps
like a robot army. We’ll stitch in notes
that divide and spill and run
into the cracks we’ve created.
Let’s write a song together. Throw it
against the wall of the birdhouse and we’ll watch
it sloop down, leaving a silver trail. You’ll
finger-pick the remnants which have
gathered on the sandpaper floor.
Let’s write a song together. Let’s wring it
out for good sounds and intentions, which
puff out from it like blue spores. You’ll
provide a fine bass-line and I’ll rustle up
a crunchy lyrical side salad.
Let’s write a song together. We’ll create the
thing that lights up somebody’s shore. It’ll have
the rhythm of rocky sand and glow
like a night light. Let’s write a song which buzzes
and sings and fizzes on the tongue of the world.
The jumble of song – that’s the sign I wait for.
There’s such a stillness about the canal through
winter, and then this release, like breathing – a delicate
lacework of sound above the quiet. They don’t
care that I’m here. There are more important
things to think about than a human with heavy feet.
Nests to build, lives to grow. It’s comforting, this
world that keeps on going. New leaves, yellow
and green, catch the shaken song on its way down
and hold it there, thrilling in the life that thrums
from it. An opera of spring. We’re here, they say,
and the trees are full of our music.
I haven’t posted for a few days because I’ve been busy over Easter weekend, but now that’s finished I’m feeling unwell with my usual health issues. I think for the rest of April I’ll just write when I feel up to it and not pressure myself, as right now I’m pretty exhausted. Such is life with a chronic illness…so watch this space basically.
Ritual. The swapping of the same jokes,
the same gentle jibes. Wrapping yourself
in the familiar and its sense of continuity,
all the while knowing that things are about
to change. Singing in the car. Card games
at the table. Vestiges of your childhood
more for me than you these days I suppose.
Every now and again a glimpse of the
child you were, when you’re overtaken
by uncertainty, some new experience
you haven’t quite mastered. Sometimes
you still turn to me, less often now.
But your sky is wide open and flying is
what I trained you for. So I’ll let go, when
I need to. Perhaps we’ll still sing,
differently.
I decided to write a villanelle for this. It was surprisingly easy, as the prompt was vaguely surrealist so it gave me loads of word options! It’s about the friendship between two surrealist painters, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.
My dove, my love, my pot of jam
My sister witch, my ginger cat
You understand me as I am
My rocking horse, my friend, my lamb
My freedom call, my bowler hat
My dove, my love, my pot of jam
My open door, my window jamb
My horse, my house, my tit-for-tat
You understand me as I am.
My life, my leaf, my wild yam
My unicorn, my chew-the-fat
My dove, my love, my pot of jam
My sorceress, my give-a-damn
My vagabond, my caveat
You understand me as I am
Amusing muse, my epigram
My Sunday best, my laundromat
My dove, my love, my pot of jam
You understand me as I am
A memory. February 2016. Walking the
streets of Salford through skewering winter
rain, on a hopeless errand. I’m listening
to music. Something by Radiohead –
a plodding acoustic strum rhymes with my steps.
That’s not me
Two pharmacies already, turned away from both,
like an addict trying their luck. But this isn’t for me.
It’s for my Dad – something to help him sleep while his
body slowly drowns him.
The song sighs into the chorus.
I’m not here. This isn’t happening.
Walking, walking. Keep going. The next shop has to
have it. It has to. Up the hill, past high concrete walls.
Past the women’s centre with its steel grills. Past
the shops. I used to walk here with him sometimes. Back in the days when i was still his child. Before we became broken and separate.
Sweeping electronic crying fills my head.
The moment’s already passed.
The rain doesn’t stop. I already know
what they’re going to say.
Sometimes a poem is just fun to write! Today’s prompt was a six line poem with a ‘mic-drop’ line at the end. Just do the thing, dammit. You want to … Continue reading Day Fifteen: Do The Thing
Today’s prompt: to write about a place inhabited exclusively by non-human creatures, using some slant rhyme.
We do these things together. Legs rub.
Shield percusses. We live and die as one.
Your life doesn’t matter. Nor does mine.
What we do is for the nest. Follow me.
Abdomen chirps. Do as I do. Feed the queen.
Feed the collective. We find the fallen on sand.
Too hot to be still. Feet on sizzling stone.
Keep moving or perish. Bring the flesh of the weak.
Feed the colony. Sounds of work all around us.
Limbs scratch, mandibles crunch. We do these
things together. Remember your place in the
structure. Carry the injured and leave the dead.
Our bodies scream of danger. Your life doesn’t
matter. The sound of a million feet on sand.
Feed the queen. Feed the collective.
We will never die while the colony lives.
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