MY FIRST BEDSIT
My landlord's wife,
a tall full-breasted Pathan
with sleek cat's eyes
and luscious lips at 40,
fished out the secret ciggies from her bag
when he went out
on "masjid business" (drinking).
She taught me "jao",
tum khoubsourat aurat hai,
and little words like "lullee".
She told me once
she shaved her private parts for cleanliness,
as we watched telly in the downstairs lounge.
My bedsit room
was big and warm
- and so was she!
[Originally written in the late 90s,
rewitten in February 2009 with lines of 4, 7, & 10 syllables]
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Uncharged
Uncharged
Their pleasure malicious
in it trying
to degrade humiliate him but
he switched himself
off from years of practice bashed
against a wall and blocking out mams black
eyed tears
their convenient target took him in
their car they
had the power
to do
it
No
one will come if
you shout
for help they said bend over fingers
up his bum gratuitous full body
search they called
it because they could it was
part of the game their right
and left
him hours alone wondering
would they do if then at
last they let him
go
home shaky then
he painted out
his
anger
[original version published in a Poetry Now anthology, 1993]
Their pleasure malicious
in it trying
to degrade humiliate him but
he switched himself
off from years of practice bashed
against a wall and blocking out mams black
eyed tears
their convenient target took him in
their car they
had the power
to do
it
No
one will come if
you shout
for help they said bend over fingers
up his bum gratuitous full body
search they called
it because they could it was
part of the game their right
and left
him hours alone wondering
would they do if then at
last they let him
go
home shaky then
he painted out
his
anger
[original version published in a Poetry Now anthology, 1993]
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Alan's Poetry
was life
They let me take the money
when I closed her account
One pound (and five pence interest)
with
only a photocopy of the death
certificate to show
this was a life
This is her estate some second hand
furniture and 2000-odd
pounds
owed to the catalogues and
more on gas electric water rent
Going through
her papers every one a bill prescription
summons final
reminder disconnection
notice
And meaningless words
service the tearful
congregation
all god and resurrection
(was this a life)
unheeded as ever
until
the things about her as a person
warm
and never judging full of
love I crushed
my best friend's squeezing
hand
and cried immobile
this was a life
I kept the badge
her relatives had told her
off for wearing
(CND)
a life this was
[in memory of Kathy]
---------------------------------
MODEL GIRL #2
A model child, so meek and mild,
a pretty girl with lovely curls,
a little cutie, what a beauty,
a loving friend, a perfect daughter,
- Until the end she chose, in water.
No one could guess just why she made
that sudden mess, when she repaid
the terror of her golden life,
the secret scars, the little knife,
the bleak refrain behind her laugh
- then one last pain in a warm bath.
[Autumn 2008]
----------------------------------------
A POEM FOR ST VALENTINE'S DAY
[originally intended for a St Valentine's Day poetry competition: I wanted the subject of sex rather than romance, and linked to the St Valentines Day Massacre in 1920s Chicago]
"St Valentine's Day" / "Kneetrembler" - early ideas
His hand pressing her hand urgent on his thigh / her hand guiding his hand to her left nipple / The way she made him wait and wait... / for that first kiss /her honey hair /a blindfold veiled across her face. /
The salty taste of love./Mouth sweet as daikiri & mint /or bootleg booze / and blood. / Lust like angina, yes yes yes. /He shuddered. /Ice. / Through his left ventricle. /
Up against the wall. / The taste. Fulsome. / Kneetrembler./ And the hammering of his heart /
in his ears / the jolly rattatattatat/ of tommy-guns.
... eventually, thanks to Emma Cole's online course I reduced it down to the basics as a haiku:
FEBRUARY 14th
Up against a wall
heart-pounding, kneetrembler bang:
Tommy-guns rattle.
[not brilliant, but perhaps a new starting-point : watch this space]
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Past Poems - updated 2008
LABELS AND LUGGAGE
Skinny Minnie “must be on crack”
(vomiting behind their backs).
“Stuck up” secretive, aloof,
Can’t tell anyone the truth:
I have to stop from getting fat
By being sick, and that is that!
“Radio Rental, loony, nutter,”
Cos his symptoms make him mutter;
“Scary”, “freaky”, weird and snappy
Even when he feels quite happy.
“Just a housewife”, someone’s mother -
The harmless words designed to smother
Everything that really matters -
The son who cares, the man who batters.
Teenage hoodie, surly yob,
“Why can’t he get himself a job?”
Behind the door he keeps his mother
Safe from the battering ex-lover.
“Get a grip” and get a life,
Find a hobby, find a wife,
Count your blessings, see the good side
And stop the silly talk of suicide.
‘Course it’s not at all self harm
To jag a sharp into my arm
It’s just the same as getting pissed
(Life makes me want to slash my wrist).
“Bossy boots” and control freak,
Moral guardian, god-squad geek,
“Knows it all”, has to be right,
And cries with loneliness each night.
[Alan 2008, for New Ideas]
ON LOVE
Love is us, not you or me
Love is a prison in which we are free.
Love is a beast which comes in the night
to seize you in its jaws:
it hunts you down and finds you out
behind your safe locker doors,
and rips you with its claws.
Love is a kiss so tender and soft
you hardly feel it there;
a vampire’s breath upon your breast
that strips your feelings bare
- but somehow you don’t care.
[one of several versions, updated 2008]
THE TASTE OF YOU
The butter-spreading sun
sleeks your sweet skin
with basting dew
and suddenly my tongue
feeds on deep sin.
MODEL GIRL
Superbody models in the magazines,
why can’t I look like them?
A stubby tub of butter
is what I’ve seen
each mirror-murder day
- I must get thinner!
“Yer acting like a nutter
- don’t make a scene.”
“Can’t eat? You fat? - No way!
Just eat your dinner.”
Superbody models in the magazines,
why can’t I be that thin?
[one version, 2008 for New Ideas]
UNAPPRECIATED LOVE NOTE
I love you
deeper than the deepest ocean
higher than the highest mountain
and wider than
Stockton High Street.
[true story - an unappreciated love note,
1990's]
RITUAL SALT
“Where is the salt?”
I need those brightsharp krystals
hot to my rugged-smoooth tongue
hot to my wounds
Pure
salt distilled from
Tears from blood sprinkled
by earthenware fingers
to sift through the skull
to form grey drifts
of grit amid the crenellations
and trelliswork
of non-specific sections
of the brain
To stain the lungs to sting the gut
to dry the blood and rot the bones.
I must atone I am alive
and well they’re not.
I have been told it’s not my fault
yet still I gorge myself on salt.
[originally a "concrete poem"
- The opening reflects something I read about salt crystals by a Jewish novelist]
REFLECTIONS
[A “nursery rhyme” song composed beside Albert Park lake, Middlesbrough,
for my daughter Georgia when she was a baby]
I see the sun shining down,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
and the leaves on the trees,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
and the leaves on the trees,
and the ducks upside down….
- and the mountains …..
- and the roofs of the town,
- and the people that pass,
- and the flowers in bloom,
- and ideas & dreams,
- and a baby that cries,
- and my own happy face
... in the water, the water.
SKETCHES FROM LAST YEAR
[Nov 2008: needs reworking]
Looking for inspiration
for a poem, I dug out sketches
from last year. One
called “Merry Xmas”
(Mary ex-mass!) life through the bottom
of a glass: there is no life
on show, just part of a room devoid
of human touches.
And other drawings much
the same, with vodka bottle
on display.
- Deck your life with hollow jolly,
Tra-la la-la lah la-la la lah,
God I’d rather have a Stoli,
Tra-la la-la lah, la la la LAAAAGH!
“Middlesbrough
in Winter” - black,
black buildings, tarmac, sky,
in heavy bleak ballpoint.
“Letter to a Friend” - a drawing
With anointed words
scrawled, mauled, and overlaid &
overlaid
until the paper crowded
tight with sprawling sins,
frustrations, thanks & dreams
& sadness, madness, schemes,
Crawling desperation.
Attempted “Chinese Landscape”
- this the most depressing - black
ink pushed rudely with the
brush held wrongly in the
western way: proportions wrong, all
Wrong; clumpy cumulo-nimbus
clouds (top left) chase or clash with strato-
nimbus slashes (right); crude
mountain, haggard trees; black-inked
earth slapped on bereft
of style; grainy grey sky full of rain
Perhaps; cliff-top wrong height and
use of space, topped with
scratchy palm trees and
a skeletal structure looming
wonky like an old
ghost hut, immense yet not.
I wasn’t unhappy when I painted this - it’s simply bad!
A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY HANDS
Hands out
too small to help
to stop dad’s fist
in mammy’s face.
Hands up to shield . My turn.
Hands out whack whack
the stinging cane
because my childish hand
smudges
instead of writing neatly
in infant school.
Hands over my nervous laugh.
Hand over my pathetic pocket money
to the junior bullies.
Hands clenched
in anger, fear,
then up to rub away
a tear.
Hands fidget, fumble,
oh my clumsy hands.
Hands in my pockets
Squeezed down out of sight
The way I want to be.
Hand down my trousers
To rub away the bleakness.
[originally laid out differently,
written for a creative writing course years ago]
Skinny Minnie “must be on crack”
(vomiting behind their backs).
“Stuck up” secretive, aloof,
Can’t tell anyone the truth:
I have to stop from getting fat
By being sick, and that is that!
“Radio Rental, loony, nutter,”
Cos his symptoms make him mutter;
“Scary”, “freaky”, weird and snappy
Even when he feels quite happy.
“Just a housewife”, someone’s mother -
The harmless words designed to smother
Everything that really matters -
The son who cares, the man who batters.
Teenage hoodie, surly yob,
“Why can’t he get himself a job?”
Behind the door he keeps his mother
Safe from the battering ex-lover.
“Get a grip” and get a life,
Find a hobby, find a wife,
Count your blessings, see the good side
And stop the silly talk of suicide.
‘Course it’s not at all self harm
To jag a sharp into my arm
It’s just the same as getting pissed
(Life makes me want to slash my wrist).
“Bossy boots” and control freak,
Moral guardian, god-squad geek,
“Knows it all”, has to be right,
And cries with loneliness each night.
[Alan 2008, for New Ideas]
ON LOVE
Love is us, not you or me
Love is a prison in which we are free.
Love is a beast which comes in the night
to seize you in its jaws:
it hunts you down and finds you out
behind your safe locker doors,
and rips you with its claws.
Love is a kiss so tender and soft
you hardly feel it there;
a vampire’s breath upon your breast
that strips your feelings bare
- but somehow you don’t care.
[one of several versions, updated 2008]
THE TASTE OF YOU
The butter-spreading sun
sleeks your sweet skin
with basting dew
and suddenly my tongue
feeds on deep sin.
MODEL GIRL
Superbody models in the magazines,
why can’t I look like them?
A stubby tub of butter
is what I’ve seen
each mirror-murder day
- I must get thinner!
“Yer acting like a nutter
- don’t make a scene.”
“Can’t eat? You fat? - No way!
Just eat your dinner.”
Superbody models in the magazines,
why can’t I be that thin?
[one version, 2008 for New Ideas]
UNAPPRECIATED LOVE NOTE
I love you
deeper than the deepest ocean
higher than the highest mountain
and wider than
Stockton High Street.
[true story - an unappreciated love note,
1990's]
RITUAL SALT
“Where is the salt?”
I need those brightsharp krystals
hot to my rugged-smoooth tongue
hot to my wounds
Pure
salt distilled from
Tears from blood sprinkled
by earthenware fingers
to sift through the skull
to form grey drifts
of grit amid the crenellations
and trelliswork
of non-specific sections
of the brain
To stain the lungs to sting the gut
to dry the blood and rot the bones.
I must atone I am alive
and well they’re not.
I have been told it’s not my fault
yet still I gorge myself on salt.
[originally a "concrete poem"
- The opening reflects something I read about salt crystals by a Jewish novelist]
REFLECTIONS
[A “nursery rhyme” song composed beside Albert Park lake, Middlesbrough,
for my daughter Georgia when she was a baby]
I see the sun shining down,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
and the leaves on the trees,
in the water, the water.
I see the sun shining down,
and the clouds in the sky,
and the leaves on the trees,
and the ducks upside down….
- and the mountains …..
- and the roofs of the town,
- and the people that pass,
- and the flowers in bloom,
- and ideas & dreams,
- and a baby that cries,
- and my own happy face
... in the water, the water.
SKETCHES FROM LAST YEAR
[Nov 2008: needs reworking]
Looking for inspiration
for a poem, I dug out sketches
from last year. One
called “Merry Xmas”
(Mary ex-mass!) life through the bottom
of a glass: there is no life
on show, just part of a room devoid
of human touches.
And other drawings much
the same, with vodka bottle
on display.
- Deck your life with hollow jolly,
Tra-la la-la lah la-la la lah,
God I’d rather have a Stoli,
Tra-la la-la lah, la la la LAAAAGH!
“Middlesbrough
in Winter” - black,
black buildings, tarmac, sky,
in heavy bleak ballpoint.
“Letter to a Friend” - a drawing
With anointed words
scrawled, mauled, and overlaid &
overlaid
until the paper crowded
tight with sprawling sins,
frustrations, thanks & dreams
& sadness, madness, schemes,
Crawling desperation.
Attempted “Chinese Landscape”
- this the most depressing - black
ink pushed rudely with the
brush held wrongly in the
western way: proportions wrong, all
Wrong; clumpy cumulo-nimbus
clouds (top left) chase or clash with strato-
nimbus slashes (right); crude
mountain, haggard trees; black-inked
earth slapped on bereft
of style; grainy grey sky full of rain
Perhaps; cliff-top wrong height and
use of space, topped with
scratchy palm trees and
a skeletal structure looming
wonky like an old
ghost hut, immense yet not.
I wasn’t unhappy when I painted this - it’s simply bad!
A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY HANDS
Hands out
too small to help
to stop dad’s fist
in mammy’s face.
Hands up to shield . My turn.
Hands out whack whack
the stinging cane
because my childish hand
smudges
instead of writing neatly
in infant school.
Hands over my nervous laugh.
Hand over my pathetic pocket money
to the junior bullies.
Hands clenched
in anger, fear,
then up to rub away
a tear.
Hands fidget, fumble,
oh my clumsy hands.
Hands in my pockets
Squeezed down out of sight
The way I want to be.
Hand down my trousers
To rub away the bleakness.
[originally laid out differently,
written for a creative writing course years ago]
Friday, 30 January 2009
Poems for an online writing course, 2009
POEMS FOR EMMA COLE'S ONLINE POETRY COURSE (January 2009)
Kennings, Cinquains and Haikus
Kenning = a two-word description, a riddle with two linked words per line.
Cinquain = a verse of 22 syllables in 5 lines with syllabic rule: 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
Haiku = a verse of 17 syllables in 3 lines with syllabic rule: 5, 7, 5
- preferably making something clear in the final line.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FLUNG STONE
A stone flung sudden
nearly grazed my flinching face
and flew to its nest.
(Sparrow swooping close)
SEED PODS
Looking at spring plants
she said, the seed pods are full.
- So are mine, I laughed.
FEBRUARY 14th
Up against a wall
heart-pounding knee-trembler bang:
Tommy-guns rattle.
[a reference to the St Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago;
based on a long-abandoned draft for a Valentine poetry competion]
PUT AWAY
Christmas
decorations
tree & lights & fairy
left-over crackers put away
at last.
BABY
My child
sleeps, wakes and wails,
cries because awake, bawls
for breast, burp, play, rearranging,
changing.
MORNING
Johnny
fought to the end.
This funeral morning,
with his dry-eyed wife, preparing
butties.
PORTRAITS OF DEREK
Lib-dem candidate
(in the local elections)
Junior manager
(until the last recession)
Neat as a Mormon
(even when years out of work).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2 pencil sketches
(restarted, altered)
1 semi-formal portrait
(painterly, crafted)
1 "60-seconds" graphic
(vivid free-flowing paint lines):
He bought the last one
for the bright wildness
of his hidden self
(cheap at only a fiver!)
["extrapolated haiku" : 5, 7, 5, 7, 5, 7;
5, 5, 7, 5, 7, 7; 5, 5, 5, 7.]
Kennings, Cinquains and Haikus
Kenning = a two-word description, a riddle with two linked words per line.
Cinquain = a verse of 22 syllables in 5 lines with syllabic rule: 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
Haiku = a verse of 17 syllables in 3 lines with syllabic rule: 5, 7, 5
- preferably making something clear in the final line.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FLUNG STONE
A stone flung sudden
nearly grazed my flinching face
and flew to its nest.
(Sparrow swooping close)
SEED PODS
Looking at spring plants
she said, the seed pods are full.
- So are mine, I laughed.
FEBRUARY 14th
Up against a wall
heart-pounding knee-trembler bang:
Tommy-guns rattle.
[a reference to the St Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago;
based on a long-abandoned draft for a Valentine poetry competion]
PUT AWAY
Christmas
decorations
tree & lights & fairy
left-over crackers put away
at last.
BABY
My child
sleeps, wakes and wails,
cries because awake, bawls
for breast, burp, play, rearranging,
changing.
MORNING
Johnny
fought to the end.
This funeral morning,
with his dry-eyed wife, preparing
butties.
PORTRAITS OF DEREK
Lib-dem candidate
(in the local elections)
Junior manager
(until the last recession)
Neat as a Mormon
(even when years out of work).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2 pencil sketches
(restarted, altered)
1 semi-formal portrait
(painterly, crafted)
1 "60-seconds" graphic
(vivid free-flowing paint lines):
He bought the last one
for the bright wildness
of his hidden self
(cheap at only a fiver!)
["extrapolated haiku" : 5, 7, 5, 7, 5, 7;
5, 5, 7, 5, 7, 7; 5, 5, 5, 7.]
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