2018.16 Pilgrimage

It is maybe the third time,
Limned in sticky sunlight,
Wild with sleep deprivation,
And wrapped in last night’s stop-out clothes,
I stride to the place,
Still unmarked save in memory.

You hated this time of year.
I wonder if that’s why you checked out then;
I find it hard to credit any of this
As under your control.
I find it hard to see you here;
I have no memories of it but this.

We’re supposed to congregate,
Take our time to murmur to you,
Deep in earth and sunlight.
I’m remembering the time
I staggered to your bedside dressed like this
And you whispered, mischievous:
“Are those leather trousers?!”

Yes, they are. I am Saturday night dance-sweat sticky,
Sick with longing a year on,
Humbled by Sunday’s brightness.
I hope you don’t mind:
I brought no flowers,
Just this overwrought body and half a brain.

The earth is dry and sickly
I sympathise, braced and baking in heathen pigskin,
Whispering, miserable: I miss you
Wishing I could sing you to sleep again.
My brother stomps here most weeks,
Mine will be a different type of guilt.

I will seek you elsewhere:
Seeing you in tulips, these unruly tresses;
Hearing you in the way my voice curls Hibernian, Caledonian;
Feeling you in sea breezes, freezing and freeing;
Tasting you in bolognese, scenting you in heather.
I know you in these bones you gave me.

It’s taken me 6482 days to write this poem;
I had a lot of things to learn without you,
And yet every step was braced,
Threaded through with your essence.
I still sing, still dance, your legacy
More than conscientious memory.

June Roberts: February 1946 - July 1999 

2015.24 - Logbook

Today in the Allographic workshop (Finding the Narrative, with Matt MacDonald), we put together twelve words/ phrases between us with which to make a poem. They were: sand, running, flocculent (thanks, Emma!), it, 2001, Caribbean, the sensation of cat's fur under fingertips, Justine, green, teeth, winnowing,  bloody.

I cheated slightly (you're supposed to work all the words in explicitly), but hey...
___________________

2006:

Your footsteps are already fading,
The sand winnows into plumes,
Ash-breathed, kiting westward.

2005:

We have said nothing,
Loud enough to break glass.
I suck silence from between my teeth,
Start to make lists.

2007:

I still run, hunting calf-burn,
Celebrate heat in the clang of
Ambitiously green liquids in
Frictionless bottles.

2004:

I coo between gritted teeth,
Inch, bark-bellied, as you advise from below,
Summon the sensation of cat fur
To reaching fingertips, clench thighs against
The trembling.

2008:

A blue-and-white summons:
Justine has friended you.
Gape at the warmth of shallow waters,
The sudden fan of creases
I will never feel beneath my thumb.
Find myself on the driveway,
Stale cigarette smoke tugged into my lungs.

2003:

My kitchen is a haven of strange scents,
Abruptly, I am someone with a steamer,
And buckwheat tea.
You dab dots of jerk seasoning,
Suck your finger, grin.
The steamer falls, to be attended later.

2009:

"Wow, where did you learn that?!"
I lie with a nameless book.
'Flocculent' is your word - a nest of
Tiny morning dreads.

2002:

I emerge into cotton mouth,
Iron filing dregs like sweet penance.
A half-known ache pulling me to my right,
Your comma shape a gravity well.

2010:

He packs the bloody space with cotton wool,
I breathe the bitterness of
Doing the right thing.

2001:

You are salt water on my chest,
A shuddering warmth calling my arms,
A coiling strike upwards at my throat,
A tsunami in slow motion.

2011:

I click, gaze, scroll west,
Ease shoulders into unfelt heat.
It's good to see you made it, after all.

2015.20 - Red: Take Action

Shall I compare you to the winds that howl?
To downpours that make every step a chore?
I’d illustrate the thunderstorms that prowl,
And twisters flinging dust around and more.

When held against the misery you bring
The metaphor of weather’s pretty tame
There’s no umbrella of which we could sing
To stop you putting avalanche to shame

They say that no disaster’s truly done
Until the aftermath is all put right
Our clean-up, mate, has only just begun
To undo all your damage done last night.

I will not speak your name, or see your face
You cannot ever get back my good grace.


_________________

Every year in April I do a new sonnet, building up (wearing down?) my resistance a poem at a time...

2015.18 - Ask Me Tomorrow

Another one from #PoetryToGo, this time a one-word challenge: “`Happiness´. Can you write something from that?”

“Well, yes, but it could head off in all sorts of directions, so: what does happiness mean to you?”

“People leaving me alone.”

“Er, I can take a hint, if…”

“I suppose that´s quite rude, but I didn´t mean you…” and she went on to rhapsodise on what I can only describe as the serenity of solitude, the peace to think about past and future rather than present, requested a 10-ish line free verse poem, manually typed on green card:

_________________

Walk me into light.
This silence sings,
And brings me into a
Core of peace.

Release the busy clutter,
The bright bustle of polyphony,
The drowning questions,
The apologetic constants.

Here I can hum
The one note of me
Suspended in the grace
Of continuity.

2015.17 - A Message

One from #PoetryToGo - the brief was from talented local storyteller Marion Leeper, who's been joining us for NaPoWriMo this year. She said she wanted to give me a challenge: a terzanelle about political cross-dressing (she'd just been to see a talk by Steve Bell of the Guardian). The poem needed to be put in a party-neutral poster form for Marion's window.

Behold the result:
______________________________

That mannequin you might well label Queen,
But not the one you think that you all know.
(Some people find that sort of thing obscene.)

The time has come to dress up for the show,
To cover up this figure’s ugly fact.
(But not the one you think that you all know)

Although you know this smile is just an act,
You may not see how smoky mirrors serve
To cover up this figure’s ugly fact.

Don’t speak up and you’ll get what you deserve –
The Emperor’s bereft of honest thread –
You may not see how smoky mirrors serve.

Don’t let the bright lights turn your pretty head –
There’s something darker lurking underneath.
(The Emperor’s bereft of honest thread.)

In shiny shoes here comes a heavy tread –
That mannequin you might well label Queen.
There’s something darker lurking underneath.
(Some people find that sort of thing obscene.)

#7 Digging up Luggage

This went all kinds of wrong. For hours. It's a "Golden Shovel" form - the end of each line together becomes an Easter egg of a completely different poem. This afternoon it wanted to be iambic pentameter, and it was going fine until it broke me.

I gave up and did this version in free verse (because sleep has been all too absent anyway this week already). Bonus points for getting the stanza and poet that inspired it before the end:

~~~

This is the way of all things that we do
This is the mask of those we do not
That final touch that lets you go
Hurts. However slow, it's never gentle.

Here is the darkness I descend into
A clammy veil over all that
Comforts or delights - all that's good
I'm in that suffocating noonday midnight.

I know this feeling well of old
Experience enough for twice my age
"Call yourself a poet?! You should
Have written of that cold burn
By now" - the absence of your hand.

Without its shape I ape the brave,
Find other monsters to run at
Shout louder when you come close.

(She says: "What are you afraid of?"
"Guilt: that maybe if I saw her today
She'd be just a stranger from another age.")

I still have the capacity for rage
A flame to cup against
The cold and dark - a spark - the
Warmth that still leaks from embers dying.

And never mind what I'm guilty of -
I'll alchemise pain; from your unchanging love, mother,
I've made a raging light.

This is just to say...

... that yes: I'll be doing NaPoWriMo this year again. Now then. Who's with me?!

#30 Coda

In a rush of unrepentantly self-indulgent meta-poetry, I give you one to end the month with because, I know I won't win medals for this, and some of the work I did was pretty suspect, and it's not the most arduous, painful or dangerous thing in the world, but - you know what? - this is my craft and my work and at the end of the day I set myself a challenge (and several sub-challenges) and I bloody finished it (and them) on time! So this is for me and all the people who did it too, and all you lovely people who read and commented and said "whooo!" in various flavours  :D

Somehow, left and right
Clasped hands and all
The trudging days
Of pleasure turned to grind
And then transmuted into new,
Surprising pleasures
Are now past and,
Gasping, we stand here,
Upon our peak.

Take your time to
Contemplate the others
Now awaiting light
The doors unlocked
The bright and flocking bodies
At the threshold,
Mocking darkness,
Mocking silence.

Smile at all the
New connections made
And how they pulled you
Through the drought days,
And the doubt days,
And the days that
Tugged out fountains from the air,
Miraculous as handkerchiefs -
All monogrammed by hand.

So now my sisters, brothers, sleep -
Close your eyes and,
For this little while,
Just cease.
Your work's complete -
Dream sweetly clasping
Fear's defeat.

#2 French Swimming Pool

I'm no mermaid -
That chance left long ago
And so I approach l'eau
Avec trepidation,
Celui ci n'est pas courage,
C'est une homage de
Ma copine qui loves it:
Piscine, pristine, cleaving waves
With ease, teasing gravity's grip
And slipping free -
In her element.

It isn't mine -
I'm nervous, always,
At what I see as this perversion -
This is no excursion,
At best a dare,
As I bare my fear and flesh
To this chlorine-choked,
Faux-marine scene.
Pushed past by children -
Rushing, cocky, mocking
The earthbound with
Sure-footed folly over
Smooth wet slabs to splash!
And roll and glide,
Thoughtless.

I'm tired,
I've been translating myself
All week -
Entreating ancient memories
Tugging at understanding
Sometimes just nodding
As I tread awkward water
Until I find my feet.
You are politely plural,
I always turn my head the wrong way,
And apologies are desolate
Until I'm told "C'est ne pas grave!"
Je ne suis pas suave, je crois
Mais ça ne fait rien.
Alors, bien, I'll shrug off
Disappointments and paddle,
Quacking only when I'm crossed.

As I submerge myself,
Trust my skill's suspension,
I find that I can still breathe
My more customary fire
When required,
That, on my own terms,
Not only do I not die,
But I can bob, smiling,
Buoyant for a while -
Un peut plus lentement,
Si'l vous plaît, does wonders.

And I may never now be chic
But I've learned that I can
Slip between these states of being,
These balances of tongue,
And limb, and breath,
And best my terror,
Gentle guest in another's country,
Still myself.