18 - Snowflake

#NaPoWriMo Day 18 (technically 19) and today I’ve been writing a pantoum inspired by too many conversations that I suspect many of you will find… familiar…

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the seventeen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: [Patreon post]

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I ask him not to use that phrase;
I am polite, I do not shout.
He tells me that it’s just his ways,
I don’t know what I’m on about.

I am polite, I do not shout;
we must be careful to be safe.
I don’t know what I’m on about:
his arrogance begins to chafe.

We must be careful to stay safe,
and not upset the "normal" folk.
His arrogance begins to chafe…
of course: I cannot take a joke.

Please don't upset the Normal Folk.
(He tells me that it’s just his ways…
of course: I cannot take a joke.)
I ask him not to use that phrase…

---

If you’d like to write your own pantoum, why not make use of my handy-dandy shareware spreadsheet that can help get you started? https://bit.ly/poemrep

17 - On losing my Saturday and part of Sunday to a sodding migraine

#NaPoWriMo Day 17 (technically 19) and today I’ve been writing a haiku inspired by exactly what it says on the tin, as an emergency measure because, what with that and the epic editing process for Ouroboros, I’m now super behind.

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the sixteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-losing-my-and-156046560

---

It’s no joke in Spring;

no-one’s prepared to cope with

atmospheric shit.

Migraine Brain by me. I didn’t even both looking on Google this time.

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If you’d like to write your own haiku (in English), why not make use of my handy-dandy shareware spreadsheet that can help get you started? https://bit.ly/poemrep

16 - Ouroboros

#NaPoWriMo Day 16 and that night I wrote a piece of free verse inspired by the prompt “Golden eagles could be returning back to English skies after 150 years” as part of my ongoing (possibly Adrian-Mole-esque) attempts to get a news poem into Rattle, which I’m becoming increasingly sanguine about and just seeing it as an opportunity to do a submission to a friendly place and keep finding fresh, weekly prompts for easy poem-inspiration.

Easy. Right. So the process went something like this (skip to the poem if you’d prefer):

Me: I shall write a poem about golden eagles. Golden eagles are great!
Writing Brain: Uh, yeah. Great.
Me: No, we agreed: golden eagles. The Patreon subscribers picked it unanimously. We just did hours of research and shit.
WB: Mmmh. Not feeling it.
Me: Deal with it.
WB: [stubborn silence]
Me: [tries to tempt WB out with setting up an acrostic]
WB: [tumble weed]
Me: Fuck’s sake, fine. [slumps] Leave me, then. I’ll just sit here, bereft. Like this nation bereft of all those species that got hunted to extinction…
WB: Oh, hello.
Me: What?
WB: Say that again?
Me: Uh. “Fine, leave”?
WB: No, the other thing.
Me: “We are a nation bereft”?
WB: That’s the puppy.
Me: Uh, okay…? [starts writing]

[time passes]

WB: Ooh, we could expand this list of extinct British animals…
Me, cautiously: I guess…?
Me: Wait. Are we writing a political poem instead of a nice nature poem…?
WB: Maaaybeeee…?
Me: Fine, I supposed ecology is pretty political…
WB, absently: Now you’re getting it…

[after a couple of stanzas]

Me: So, just a short one, after last night’s sestina, right?
WB: Oh, absolutely.
Me: Right.

[80 minutes later]

Me: Why is the poem going over the page?
WB: Nearly done…
Me: You mean it’s not finished yet?!
WB: Shh, I’m busy.
Me: [growls]

[time passes]

WB: Hey.
Me: What? Done?
WB: Not exactly. Could you go look up a list of reintroduced species to the British Isles for a kind of rollcall near the end?
Me, throwing hands up: I guess!

So that all happened. And then I realised that my delivery during the recording left a lot to be desired (there was definitely a bit that came across horribly classist, for one), so I re-recorded the last two stanzas. And then did the last one again, because WB chipped in saying “eh, that’s a bad assonance” (you’re a bad assonance!) and rewrote two lines. And then there were bits which no amount of cleaning could fix which needed pick-ups and that’s why I’m a day late releasing this NaPoWriMo poem (which doesn’t even mention golden eagles by name…), officer.

Anyway, remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear the much-belaboured recording of this piece (and the fifteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ouroboros-155915962

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We are a nation bereft –
we swept out all the things we
didn’t think fitted our
image, insisted on diminishing
diversity, this unenlivened
island made bland as butter,
utterly subsumed in
consuming greatness.

No more bears or boars,
these shores cleansed,
carcass flensed; we’d throw you
to the wolves, but that’s not
an option anymore.
The aurochs gone, the great auks
axed, taxed by a species that
sees vulnerability and
bleeds it dry.

Anything deemed too big for its boots
is rooted out and then, ironically,
we go looting elsewhere, and
dare to complain when these actions
have consequences, begging the
question: when does entitlement
get fed up with itself?

I exaggerate, of course:
#NotAllHumans actively stamp out
the damp borders of this
hoarding nation, saying
“Let’s slay things, let’s make this
frayed system more desiccated,”
dedicating efforts to ending
indigenous and migrant
variety alike.

But, gods help me, enough of us
do nothing, and that’s… bad.
So thank heavens for those
closer to the ground by choice,
voices raised, daring their best,
questioning the status quo,
knowing that all this hard
graft might not stem disaster, but we’ll
sink faster in the quicksand of
handing off our responsibilities.

And see? The Fisher King
builds, buck-toothed and broad-tailed
in this ailing nation once more.
White storks haunt lake shores,
scores of pine martens and many tiny ants
gathered and nurtured and handed
back to a land that needs them.
Demanding more than monoculture,
ungovernable greed asset-stripping
this habitat for… snacks,
has to start somewhere.

There are bison now in Kent, and the Isle of
Wight has white-tailed eagles thriving,
driving out the unchecked
predators, invader turned prey.
And hey, I know what you’re thinking:
“This place is more crowded now and
how will we cope with these new-old things
incoming, taking up space, fiercely protected,
who gets to stake their claim,
blame shifting… this way…?”

And I say: reparations from the audacious few
who caught us all up in their hunger have to
happen, so please, bring on the wonderful
thunderclap of wings broader than
I’m tall and I’ll sing you such songs
of old wrongs righted. No longer benighted,
we can be inspired, and wild,
and rightfully just a part, not
monarchs, but citizens, dancing,
balanced again at last.

What’s that, Fay? You decided to draw something you’ve never drawn before for this already very involved poem? Cool. Cool.

---

The Ouroboros represents many things, depending on the cultural background you’re viewing it from. Unity, protection, duality, completeness, the trap that is the physical universe, and the end containing the beginning (and vice-versa) being some of them. Up to you which you’d like to apply in the context of this piece…!

15 - Safekeeping

#NaPoWriMo Day 15 and tonight I’ve been writing a sestina inspired by love and connection, after attending the gorgeous Fen Speak open mic (which I wasn’t going to, and then wonderful things happened, so I stayed).

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the fourteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/safekeeping-155744689

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Tonight we are treated to treatises on love
and acceptance, cozied in glorious metaphor.
Tonight we dance under moonlight,
drifting in snow-powdered warmth,
daring to name family in new ways,
old ways, loud and soft together, clasping hands.

How wonderful, to span distances with hands
separated by miles and water, seeking love.
Battered by battling life, we find ways,
even now – especially now – for
bringing brilliance, by-product of warmth
to those in search of light.

It is nice to be reminded, to take flight,
lifted and steadied by multiple hands,
securely precipitous, glorying in the warmth
of spirits who, time and again, choose love,
doubling-down on every indicator
that shared humanity is more important, always.

I am tired, in too many ways,
but my veins fizz with light.
I am unclenching from a score
of near-misses, feeling returning to hands
that long to show my love
in more ways than words, to share warmth.

There are many types of fire building this warmth,
and it occurs to me that ‘nice’ can’t encompass the ways
we feel, the fights we are fuelled by, knowing that love
is summoned through filters across a spectrum of light,
and that this infinite diversity is perfect – ANDs
glittering in this coruscance of connections, the beauty of ORs.

And isn’t that what our perfectly illogical logic is for?
Logs given to the hearth around which we gather, warmth
a gift, shared, multiplying between many hands.
And we are careful to acknowledge all the ways
that flames this large cast long shadows, a twilight
in which we dismantle all the grim things to which we clove.

Take each other’s hands in the dance – it’s what they’re for –
step with purpose and wild abandonment, love and warmth
the inspiration for more ways to light the path, to say We’re Here.

Drawing by me, shamelessly reusing one of the sets of hands from Spectral, flame reference from Wikipedia

---

Did I add a Star Trek reference in there? Why yes; yes, I did. Zero regrets. (See also the couple of cheat words I used that a sestina purist would probably scorn.) Am I satisfied with the drawing? Not yet, but, in the spirit of NaPoWriMo, I’m posting it anyway.

If you’d like to write your own sestina why not make use of my handy-dandy shareware spreadsheet that can help get you started? https://bit.ly/poemrep

14 - Count Down

#NaPoWriMo Day 14 and today I’ve written an Abracadabra inspired by the Random Line Generator. The words I was given were clean, taunt, inspect, secret, guard, thick, brush, and vapour, and it’s quite the challenge to fit them into such an already curtailed form. Judge for yourself how you think I did!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the thirteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/count-down-155651088

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“Is it clean yet?” the old man taunts. “Come on, boy!
“He wants to see your face in it, come night.”
The young lad shakes his head and brushes
thick detritus of an age free.
Intent to pass inspection,
he fails to keep his guard.
The secret hour strikes;
he sees nothing
as vapours
claim his
life

Original mirror image obtained from Wikipedia, then thoroughly messed with by me

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If you’d like to write your own Abracadabra, why not make use of my handy-dandy shareware spreadsheet that can help get you started? https://bit.ly/poemrep

13 - Weathering

#NaPoWriMo Day 13 and tonight I’ve been writing a triolet inspired by loneliness (well… specifically missing someone).

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the twelve preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/weathering-155564589

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“I miss you” seems repetitive and trite,
and yet, it is the only phrase that fits.
Alone, the world is dull, and with you, bright.
(“I miss you” seems repetitive and trite.)
See, when you’re in my arms, the world feels right,
and holding you will smooth my jagged bits.
“I miss you” seems repetitive and trite,
and still… it is the only phrase that fits.

TV room poet’s own

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If you’d like to write your own triolet, why not make use of my handy-dandy shareware spreadsheet that can help get you started? https://bit.ly/poemrep

12 - Prickling Tributes

#NaPoWriMo Day 12 and tonight I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by Prickly Pears – a tribute poem to all the performers tonight.

Normally, I’d tell you to remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the eleven preceding it) there. HOWEVER, I promised a recording to the performers, so you get it here too (and I’ll just have to come up with an extra gift for the Patreon subscribers to make up for this not being exclusive…).

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fayroberts · Prickling Tribute

We are safe, sound, and wonderfully colourful, loving the brilliant wisdom of glittering sensitivity, lifting each other, comfortable challenges, deft and considerate.	Intro
Do or die is not today, burning down expectations, searching out the dangers, mistaking the ways of working, turning lurking in perfection into freedom.	Kate
Sinners pay for the mistakes of making noises, canonically confetti-strewn, and construing duty as a reconstruction of a stumble.	Gareth Barsby
Clap out the chaos, refusing to inflict infantile isolation, reject rot, recognise the wild sanctity of humanity, games making fiction a breathlessly empty treachery.	Vayl
Let’s teach each other constructive alignment, pedagogically, paradoxically dodging OFSTED, bodging observations, repetitively dictating today’s duration, even though it feels endless.	Pip
Open a correspondence into a lifetime of idealism, downing a cocktail of positive experiences, reeling and rocking, mocking the inevitability with a grin.	Ash
Consumption of society’s norms can be filling, drilling into the bedrock of toxic assumptions, dumping constructions, rolling the stones over and over to the conclusion of inevitability.	Sandra
Unprompted preparation paves the way for a final trip, flipping memories over on the grill of reality, the musicality of island tides gifting something undefinable, measured in its loss, sweet as Paradise.	Phynne~Belle
Triple-time gifts us dancing experiments, bending shackled minds to wander and wonder under the bedrock echoes of the resounding repetition of loneliness, serendipity abandoned, surviving unforgiven.	Joycey
Fresh words flourish in fertile space, stretching restless frustration into a new cage, hemmed in, digging into resentment, then switching optimistically, gathering new meanings, leading to graceful patience.	Tamika
Paradoxically, we walk in contradiction, begging for attention, twitching in syncope, drifting in focus, opening minds to the ‘craziness’, not lazy, but blunted, shunted into a category that clatters at the periphery.	Ashley
Cued up, we examine bigotry under a magnification of narrative that serves only the kyriarchy, wicked and wilful monochrome, honing the agenda of apathy, the gift of those who spike the path mendaciously.	Phoenix
We’re a patchwork of fingerprints, beauty painting a palimpsest of history, gifting us a view that inevitability depends on compliance and forgetfulness, the weft of deft love and clear eyes against the warp of greed.	Suzy
We carpet bare memories with prettiness, mess swept under the fashionable patterns that distract from the demons inscribed into the grain, blame bobbing down the rivers of sweat buoying complicity.	Bethany
Colour flourishes up walls, adorning imaginations with grace and clipping, trimming situations with disappointment, impressing lines into blank pages, the ages connecting, washing up against our shored stories.	Lee
We have opened many windows into compassion dashing, sweet, spendthrift and multiplying, kindness a warm gift that benefits every member of our shared continuity.	Gareth Bartlett
Automated text tells a layered set of mixed messages getting tangled in parallel meanings, gleaning more than nonsense, the strangest guest of humanity, sentience being a lucky dip.	Clive
And finally, functions summoned by departed friends send us into a litter of plastic bagged eternity, wildness lined with polymer, bone-deep, changing our definitions, prinked colours murmurating across the canvas of the mind.	Beth

Thanks for the inspiration

Poster of the event because why not?

11 - Anvils

#NaPoWriMo Day 11 and tonight I’ve been writing a haibun inspired by a very real story that happened a few hours ago…

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the ten preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/anvils-155399668

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I am searching for the perfect metaphor, all unknowing, a way to say: this is the situation, pay attention, I’m not joking, it’s serious business, not something to downplay, get ever-so-British about, not a sideways shuffle into clout, this thing I’m on about. I have been skirting closer to the truth while people nod, knowledgeable, exchange sympathies, euphemisms dripping with sincerity and wildly off the mark, while I slump, succumb, let them off the leash to bark up the wrong tree, watch them run, blissfully oblivious. Why spoil their fun? But now you’re here – caught in the dipped beams as my friend encourages us to creep from the car and crouch, coo cozening comments. You’re having none of it – big bright bastards battering you with blather, bugger off! So you scuttle into last summer’s dried grass at the foot of habitat whose name you carry, barrier to chatterers, and hide enough of your head to no longer see us, torso tense in prickly denial. And, while my friend’s snapping pictures, I’m thinking: That’s familiar. That’s a Mood. That’s… a simile so spot-on the gods, no longer dropping hints, have got it literally spotlit…

In hiding from debt,

I spy an apt analogue:

Hedgehog in headlights

Depiction of the evening’s discovery made imperfectly by me (Krita & Huion)

10 - Sweet Symphony

#NaPoWriMo Day 10 and tonight I’ve been writing a free verse inspired by the Random Song Generator giving me a track by RAYE, and autoplay taking me to another in the album, and suddenly I was hooked and looking up the lyrics and then bigger pictures of the cover art and what seems like no time later, here is a free-write stream-of-consciousness. Enjoy the album – I intend to!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the nine preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sweet-symphony-155326024

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Image first this time, since the poem is responding to it, sourced from the artist’s website, and I dearly hope I’m not going to get into trouble for this, as this piece is, essentially, a recommendation…

She flies a kite;
bright above the flat
land, she opens a door
to impossibility.
She has carved a blue-white
place beyond the tumult,
she is saying ‘This too will pass.
but ask yourself if there’s a way
to make it hurry up, come on.’

‘See me: I am red against the green, the
grey, I am day in night, and
night in day, bathing in contradiction,
strong arms straining against the
gravity of the situation, dazzling in
satin, not just waiting for it to
happen. I demand happiness, and
I will lean my whole weight into this.’

It is theatre, my dear – it is all
a show, and you should know that,
on closer inspection, the clouds are
a flat on wheels, the light too
bright and focused to be anything but
electrical. But the woman glimmers,
real as red against green against grey,
saying, ‘I stood on one foot for this,
I wrote my heart into the lyrics
underpinning it, everything is as palpable
as the feelings invoked by my voice,
my words, the soar and surge of chorus,
don’t ignore this, it can contain hope.’

And so this barely edited free write
takes flight, despite any misgivings,
singing home the lingering visions
inflicted on me, joyfully, carrying a
piece of blue dutifully with me.
The grass will rebound from under
the wheels, the bare feet; the satin
will lose its heat and uncrease, but
these feelings remain real, and
that’s a gift worth writing home about.

9 - Maximal Drama!

#NaPoWriMo Day 9 and, owing to ill health and another day of sleeping for what turned out to be 14 hours(!), I’m catching up a little frantically today, knowing how difficult it gets if you let it slip and keep saying “Oh, I can catch up – it’ll be fine! So, given an interesting combination to work with by my Prompt-o-matic Spreadsheetatron™, I’ve been writing a piece of alliterative verse inspired by Max Devrient. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of him either, and it took getting an automated translation of the German Wikipedia page, which is (unsurprisingly) packed far more with information, to find out enough to make this piece, where I decided that “alliterative” in this instance meant “all the words have to begin with either M or D”. (If you’re keen to find out more about this fascinating chap, this page is quite the treasure trove, including some delightful photos I wasn’t sure if I had the rights to use!)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the eight preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/maximal-drama-155321764

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My mother made me
delve deep, destiny’s
metric demonstrated.

Disappointments dog
men mirroring me.
Dented masks; dull drips.

Dynamic mastery
marries, denied divorce,
making do, multiplying.

Deflected, movies magnify
my dramatic definition,
monk making much money.

Deep down, darkness
deals death; daughters
dispense desperate doom.

Diverted, my midwinter
directs, monarchs match
my merits dutifully.

Döbling decorated,
my moniker delineates
driving. Magnificent!

Max Devrient as “Zawisch” in Grillparzer's “King Ottokar’s Fortune and End” at the Vienna Burgtheater, courtesy of Wikipedia

8 - Erasing Eris

Things you need to know:

1. Eris is the unpleasant, bitter, Greek deity of Chaos and Discord.
   
2. This took me for-bloody-ever…

#NaPoWriMo Day 8 and yesterday I sculpted an erasure poem, inspired by a prompt of “Eridanus”, courtesy of my handy-dandy randomised prompts-and-topics spreadsheet. And, being me, I went a bit extra with it all (we’re all astonished, I know), and decided that the thing I would be erasing would be the entire bloody Wikipedia article, and then, in order for the audio version to match the spirit of the visual version, that I would record me reading the entire bloody Wikipedia article aloud and cut the concomitant bits out of the recording for authenticity.

I can certainly say I’ve learned some things, though what they might be, only time can tell… (The image description for this is going to be… special, for one…)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the seven preceding it) there. And it is certainly an experience! The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/erasing-eris-155174189

---

Two halves of the redacted article side-by-side:

Or, if you’d like to see the whole darned thing in a oner:

---

Fine, I’ll have pity on you – here’s the version rendered into plain words:

Eris stretches along the south.
It is a river. It remains one of the
real features of the blue-white years,
whose tradition means “the end”.

Peculiar observations indicate poles
spinning extremely rapidly.
The noteworthy Beta tradition called
a blue-white Earth. Its foot gives
indistinguishable amateurs primary
binary magnitude; visible, divisible:
a triple system consisting of an
orange main star,
a white dwarf,
and a red dwarf.

The maga is easily visible white.
The maga have a period of 50 years.
Artists impress, ran –
one extra orange-hued star,
one planet, a period of 7 years.

Supervoid cold spot is large
(devoid of gaies),
meter superseded only by
speculation that the void may be
due to quantum entanglement
between our universe and another.

Deep-sky visible in small amateurs
with large instruments
light the northeast. Eris is a faint reflection,
an ancient remnant illuminated by grand design.
barred gays center an unusual structure:
a grand design spiral that exists tightly wound.

The Nu Eris shower radiate cons every year;
the parent is unidentified.
Another peaks, dips his paws into Eris;
this mirror depicts a river,
flowing into the south.
According to one theory, the marsh is
held sacred to the domain of the Abyss:
a myth of the father, no strength to control
and so veers, scorching both Earth and heaven.
Zeus intervene and cast him to the burning river!

Eris cannot be seen from China.
The White Tiger of the West was
classified knowledge of western stars.
Citation needed.

7 - Advance

#NaPoWriMo Day 7 and today I’ve been writing a sonnet inspired by the prompt “JD Vance Learns in Real Time Trump Left Him Out of Iran Attack Plans”. This one will also get sent to the weekly Rattle: Poets Respond challenge, because hope springs eternal, and why not get another twofer in there? (And if you fancy learning how to write your own sonnet, why not come to one of my workshops on exactly how to do that?)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the six preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/advance-155057788

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Exposed, you send a memo to yourself,
as, in full view, you’re ridiculed, alone.
They ask why you’ve been left up on the shelf –
it’s something you can’t see; you must be shown.

You’re never more than one nudge from the drop;
when elevated, check your footing’s fast,
or else you’ll end up head-deep in the slop
that’s everywhere – how long can this thing last?

A while ago, you chanced upon a show
that demonstrated toxic benthic vents,
and even though it poisoned all below,
the best-adapted worms thrived on the scents

of threats to normal ways of backboned life.
Your mission? Stay afloat on hot-aired strife.

---

The Yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta), discovered at a depth of 2,300 meters on a hydrothermal vent of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge; photo by Alexis Fifis, via Wikipedia

Because that’s how these things go, subsequent to writing this, I got lost in a maze of trying to find pictures of hydrothermal vents (and/ or their creatures) and now I know a bit more than I bargained for…

6 - Douché

#NaPoWriMo Day 6 and today I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by the “official” prompt yesterday to write about things we dislike, “… particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.” Challenge accepted!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the five preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/douche-154960772 (and it has sound effects!)

---

I hate taking showers,
growling at the necessity
for nakedness and standing,
and my skin sheds anyway,
take the grime with it!
Stupid, itchy, blithering,
witless skin. Shut up!

I’m in now, glowering at
flat, white surfaces, shivering
in the chill of an unplugged
updraft from somewhere,
staring at familiar objects,
objecting all the while,
grinding my teeth.

UGH! The water hits my
griping feet, sleet-cold,
growing violently hot,
scotch bonnet sensation
grating, turning skin from
blue to red, and I hop and
test and flex and grimace.

I sweep the grudgingly correct
temperature up my shuddering
frame, blame society’s weird
propriety and turn to get drenched,
wrenching a comb through
tangled locks and cursing,
nursing each strand free.

I go through the soaping
motions, swaying in the heat
beating against scalp and
shoulders, moulding my
mouldering bits by ancient ritual
into a different me, free of
crust, chemically sweet.

Then my timer chimes, the
real world flits in, reminding
me of outside responsibilities,
a grief of gravity claiming
this blameless mer-wraith,
making me desist, persistent
in its insistent linearity.

I hate quitting showers!

---

Portrait of the Poet as a Wet Little Guy

I went searching for a Creative Commons picture which responded to “grumpy shower”. What I got was a swamp of GenAI nonsense so, on the grounds that doing it yourself badly is better than using GenAi, behold, an original!

5 - Inflexible Meritocracy

#NaPoWriMo Day 5 and it is Sunday, so I’m taking advantage of the bibliomancy prompt I gave the Allographic Write-In to make what turned out to be a somewhat fatalistic rant against the symptoms of autocracy, on a variety of scales, via a quote from a book about astronomy, that I happened to have nearby because I wanted to check about Rhiannon’s place in Welsh astrography for yesterday’s piece. I bounced via Perseus and Medusa to misogyny and marginalisation, and thereby pattern-matching and prophesy. So, you know, nothing too major… The title speaks to the etymology of the names of the Greek Fates, especially Atropos.

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the four preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/inflexible-154851101

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Where the arm of Perseus curves around to hold his shield, there are several interesting star clusters worth observing.

Dark Land, Dark Skies (The Mabinogion in the Night Skies)
Martin Griffiths, 2017

Where his arm curves, something glimmers,
a shimmer in the half-light, a collection of
burning elements that may protect him.
Some say it had a woman’s face, once;
something to possess, cursed for its
rarity, high market value, hanging in the
balance of men’s regard – something
only the divine could stand against.

And yet. How fearsome to be someone
used and rejected, ejected from humanity,
disappearing into myth and yet made
to go on serving after being cleaved from
the weft. We are a warped warning;
for daring to have ungovernable hair we’re
a sinful admonishment to freeze, petrified by
whispers that those the gods favour
can be cast lower than a snake’s belly,
and jealousy is bitterest when it
echoes from the mouths of power.

This stanza should be a volta, a turn from
the established narrative, a way to make
this story happier, the powerless rise up,
abusers affronted at being confronted,
but I haven’t found the solution, hope
only we’re not doomed to repetition, and
that lessons learned from classics can
be steps; foundations, not predictions.

Fate’s a tricky thing, and eavesdroppers
on the future never prosper by it,
locked in an agony of wanting to stop the
jackboot, halt the tide, and craving the
grim frisson of being right. Tucked far enough
into the margin, you get a better view of
the larger pattern, and, hampered by the need
to see it complete, we compete with curiosity
to grasp the shears, delineate what’s next.

And maybe this time…
Maybe. Please.

Image is of a Medusa cameo ring from the Altes Museum via Wikipedia

4 - Yr Eos

Day 4 of NaPoWriMo and I made a spreadsheet to give me random prompts of form and topic. While testing it out the other night, it gave me “Blank Verse” and “Rhiannon”, who happens to be one of my favourite mythological figures. (I was once cast as her in an audiodrama and I nearly expired of excitement – the title for this came about because the sound designer used nightingale birdsong behind my voice.) She has no connection to inspiration/ the awen that I know of, being a shrewd stateswoman and strong woman associated with horses and sovereignty (and sarcasm), but her advice to go slow and her association with (healing) birdsong turned into an exploration of patience in association with creativity. And I thoroughly ignored the notion of blank verse and used a series of chained clogyrnachau instead…

If you’re subscribed to my Patreon, you can hear an exclusive recording of this (and other things) read aloud. The recording is here.

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She is still with us, don’t you know?
She tells us: “Take your time, be slow…
“The trees are heavy
“with birds, so merry.
“Listen, let the words flow.

“Child, the muse exacts no levy,
“the fruit comes in its time, very
“generous and true,
“because it is you,
“and creation’s messy!

“Cariad, take the longer view:
“the words will come out when they’re due.
“If shy, you must coax,
“not lash them to yokes.
“Trust in patient virtue.”

Her voice lingers beyond the oaks,
I close my eyes, let it invoke
magic, sweet and slow
(she’s still here, you know).
Let her guide my penstrokes.

Image from the Lady Charlotte Guest translation of The Mabinogion, by S. Williams, via Wikipedia

If you’d like to try out a clogyrnach or two, why not use my Repeating and Concrete Forms spreadsheet, which also has some syllable-counting forms like this, to help you?

3 - Truncated

Confession: I slept through Friday (3-Apr) and so I’m invoking my personal Emergency Short Form Protocol (i.e. I’m allowed two emergency short forms – haiku/ senryū, limerick, clogyrnach, or tanka in the course of the month – if I chain them to make a longer poem, that doesn’t count as an ESF) already. Someone on Threads said that we should all Google Pink Fairy Armadillos, if we were unaccountably unaware of their existence already, and I took that as a sign…

(Don’t forget that you can access recordings of these poems on my Patreon!)

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You shouldn’t exist.
Your design is too tricky,
and yet you persist…
Pretty burrower won’t you
share your stubbornness with us?

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If you fancy writing a tanka for yourself, you can use my Repeating and Concrete Poetry Forms spreadsheet, which has a number of syllable-counting forms in there too…

Picture of taxidermied specimen courtesy of Daderot via Wikipedia

You can access the recording of this poem via Patreon.

2 - Impure

NaPoWriMo Day 2, and I’m combining this one with my weekly forays into writing something for the Rattle Poets Respond challenge. Rattle have a very civilised (in my view) approach where poems submitted to them can be self-published online (blog, Patreon, social media, etc.), as long as they haven’t been curated elsewhere (defined as when someone else has picked them out and highlighted them for publication).

Reminder, however, that, if you’re a paying Patreon of mine, you’ll see all of my NaPo poems (and only Patrons – paying or free – get the recordings of me reading them). If not, you’ll only see the ones I have no intention of saving for third party publication (where they’re more strict in their definition of “previously published”).

This piece was inspired by this horrifying news story, so carries warnings for death, dereliction of duty, mourning, and a lot of grimness. It also talks reasonably openly about an aspect of the OCD I inherited from my mother – the so-called “Pure O” element of the condition that can be very troubling.

(Shout out to Lou Sutcliffe, whose extensive infodumping earlier this evening about Chilean geology and geography – which research rabbit hole they plunged into after listening to Tlacuache Theatre’s episode on the myth of El Caluche – informed the fifth stanza, which turned up when I was typing this up from handwritten notes.)

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Link to Patreon post with recording: https://www.patreon.com/posts/nightlights-154561064

It’s interesting how quickly I slip
into obscenities – not the obvious curses,
the worse words learned obverse to disaster,
casting this bark as tempestuous, cross,
oblivious to social constructs, mores
more important than scoring my rage…

No, I’m talking about the images that
glimmer on my inner eye,
wild flashes of nastiness, beset with
the grimness others have gifted
reality, humanity abandoned for
Mammon. That’s the real curse.

Verses buck under me, cleaving
these fleering demons fleeing
responsibilities to their victims,
living and dead. I cannot comprehend,
yet am doomed to see their sins
seared onto my occiput, rendered forever.

It’s not new to me – inheritance from
unoccupied pockets of ancestral
mentation, wretched wraiths etched into
inner vision, pricking with the gift of
what-if risk analysis, painfully vivid,
ultimately none of our business.

And yet. We are not islands, this
shit isn’t isolated; we are peninsular,
isthmuses, archipelagos of the
volcanic – product of pressures from
the obvious and not-so, above and
below, summoned from our molten core.

And still this vision lingers – the bodies
bodged, boxed wrongly, blocked
from the arms and hearts of those left
bereft, mendacities becoming more deft as
the dead stack, backlogged in
backrooms, abandoned on slabs.

My brain may visualise it effortlessly,
executive dysfunction can somewhat
sympathise, but my heart can’t
comprehend how they could end this way,
weighing dismay and coming up with
nothing – not even a stab at apology.

And so obscenity devolves to mystery,
glimpses of waste parading naked to my
inner eye, defilement surrendering
nothing but shame, and new
fuel for nightmares, wondering where
else bears this banal banishment of
basic decency that shan’t be laid to rest.

image of Paris catacombs courtesy of “Mustang Joe” on Flickr (found originally unattributed via picryl)

1 - Nightlights

NaPoWriMo has struck again, and this year I’m determined to finish. 2023 was the last time I tried, and I got precisely four poems out of it. 2024 I was moving house, and 2025 I was receiving, then recovering from surgery. This seems like a decent year to start again…

If you’re a paying Patreon of mine, you’ll see all of them (and only Patrons – paying or free – get to hear recordings of me reading them). If not, you’ll only see the ones I have no intention of saving for third party publication.

This was not one of the ones I’m keen to cling to, but then, so far I’ve not exactly produced any immortal bangers on the first day of the challenge (yes, I just checked back through all of them, shhh). I looked for an image to do some ekphrasis with and the first lines that came to mind felt like they belonged in an end-rhyming, common metre poem. Often enough, style informs substance, so this is not the poem I started out to write, but it is the poem I finished, which is, after all, the point…

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image courtesy of picryl

Down here the cracks are crevices,
and all the streetlights stars.
These details where the Devil lives
are written in the scars.

Marred tarmac, paint, and metal struts
are sutured by the stains
of diesel, gum, discarded butts,
the residue of rain.

Every puddle is a lake,
each divot is a dale;
arrivals conjure earthquakes,
departures summon gales.

But here black has a thousand shades,
up close, grit scintillates;
this patch of moss a pleasant glade,
a single breadcrumb sates.

The miniscule holds treasures
if you’re prepared to look,
and what you thought half-measures
might just contain a book…

link to Patreon post, complete with recording, here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/nightlights-154561064