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.

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

2019.2 Ishqbazi

They call it husbandry.
He watches the coterie tumble and
dance, flirt with air-currents,
a smile on his lips,
even as he trains them,
directs their pairings,
with an eye for their offspring’s fortune.

He exhorts them to lean into
the best of what their God gave them,

discarding the careless practices
of his fond but feckless forebears.
Each feather is a treasure,
ribboned ankles a flash of pride
in the heart of his court.

Ringed with gold, fed only the best,
they test the Charkh and the Bazi,
fling themselves into contention with
gravity, pull praises from him,
trust to the truth of his love.
And even after their brief twirls are done,
they grace the zenana, pecking painted grains;
perfect specimens forever.

Pigeons feeding near a golden pigeon cote on a hillside, Mughal, Kashmirmid – 17th Century © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Ishqbazi means “love-play” and is what Emperor Akbar used to call pigeon-flying. This is either adorable or slightly creepy. Probably adorable.

Charkh means “a lusty movement ending with the pigeon throwing itself over in a full circle”

Bazi means “lying on the back with the feet upwards, and quickly turning round”

Zenana “contextually refers to the part of a house belonging to a Hindu or Muslim family in the Indian subcontinent which is reserved for the women of the household.”

2018.18 Three Card Draw

IV The Emperor



Every element is carefully selected, from the rams’ heads to the shades and shapes of his draperies. He is bulked and bulwarked, encased in ridged, rigid materials from crown to spurs. Everything is gorgeous, from gorge view to gorget, and preparation is everything; thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, he is unfond of surprises.

He waits, gripped in dread
Battles the creep of ageing
Less feared than fearing.


6 of Wands, reversed



Dread Emperor I have…
Dread…
(Dread)

So, my liege, a funny thing happened
On the way to the battle
And.

No.

Bravely caparisoned and thronged we strode
High were our hearts and strong our voices
Many who cheered us along our road
Blue were the skies with a myriad choices.

Cut to the chase. I think he’d…
He needs to.
I’ll.

Fear now follows fear
A new day beckons the land
The wall has fallen.


8 of pentacles 



No matter what occurs, the sky never actually falls. It calls: blue, grey, white, star-sparkling, or rain-blessing. The sky knows its own business; a kind of competence that only the masterful possess. Gaze focused, intent on craft, this one spins out protection, carves calmly the shape that turns back indignities into equality, perfectly balanced.

Empires creak and fall
Wisdom rises to artful
And work still goes on.

2018.12 Helm’s Deep

He scribes lines,
Tries to define the intersection
Of flesh and everything

His spanner eyes
Peer, grappling with the
Gears of the universe

Passion is a curve
A perverted slant;
The shan’t to his must

Even circles twist -
There is nothing Euclidean
In this sly existence

He curses, hammers, scores,
Sure that, this time,
The sky itself will bend.

But precision eludes him
Elision creeps,
Steeping him in sleepless sweat

Next time, next time,
Next time, next time,
Next time, next.

2018.11 Spectral (for Cara)

Kindness comes in many colours
From the purple of a hug at the right time,
To the golden-green of eyes catching and holding.
It’s in the silver of a held door
Or the wavetop blue of weights lifted.
It’s the bright pink of a text when the world is grey
And the orange of hot food for bone-deep cold
It’s the gleaming black of a bed for a night
And it’s the smiling yellow of the reminder of worth.
You can find it in hands, eyes, voice, smile -
A magic all its own,
Striking rainbows through you, giving or receiving.
It binds and stretches through distance and time,
A reminder of everything we are together.

2018.7 Still Life

Peel back the surface
Catch the message glimmering beneath;
There is a wealth of invention
To be gleaned.

I wonder if he got bored - or merely frustrated with the way that only the shells resisted change.

The blue is its own definition;
Symbol of a life
Lived in leisure,
Of time to take pleasure in colour.

After all, insects rarely stay put, wings splayed just so - invention would have been a great temptation.

Here are layer upon layer
Of fragile strength,
Delicate curves of
Complimentary intransigence. Pinned.

After all - who would know? Van Kessel dares to evolve - patiently scraping forth unicorns in plain sight.

The detail is fresh,
The depicted flesh solid enough
To cast shadows,
Mirrors itself in perfect grace.

He has perpetrated an in-joke of 350 years or more, maybe, or was commissioned to blend fantasy with reality.

The wonder of nature is preserved,
The correct delicacies observed,
The perfect compliment to
Anyone’s collection.

Or perhaps he was simply on a deadline and copied someone else’s badly-executed lines.

2017.29 - The Beginning Is Always Today

We are greeted by the voices of women
And the visions of women
We step into a forest of arms held wide
And fists held high.

We enter a riot of colours
All the shades of defiance
All the textures of acceptance
All the shapes of love.

We are told to be bold
We are granted permission
We listen and we are heard
We watch and we are seen.

Here are the dreamers of worlds
And the builders of dreams
Here are the wall-shakers
Here are the bringers of light

We have encoded resistance
Into an insistence to be heard
And we have changed the shape of conversations
In the realisation of worth.

And by one man’s metric,
We are nasty. A degeneration of
Our one true station of servility;
Civilisation’s demise in four syllables.

Sad.

Listen: if the tower must be dismantled,
Brick by brick, to be rebuilt as kilns
And hospitals, and libraries,
And bridges, so be it.

If the walls must be torn down,
Again, we’ll lift our busy fingers
And strong hearts to the task,
Talking all the while.

And we will break silence with song,
And fear with laughter,
And dark grey fences with pinks and browns,
With violets, whites, and greens.

And we will plant flowers on your
Place of rest, and remember.
And we will walk on,
Dancing into the dawn.


We’re very near the end of the month, which is exciting (and, if I’m honest, somewhat relieving, and also sort of sad: I’ll have to make up my own excuses to write poems…). The last Sunday of every month is usually Allographic’s open mic, but this month we’re teaming up with Nasty Women Cambridge to help them celebrate the end of their exhibition in aid of Corona House (housing single, homeless women with a Cambridge connection), Cambridge Women’s Aid (providing dedicated and specialist services to women and children affected by domestic abuse), and Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre (offering support to women and girls who have experienced rape, childhood sexual abuse or any other form of sexual violence).

What’s that got to do with this poem? Well, glad you asked. I went to see their exhibition on text art resistance, and came away with my brain buzzing and my heart dancing, as I was pretty sure I would. I wanted to write something for the exhibition. And that’s definitely how the poem starts, but it becomes more about the general Nasty Women movement and I am so looking forward to performing this to a bunch of other footstomping, outspoken, resistant, Nasty People of all genders on Sunday evening. The title comes from one of the pieces which, in turn, is a quote from one of my literary heroes, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Boom.

2017.18 - Balloonist

Trust me, you said,
Tying a bright red ribbon
At the halfway point.

Around us seagulls,
The soar of day,
Full-throated clouds.

I worry about weights,
About being too close
About the lack of tension

The sky is not quite blue
The earth not quite green
And we are not quite...

Trust me, and I,
Clasping the length
Of my courage, watched.


I do not play table-top games, but my partners do. When I, sleeplessness hungover from driving one of them to the airport at 2:30am, asked the other one (similarly hungover) for a prompt, I was shown the vision cards from Mysterium. Some shuffling later, and here we are. (We may well see another one of these before the month is out!)