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.

2023.4 Might as Well

No prompt used this time – this comes from some free-writing while testing out the Sprinto bot in a discord app. Took literally 2 minutes to write; the first part is almost entirely free-written, then I realised it looked like a haibun, so finished up with a senryū.

I am writing some words that will never be heard in a blank space dictated by the amount of time it takes to make this assonate internally, eternally grateful to all the way the Maker shaped me for verbage. I’ve learned it’s impossible to ignore the awesomeness of your own spirit, mauled though it might be, it shines through duly, unruly and grime-streaked though it might be, it speaks, drifting in infinite wonder, sundering itself to beauty and the press of helpful flesh again and again. And though it might be lost for a while, or its light dimmed, its flicker will never be diminished as long as its name is spoken in its own, secret, holy tongue.

Once more I find it

shining in the eyes of a

friend, beckoning love.

[Image description: Black & white photo of actor Jim Carrey, a middle-aged, clean-shaven, white guy, gazing pensively upwards and being quoted as saying 'You can fail at something you don't want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.']

2020.2 Buzzing

“Humanity at one of its finest moments, in the pinnacle of creativity.” – YouTube user Turtlefeathers, on the 2010 video “Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque (Virtual Choir)” as quoted on page 197 of “Economies of Collaboration in Performance (More than the Sum of the Parts)” by Karen Savage and Dominic Symonds.

I have language issues, sometimes –
They arrive on the back of processor lag,
Me gabbling, attempting to parallel process
All the remaining words to say;
Turns out the human larynx
Doesn’t work that way, tongue tangled,
“Wurbs,” I say,
You nod gravely, parrot it back.

They flock, soaring and diving,
Sometimes outlining with crystal clarity,
A dance that changes,
Echoes in heads –
You forget the sense,
Retain the sensation;
Other times derailed into chaos,
Panicking at the claxon,
Unbuffered by Maslow.

Eat a sandwich.
Get some protein down you,
Eat a biscuit, drink some water.
Listen, if it was that easy,
I’d’ve done it already;
Instead I’m unsteady,
Rushing through on our old friend:
Adrenalin.
Because that always ends well.
And yet. And yet.

I can categorise the people I like
On several factors:
One: I can speak quickly enough
In front of them that my mouth
Can keep up with my brain.
Two: when they shoot for the blank
In the stammer, they land it
(by a broad majority).
Or three: stand back and let me
Catch up with fluttering synapses,
Humming gently to fill the silence.
That’s nice.
Three: three: three: thhhhrrrreee…
Four: they don’t take offence
At clenched fists, missed eye contact,
Never grab me by the wrist.

(Never grab me by the wrist.)

Sometimes there’s a big, blank space
For the word because there’s too many
Candidates, all circling, clamouring:
“Me! Pick me!” as I…
[I… what’s the word, the perfect word?
Cup left hand, clasp air, flicking eyes.
Something of wheat and chaff…
Yes!] winnow for perfection…
Except the moment’s gone, the rhythm
More than syncopated,
And dehydration doesn’t help –
Brain pickled in its own unhealthy juices.
Useless, useless, useless.

Shhhh…
A breath. Take one.
Don’t hush me.
No – not a gag, an amplifier,
A byproduct of the silence
Is that the words can ring in it.
I grumble, unconvinced.
Eat a sandwich, you glorious idiot,
Switch off your alarms,
And charm yourself to sleep with
Cheese and bread, forgetful of regrets.

(I agree, but type this up instead
As birds chirp, sky silvering into Saturday
While I softly splinter.)

2018.4 Druth

When I left, they let me.
No-one followed, And I
staff in hand made my own path
Sky-clean and stream-wandering.

I bordered on nothing, nodding
its feather-brush, touching and untouching.
I dark, it follow, wending and
unending. We peer freely, touch
with reverence, the grey is

And I

Forest is sky - the touch untouch
fronds against light and dark speaks.
It is more than maybe but
Not too soon.

If I, feathercloak fly it will be
Taken of taking, touch of untouching.
I gather. Cleave close to edges
Edges speak where the centre stays silent.
S   I   L   E   N   T   C   E      S   I   N   G

I prefer here that is not-there
Ivy shoulders; smoke skin,
Gather the edge dark in my hands
Wait patience as song for them to stop
feathering, gather my arms from mist
so I can eat.

I still eat, though its weight can be
bruising and nor of. Some of the
It’s very light, but quiet is dark so
edges of song drift feather bright

We were leaves once.

And we. We are featherdark light
And I am forgetting where my
old name talked.
It talked and talked, lode and loaded
the words hot and

Yet

Song.

Silencesong is feather soft, leaf edge
against me and we walk,
Darkness and I cry sometimes
Laugh sometimes, edge drift like
the smoke I remember
And quiet is still and I can hear
on the edge of breath

My other heart. A new hearth
For the silent song.

Bound no more. I am.

2018.2 Cycle

It all crowds my head. Your heat flickers inside me
And there’s no release, no means to breach this
I am lost in the white noise crackle, dappled in the harmful,
Gullet full of other people’s bile.
And I want to help. I really, really want to help
Help me. Help me stop this. Help.

Stop.

Step away, but that’s not far enough
Say it clearly, cite the parallels they’ve learned to adapt to -
Kitchen utensils as a measurement of capacity.
Acknowledgement
Affirmation
Just one more thing.
No more.
No more things
No more citations, no more debate,
No more inference that my interferent noise is not great enough
To break the signal.
No more, please - I’m not a debate, my existence
My existence isn’t theoretical, charity, a lack of clarity
I AM NOT A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE.
Google terminology
Google visibility
Google why jokes are important, actually
Google “kicking down”
Google cultural signifiers
Google privilege
Google check your fucking privilege
Google those who’ve been able to say more clearly: this is not a joke
Google the statistics
Google the death statistics
Google the deaths
Google why me opposing your entitled bullshit here is as important as opposing state-sanctioned bullshit in [pick a country where human rights are a big issue and insert here]
Google why my existence doesn’t invalidate yours
Google why words are important
Google the fuck out of why I’m calling you out.
Google us. Read the fucking names.

Breathe.
Just fucking breathe.

Mount the bike,
Take the time,
Spend the excess adrenalin,
Make physical pain the coin of distance, of deliverance, of perspective.
Make.
Make cloud patterns
Make nods at joggers and dogs and kids on scooters
Make a third personal best on that curve north
Make good headway against return headwind
Make faces at other cyclists, and returning geese, and cows, and

Is that a hide or a bomb shelter?
Is that a war memorial or an abandoned pump?
Is that

This is broad lungfuls
This is the body’s heat, whispering into entropy
This is glissades of temporary
This is

You are.

Breathe.
Signal.
Manoeuvre.
Return.
Breathe.
Be.

Now, what were you saying?

2017.5 - First and Last

Not all gods live in groves
Not all skies burn.
We sought an answering pulse in the world
Stretched skins to echo
Sending an embrace to everything
Seeking answers in flesh and breath

And we found it in the rise and fall
And in the glory of the simple
Teeth chattering on that
First cold morning
One minute past dawn
And no-one told you
The way the colours would blend
And bleed and the way that warmth
Blesses.
The way your skin stretched itself
Over cramping muscles
And suddenly
You couldn’t stop
And there was nothing,
Nothing between the sky
And the bottom of your lungs

At the top of the hill
You couldn’t hear anything, at first,
Over your own gasps,
The protests of creaking bones
Too long still
And pushed to flight
And drinking in height
And the drop of earth
And the promise of rain
Seen three hours away.

Measuring distance in time
You are an alchemist
Blood flushing blue-white fingertips,
Stinging the tops of your ears
When was the last time you felt that?
When was the last time you knew
The size of your ears
Where they finished?

And when was the last time you heard
The praising skies
Echo and answer each other
Longing across the flocking distances
Bright as wingflight and
You wonder if you should want to take a photo
And you will never take a photo

This moment is textless
A grin stretching skin
Into a peerless ache.
And soon.
And soon the descent, slow and rueful
And yours.
But now?
But now you sing,
A diaphragm-deep gulder
Bellying the words before words
And this
This freedom?
This will tuck, a fold of always,
Rising to the surface
Each time you see such colours,
Each time your hear your own gasps,
Feel the span of your ears,
Freezing hot,
Each time you do not take a picture
Of the sunrise.


Those tricksters at Lies, Dreaming Podcast generously supplied some idiosyncratic prompts for NaPoWriMo. One struck me, at first because of the name, and then because it was a link, and then because what it linked to was so stunning, including what lay beneath. The poem above is a free-written piece that was the result of writing while listening. I thoroughly recommend it.