2021.11 Box

Over an hour later, I’m waist-deep in Google when you come in.

And you’re immediately excited: You know what that is?!
you sign. I sigh, resigned, try gesturing to my
many open tabs but you’re entranced: Beautiful.

I knock the table, sagging a sarcastic Heavy! your way
baiting inevitable rolled eyes, while you run entranced fingers over
dusty textures that this heathen sees as merely mechanical,
absolutely prepped now to receive a lecture.

Your colour’s high as we fumble for common concepts,
collecting better understanding as your enthusiasm
absolutely tests my resistance. Before I know it, your itchy digits
have collected instruments and I’m witnessing disembowelment.

You hand me the isoprop. Why me? I immediately frown.
You clown a smirk, and I gather from the resultant smug flicks
of intelligence that you’d hate to deprive me of such a unique
experience (git) before twisting the dials’ backsides my way.

And, damnit, you’re right. Nothing in my life is quite this concrete,
the discrete clunks of the hunks of Bakelite and metal
melding with the stink of alcohol, the smooth, shining movements
freed from imperfection loosing something else in me.

Our eyes meet, and you grin a gotcha, which I acknowledge
on my own roll of eyes and you smile, sign that we can reconnect
this elegant bit of history to itself and present tense,
because next you’re going to demonstrate how well it holds its place.

The thing hums its untempered ohms in somewhat smug digits
of undiminished calibration and I nod proper humility
to it and you, shining in the dimness of my tiny office,
wonder how to catalogue and categorise, and if it’s too late.

This was from the Day 11 prompt to write something inspired by the results of the Science Museum random object search and what came up was this little beauty. Subsequent wading through enthusiasts and this curiously entrancing teardown and testing video gave us this poem, for some reason!

A Muirhead Decade Resistance Box, named for the dials marked 1-10 moving in tens, hundreds, and 1000s of ohms

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.

2017.21 - Button

Today they showed me your picture.
It was the best kind of surprise;
I smiled, unbidden, thinking:
Yes, this is someone I want to know.

I will never know you.
You will only remember me.
We meet today across photons,
Tricks of algorithm,
A best guess of time
Sprinkled across the bones
That show.

My scars will deepen
But they will also soften
As laughter arcs
From point to point
And lurking sparks burst forth.

In this new face I see my dearest blood
Summoned up in some
Beloved nest of twinkles,
And I finally make sense of my
Genetic destiny,
Seeing it laid out by a game;
A shame I’ll have to wait so long
To see your face again.


A friend of mine showed off a four-by-four square of images on Facebook today. It was him, transmuted by the alchemy of something called “FaceApp” from himself into an ageing version of himself, a youthful version of himself, and a female version of himself. He is three days younger than me. I gave it a go, somewhat braced, and was amazed at what happened. (Of course, what also happened was a poem…)

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!)

2017.14 - Generation

Uppity.
He’s never called that –
Cocky, bold,
Decisive,
Maverick and rule-breaker;
Never uppity.

My brass neck
Sets off shrill alarms,
My mettle
Detected;
Unnatural, they call it –
Brazen, unholy.

I’m a steed
Of a different stripe,
Stand hidden
In plain sight;
Pierrot makeup, broad back,
Prized for my fine skin.

You should know:
Underneath it all
I’m angry,
With reason;
I won’t smile for the telling,
See, I’ve learned too much.

I won’t kneel,
So don’t hold your breath;
No trophy,
Owned or sold,
Obeisance be buggered –
I’ll walk my own path.


Elaborate set-up: using a different random word generator, I generated five words (uppity, brass, zebra, known, obeisant), then plugged them into Google image search. Scrolling through some weird and wonderful results, and jumping some links, I came across:

Since I’d also come across 

 and 

along the way, the scene was set for the theme. I then trawled Wikipedia for poetry forms, and found a Shadorma. My only regret is that I can’t seem to find out who the ladies in the first image are, so, if anyone can enlighten me, I’d be very grateful!

2015.16 - United in Rhyme

I blame Ian Barker, who captioned the attached photo of me as: '"...and then I choked him" [discussing a visit from UKIP to the stall]'

Warning: xenophobic and violent imagery to follow, along with the worst rhyme I think I've EVER perpetrated…
_____________

That candidate's a nasty man
He's got a lot of gall
To bad-mouth immigration
When he steps up to my stall

He says: "Is this poem foreign?
"For I shan't have none of that!"
I say: "That word comes from the Greek
"You narrow-minded prat."

I add: "While we're on the subject:
"With a surname such as yours,
"It's ten to one your family
"Came here from other shores."

"Never mind the fact that immigration
"Is far less to blame
"Than your old mates the bankers
"With their nasty little games."

I feel I gave fair warning
But he wouldn't stop his rant
So I put him in a chokehold
To inspire him to recant.

I helped him show his colours -
In fact, he was a couple -
A yellow little coward
Turned that hateful UKIP purple.

2015.8 - Inconsolable

Along the path I stump and shuffle

Today I'm wearing new boots in
My whimper-breaths I strive to muffle
Along the path I: stump and shuffle
My pinking heels begin to ruffle
Tomorrow may be blistering
Along the path I stump! And! shuffle…
Today I'm wearing! New! Boots! In…!

#24 Parliament

"Make a big fist now", he urges
My own drowning in the grip
Of generations

You sidle, stomp,
Shake your shoulders,
A veteran performer
But still up betimes

We have been told your story
The intricate knit of land
And prey and you,
And watched you land, sighing,
Laughing, snapping, pointing, shuffling,
Shifting from foot to foot.

I feel you echo this
On my fingertips,
Watch, incredulous at fortune,
See you duck as the image-maker
Blinks and beckons
"Come on, boy!"

I release you to your warden,
Still in awe, grinning,
Head spinning;
Wishing, wishing, wishing.

***

Photo by Carla Keen