20 - Post-Truth

#NaPoWriMo Day 20 (technically 25, but hey – what’s a little writer’s block between friends?) and tonight I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by the prompt “Donald Trump is rushed from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after gunshots fired”

Talk about fresh inspiration! This only happened an hour ago! And just in time for me to dash this off and submit to Rattle!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the nineteen preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/post-truth-156566308

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Chaos layers on confusion;
contusions are few,
groups of suits,
unsuited to action,
stack under the boards.

And he looks… bored, while
scores of silk-clad reporters
pour their accounts into
news desks from vantage points
anointed by shiny shoes.

Writer’s block unstoppered by this,
I slip the headline into the
discord, grimly nod at
insomniacs echoing my
disquiet: is this real?

Can we trust anything we read?
Greed has cast doubt on
the clout of journalism,
that prism has cracked, and
not all hacks are even human now.

Will this turn out to be an accident,
an act of defiance, an
alliance of those who serve history,
a mystery twisted, or an ideal
diversion from the traditional roasting?

Who knows?

“Post-truth-era 03”. Photograph from the POST-TRUTH ERA photo series by Heikki Leis. Glass negative, 2017, via Wikipedia

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.

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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…!

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.

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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…

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)