Lost for words

I ‘ve been having a bit of a break this week, after the massive effort to complete 30 poems in April. Here is an American Sandwich, using the words from 3WW.

He specialised in placing cryptic clues in recesses around the house.

His wife flashed messages in Morse to tourists lost in the labyrinth.

They both stopped, wordless, after the villagers started to malign them.

The Kreativ Blogger Award

Kimberley at The Possiblity of Being (cool name for a blog) has given me  the Kreativ Blog Award. Until now I have been too busy with NaPoWriMo to formerly accept it. Kimberley is one of the talented writers I  discovered over the last month.

The award comes with a few responsibilities:

1.  Post the award on your blog and link to the person who gave you the award.

2. List seven things you love.

3. Pass it on! List seven blogs you love and let those people know you’ve given them the award.

Seven Things that I Love

1.  My family.

2.  My cat, Jack.

3. Chocolate. It’s best that I don’t get the taste of it as once I start eating it I can’t stop.

4.  The great outdoors which includes my garden, the New Forest and the sea (both close by), lakes and mountains.

5.  My computer. I wouldn’t be without it and I’ve written a poem dedicated to it.

6.  Holidays in faraway places which I came to late in life as the result of having wandering offspring. To date I’ve visited China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and  Malysia.

7. Oh dear! I’ve come to the end and there are still lots more things that I love. I love writing, which means I also love reading…and, of coure, poetry.

(I realise that I’ve cheated and crammed in far too many things).

Now I don’t know who has already received this award and please feel free to turn the Kreativ Blogger Award down if it isn’t your thing.

This is my opportunity to flag up the blogs I enjoy visiting.

Blogs that I love

1. David King at Pics and Poems. Dave’s blog is a mix of art  work, fine poems and (sometimes controversial) topical posts.

2. Kay McKenzie Cooke at Made for Weather. Kay is a published NZ poet.  Kay illustrates her posts with wonderful photographs.

3. Andy Sewina at Sweet Talking Guy. Andy is the creator of the Naisaiku (or was that Wendy Naisaiku?) and the American Sandwich.

4. Linda Jacobs at Linda’s Poems. Linda is an American High School English teacher who writes some very original poems and co-hosts Totally Optional Prompts.

5. Elizabeth Enslin at Yips and Howls. I ‘met’ Elizabeth through NaPoWriMo. She  is a writer and anthropologist who claims not to have written much poetry before.

6. S. L. Corsua at Unguarded Utterance. A pen name for a blogger who writes powerful poems as an antidote to the law. She is based in the Philippines.

7. Wayne Pitchko at POGA…Poetry. Wayne writes poetry and paints. I also ‘met’ Wayne through NaPoWriMo. His poems are quirky (I like quirky).

#30 The finishing line

So this is it. Day #30 and I have six words left from Read Write Word #15. I have more than thirty poems. I have made some wonderful new blogging buddies whose poems I will continue to read and the prompts have been amazing.

Keep writing!

This lunacy must end

It was less like hardscrabble
more like a magical mystery tour.
Thirty shiny pennies jingle
in my piggy bank of poems.
The company was wicked.
I’ve travelled on different cadences
and I close these thirty days
with nascent aspiration.

And to update my Naisaiku:

today’s the last day
thirty blossoms are blooming
A RED LETTER DAY
thirty poems are written
let’s have a party!

(Microsoft media clip)

#29 How not to move house

Day 29 and madness has set in. I have just spent three hours writing a sestina, a form which I abhor above all other forms. Surely tomorrow, I must use the remaining words, including lunacy, from Wordle #15. Carolee’s prompt at Read Write Poem was to spend five minutes writing a list starting with the words ‘I don’t think I can…’ My list included ‘I don’t think I can move house’. This is the resulting poem:

How not to move house

It snowed the day we moved here, in nineteen eighty-four,
At the start of the year of Orwell’s dystopian vision.
From garage loft and shed the junk of twenty five years,
Extends ropes, chains and padlocks to tether me to the past.
When all I want is to move where I can have a future,
I’m snared by the cast offs from my family’s other lives.

My eldest is a musician, he has a new life
Teaching in a school in Geneva, where he has no use for
Old music, a trumpet and a music stand. His future
Now lies with wife and son, there is no place in his vision
For the flotsam and jetsam of his past
But he left rubbish from his car when he visited this year.

My daughter is also a teacher. For the past year
She’s taught at Kanda University. Her new life
In Japan leaves behind less clutter from her past,
Stuff that she’s been hoarding since nineteen eighty-four –
Just books and clothes and a digital television
which she may need if she returns some time in the future.

My youngest is an artist. He now has a future
up north in Salford where his son turned one this year.
Now artists of all people are apt to have a vision
That floats unmoored to their day to day lives
Leaving a trail of items they just might find a use for.
He of the three has left behind most debris from the past

Ten years ago my mother moved south, brought another past
In addition to my children’s and mine. I put my future
On hold, just as I’ve been doing since nineteen eighty-four.
My mother’s bewilderment led to a hard choice last year:
She will now have other carers for the rest of her life.
Amongst the litter left behind – another television.

I’m still struggling to hold on to a vision
In which I’m no longer coupled to detritus of the past
And I’m the one moving forward to lead a new life
Without other pasts haunting my future
Maybe this year will be the year
I’ve been waiting for since nineteen eighty-four.

Since nineteen eighty-four, I’ve had a vision
Every year of breaking with the past
To build a future for my life

#28 An Anglo-American Sandwich

Thank you Read Write Poem for mentioning that Carol Ann Duffy is joint favourite, with Simon Armitage, to be the next poet laureate here in the U.K. I used a phrase from her collection Rapture in my collage poem on day 22 of NaPoWri Mo. The present laureate, Andrew Motion, has done much to promote poetry with the Poetry Archive, but although there are some female poets, Duffy and Jackie Kay (also included in the betting) are not included. Both, however, can be found on the British Council site and Famous Poets and Poets, which also features American poets.

Today, I have written a list poem using Andy Sewina’s American Sandwich, which is based on Allen Ginsberg’s American sentence (17 syllables like the haiku). Andy lives in the Manchester area of the U.K., which is where I have my roots. The prompt at Read Write Poem is ’seeing red’. I’ve given my American sandwich a British flavour by making it red white and blue. If I had more time, I would have worked at the rhythm more.

Red blooded, ruddy, robust, violent tempered, bolshie, leftie, Marxist
White skinned, Caucasian, bloodless, blanched, ashen, pure, clean, whitewash, coward
Blue blooded, patrician, profane, racy, risqué, dejected, down, sad.

P.S. I couldn’t make the ‘white’ white as you wouldn’t be able to read it.

And my Naisaiku, also with a red theme.

the last day of April
with thirty blossoms blooming
A RED LETTER DAY
with thirty poems written
the last day a party

#27 Nightmare

This is day 27 and there are only three more days to go. I’ve used some of the words in Read Write Word #15 and Monday is also the day to get aboard the Poetry Train.

Nightmare

I find you among the specimens
in a draughty museum; behind glass
between the Egyptian mummies
and shrunken heads brought back
from Papua New Guinea…I try
to remember…I could not
staunch the blood leaking
from your wounds… A young doctor
gave you an injection of plasma
and a spark of life shimmied
along your arteries  then stalled
in your veins… I try to remember
the path we took so that I can
retrace our steps, and by travelling
backwards, re-wind, re-take.

#26 Let’s get Metaphysical

Christine at read Write Poem is asking us to get metaphysical and the prompt at One Single Impression is ‘Word’.  Both of these seem to be right up my street. My interests, apart from poetry and literature, include science, philosophy and spirituality. I’ve chosen to concentrate on the macro world but the micro world inside the atom is just as awe inspiring and unknown. Even hard nosed academics like the novelist Martin Amis said recently  that in the face of the fact that 98% of the universe is dark material, which we know nothing about, it is irrational and counter intuitive to dismiss the possibility that there is a God. In a lecture delivered by Amis and James Wood, the Harvard Professor of Literature, the present was referred to not as post-Christian but as post-secular. People are hungry for spirituality and theology is being taken seriously here in the U.K. where religious practice has declined far more than in the U.S. Anyone who has been reading my blog for over a year will know of my hostility to Richard Dawkin’s campaign for atheism which has currently taken the form of an atheist bus. If I were to put a label on myself I am an agnostic Christian or maybe I’m a Christian agnostic.

Metaphysical

Words are a lamp to the dark matter of the soul –
the chi, essence, life force – that no longer inhabits
a cadaver stretched out on a table.

Questions about the soul’s previous existence
and continuation after death rattle like dry bones
in an empty casket – without words.

If the universe were a fist, all that we know about it
would fit on the nail of my little finger. We still do not know
why we exist but we do have to be  in order to be not.

We do not know why the device that drives the universe
is speeding up, flinging stars further into space. We toss
a salad of words like ‘black holes’, ‘chaos’ and ‘entropy’.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God…

‘Your word is a lamp to my feet’ (Psalm 119: 105)

‘To be or not to be…’ (Shakespeare: Hamlet)

‘Hands that flung stars into space’ (Graham Kendrick)

‘In the beginning was the Word…’ (John 1:1))

Who was Jesus?

#25 How to Detox your Car or Silly Saturday

Today is Day 25 of NaPoWriMo and I’m starting to crumble beneath the piles of unsorted clothes (easy enough to put them in the washing machine) papers on the table (including poem acceptance) and an unkempt, neglected house.  So today is also cleaning and tidying day. My time for poetry is severely restricted. I do have a certain level of tolerance but it has long been passed.

‘Using the recipe format, insert your own instructions for something completely different’, wrote Jill at Read Write Poem.  I wish I knew more about what was going on under the bonnet of my car but this is just bizarre…

How to Detox your Car

Place the engine, together with the spark plugs and fan,
in a very large saucepan.
Add some engine oil and bring to the boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer for fifteen minutes until
the spark plugs are tender.
Season with laughter and freshly ground good humour.
Drizzle with green credentials.
Liquidise in a blender or food processor.

Follow this recipe carefully to do your bit
for the environment.

(Recipe taken from Carol Vorderman: Detox for Life)

#24 Sounds of silence

NaPoWriMo #24 and I’ve just received an acceptance for one of my poems – ‘The Cloakroom of my Childhood’. I will add a link to it on my  ‘About’ page in due course.

Today’s prompt at Read Write Poem is noise (or silence).

Silence

In my room
a fan whirrs
my computer clicks
and it sounds as though
I’ve put a sea shell
to my ear.

Outside
I hear
the hum of a tractor
the drone of an aeroplane
as it rises to a crescendo
and then diminishes
car wheels screech
on the tarmac.

In the garden
my cat meows to be let in.
The busyness of birds
in their aerial arena
hits me like a wall
of sound.

In my head
conversations
with people
real and imagined
what my kids are doing
what I need to do
what is urgent
what can wait
who is coming
who is going
a re-draft of
a short story
or an idea
for a poem

Is there such a thing as silence?

Protected: #23 The Lonely Path

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