Salamander

She wants to procreate

in poetry; drench words in sounds

but most of all in silence.

She wants to pour forth

the secrets of her soul but

still hold something back.

She wants to pivot

between stillness and movement

as in a Zen meditation.

She wants to pan

like a prospector; to separate

gold from the dross

She wants to live

like a salamander between

water and wetland.

For my Weeekly Whinge: http://watermaidmusing.wordpress.com/

A Walk in the Wood

My mother told me:

Always keep to the road!

If I go through the woods I can save twenty minutes.

For weeks, the rain has been covering southern England

with a blanket of black mud which slops and squelches

underfoot. I’m wearing my white trainers.

I have a fetish for clean shoes.

Today it’s stopped raining and the pasty path draws my feet

like dry bread.  A few paces in, I stand on a knoll

for a better look at the pond. Sparse green shoots are sprouting

on the trees and sunlight skims across the water.

I hesitate. Deep inside the woods,

no-one will hear the scuffle or a girl’s screams

as she’s bludgeoned to death

and her body dragged beneath the green algae.

Last nigh, a prisoner escaped

from a high security jail.

This is a re-write of a piece of flash fiction. I’m not sure which form works best. As I wrote this it moved away from depicting the consequences of disregarding a warning to the narrator being the agent that fulfilled that warning.

Always keep to the road!

If I go through the woods I’ll save twenty minutes. For weeks, the rain has been changing southern England into a blanket of black mud which slops and squelches underfoot. I’m wearing white trainers and I have a fetish about clean shoes. But today it’s dry underfoot and the pale path looks inviting. I take a few paces to get a better look at the pond which I can see through the sparse green shoots now sprouting on the trees. The sunlight skims across the water, caressing the green algae. Once I’m deep inside the woods, no-one would hear if there’s a scuffle. No-one would hear a person being bludgeoned to death and their body being dragged underwater. I take a few more steps along the pathway. No-one will ever know.

Last nigh, a prisoner escaped from a high security jail

A man has been charged with the murder of three prostitutes in the NE of England, following the discovery of the remains of one of them on a river. It’s difficult to understand the mindset of the perpetrators of such awful crimes.

Me and Digital Technology

I feel the need to write about why I’ve been absent from cyberspace for almost a year.

First of all, three apparently unrelated incidents:

• A statistical survey I did in a Maths class back in the Eighties.  One girl told me that each member of her family of five had a TV in his or her bedroom, which was also where they took all their meals.
• A report that Simon Cowell can’t use an ipod.
• A short story, written by E M Forster called The Machine Stops. In this futuristic fantasy, all the inhabitants of the earth live in a honeycomb of cells below the earth, where all their needs are provided by the Machine. Communication takes place through a round, hand held plate which glows before lighting up to reveal the image of the caller.

I like to think that I’m pretty savvy when it comes to digital technology; I bought my first computer in 1999 so that I’d be able to e-mail my daughter in China.  In that instance, having a computer was a good thing. I don’t own an ipod, although I can see that they are handy on a journey or when out jogging. Like Cowell I sometimes find ipods intensely irritating and I preferred the days when  listening to music was more of a social activity.

I was, however,  horrified by the image of my pupil and her family sitting in their individual ‘cells’, eating their meals and watching TV. Also back in the Eighties, the daughter of a close friend told her mother that our families were the only ones who still  sat round a table to eat a Sunday roast. I suppose that by removing watching television from the social sphere prevents rows over which channel but it also rules out the pleasure of shared social activity. In the twenty-first century we can now watch whichever programme we like, catch up using devices like BBC iplayer and watch DVDs; all without leaving  our laptops.

Forster wrote his story before the First World War, well before the era of Facebook, Skype and ichat. The woman in the story, Vashti, knew thousands of people, but not face to face. When her son, who lived underground in the northern hemisphere – she lives in the south- wants her to visit him, she’s horrified:

“But I can see you!” she exclaimed.”What more do you want?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I love having from all over the world, but I did start to feel the need for more face to face communication and social interaction. Many people manage to get the balance right, but looking around me, I do see society  moving in the direction of Forster’s dystopia.

Watermaid’s return

I’ve been absent from my site ever since completing a poem a day with ReadWritePoem last April. I decided I was whiling away too many hours at my computer and life was slipping by fast. I intend to return soon but to try to be less obsessive.

Watch this space!!

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

#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?