You've Crafted a Real Gem Here.

 

Day Two

Thank you for reading and commenting
Life happened so hard, but
Who cares over a glass of beer or two?
I need awe on a daily basis to survive.
I have kept a note of this gorgeous carving;
May it be its own reward when needed.
I can't like it due to problems but I like it!
The title is just chef's kiss perfect. 

I feel this to my bones, love
the idea of collecting stones
And souls. This looks like my life!
I like that you mentioned
The necessity of drought
Cleaning the ocean of pirates.
This is magical, God
I am stumped by your art. 

Lovely lovely lovely lovely.
Insanely kind of you to say!
To be witness to the madness,
Captured by the moon-shaped guitar,
Whose rhyme just clicks into place.
I'm not sure what romp means even 

Though you went deeply into sensuality
And might not have been a person at all
But boy you said it well – and in new ways.
Lovely dog photo too! 

Your poems instantly brought back the world
Your beautiful, concrete poems.
It's watermelon season and
We evoked the sound of the cuckoo.
Your comments made me sit a little bit taller.
I hope you had coffee and crumpet.
This made me smile, to know
That my words landed for you.
Consciousness stirs in the presence of a good spice.

Love in Dire Straits

Day Thirty

Backseat midnight car to Cornwall,

Romeo to Juliet lays out 

Just that the time was wrong.

Devouring midnight down the years,

I never quite got my timing right.

A friend never had this education.

No wonder he's getting divorced;

He never learned how to fall in love.

Janis Joplin as a Fish Swimming in Gasoline

 

Day Twenty-Nine

Seems like you were always leaving
Or left. Leaving with 

Your roaring engine voice.

Left in the split

Of your fire-cracked glacier voice.

Fleeing the Texan woman's life 

At your throat.

Left-field, gone big in The City

Singing in colours the let me be

Purple plea of the wounded.

Seducer of tied-off fuses

With no match left unlit

By your spilt whiskey voice. 

Leaving behind the foreboding, 

Real-known moment,

Of needing to swim in gasoline

When you couldn't quit lighting matches. 

Left lonely by lovers, with

Only what was left in the wake

Of your Russian roulette voice;

Your Pollock-paint life

Of daring too much

To be too different.

Leaving us at twenty-seven

With only your brass rocket voice.

Happy Birthday

Day Twenty-Eight

"Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing."

- Georges Jacques Danton, French revolutionary 

 

My family song waxes long

as I am in the tooth. 

I might die

in the duration of the dirge,

the drawn-out vowels 

like dragged-out bowels;

a most prolonged execution.

Light a candle for our

huddled, gut-pulled parlance.

Let us groan in dissonance.

How I long

for one swift stroke of a song

A get-it-over-with, choppy song

A flash of the axe and a slice

of cake.

 

Rethinking a Niger Fisherman

 

Day Twenty-Seven

Manchester Art Gallery's exhibition Rethinking the Grand Tour reassesses art of the British Empire. The subject of my poem, A Niger Fisherman, can be seen on this page.

I almost wish the curator's note gone,

framing this apricot syrup sun as

pulp, squeezed through a fist;

The fishermen lit like fantasy;

Marketed beauty for turning heads 

Empire-conscious.

I stand pale

with the undepicted details.

My skin, prickled

Empire-conscious.

If I took this little rethinking card,

silenced it in my pocket,

marker-penned out the unseem'd

legacy line of Empire Marketing Board,

might it quiet this discomfort?

The sun, laid unsickly on the river.

The river, not bleeding the sun.

The mangrove, wading the river

uncurated. Unmolested.

The fisherman's net, swung

more free beneath the mangrove.

 

Delayed Sleep/Wake

Day Twenty-Six

I wake disordered. Sleep phasing out slow
as floe ice. As winter's late-waking light.
Sleep disordered. Waking late to barely know
the day. Draw myself delayed til night. 

I ache to sleep and barely sleep to wake,
disordered. Weighted, fazed and dreamt by day.
By night I calculate the lunar phase, 

lying low with circadian delay. 

 

My days are hopelessly enjambed. A stayed
sentence cut with melatonin disdain,
All sleep and wake disordered and delayed,
Forever made to suffer sleep's refrain.

 

Birds begin the day with songs of sorrow,
A hymn to mourn the dead; my lost tomorrow.

 

Thirty Backwards Standing Figures

Day Twenty-Six

Intrigued by this installation by Magdalena Abakanowicz.

Here are thirty backwards standing figures
One becomes them all by only seeing
Thirty figures held apart by fissures
Witnessing is splitting into being

Take your due but ever be the giver

Be at peace through never-ending labour

Stay rocksteady while a flowing river

Call out wrong but never judge thy neighbour

Live a simple life of many faces

Draw-in air despite the hand that smothers

Be at home in many different places

Sleep with lies but hold the truths of others

Many selves, ashake in separation

Strive toward the sum of expectation