NaPoWriMo Day 29: Bound

A couple of film references turned up in my Facebook feed today which jogged the memory and set this off in motion.


Bound


He is shaking the way I imagine typists
produce diatribes
when they think the internet is wrong.
"She's infectious human waste, good luck saving HER!"
The release of hate drains his skin, his clothes,
as grey as concrete.
I show him no response,
brain locked on the Fisher King.
Wondering if her wounds are mine
held open by a knight wreathed in flame.
Dreaming this might be my feat to accomplish,
that we might both get to go home.
Yet I don't reach out to help her.

NaPoWriMo Day 28: Last of a line

The next Northern Oak song is going to be about the pagan goddess Nerthus and starting the research for the lyrics I read the words carved bones and this came out.


Last of a line


I could barely crouch in the hovel
that had seen hundreds healed,
tilled by a heritage of women
who forgo-ed pleasure to anoint pain.

For the past hour, with a mother's grace,
she has placed bones like fragile lives.
Each seems older than the one before.
All are resplendent
in an emerald script
that whispers directly inside me
with a language I feel I once knew.

I have survived my last rain.
I will teach you how to bind me
like my sisters here before us.
Then I will guide you through your seasons
to work in the half light between soul and spirit.

Why would I help the one who failed my son?

Because now you understand the importance.

NaPoWriMo Day 27: The view from South Road

I ran a writing workshop at the Sheffield Buddhist Centre this evening for the younger Sangha. The theme was Re-Imagining the Buddha and engaging with what an enlightened one meant to us. This was taken from an exercise about engaging with a place as being alive and connected to us rather than taking the materialistic view that it is dead. You may potentially see more of what came out of this workshop if I run out of time over the next few days!


The view from south road


is vexed when I ignore it in the morning.
With my bleary vision and brain hampered
by headphone parasites deep in the ears.
It tries all manner of things to grab my attention
but only ever succeeds by donning robes
of fierce orange, pastel blue and rose pink.
Waiting until I turn down Barber Road
to commence the dance,
to set free a shifting celestial palette.
These pinhole camera eyes
barely take in the magnificence
before my film of mindless movements combusts
and the shock benumbs my body with awe.

NaPoWriMo Day 26: You can see the house from here

I was told about the serial killer H H Holmes before heading back home yesterday so he was the only subject that really came up. Doesn't feel like I've really captured anything here but in terms of 30 poems in 30 days it fulfills that purpose.


You can see the house from here


Built near the fair
of symmetry and splendour.
Whose sewer carried those,
drowning not waving,
in broken attachments.
Where the rooms were cheap
and check out in the basement.
Where hopes were stripped
down to the curves of their anxiety
and exploited.
Where a man believed he was separate.
That the earth was raw and mindless,
fuel for his architecture
but all he could work was pain
the material that scores the soul.
His legacy a weight of suffering
and the promise of endless towers.

NaPoWriMo Day 25: Practice room in a derelict warehouse

Where ever you go, there you are. Take it as inspiration.


Practice room in a derelict warehouse


I rest my back against the rusted steel door
wondering if I blend in with this wasted body
of screen dried eyes
smoke withered skin
and coke rotted teeth.
Wondering if like this door
my true nature is buried.
That I could free
something cool and brilliant
if I could just peel off
the dead skin of past failure.
Only picking up the mic will tell.

NaPoWriMo Day 24: Stop the Narrator

This had the potential to be a lot longer but time ran out on it.


Stop the Narrator


Let this day be like no other.
Free it from waiting for Tomorrow.

Grant Ease no chance to dissuade you
from the toil of what needs to be done.

If Delight should grant you audience,
remember how fickle her courting can be.

Do not let the arms of Apathy drag you
into a complicity of murdered minutes.

Shield your eyes from the glare of Anger
and the violent holes it burns in vision.

Give no shelter to thoughts of Misfortune
for they will grow and capsize these hours.

Actually experience this day's wonder
without that veil of Narrative.

NaPoWriMo Day 23: When your desire withers

The final lines really show that syllabics aren't better suited to languages other than English.


When your desire withers...


I would always open to you
like a plum blossom
opening not for the spring but stars.
They linger with me
like your love holds my restless form
both gone by the dawn.
Your lyrics haunting my breathing.
Fervid breath of muse,
how your absence dines on my spirit,
bones sagging like chains.
Karashi ito atashi
shinde shimau no.