NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 6: Promethean

The poet Maitreyabandhu said in a talk that Poetry is not therapy and I don't agree with him. I will acknowledge that therapeutic poetry can struggle to be good poetry as we are wrestling with something that we can't quite get to grips with but for me poetry can be exactly the tool for working with those things we don't understand yet. For bringing some light to them.



Promethean


My eyes are on fire.
She must know what she's doing
with the man in her charge.
Attended all legal training.
I don't want to do it.
Where is the line between
politeness and duty?
Stop sticking my nose in.
I don't want to do it.
The establishment is voiceless,
surely with approval?
Risk assessments in place.
Surely?

A silence falls in the room.

An insidious calm, that whispers,

pretend.

Pretend as if it never happened,
that everything is ok.
Until you are silly enough
to turn around.
Fool enough
to see him bound.
What emotion
surges from the sea
of consciousness?

A compassion for another's suffering,
which widens out to all those beings
who find themselves tied?

A fear that we might be next?
That the wheel turns onward
to tear all faculties from us.

The shame of the wrong choice?
That evil can occur this day
if we choose not to act.

Or can we finally stop lying
that people are fixed
and chained to one position.
Acknowledge the truth
that we are a vortex
of all these and more.
Including the part
you choose to abhor
bearing sympathy
for the jailor.
For the meticulous
accounting of events
that lead them there.

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 5: Blossom

It has been quite a mild winter in the UK and with the sunlight it has brought out the blossom a lot earlier than usual. From the window of the community gym I go to there is a fantastic tree blooming with rich red.


Blossom


Not every ghost is there to warn or haunt us.

See how these play in the newborn sunlight,

speak of when winter couldn't clog your lungs.


Let them invigorate your dormant mysteries.

Escape from the shade of the new moon

to join and share your resplendent beauty.


This dance upon the branches is brief, so

inspire and do not resent the fatal wind.

Live within dreams of the following spring.

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 4: Doe Eyed for the Darkened Corners

So this came from http://www.napowrimo.net/ first prompt which involved using the following divining tool http://bibliomancyoracle.tumblr.com/askoracle and I got led to a piece called 'I recommend the Zebra Lounge' by Megan Volpert and it led me to write this...



Doe Eyed for the Darkened Corners


When she said that piano bars are for the lost
I was heady with the sweet romanticism.
The way smoke smells so heaven sent
the week after you've quit again.

Reminds me of a man who wanted a gin joint
so he could down ruin and clutch the glass,
as the bitter fire churned his gut.
Not that he had any sorrows.
Just knew the misery would find him
if he could land the right venue

and I think we've all got that faulty wiring.
Sparking pleasure from the wallowing
and it's fine for a time
if we can acccept it's a choice.
That shouting and yelling
is a lot cheaper than beer
and there are a host of hands
out there, reaching to help us.

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 3: Blogger

At the Poetry Business writing day last saturday Peter mentioned how great it was that a Ted Hughes poem mentioned a coal shed and asked how many people had one in their childhood home. It's been playing on my mind that a lot of my poetry doesn't make much of a nod to the time I am from and I guess that is where this comes from. It fell into being a sonnet of its own accord but I think the final two lines might be labouring the point too much.


Blogger

Their spider like fingers trapeze across the keys.
Spine steadily fusing into a sharper curve,
allowing their lobes to lunge toward the screen.

Tabs whirl as if caught by a breeze
before a downpour of characters
drench the browser with details.

Each page revealing one more digital native,
foraging for memes and reams of knowledge.
For the like minded to offer them validation.

Striking that enter Key can make thoughts global.
An instant electrical, mental connection
tempered by a cold physical distance.

Hasn't that always been the condition?
Every one of us so close, yet so far.

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day 2: An Assay of Stone

This came out of the week 13 prompt from Jo Bell's 52 weeks blog. http://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/



An Assay of Stone


The fracking began on her chest
as if shale gas
might be hidden in a ventricle
or parted from the vena cava.
Though as pale as a cliff
no fault or fracture
could mar her visage.
She knew every abuse.
That they could carve her,
delight in their design
and still not own her
for they would burn out
long before the chisel of time
had ground more
than a few layers from her.
She only begrudged
how they removed her teeth
of diamond and gemstone
for mere decoration.

NaPoWriMo Day 2014 1: With Royal Ease

With Royal Ease

Falling from encounter to encounter
from work agenda to beer drunk banter.

Anxiety is a prisoner
constantly rattling my cage.

So to see how the figure sits,
as if no doubt could disturb.

I ask if it sees the golden thread
drawing us all to the heavens.

Something beyond thought and form.

NaPoWriMo Day 30: With Hindsight

This is it ladies and genetleman, we are done. NaPoWriMo 2013 - 30 /30 poems completed - achievement unlocked.


With Hindsight


Puberty was a detonation in the head.
Looking back at splinters of the past
I see so many strands of self
orbiting some core essence.
Each of my past incarnations
bearing such alien neural architecture,
yet seeming to coalesce over time.
Drawing toward the pure thought
that gave rise to this form.
The purpose I've yet to fulfill,
still sickeningly unknown.
A script still to be written
but I know
that as I sharpen mind
and strengthen sinew,
I will be ready
for the sublime performance,
when that final curtain rises.

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.

NaPoWriMo Day 22: Legends

Legends


I know they did something extraordinary.
Tore up corrupt roots with the courage of a lion
or focused their energies to move beyond human.
Perhaps just a simple and incredible act of kindness.

Why can't we leave the telling to that?

Why do we obsess with the embellishment?

If this truth does not impress upon everyone
the way it conducts the beats of our heart
then that is fine.
That is inevitable.

Instead we insist on laying foundations
for the most beautiful and towering of falsehoods.
Like a lighthouse guiding our aspirations to shore
where we must confront the weight of our lie
and have the audacity to feel cheated.

NaPoWriMo Day 21: Memory like fire, whirling from the wasteland

I read T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland for the first time this weekend and was absolutely spellbound by it. This is a response of sorts to it.


Memory like fire, whirling from the wasteland


There was a time when there was something dark in me,
like the void that feeds on colour.
You could put your ear to my chest
think you'd heard my heart
it was the dark.
Forcing out something thick and crude
to well in my capillaries
collect under the skin
where it burned each day
until my mind prayed
to revel with Maenads
and beg for excoriation.

I can't remember how it was worked loose.
I would guess a human hand
with warmth and patience
and something
agreed for a time
as love.

Like a cool flame, Temptation
would have me forget.
Like it would have me forget
                   the softness of thighs.
                   So the wish to relive
                   feels not like desire
                   but something vital
                   for this puppet form
                   to jerk its strings.
Would have me forget
                   there is a part of me
                   that drags its slimy belly
                   down rats' alley
                   that knows and delights
                   in what took the bones
                   of those dead men.

But the dark in me that once held court
like the void which feeds on colour
is part of this puppet form,
its past, present and future.
Just as you would not pierce an eye
to release a viewpoint down your cheek
as vitreous humour
you would not silence that resource
that speaks other tongues
that leads you down passages of poetry
so you might know how the dark
manifested in a man a century ago
(Who would kept telling,
retelling the sermon of fire
to the ear-less wasteland)
and guide you out again.
Like the prophet who knew both sides of the vice.
Leaving no taints but something richer;
footprints of a precarious middle way.

NaPoWriMo Day 20: First Lines

Sorry for the delay but wasn't able to post this due to my Aunt's 60th birthday, this started in my head on the journey over there.


First Lines


Can be found everywhere
if you train yourself to see them.
A strange turn of language in an article.
The cadence of a thought on a stranger's face.
Nature composing a hillside with a palette of trees.
They hold that glimmer of a first line
like the seam of a rich ore,
waiting for you to excavate.
To hue the strata of reality
until that unconditioned beauty
is revealed in a poem.
Your hand will not always produce
the priceless jewels that delight the eye.
Sometimes it can't quite hold the structure,
manage to excite the depths with polish
or dent it with the chisel of cliche.
Other times they just collapse
into fragments of rhyme and idea.
No matter.
No matter how many days crumple like pages.
No matter how much the shadows of ink lengthen.
There's still time for that boundless seam,
Keep mining.

NaPoWriMo Day 19: The Dark of the Matinee

A mention of the cinema, spurred this train of thought on and yes I've pinched the title!


The Dark of the Matinee


I wish this was cinema.
I'd splice out the static,
remove the monotomy
of what I ate and defecate.
Only speak with purpose
(a script writer at my back.)
Slow steady progression, over
in the blink of a montage.

For now I only feel the drag.
The same scene gestating
before an arthose camera.
So I lose myself in the matinee
with the lovers, lost and lonely.
Learn that buried in this life,
this series of passing frames,
there is an arc.
Then climb from subterranean wonder
to find they are still showing
The Afternoon Sun
It's like the audience is on your side
and there's still time to change the reel.

NaPoWriMo Day 18: Point of Origin

I was listening to 'You're Not Here' from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack and it helped summon this.


Point of Origin


They'll continue to grind
my flesh under their gears,
spraying gore and viscera
until they hit something deeper.
Smooth as glass yet sharp as diamond.
The stench of rotting meat will part
for the scent of jasmine
from that night when,
lying beside another,
base passion was transmuted into love.
As they pause and try to understand,
my blood will take its leave
until I am as clear as the pools
in those last few woodland shrines
and they won't be able to tell,
if the light shines through or from me.

NaPoWrimo Day 17: Blessing

Weary is definitely how I would tag myself right now but we shall succeed!


Blessing


You tore down the hall like leaves
at the mercy of a kindly wind.
May your pulse find rest here
and unquiet thoughts leave you.
May the wheel cease to turn
and the upward spiral begin.
May your actions bear fruit
long past that final winter
and if you find your wings,
don't doubt, take them.