NaPoWriMo Day 6: Making the Job Offer

Days 6 through 12 were all written where I had no access to the internet so please find them here retrospectively.


Making the job offer

can be joyous.
Presenting a gift of
security and development.
Praising their biography.
You haven't heard gratitude until,
you've offered a job to a cleaner.

It can be tedious.
Weekends suspended by time,
time to think about it.
Negotiating start dates
terms and conditions, salaries
managers always quibble salaries.

Sometimes you don't want to call.
You've sold a dream that's not there
and though you drop hints of reality
down the well of the receiver
the reverberations of elation still return,
gritting your smile into a grimace.

NaPoWriMo Day 13: Liminal

Disclaimer: I haven't had the chance to type up all the days inbetween while I have been on retreat, so to make sure I don't loose the rhythm, please find todays poem and I will post the others when I am able.

I have been reading Sangharakshita's history of his going for refuge and he talks about how his poetry took on an autobiographical form in that they spoke about how he was feeling or his throughts in a way he could only express in a poem. This following emerged during a walking meditation after a mindfulness of breathing sit this morning.


Liminal


When belief in control is let go
consciousness drifts down the spine.
A swirling nebula of sense and stimuli.
Skin tingles with cosmic possibility,
the thinnest guaze, inviting nourishing light
while barely stopping playful cells
from exploding into the surroundings.

All it takes is a voice from another room
or the needle point of spider legs on flesh.
This heady scent of longing and aversion
for me to bind this body again to my will.
I fuse muscle to form armour against other.
I use these hands as tools, skeletal guantlets,
for cleaving the world with my craving.

I know one of these states is unreal,
I just can't tell which yet...

NaPoWriMo Day 5: Sheffield to St Pancras

On my way to a retreat centre so this is clumsily typed into my phone and the last published day until I return!

Sheffield to St Pancras

When it's a fiver more on the train,
always upgrade to first class.
It's worth it for the WiFi.
But I can only wonder
who I share the carriage with.
Are we all bargain hunters here,
smug with superior thrift?
Yet when the fare website
gleefully shouted I'd saved
one hundred pounds eighty pence,
there must be someone
who picked up that price.
Untaxed people steeped in plenty.
Barely noticing the 'hosts',
as if tea serves its self.
Surrounded by tablets, e-readers,
moving and spending sums
more than my net value,
with stamps of their disinterested digits.
To cast so much with disregard
while others are herded
by advances and railcards,
such comfort in the face of struggling,
it isn't right.

NaPoWriMo Day 4: Lost

Well this devolved from a misheard Seth Lakeman lyric from the song The Bold Knight. Can't really say how it got here and really not sure if the last line needs to be there.


Lost


Mused by beer
we sings of the arms and of the men
bought by the king's coin.
We've always an audience
'cause it's easier to laugh
than admit that ice of terror.

We lurch again by noon blaze
but carrion won't dare circle us.
Our hangovers are miasma,
sweat the screams of fallen women,
movements fraught with a violence
our muscles barely chain.

As we enter the next town you'd swear
that mortar could tense, could whisper,
'These are no caballeros
of the rueful countenance.
Just horrors
with no Dulcinea to guide them.'

We settle to drink once more,
failing again to gorge on oblivion
and I pray to the knights above.
By the vicious silence of first light,
let me know a true enemy.
One that isn't in the mirror.

NaPoWriMo Day 3: The rain still falls

So today the NaPoWriMo page suggested taking a prompt from this website
http://nateseubert.com/paint/pix_la/index.html
and number 1 spoke this to me.


The rain still falls


His thoughts are a cumulus
of things he could have been.
Scenes too beautiful for reality,
like the vanilla skies of childhood.

But rain drops turn his gaze
like the hands of dead men
forcing him to attest
his own underworld.

Raised on raped resources
with organs cast in concrete
that crumbles like ethics.
Rusted spine, ill fit for action.

Dear dupe of delusion
either look up once more,
and hide from those depths.
Daydream until the downpour.

Or part those talons
and act on your insight,
strive through suffering
to a structure that grounds you.

NaPoWriMo Day 2: Illume

Once again we find ourselves with a flurry of last minute writing - day 2 is go!

Illume


I write a love letter in foot steps
that echo throughout the ages.
Following the earth's rotation,
obedience is my kiss.

In dreams she chides me
to leave this moon lapse vigil
but I am stayed by reverence;
to trace her path is bliss.

NaPoWriMo Day 1: Words

So welcome to Day 1 of NaPoWriMo were poets across the globe are attempting to write a poem a day for the month of April.

It was looking a bit bleak when I hadn't actually spent any time writing during the day but after a particularly good puja at the Buddhist Centre led by Padmavajra this started coalescing in my head, which was cue to dash out the building - inspiration is happening!



Words


Some words reach out to me
like a potter's fingers.
Parting the soft clay of my ribs
so they might shape my heart.

massage aorta
dwell in vena cava
dance between atriums
unfurl
to the quickening pulse
dispelling that tightness
of fear and frustration
so that burdened muscle
can finally relax
my chest opening its tissue
to the beauty that ensues

The same constellation of characters
will not move me twice
but they've marked my rhythm,
the way a ripple never truly leaves a pool.