Snug on the shore

Here’s what I’ve put together for Magpie Tales this week.

Snug on the shore

She lays on the glacial

pine ribs splayed

the lake

her eye

the sky

her lid

still yet scoping

as she hides

from the glare

a singular structure

on the pensive shore.

Snug in solitude.

Old links, a new year, and a repeated promise

So in a vague attempt to keep this blog updated, I thought I’d better make sure I linked to Four and Twenty, who very kindly not only published my poem “Twins” in their October edition, but also chose another entitled “Different Strokes” as their poem of the week on October 18, 2011.

My MA is currently taking up most of my time and head space, but I’m hoping that I keep up my current form of carrying a spare small notebook around and jotting down things which spark interest in me.  So once again I am repeating my promise of yesteryears, and hope to post more often.  Fingers crossed.

 

By-your-leave

Sometimes

you gotta just accept

the bad calls, the things you’d change

the regrets for not being who

you could have been

(for not letting yourself

be really seen)

you gotta just accept

that while you may have evolved

the imprint of you laying

on another’s memory is

static

unyielding

no amount of pushing

can force the other to update their view

by letting you get close again.

Sometimes,

no matter how far you may have come

you have to accept

either way you look at it:

one of you gotta get left

behind.

Negative space and spam…

Predominantly this blog was started by me in an attempt to force myself to write more regularly, and more specifically to write more poetry.  However, every now and again a thought occurs to me that I’m not sure what to do with – it doesn’t feel like the kind of thought which would adapt well to being shaped, formed and coerced into a poem but yet it still demands to be considered.

So just a few moments ago I went through the bi-daily routine of clearing out my spam folder on my email.  Now my spam folder isn’t particularly exciting, or at least I didn’t think it was.  But as I confirmed that yes I really did want to delete all the emails in the folder -  but thank you Yahoo for double checking that I wasn’t a) being wreckless or b) having some sort of seizure over the keys, thereby inadvertently leading me to initiate the deleting process – and while I was in the process of reiterating my commitment to ridding my life of unsolicited emails, I suddenly paused for the briefest moment and actually read the titles of the emails (capitalisation is as it appears in the title):

GIVE HER WHAT SHE WANTS – THE WHOLE 10″

PENIS ENLARGEMENT – BE BIGGER AND BETTER

Hip recall injury centre

ZQuiet – Stop snoring immediately

Get your lucky numbers today and change your life.

As I read the titles of the emails, I wondered if, worse case scenario, some stranger accessed my spam folder what would they deduce about me from its contents?  I became quite interested in this idea – that in this media savvy, media-centric world where an increasingly large part of who we are (our social selves to friends and our more formal selves in business and with social agences etc) is sent through the forum of electronic exchange, that some sort of electronic negative space may also be created.  What if in some way the emails we actually send and solicit are our form, but that the correspondence which just appears before us somehow forms an electronic space around and between ourselves?  What do the emails we just delete, or which our email provider automatically file away,  suggest about us.

Well according to the sample of my spam mails listed above, I am apparently a less than well endowed (and anxious of the fact) man who most certainly wants to be able to give my mythical female other 10 inches – of what the ad doesn’t make explicit…perhaps it’s an ad for mini bunting, but I’m assuming they want me to part with my cash so they can stretch and tease every last sorry (and no doubt highly painful) millimeter out of my apparently less than fulfilling member. Or to – in some ways- worse, have me part with my money for no discernible reason but in full knowledge that if this is a scam I will be so mortified by becoming that self-fulfilling prophecy of a man with penis anxiety that I will keep the whole sorry incident to myself, while at the same time disappearing into my rapidly shriveling scrotum.

I could also deduce that I have had hip problems (probably caused by repeatedly standing in a skewed manner in order to thrust my genitals forward in an ultimately futile attempt to make myself appear well endowed), but that perhaps due to pouring all my resources into achieving a bigger and better shlong, I was only able to afford a less than perfect hip replacement and now am faced with the need to hand back said defective hip replacement.  A painful thought as I’m sure that both physically and mentally I will have grown attached to that replacement and will be sad to see it leave.

I also snore, to the point where some random person, out there in the ether, can hear my affliction and thinks that not only do they have just such the remedy that I need but that they must waste no time in telling both me and another thousand or so other people what can be done to solve the problem, at a cheaper than ever expected price. To add insult to injury I appear to also be the kind of person who needs a stranger to send me not just luck but financial riches.  Which on the flip side is actually a good guess as I’m clearly broke as  a direct result of me having spent the last of my pennies and pounds on trying to encourage, stretch and elongate my (equal to,or less than, a squid ring) sex sausage in order that I may be able to best satisfy my implied, non existent and clearly unsatisfied female partner, as well as having to find the money to file a costly, laborious and long-winded law suit against the manufacturers and professionals involved in my (newly revealed) defective hip replacement.

In essence my spam folder is affirming that I am somewhat of a loser, but never fear because the clearly well meaning, altruistic human beings out there in cyber space are on hand to give me a bigger wanger, better hips, an end to my nocturnal fog-horning and (the cherry on the spam cake) the numbers that will open the door to luck, good fortune and riches beyond my wildest dreams.

So next time you automatically go to delete the contents of your spam folder, ask yourself “what does my spam folder say about me?!” -  also known as the “what do they know that I don’t” folder.

Stuck

Here’s mys submission to this week’s Big Tent Poetry prompt about being stuck.

Stuck

The thunk, thunk
reaches me
before the sight
of the bird, in full flight
hurtles into view.

Thunk.

Me and the bird.

Them on the other side of the window
caught by the promise
of their own reflection.

Me, on the inside
wondering what it feels like
to be on the other side.

Thunk.

The bird and I lurch for freedom at the same time
and slide together:

them to the garden chair
for another attempt
to woo themselves

me to the floor
from where I can just
catch a glimpse of sky.

Those days

Here’s what I’ve put together for Three Word Wednesday: the words given were breeze, mellow and tickle.

Those days

Life used to be easy
then
those days
when I could lay
with my head
to the ground,
listening to the grass
whistling
the breeze
rousing
my neck
tickling
my thoughts
my skin
mellow
beneath the golden
warmth of childhood
sun

Flirty Flowers – for Magpie Tales

Gosh, I can’t believe it has been 6 months since my last post! And I had been doing so well. I can only account my blog lapse to a desperately cold winter and the copious amounts of crafts I have been engaged in over those freezing months.

But with buds a-bloomin everywhere, I took a gander at Magpie Tales this week and here’s my offering.

Flirty Flowers in the Springtime

I lay my head
on the slick blades of grass
with its just washed
lino slipperyness
and offer my cheek to
the hairy petals
of the violets
which punctuate
the undulating signs
of imminent spring

I can almost hear
the pop of the plant
as it pushes through
the soil, shouting
to be seen
a tease as it open and closes
under the sun and my gaze
and tickles
my skin,

my nose
struck by the initial
scent but then struck
dumb *

I lift myself off
the once odourous ground
and wander around
until I may recover
to sniff again.

* One quirk of some viola is the elusive scent of their flowers; along with terpenes, a major component of the scent is a ketone compound called ionone, which temporarily desensitises the receptors of the nose, thus preventing any further scent being detected from the flower until the nerves recover.

Homily

Here’s my poem in response to the Big Tent Poetry prompt from October 25:

Homily

My mind sweeps
around
latent chocolate wrappers
and dusty table tops
shoes scattered
like fish food floating,
coats in disarray
like skittered boats
at sea on unsettled days

my mind plods through the hall
catching the dust balls
and flinging them against the walls
and skirting boards
as my eye searches
to find a place

for me,
in a flat
where even discarded hair
can find a place
of rest along
the edge of rooms,
I have none.
No enclave to me
personal

every cup
pen
duvet
second
shared
this is a home

but whose?

Rage, rage against…

Here’s my contribution to this week’s Three Word Wednesday:

Rage, rage against…

My brain aches for a fight
as your key,
so fragile,
causes the door to tremor
which in turn causes
my sense of decorum to fly
just above the head board
and disband in rampant
unwarranted
technicolour
anger.

Against you.
Against me.
Against them.
Against everyone and
no one much at all.

Render – for Magpie Tales

There
it lays
snapped in two
like one of those
H Samuel’s trinkets,

“I love you more today
(made for breaking)
than yesterday, but less
than tomorrow”
(never to be reunited).

Gaudy,
but proof that a loss should be mourned.

Cliched,
but proof that stone can be broken.