TS Eliot was asked: “Do you really think it necessary … for a poet to write verse at least once a week?”I am choosing to write 30 poems in September and post one a day in this blog post.
He replied: “I had in mind Ezra Pound when I wrote that passage. Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do is to write as little as possible."
Day thirty: Poem of a Dream
This was my dream:
in a room, the floor,
sat beside red-her
- hair, top and trousers -
as if I'd known her before
we came to lie in the crowd
of all those around us
but alone in our looks
and subtle touches of fingers
and shoulders and palms.
My dream ended, sadly,
with the joy of her
pushing off with a smile
suggested in the light.
This was my poem:
a dream part remembered
and constructed new
from the source I knew best -
these words, those words of you.
Day twenty-nine: Witter (i.m MH)
Dog faced, a smile
was strange until
he realised
that all the while
I wittered on -
his word, not mine -
and his face down
a standard frown
at McKelvie.
I made mad sounds -
a wittering
of words and mime.
He viewed his life
as a stone leaf
left unautumned
'til left unsafe
by his witter
of words, a mile
or so to read
in a minute
or so, and now
he is dead.
Today, I found out that MH - who sat opposite me for months and would grumble when I went too far and score me 15 out of 10 on his Witter Scale and would rarely smile but attempt to on occasion from his Droopy face - today I found out that he died. He killed himself last week. He left a wife and three children under the age of six.
Day twenty-eight: The witch, Isabel Finlay
I held my mother, was shoved
by Mister Reid, the legal man,
who shouted, cleared the way,
but not enough, to let the witch
walk her last way to the stake.
Isabel wore a sack, bald-headed,
I thought her fingers painted
scarlet for years, my thoughts
fell to her bare feet cold and broken
by ten stone miles from the Court.
We all stood back from her
and soldiers and their guns
tied Isabel to the river post -
low tide, they marched back
muddied, dirtied by the water.
She looked at us, white and cold
the winter, shouting to us -
If I'm to be a witch
I'll curse you all and wish
a rain of fire on your houses!
The witch drowned later - Isabel
was the start of two traditions.
First, an iron bridle, a gag
was fashioned by the smith
to halt curses from all future ones.
And next my mother, dear, her oldness,
never left the house on rainy days
for fear of rain of fire.
Isabel, I remember, once let me
dry my wet self by her fire.
Day twenty-seven: After shaving
I pull at the plug, the soaped water spins
its way to bottom, Corryvreckan pool
and shove at the bristles, my sheep-shorn wool
sinks to the edge, where the pattern begins.
With water expelled, my red hair remains…
I think to the past when I was a Celt,
a Scotsman, a Pict in a ruddy pelt –
the Laird of Pictland wi’ a thousand weans.
That waste, that detritus, that flotsam and
quicksand and sweepings, those parts of me lost
and mindlessly so – quite absently tossed
away, flushed down, not required, no demand.
Some part that is forgotten sprouts each day;
each day we take to it and slice it away.
Day twenty-six: Roadkill
The first things to go are always the eyes:
craters, calderas, collapsing to red
from bright to dark as the animal dries.
Second sight reduced to zero instead.
Think of the Outback, the still kangaroos
that speckled the highway, that rotted through
to the core of the earth to hide and choose
a new life as the ground from which they grew.
Think here: of the badger, blown to a ball;
the fawn's leg missing the rest of itself;
the rabbit's legs splayed, a slut to them all.
The surplus of sights, the symbolic wealth...
But birds come to clear the dead from those parts
the world puts aside for these rotting arts.
Day tweny-five: The side of a hill
I am the side of a hill
part battered and torn
to the sky – a slash of red
sandstone beneath my turf
my outer skin of air
and repetition.
I have a brother
on the other side,
that otherside is him,
he speaks likewise about me
but we never meet
nor see the other.
I was stopped once –
some rambler muttered –
that that side between us
was a third one, some
other side to either of us
and did I know him?
...
Yes, they go on, go on
their rambles, fools
who think in multiple
sides who never know
that only one or other
are the brothers worth knowing.
Day twenty-four: My latest fear, a total one:
that I am better as words
than as a human being;
that I am greater as characters
than flesh and voice.
Borges had his Other,
and my Other is me now –
and the one who walks,
who shits, talks and flicks his hair
is the lesser of me –
he has neither confidence
nor wit, nor fullstops,
nor the need to talk in sentences.
Had I the option I would
convert myself to font and text
and be what the pages says.
No, no… be what the words say.
Day twenty-three: Corrugated iron
Some autumn wave in winter.
Some airbrushed splinter of a sun
setting somewhere behind the grey.
Some day of rust pasted on a curtain
closed and drawn to and floating
for a second, a morning, the day.
These are roofs and walls of use –
beauty is a stranger, no wonder
the rust gathers and paint flakes
in the coolth of this northern latitude –
it seems bound by the colour of the rope
plastic and orange that hangs beneath it.
Rust is the colour that shouts
in a landscape of green and speckle
and rust covers this iron; rust is
and has no option but to be this iron
that stands, clacks, creaks and sings
in the wind and watered air.
Day twenty-two: An old man’s advice for the boy about to fall
Stand tall, my boy, stand tall –
face the void, the depth before you.
Visualise the floor – you see it
plainly with your eyes or not.
The distance is greater than you thought.
Heart and bones will split the earth
if you fall there badly, badly crawl
though the sky with a fractured word
and no relationship with the empty air.
Stare out, my boy, at the depth, boy, stare.
Edge to the part where you want to fall
and stand tall, now stare, now mark the place
down in the blue, the grey and black
where you want to land and chant your song:
“The ones who fell, fell good, fell long.”
Day twenty-one: Saving a bee
Some women fall in love at this part:
From the mountains to the sea
in one day, from height to flat
from cut-winds to wind cut
open and laid bare –
there was Agadir and the Atlantic
both calm after the wild,
after the harsh hold of desert.
I saw it first: a bee stuck in the slide window
some little soul struggle
in a vice between the light outside
and the dark of me.
I should kill it, I thought to others
who shocked and said No.
But to escape it from misery…
but their foreheads frowned Never.
Mohammed stopped us
pulled over and climbed
into the back, serene with keys
he used to prise the yellow and black
slow – slow – so gentle – slow
cupped fingers, cupped hand
to capture and save, be stung
and be saved and be loved.
Some women fell,
I saw them and I hated
myself for not being
a man more like him.
Day twenty: More South Lanarkshire Birds
The goldfinch chirps
librarian to the hedgerows
and he knows the orders
of leaves – his code unique,
he believes unbreakable
by all but him – this keeps
his goldfinchness employable.
The heron stands guard
with a former-military stare,
stands ready to challenge
the hard water, tough wind,
those weak, those malingering
ones who have sinned against
the military style.
The wren ties the laces of her boots
and runs with the boys to play –
the lazy say and call her tomboy
but she is sure of what she is and who
the boys should be after.
Hers is a sure, quite intelligent
and not-to-be-missed laughter.
The curlew – some lunatic
who claims the soil and the air
as equal and equivalent,
as interchangeable and similar
to the body of his feathers
and the thoughts feathered within
his up-down, air and soil brain.
Poor greenfinch – who wants her?
Such misery of a girl…
She only wants to show the world
a smile and tear of joy
when she meets the arms
of some weather-scorched, crag-faced,
of some stonewinged greenfinch boy.
The stonechat wheels an incantation
to the hilltop – he is mystic
overall he watches the county
and plans a visitation
of magic to the land and colours
to the sky as sunset follows
not the dull day but the night.
(See here for six others...)
Day nineteen: Polemic - Other alphabets
“Text is Art
most often when
it cannot be read.
“Slants and marks
curve to Design
and Design when distanced
from a purpose
tends to a limit –
tends to Art.
“Good or Bad,
it is Art.
“And Art conveys
information apart
from Meaning.
“Separated and cut
and sliced from a body
of Meaning.”
Day eighteen: Two tangled sets for Sarah
one.
We crossed empty bridges,
laughed alone.
Crossed the river quiet –
unmoving, singing:
“Empty River, you drifted still, alone.”
Bridges, quiet, drifted.
We both almost laughed, unmoving.
Still both there – altogether.
Alone, singing “Alone…
almost altogether alone.”
two.
Buchanan Street - my waiting, rumble blue.
Street people, city folk, over striped,
“My city” they say
and skirt waiting folk, say:
“Who're you?”
and rumble over.
And you arrive here:
blue striped skirt and, here, you.
Day seventeen: Five similes for Kim’s eyes
Her eyes: like remembering
some things stolen, but then
realising they were not.
Her eyes: like the drop
of a bomb three-two-one
and that whisper of light.
Her eyes: like the sun-lee
of a house as it fails
to stay one and shines.
Her eyes: like reflections
in a cylindrical mirror
reformed for perfect viewing.
Her eyes: like a crescendo
hitting a wall – a quarter-second
diminuendo with thud.
Day sixteen: Butterfly Effect
Best you ignore it
because
butterflies are rare in cities.
They hate the fumes
and hate the lack
of all they love.
They hate the people
who do not know them
and mistake their wings
for aberrations or beauties.
They hate the people –
kind, generous, goodfolk –
who talk chaos when they mean
fate, chance and luck
like cursing ‘fuck’ when they mean ‘good’.
The Effect is closer to ‘good’
than the ‘fuck’ they all wish for.
And the butterflies,
dull-bodied, glory-winged,
hate you for it.
Day fifteen: Sonnet - Subway Girl
A timetabled stop at St George’s Cross:
the jerked-opened doors, she took a step through
and there, she chose there, to sit beside you
quite obvious, to be exampled of course…
You stunned at her paisley-patterned hair toss
of girl of style, unaccustomed to do
what a boy should wild repeatedly do:
beat out some intro in iambs or Morse.
Her headphones a barrier, protecting her life
from assault of the World, from her vision, from you.
She twirled the shield wheel of her defensive iPod
and listened, you saw, to Dirty Dream Number Two,
then she stood for Cowcaddens – no wink nor a nod –
and her perfection and future were lost to you.
Day fourteen: It is wrong to talk to yourself
I know – girls will laugh
and boys throw a punched glare
towards you as they pass.
But if I ask myself sincerely
will I be as wrong as passers-by
might consider me?
And is a poet as evil
as the self-talker when words
hit the page or the air?
And do they make a sound
if no-one is there in that forest
to hear them?
Day thirteen: Mungo Park’s Last Expedition to the Interior
(for Leonard Shelby)
Jan/Feb 1806 – Bussa Rapids, Nigeria
They picked the body
battered from the shore
and took it off to Kainji
to bury it where
there is now no land
but only a lakefloor.
20 November 1805 –leaving Sansading
He boarded his boat,
handmade, the Joliba,
shouting his task
would end at the end
of the Niger, completed –
“Let’s sail! And speak to no-one…”
28 August 1805 – Maraboo
“Bad case of the shits…”
That was the only way
to treat it: six days
incapacitated from calomel –
“I can only now, just, talk,
but sleep is what I need.”
19 August 1805 – Bamako
“Let’s stop, let’s stop…
there’s time for more
when more can come.
Do a roll call, Sergeant,
though we know only twelve
are left here, failing.”
18 July 1805 – marching
“Though five are dead
from dysentery, one drowned,
three missing, four unfortunates
left to feed themselves
four days away – I know
we shall succeed and glory.”
4 July 1805 – marching
“Our guide crossed the water – “
Wait! its teeth attack,
its dinosaur grab at legs
and his fingers pressed to its eyes.
It dropped him, went under.
“Goodbye, now, reptile thunder.”
10 June 1805 – marching
“Though you water us,
though your storm clouds turn
our path to river, our river to ocean –
we shall persevere and conquer!”
But the lurgy fell on all, and each
new raindrop amplified.
26 May 1805 – marching
“So silly to talk of – the asses
and mules were attacked today
by bees – some slaughtered
while we took water and paid
too much for the privilege.
Some men were stung too…”
4 May 1805 – Pisania
“We set off on our venture –
bold as the Sun, noble
as the Moon, as glittered
as God’s Stars in Heaven.
We will accept no failure
and accept only our aim.”
27 April 1805 – Kayee
A letter to his wife:
“It pains me, but we will die –
this Niger quest a beast
to eat the nation of us up
before we spit ourselves
from its mouth.”
Day twelve: A child’s drawing of us on Amalthea
A black scribble, a sky.
A yellow ray, the sun.
A scrab of pebbles and stones
in yellow and black.
And there above us
that other sky...
And there we are as sticks
with eyes unclosed,
a loop incomplete.
Out feet are lines
with pebbles poking through.
Two smiles of smoked
and smudged alliteration.
We are facing the viewer.
No mountains as we saw them,
a white strip of paper
where they all should be
so small on a horizon,
distantly hazed.
But there is no edge to this world.
A forgotten in absence.
And with no horizon to aim for
there’s nowhere for us to go.
Day eleven: The Moons of Jupiter
Last year I took a trip
to the moons of Jupiter –
a ten-stop tour, and whistled
back to Earth of how I loved it.
I enjoyed the sunsets
(very indistinct, so vague)
and the drop of marble Jupiter
massive over the shaded edge
while Io flung its squibs,
and Europa cracked its eyes,
and Ganymede massed over
the form of dull Callisto.
I went off the tourist track
to where the lesser moons
are more likely to attack
poor tourists with charm
and angry beauty – angered
by a solitude of their making
and a charm of my own.
They are the places to be.
See, picture me, here, look at my photos,
see me on the sand of Amalthea
staring at the Giant above
and its cloud storm, its speed.
I met her here and we allowed
a silence, a comfort,
to come and rest between us –
words are rare when they smile.
But no calm like that on the Big Four.
There noise and riot reign –
there the dollar is all
and the locals make a game
of the buying of a hand,
of a postcard, of the land
you’d put your boot on –
the soil you might land on.
Would I return? Who knows…?
I say I might, but this universe
is a big one, big one, baby…
let’s say, well, hell yes, yes. Let’s say:
maybe.
Day ten: Walking up to Bath Street, 9/9/09
If a street were a forest
where would the trees be?
There is no difference in the two –
a building can be green as quick
and lively as a river of passers-by.
But if the forest were a river
and the river the street,
the water, the life and tarmac
would be a quality in one.
Some trinity, some three-in-one
some three for the price of
one day in the life of the river,
the forest and the street.
But a pedestrian may be something else –
some old thing else that clatters
a mystery to the forest floor,
the river bed and the civic gutter.
What would it matter if a walker
walked by, some walker-by
who dropped a simple question
on the street he passed by?
Day nine: Eimher, Charity Rep, Argyle Street
Funny, yes - her Irish wave
of hand, her blonde assault
of voice and information,
see her smile, a salutation
and a forced halt.
I stand stopped within the motion
of the pedestrians' jolt.
Her slide-to-view, her how-are-you?
and an umbrella raised to shelter
us both, she shows her kindness
by ignoring the absent-mindness
birth has dealt her.
She positions her charity business
and delivers a belter.
Five minutes, timed, of talk
of nothing, jokes and what I like;
then move to five of memorised facts,
the unfairness of systems, of too much tax -
she has a good strike
at the things I know about and acts
correctly at my delight.
I am stunned by her, she knows
her job too well, she plays her part
and charms her way to knowing my name
I ask her hers - we laugh the same.
She then knows to start
the talk of money in this game
and I lose heart.
She is beautiful, yes, I know…
but I keep my eye to the ball and smile
and walk on, she follows with each foot
asks what amount is best?, what would suit?
and her chatter all the while
on points best left moot,
best unsaid and unfiled.
Day eight: The Quality of Fractal
(with thanks to Les Murray’s sprawl.)
Fractal is the quality
of the country that can’t decide
how big it is and wants both
bigger and smaller.
(And the truth is it gets both.)
Fractal divides inside your house
from outside your house,
where a house is turned within
and without it are the spikes
of a wall and its wallpaper.
So it is where the wallpaper
meets the wall and the wall meets
the brick and the brick meets
the render or the painted pink.
The shape of Fractal occurs
when a man takes his brain for a walk
in words that neither talk nor shout
but float in the air – Fractal can share
its thoughts with everyone
but can never be looked at naked – like the Sun.
Day seven: Churchill
Now there was a man who never loved peace.
His bullet head, his nerve-gas brain,
his I-never-knew-about-the-Bomb
rumble of fingers on a desktop –
all wondered why the feet stayed white,
what would they march on for?
Here’s a story of Churchill in the War:
His Babel library around him
he asked Herr Hitler to choose
a book worth saving__
if you are wrong, he said.
you lose and take exile.
While the Führer browsed
our hero took a moment to consider
how best to kill the Beast at last
he chose the claw hammer.
But, searching hard, he lost
the other down a black dog aisle
No chance then for his exile.
No, he never loved peace – his eyes,
his swords, would not allow it.
Day six: A love story
“So, first, here’s the end:
she didn’t love me – simple!
But lets stay friends.
Yeah, yeah, of course, whatever… quite
simpleminded of her, I should have thought
at the time – but I rather hunted
for some clue and hint
that what she actually wanted
was, well, quite frankly, me:
Look here I am, a friend
who wants more, see?
But that was the end.
“Now, the middle –
That was good. We laughed
when we needed,
we talked when required
and the secrets were told,
imaginations fired
into bold common interests
and togetherness and jokes.
Maybe Love isn’t when you’re loved
but when you’re happiest…
(Though whisper it: the opposite of love
ain’t hate but disinterest.)
“So, lastly, how it began –
we stood in Airport Arrivals
never noticing the other
‘til six hours later.
And, yes, when the eyes
first met they acknowledged
that something was there,
something beyond a first stare…
But anyway, back to the start:
there’s a hyphen gone missing
from that title up there –
between the ‘A’ and the heart.”
(This one is perhaps too clever for its own good...)
Day five: Sonnet, “Damsons – out of season”
Over lunch I mentioned the damson tree
that grew in the valley down by Burnfoot.
It stood bare in its anonymity
and, bar me, no-one ate its purple fruit.
Then someone mentioned a month in Zagreb
in a new friend’s house with minimal glitz,
rats in the bathroom and one spider’s web
brushed off of the bottles of slivovitz.
I spoke of the year I met Uncle Les,
his use of danzom for damson, a sound
that erupted from “ev’ry word I sayz
iz a word from thiz, my Zummerzet ground”.
“When did you last eat a damson?” I asked.
“As long ago as you – some time – the Past.”
Day four: More songs
Still… some songs die.
They throw a corpse on the floor
take a tantrum of mortality
and a crying in the hold.
They sink; they rise to heaven above
and fall back to hell and their pandemonium.
Some songs suffer, some well, some worse.
Some take a trip in a dove-laden hearse
as the clouds descend, and have rain
in their graves as their graves ask for the rain.
(An almost sequel to this poem.)
Day three: Through a stranger’s hair
A loop of hair
illuminated
by the sun rising
behind
showing the city
balanced
within the thinness
of the light
and if it weren’t
so perfect
you’d presume
designed.
Day two: A boy on the station platform, Argyle Street
What can a woman know
about how we feel?
There’s no accident in the rhyme –
boy, joy and toy.
Look at him, flying
with the excitement in his hand.
One box of plastic
so much bigger than its contents.
One cut of a map
showing a path to the Fantastic.
And his pleasure at owning –
a pleasure of his own.
Picture it later, when parents,
allow the box to be opened.
The revelation.
You have your ownership, yes,
your buying.
But you can never have this one:
this Sense of Owning.
Day one: A Journey to the Land of Poems
I set foot upon its shore –
the words rattled
on the wooden floor
it could have had,
but a sand of sound
observed my passing through
its held-up hand
of poetry.
From beach to mountain
I stepped three steps –
passing the lantern
at the hilltop to climb
down to the valley
where Poems came to greet me,
their bodies all words
a swash so swept-up sweetly.
They asked in the languages
their tongues became
how many oranges? to trade
how many? I required.
I replied I would not trade
a single rhyme with them
and asked instead of riches,
gold, of diamonds, of men.
...I stepped upon the shore again.
Cargo kicking across my back
these violent, these poem men
who risked their words in attack
but failed to land a blow.
The sea became less worded,
the sky became less loud.
And I found my ship again
and went below.
