Sunday fun & games again … today’s task involves the use of acrostics & pseudo-golden shovels; forms I haven’t played with much. I tried complicating this (with mixed results) in the middle stanza, but overall, it holds up okay. The melancholy mood seems apt given the songs I’m playing with.
for the love of Murray 2 Acrostics & Golden Shovels
unfinished
waiting forlornly for you to realise this is a one time love offer
if you decide again we are meant to dance never not ever no never dance together we again end with if
so i must let my soul release you & gently watch love go
Today’s pome was written while exhausted. It’s both pretty simple & pretty self-explanatory.
the things we do
love comes in many slices including standing on your feet for 8 hours selling pizzas after vowing years ago never to work the wrong side of the oven ever again
After working 8 hours, plus a 2 hour drive to town then 3 & 1/2 hours of playreading, I was feeling somewhat frazzled yet curiously sleepless. My flight north was early morning. This is what escaped in those solitary hours.
killing time
shadows slide : behind me : into walls & dumpsters : as i drive the desert : that is : the city : cbd at night : killing empty hours : before my pre : dawn flight
an angry : drunk : couple stagger : a younger couple : trundle home in tandem : on one of those insidious scooters : left lying : like litter : all round : the barren streets : he in what appears : at a glance : to be a tux : she’s kilt-wrapped : in a large tartan : cape? : a single woman : walks : the traffic island : like a tight wire : rather than brave : the footpaths
past old homes : the few that still : remain : ones that haven’t : been converted : into doctor’s waiting rooms : or knocked down : so a big super : market chain : has an entrance : to its under : ground : car : park
nip : down to the sea : smell the beach : salt : the dog & i : once walked : every day : happy
this quick trip : rips through : high : lights : of past lives : before i fly off : to an : im : possible future
A slight little poem about a couple of different variants of love. (Also the first poem I’m attempting to post/upload via my phone rather than desktop).
candypants
finally finished moving house yesterday after three & a half long years
rediscovered my old yellow purple pink & blue 60s psychedelic striped skin-tight Saville Row pants
back from when legs were thin gut didn’t exist & butt was defunct
i’d love to be able to fit into them one more time
but even more than that i’d die to be that man again
A list poem, that in turn, contains several ideas/lines that might themselves become their own poems this month.
the weird love,
the tyrannical distance, the disparate time zones, the clashing schedules, the near twenty years, the roller coaster that never coasts, the bicoastal bipolar, the unromantic romance, the life-is-not-a-fairytale, the beautiful beast, the beastly beauty, the attractive repulsion, the anxious agony, the unmated souls, the singing universe, the sparkling shiver, the cold silence, the nagging thorn, the out-of-sync hearts, the half-made promise, the broken chain, the joke that bombed, the unequal exchange, the one word reply, the stranger in the bed, the intimate inmate inside the head, the reluctant endearments, the belligerent confessions, the definitions of love, the expectations on love, the ramifications if it is love,
A somewhat lighthearted pome for an otherwise rather emotional day. It’s also 9 years & one day since my housemate brought Chester home to live with us.
me or the dog
high on one of my shelves a book titled as per this poem
jokingly perhaps or perhaps genuinely concerned
my significant other bravely asked: which would you choose?
i told her i’ll call you the very day the dog dies
Written early enough but owing to the exhaustion brought about by the poem’s subject matter from the day before followed. by two tiring shifts the following day meant it was unable to to posted before the allotted hour due to the poet falling asleep almost immediately upon arrival home.
moving love (for Sarah)
everyone dreads that phone call from a friend or loved one who wants to know if you’re free on Sunday (just for a couple of hours)
so when someone actually helps you: pack carry load bags boxes crates ungainly ugly furniture tatty bric-a-brac & misc junk that honestly should’ve been ditched decades ago
but most of all: wait patiently while poor logistical decisions regarding the stowage in the trailer are trialled fine tuned & discarded before again gently suggesting the idea they first shared 15 minutes earlier & which works — perfectly —
In my Glo/NaPoWriMo world, Sundays are generally reserved for some poetry fun & games … still it feels a little weird to be playing games already, only three days in. None-the-less, rules be rules. Today’s poem was pretty easy because I’ve been listening to him a lot lately — & love is pretty much all he writes about. However, I also set myself some additional rules with the structure itself which complicated things somewhat.
Prize for the first person who can guess who & what I’ve done (except you Mike 🤣🤣🤣).
for the love of Murray 1 pronouns
let you go no more
you pick me up you give me something because of you fly with you with only you thought i was
My housemate & I saw the play Constellations tonight. It was his choice because as the program states: Payne’s script presents a series of vignettes centring on two characters across various parallel universes — the same setting & conversation, but different outcomes each time. This unconventional love story set in the quantum multiverse has us asking: What if there are infinite versions of you & I? And what if there are multiple universes pulling our lives in a myriad of different directions? — & he has been toying with similar themes in a play he said he wants to call the final last night of our lives. (I think it’s a great title & might even pinch it if he doesn’t produce something soon. Fair warning given!)
Tonight’s play was interesting without being awe-inspiring. But given it explored themes of love in occasionally unusual ways, there was some useful material that had me both thinking during the play & on the drive home. With that in mind here’s a pome-in-progress; structural inspired by the play — ie, in vignette form & using rhythm, repetition & some images from the play.
lessons from Constellations (vignettes about love)
i. love is knife edge sharp love is knife edge hard love is a knife i am knifed Et tu
ii. the dangerous act of loving someone leaves you alone with your fragility
iib. perhaps even frail, guilty for there is always one other who comes between us & our egos
iii. we remain perpetually lost among the great mechanical quantumness of love forevers
we blithely step through those ever sliding doors some into happy afters some into miseries unending some into sunlight some into death supernova bright
we still try
iv. night ships titanic dinghies missing their chance thieving time as they crash into everything but the ice
v. always peeking doors of death despite the possible multiplicities & symmetry of circles
there is no formula for love all we have are our imperfect hearts & fireflies brief lives
April again = Na/GloPoWriMo. Normally each year I debate about if I should put myself through the somewhat excruciating agony of participating, but not this year. I knew I would months ago. Because something has recently happened to me which has meant I’ve been churning out new poems (some of them even quite good) at a furious rate since December. Why you might well ask. Good question.
And so to themes.
In 2020, every poem explored corona, plague, pandemics & virus. In 2021 it was heat, denial, climate change & extreme weather. This year 2022 the theme is even bigger. And also infinitely more intimate.
You soon work out what it is when you start reading.
an old romantic on a new seesaw
i don’t begrudge you
your silences your lake swims your long walks
your reading of books or baking of cakes just to cook something not work related
whatever needs to be done to stay sane, find calm detox, disengage, downtime needs to be done
i can cope with you
running soft & hot sweet & giggly mere moments after ice & distance business & banter
the seesawing between soul mates sizzling with sparkles & endless iterations on the various types of falling rain
all the talk about romance & romantic gestures & the most romantic things done have been leading to one place
this place:
where all i need is a message every sporadic so-often (say every 30 minutes or so)
a simple bit of ascii binary code with a “missing you” here & a kiss emoji or a purple love heart there
one of these will keep me off the saw for half a dozen bliss-filled hours at least
gareth roi poet boi 