Day 29 — 11th hour inspiration

Today was a tough day. Long tiring. I have at least a dozen titles/ideas for love poems about my most recent experience of same that I thought I might write this month that I never got around to. Titles I jotted down included: fairy tale love, five answers to the same question, how we got to this point: part 1, invested, MSG, questions i now know i’ll never ask, reconnection, rid, soul mates, tainted, the moment of hindsight, the spare, to those who wait among others. I guess some of those might get written one day. Just not today. Nor tomorrow neither.

Other topics I consider were: love of books, love of planet, love of land & billionaires — their love of money versus their non-love of humanity. All of which might well have produced some interesting explorations. Yet the one I went with came to me quite quickly through the flittering eyelids of halfsleep.

*****

from a foreign field

end of an exhausting day : babblebox on in background : company as i chairdoze : when my fave Escape begins : & i am reenergised

whether it be — golden farmland : mist-ridden valleys : lumpy mountains : windswept seas : hemlike hedgerows : aching lakes : weeping brooks : ancient sprites : wildflower fields : one hundred types of rain : or chocbox houses : in tiny hamlets : with absurdly wonderful : gobstopping names

no matter which area — Cornwall : Cotswolds : Cumbria — Devon : the Downs : Lake District — Shropshire : Warwickshire : the Shire — New Forest : Sherwood Forest — the moors : the fenlands : the locations list nearly endless

cannot help myself : though often wish i could : feel inexplicably torn : that some small part : of my traitorous soul : is & always will be : for ever England

Day 27 — 2 weeks ago today

This was written yesterday after a long day. First my regular Wednesday shift. Then working on a member of Film Club’s short film script for 2 hours in the afternoon, then 2 hours mentoring a local poet on a dozen poems from a collection she’s trying to work up into submission quality for chapbook-style competitions.

After writing it, I said I’ll just lie on my bed for a second to rest before I come back to set it up/post it on my website. Bwahahahaa. FLW. Of course I was asleep. Before 9pm for goodness sake. When I woke again at 1am I made the executive decision that it could wait till I upload tomorrow’s poem.

*****

how i spent my last day with you

spent all morning
watching that door
waiting for you
to descend those stairs
cavort over here
& tell me that somehow
despite all the odds
you do, yes indeed, do
in fact love me

promise myself
i’ll go inside
in a bit

after this shower passes
perhaps

then inside

it’ll be dark soon

Day 24 — the making of a poem: behind the scenes sneak peak

Attended a Gawler Poetry Readings – Poetry at the Pub workshop run by the very talented Heather Taylor-Johnson.

It was an excellent workshop … & here I’m going to quote some blurb: Form is an active part of a poem, not just an aesthetic, so the workshop will look at how different forms DO different things within a poem. Which indeed it did. We looked at multiple examples of different poems in different forms doing different things. We discussed what those things might be. We did numerous writing exercises which produced several pomes which we were nice starting points for later play.

But one exercise was particularly pertinent. Seeking to see if I could use the workshop to generate today’s NaPoWriMoPo Heather asked us to to consider something we were currently dealing with. I chose the unexpected end of a relationship (for those of seven of you who’ve been here all month this will come as no surprise, hahaha).

However in the interest of walking you through some of what we did, somewhat unusally, I’m going to present several versions of the poem (2 drafts and the current ‘final’ version).

Task: to write something super swiftly on the topic (3 minutes).

& so this. First version.

Draft #1.

[untitled]

Sorry you were not
Brave enough to brace
Yourself against the slow
Flow of obstacles

Mud & stones & sticks
Rumbling down the mountain
Brought down by weeks
Of rain & now the deluge

The sad landslide
Has wrecked everything
Washed away whatever
We had tentatively built

Not sure I have the energy
To commence the clean up
Let alone attempt any kind
Of reconstruction efforts

Curiously because this was late in the session I was already thinking about form & for some reason wrote it in quatrains which is not something I’d normally do. But quatrains certainly don’t suit this subject matter.

Aside: when I started the poem I wasn’t actually sure what it was going to be about. I only had the first few words of the first line “Sorry you were not/Brave enough…” When I wrote “brave” I immediately paired it with “brace” (why? they looked nice together) then I had to work out what she was bracing against. “slow/Flow” popped in … & that’s where the landslide imagery came in … & the rest wrote itself. [It’s interesting to keep track of what happens to those words/images through the poem; or I think it is anyway.]

Supplementary task: five minutes to reconsider it in terms of its form considering how altering form might enhance meaning. I couldn’t at first see what to do. Then:

Sorry you were not
Brave enough to brace
Yourself against the slow
Flow of obstacles

But if I did that I’d rapidly run out of room. So I reduced it from 5 spaces to 1.

Giving me this:

Landslide/slip

Sorry you were not
Brave enough to brace
Yourself against the slow
Flow of obstacles

Mud & stones & sticks
Rumbling down the mountain
Brought down by weeks
Of rain & now the deluge

The sad landslide
Has wrecked everything
Washed away whatever
We had tentatively built

Not sure I have the energy
To commence the clean up
Let alone attempt any kind
Of reconstruction efforts

Which still didn’t look right. But maybe was kinda going somewhere. But anyway, formatting it on my iPhone was too hard & besides I was out of time.

Only when I got home could I play. & after attempting it all lined up on the right hand side of the page. Urrrgh. I ended up with this. Which while not perfect, I quite like.

slippage

so
sorry
you were
not resolute
enough to brace
your soul to resist
the detritus torrent
mud & stones & sticks
rumbling down the mount
deluged by weeks of rain — now
the sad landslide has wrecked everything
washed away everything we’d tentatively built

not sure if i have the energy to commence clean up
let alone attempt any kind of meaningful reconstruction

Day 24 — doing one’s bit in trying times #notallheroes

A smaller more personal poem today, after the excesses of yesterday.

*****

peak pandemic

how perfectly pleasant
to sit inside rug on lap
book in hand tea by side
warm as butter slowly
melting into hot crumpets
dog snoring nearby

while outside trees writhe
in the window-rattling
thunder-spreading wind
the sky grey in all ways
& the rain hits the roof
like a million microscopic
viruses trying to breach
my home’s defences

all while knowing

i’m
helping
save
the
world

life has reached peak

Note: I’m borderline embarrassed to admit (but not quite really) that I almost spent more time looking at images of cups of tea next to books by rainy windows than I did writing the poem. OMG I’ve discovered a new way (as if one was needed) to waste valuable interwebs time.

Day 16 – fire (& stone)

Spent a large chunk of my writing time today trying to craft a pome comparing & contrasting the fire at Notre Dame with the fire in our climate. While many parts worked, a few did not & I realised longer would be needed to resolve the kinks.

However, while researching the idea I came across another, far less known story, which led to this …

*****

holy houses

in less widely covered news, the revered
al-asqa mosque in east jerusalem
was also struck by (a far less dramatic)
blaze at the same time as notre dame’s
inferno in france — damaging solomon’s
stables beneath a corner of temple mount

here’s a thought:
perhaps god is trying to tell us something

BONUS POEM: April 16, 2018

The theme persists.

*****

immemorial

stone is worn
moss softens
lichen gathers
chiselled lines
flatten
it rains hard
the sun shines
& pretty soon
everything
is forgotten

Day 09 – poem about damage

If I said I understood everything I wrote, I’d be lying. Today’s effort comes from a form of poetry-generation; a pome-making game I guess. The steps are simple.

1. Make a series of lists (using prompts).
2. Choose one element from each list.
3. Find a way to combine them in one pome.

Ergo, below…

surveying the damage

through the window
yellow leaves cover the lawn
on the table bread is dark
brown like chocolate
— the wind blew all night
forcing doors & knocking
knick-knacks from sills

too cold to emerge
from beneath blankets
so the water did what it must
— spend the morning
throwing all my books
into a pulping machine
they’re useless now

Day 26 – Seeing Things

What with tomorrow being tomorrow, & plenty of work to do to get ready for it, today’s poem & Game are both going to be as brief as poossible. I’ll be using a variation of one of the Word Games I’ve played before, Last Line (Gone) – except this time it’s First Line (Gone; to be the last line of my poem) :).

The line is taken from The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. A truly glorious wonderful book that made me laugh, made me cry, made me weep buckets. Told by Enzo, who is a dog, this is a book that is a delight to read & one which will no doubt linger for days.

the art of not facing the truth

it’s easy to pretend
i’m waiting for you

easy to say
i’ve learnt

easy to argue
next time will be better

easy to acknowledge
every wrong

because
now you are gone

empty gestures
are all i have

First line of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. “Gestures all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature.”

Day 27 – a love poem (we haven’t had one for a while)

Just whipped this bad boy off. Today is gonna be crazy busy, so thought I should get a poem out the way, in case I run out of time later. I like love poems. Now if only I could find topics from today, instead of dredging them out of the past.

*****

night breathing

after telling each other our stories
till it was too late for me
to stop myself tumbling
you said: let’s lie beneath the stars
of course, how could i say no

you lay a blanket on the lawn

your face so fierce, so beautiful
with skin burnt by the sun
i was out in the middle of somewhere
not knowing where
not wanting to come back

i forgot to exhale

even curled up against you
i was cold but could not move
when the rain became too heavy
to endure we went inside
& lay on your bed, still talking

i am inundated

i wish to stay lost
in this place forever
want you to kiss me
but you don’t know that
or if you do, you don’t care

to love is to breathe

instead
i put your breath in my pocket
to keep for another day
because i could tell
— you were already elsewhere

*****

April 8 – Day Eight: 4 bonus poems

Today was a bit messy. Every other day I’ve known what I was going to do by about midday. Today I had a few false starts, & nothing was really grabbing me. So I worked on a play instead, read some articles online, read Bill Bryson’s awesome chapter on Pronunciation, read a really interesting chapter on how Russia’s political instability is founded on a lack of any clear geographic demarcations between its Western border & Europe … & the “vulnerability” of St Petersburg & Russia now that the Soviet “buffer zone” of satellite Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania etc are now “independent” states. Written a couple of years again, it shed interesting light on the current Crimea Crisis – but helped little in the poem creation caper.

So to a walk on the beach. Which produced:

the blue seaglass sky

rain has kept all but the dedicated away
& we’re both a little stir crazy

thankfully this strip of salty dreams
is virtually deserted, even by the gulls

henley beach a zen meditation
the beach as onomatopoeia

water becomes sand, sand becomes sky
sky becomes water … & we drift between

lost on the wind, one lost in the wind
whispers of wings that cannot be seen

waves wash water over wet sand
the sucking sounds – sausages sizzling

in the seashell cemetery, exoskeletons sing
coral cartwheeling, a dead reef xylophone

& every piece of fairy seaglass i find
is washed out blue, just like the sky

*****

Images: moi

Which, while “nice”, felt like a pretty bog standard grj poem. It will hopefully improve once April is over & I have a chance to tweak it. (I particularly like “the beach as onomatopoeia” & will possibly explore that in more detail, sometime.)

So, home after a wonderful wet walk, & a quick stop to shop for essentials, generated this gem:

one of the disadvantages of tardiness

get home after wet beach walk, soggy
towel dry the dog, feed the dog
think about feeding myself, consider coffee
catch from an eye corner, the clock
WTH – where did the time go, calculate
we left here at 4, clock says 6.59
the reading starts in an hour
check the oven: starts in an hour there too
we couldn’t have walked for that long
would’ve said 90 minutes at most
& i only bought a few groceries
dammit! no time for food
put the frozen stuff away. & the milk.
scramble into shower, scrape face
wriggle into jeans, search for shoes
check phone. wait. what? wait!
here the reading starts in 1hr47min
i really should turn those damn
kitchen clocks back — daylight savings
has been over half a week

*****

Image: Clock by gruelism

This was followed by attendance at said poetry reading which had previously caused such panic in my efforts to get there on time. [We shan’t mention, the act of sitting at the computer to craft said poem, almost caused me to run late (again, so to speak) for the reading. Sometimes, it seems time is destiny.]

A quick conversation post-reading & this was spewed forth upon my return home. (I had 2 hours to meet the midnight deadline.)

operational policy

my friend works for the government
in the bureaucracy … doing something
to do with housing – or something

every time he talks about it i wittily
pretend to fall asleep. people understand if i say
‘i sit at a computer’ he jokes … before going silent

till one day i overhear him spieling to a stranger
i work for the government in operational policy
we implement what the strategic policy department

decides is a good idea … we make sure it works
i see the woman’s eyes glaze over too
i sit at a computer. aaah, the joke still works

yes, but what do you actually do, she persists
um, my work means the most vulnerable
get what they need in order to live

i haven’t pretended to fall asleep since

*****

Image: Wooden House by Kleemass

But this still didn’t feel like it. So I returned to an abandoned effort from earlier in the day.

beyond pain
(Peaches Geldoff dies at age 25)

the deaths of celebrities are strange events
causing outpourings of grief from a deluded
General Population who believe they are somehow
“connected” just because they saw them lots on tv.
the deaths of not-really celebrities are even stranger.

while i sincerely feel the pain her father expresses
in his statement to the media, including the phrase
which titles this poem & others equally heartbreaking
Writing ‘was’ destroys me afresh &
our family, fractured so often, but never broken
the pathos is profound – his clan has done it tough.

what i do not comprehend is how the media
thinks poorly worded tweets from other
second rate celebs some of whom may even
have known the deceased are news — but FFS
Miley & Jamie — sad face emoticons are not
appropriate ways to express your condolences
when someone’s daughter, someone’s mother dies

*****

Screencap moi: “What’s up WA? – Why is it only 3 on your Reader’s Most Viewed????

But I still wasn’t happy … which leads to today’s Official Post (see new page)

gareth roi poet boi

gareth roi's playful poetry place

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Tag Archives: rain

Day 27 — 2 weeks ago today

Day 24 — the making of a poem: behind the scenes sneak peak

Day 16 – fire (& stone)

Day 09 – poem about damage

Day 26 – Seeing Things

Day 27 – a love poem (we haven’t had one for a while)

April 8 – Day Eight: 4 bonus poems

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