Three Poems for Autumn

Apollyologies for the recent dry spell. But to make up for it, here's three poems all at once.

Android

 

There was a pain like a gravel pit inside.

I bought a flapjack and a Lucozade

and drove six miles to an unconventional wilderness

just outside of Frodsham.

It was here

amongst the gorse petals and defunct Rentokil

bait stations that I first kissed a girl.

Rebecca or Rebekah, I don’t know how

she spelt it,

but I do remember her skin as cold as an android’s.     

 

Presentation

 

For an hour, nearly,

I had to sit through a presentation

on your death. Slide after slide

about the terrific mutilations

carried out on your body.

Had I willed it somehow?

I felt I deserved to be a suspect,

even if this was Birmingham 1989,

a year before my birth.

 

When my sister smashed

a white hole the size of a fist

in the kitchen sink, I was fourteen.

She protested, they stuck

to the facts. I was hiding my hands

behind my back,

I was hiding myself behind my back.

 

New-Born

 

I wasn’t there at the births

of Callan and Aidan. They might

 

have been born in the Arctic Circle

or on the decks of The Tardis,

 

I was no less aware of it.

I was probably more concerned

 

with the birthing

of a second litter of puppies

 

that we would sell at £200 a pop.  

The first labours I saw

 

were the labours of this little Thai woman

on The Baby Channel. Children

 

were excluded from this sort of thing,

usually. But there she was,

 

wheel-chair winged and well into her throes.

 

 

 

At 11 Tomorrow Morning

Here is the poem for this week, which should be the poem for last week, only, it is late. I think this poem is similiar to the last poem ("I Cover the Waterfront") in aspects of style and the way things are being said. I like the idea of taking what is said and what is unsaid and putting the two together in the same line. Perhaps this is what I'm doing in these recent poems. 

 

At 11 Tomorrow Morning

 
At 11 tomorrow morning
The wasps are at war in the kitchen.
When I take a ladle like a tennis racquet
Their bodies change yellow to black.
That blood soaked military flag
Is really the shadow of a bath mat
On the washing line.
                                  I’ve much respect
For those makers of bath mats and war. 

I Cover the Waterfront

Here is the poem for this week, "I Cover the Waterfront". The poem takes its first line and title from a song performed by Billie Holliday but written by Johnny W. Green and Edward Heyman. I actually think that this here poem is the one I have been trying to write for the last month or so. Whatever, its the best damn poem I've written for a while.

I Cover the Waterfront

I cover the waterfront
And write obituaries for long words in the summer.

My desk is alternately a pigeon’s wing,
Postcards, a pomegranate.

Since arriving I’ve been an orange sunspot
Putting the locals off their glasses

In this landscape that is otherwise white.
 

Perseus

This weeks poem is "Perseus", another short piece I composed roughly a month ago. The genesis of the poem is a news story from Turkey I found online about a woman killing and subsequently beheading a man that had been abusing her for some time. Despite the graphic nature of this story, it seems to me that this Turkish woman is extremely brave and the story immediately brought to mind  parrellels with the story of Perseus, which I am familiar with from the 1981 film directed by Desmond Davis. Enjoy...

 

Perseus

 

Those startled faces in the coffee house,

They only know the man at Halloween

Whose head is separate from his body.

 

Careless with his reflection,

And now at the butcher's back gate

A gray mongrel appraises

The dissembled corpse of Perseus.

 

Pitched in to the centre of the square:

A man’s head, pissing blood,

Pregnant like my belly.

Postcards

I made a promise to myself to add one poem each week to this blog. Here is the latest effort:

Postcards
 
I.
A moment exiled for exposure:
The wicker interior of an Italian church,
A moment exiled for exposure.
 
II.
I walked like a branch, because the sun
Had burnt my back and my shoulders,
I walked like a branch.

III.
You take yourself too seriously.
This folk stuff, fairy talk and fairy houses,
You take yourself too seriously.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. It shall be my aim and pleasure to post my poetry and hopefully many other interesting things here. I'll begin with this poem, "Crabbing", which was recently published by Miracle e-zine (website here: http://miracleezine.wix.com/miracle-e-zine#) in their sixth issue, though it was then called "Crab Fisherman" when it appeared there. Though it may really be an unremarkable poem, there is something charming about it.

 

Crabbing

He peers over the edge, measures out the line, then

lets drop his cloth bundle of bacon and trimmed fat,

and pulls them up, horned and furious,

two or three at a time, again and again,

their claws caught in his clever weave.

 

He carries them home for tea at seven,

twelve dancing crabs in a bucket of water.