A Worried Mother

Without pause, my son
Watches vampire DVDs
In a lightless room/with the curtains drawn.

25 May 2008

We spent the night at Lynny's, so we cld go to a Eurovision party nearby. Besides a new litter of Siamese kittens, and an aquarium of (captive-bred) sea-horses, they also own the complete "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD. Since William has already been exposed to it at friends' houses, I rather weakly caved in, and let him watch it while I was still in bed... I was struck by his pale face glowing in the darkened room... Still not sure which is the better ending.

Not a poem for a change...

...but I just thought you'd like to know that the year's first batch of elderflower cordial is now in bottles, awaiting labelling! (See "Elderflower Cordial: The Making Thereof", 23 April 2008.)


18 May 2008

Fear

The octopus makes itself
Comfortable in
My chest.
He stretches two tentacles
Down, to wind round
My bowels.
He wraps four around
My heart,
To crush its squirming attempts to escape.
He sends the last two up
My oesophagus,
So they can curl out of
My mouth,
And coil around
My throat.
He has to allow me a thin stream of air though,
As he realises a little too late
That he can't throttle
Himself.

2 May 2008

I seem to be writing some pretty gruesome stuff at the moment! This was inspired by my feelings of panic the previous week, (not entirely dissipated...). I originally had a totally negative ending, but realised, when thinking the metaphor through, that there was a technical problem with him strangling his own tentacles; and anyway, the situation isn't totally hopeless, so this is a truer reflection of how I feel. I am not sure if you can use the word "throttle" in this context (where is an octopus' "throat" anyway, and can you strangle anything that doesn't actually breathe air?) Maybe it's just a rubbish image... I am also concerned about the line breaks: shld I be emphasising the body parts so much, by splitting the line before them each time? And shld I repeat "round/around" so much? As you can tell, I'm not very secure about this one!

3:15am

No sirens, no cars.
I can only hear/All I can hear is birdsong.
So sparkling, so loud.

25 April 2008

More in my "comfort zone"! Needless to say, written in my head when I cldn't sleep cos I was so stressed, and the birdsong was deafening. I spent ages searching for the 2-syllable adjective in the last line. It needed to suggest something beautiful, that didn't imply keeping me awake, so I rejected "piercing", and I finally dozed off, having decided on "soaring", (slight hints of "The Lark Ascending"), but wasn't entirely happy with that, as I wanted something jewel-like. I awoke later, and immediately came up with "sparkling", which is much more what I'm aiming for! I'm also not sure which of the two options to put for the 2nd line, but lean towards the first, as the "only" assonates with the "no"s and the "so"s.

Poetry Group/The First Meeting of the Poetry Group

I take the knife
and slice open my abdomen.
I pull my entrails/intestines
out of the slit,
and arrange them –
still attached,
still throbbing –
in coiled piles,
on two side-plates
and four expresso cup saucers.

The others poke them
and stroke them,
gently
loosening tangles
and lifting steaming tubes,
to see what lies beneath.

I stuff my intestines/entrails
back inside me,
and pass the knife on
with sticky fingers.

[The next person
fans out his guts
on one large, silver tray.]

24 April 2008

We had the first meeting of the East London Stanza on Sunday, and I was aware how much more vulnerable I felt showing my poems to total strangers, as compared to Paula, who I've known for years. Despite the graphic imagery, I actually really enjoyed the meeting, and found it really helpful! Still not sure about a title, and the choice of "entrails" or "intestines": which is better in the first verse, and which better towards the end? Also, do I need that last verse at all, or shld I expand it? Is the poem just about me, or about all of us?

Elderflower Cordial: The Making Thereof

The visit to the garden of my son’s old school.
The borrowing of the janitor’s ladder.
The secateuring of the thirty fattest, whitest blossom heads.
The vigorous shaking to remove any insects
(never wash, but why not?).
The pouring of two kilos of caster sugar
into the huge, stainless-steel pan borrowed
(and never returned)
from my tolerant friend.
The dissolving of the sugar in one litre of boiling water.
The glutinous clearing of the liquid.
The drowning of each pale hemisphere.
The stirring in of the rind of two lemons
(must be unwaxed)
and seventy-five grams of citric acid powder,
especially ordered in by my obliging chemist
(not normally stocked, as drug dealers use it to cut cocaine).
The placing of derinded lemon slices
in an orderly and attractive pattern
on the pondy surface.
The covering of the pan
With a damp tea-towel.

The twenty-four hours living in an air-freshener advert.

The sieving of the scented mush
through the afore-mentioned tea-towel.
The decanting into boot-sale-bought bottles.
The sticking of pseudo-handwritten labels
(green ink, of course).
The presenting to friends.
The freezing in small containers.
The wishing I’d kept more for myself.

The thawing out in winter.
The sudden, swirling, time-travelling
back to early summer.

23 April 2008

Inspired by the fact that I am really looking forward to elderflowers blossoming again, as last May, I made elderflower cordial for the first time, and absolutely loved everything about it! This is SO not my usual style, that I'm astonished I wrote it! I think it may be something to do with the fact that I had my first East London Stanza meeting on Sunday? (When I joined The Poetry Society in January, I was disappointed to find there was no local group in my area, so volunteered to set it up...) Talking to other poets, and seeing what they'd written, might have opened me up to a different way of working.

They Said it would Snow

I slept at my friend's house
After a movie,
Too haunting,
Too haunted,
For me to be
Old-house-alone.

With my pillow against
The window wall,
I lie and look up
Through the two-inch, curtain crack,
To see black flecks
Falling from the white sky.

I do not lift my head
To peer at the garden,
For fear
It will be perfectly preserved,
Under archaeological layers
Of ash.

6 April 2008

Another poem that's not in my usual style! I wrote the first draft of this yesterday, whilst staying at Bridget's, having seen "The Orphanage" the night before. I originally called it "April Snow", and had the current title as the first line. I'm still wondering whether the last few lines shld be changed, so the "ash" is "archaeological" rather than the "layers" (and, of course, the "perfectly preserved" is a deliberate cliché.) I am also not sure if, in my attempts to avoid actually mentioning Pompeii directly, I've made it such a subtle reference, that it can be missed altogether?