Thirty Two!!!!!

Good Lord!
It appears that 32 folk have visited this blog. I am delighted/ amazed/ completely made up etc etc.
I wonder if it just those dear souls led astray by the teasing promise of pre-molars and canines and the heady smell of amalgum (shaken, but not stirred) the distant whine of the drill as seductive as a train in the distance stuffed with promise and possibility? Maybe things will tail off now that they realise it is just some sad old plonker who writes the odd bit of duff poetry!

We'll see!

Anyway today's posting comes frmo more recent times and is a double bill....

Firstly:

A sonnet from 1998. A bumper year as I was pretty unsettled at that time and this always stirs at the sediment that seems to give birth to this kind of thing.

Shards

How the splinters pierce as moments shatter!
We limp, squirm on the shrapnel remaining;
We can’t select what will, will not matter,
Discarding some past events, retaining
Others. Inventing heroic futures,
Full of nobility and grace, where no
Stubborn waxy flags of tell tale sutures,
Show the place you’d much prefer not to show.
When cowardice, folly was you and yours
To slice through your better self; scar and maim
Limit possibilities; even scores
Between you and the others in the game.
Casting back to when the glass reflected
Was it really as you recollected?

Pete
April 1998


Secondly:
One for my mum.
An amazing lady and a true hero. Not one fo these false pretty boy/girl cosmetic, soundbite kids all spin and hair gel. A real star, like the stars, not something you notice or even value perhaps.... until they go out. Then isn't the night a dark place?



The Gospel According to Kath.

My mum’s my hero.
An embarrassing fact perhaps,
But I’m proud of it.

She taught me that grey is true.
The world is not black or white …
Not really.
The zealots would have you think so,
But it isn’t.
It is full of nuance.
At every turn there are so many maybes
That perplex the student of certainty and
Only serve to delight the
Student of grey.

People are trying to right and left of you.
Oh sure, it’s not always that impressive,
But it was their best after all,
and that
Really is … impressive.
Of course it is.

In a world of judgement and certainty
Mum posted a question mark for me.
Perhaps in the shadows of everyone’s attempt
There is nobility.
The quiet heroism of the average.

And she loved me,
In just that way.
She saw something heroic in the pale
Apology of potential I offered up.
I never felt like a disappointment to her.
To me, to them, but not to her.
And so like Matthew with his tainted abacus
I found my own gospel.

But it isn’t mine.
It’s hers.

The gospel according to Kath.


Long live the students of grey.. for they alone stand between us and disaster. If you are certain of anything you don;t know what you're talking about.... by definition!

Pete
November 2007

Another one!

Here is a slightly lighter poem from a long time ago again.

I used to live in Wiltshire and the land really rolls. It swells and moves like an ocean.
This poem was an observation on that.

The Land is the Sea

The land is the sea.
A deep swell of hills and valleys
Quickens into trees that break
In green foam;
Burst in slow spray amongst the field’s
brown shallows.

Cities are the winking plankton.
Embers in the black hollows;
Hanging on time’s tide
Like leaves torn from the wind’s current.

The land is the sea
But the sky is itself always.

Vanity Publishing to myself (a concept for the third millenium)!

What a clutz!
I have just had a strange and slightly perverse frissante of excitement as I open my new blog to note that I have a comment.
Unfortunately it is my own comment sent to me by me by mistake!
I have a feeling there is something more than a little dodgy about responding to one's own blog!

My all too brief October break is about to come to an end and the siren call of the daily grind can be faintly discerned in the distance ... not the crude reality of the 5.30 alarm just yet... more a piper on the gates of dawn reminding me that I do not have private income.

I am also still somewhat at a loss to know why I am writing this. There seem to be two quite separate reasons for not continuing....
1. Nobody is reading this apart from me.
2. I am not sure that I have anything to say that will contribute to any greater good.

Ah ha, but wait..... perhaps there is a way forward (this needs to be read in the voice of Montgomery Burns).

I will publish my poetry this is a perfect idea because my poetry is
1. only read by me
2. not really likely to contribute anything of any great worth.

A perfect match: the pointless published anonymously on the unread! How very punk!

Here's one from ages ago ... a lifetime really ... nearly a decade.



Jetsam

On the shoreline we’re dark beacons casting
A debris of failure and potential;
Beached before the tempest’s sinews blasting;
Memory’s drift of inconsequential
Flotsam and treasure. A slick half recalled;
Clinging and polluting where it fingers,
Until each sensation recoils appalled
And only wistfulness bravely lingers.
Twisted and salt bleached, pale in the mist, hung
With leathered weed and the writhing shapes of
Forgotten belongings pointlessly flung.
Beyond the ocean’s reach at last, above
Serving the pointless rhythm, storm and calm,
To rest between the tideline and the farm.


Pete
April 1998.


There are hundreds (not all miserable sonnets it must be said, but I was really hacked off in 1998) .... sorry.

But then I don't need to apologise because nobody is reading this!

Here's an idea!

What about making up film titles that contain references to food or drink…
Here’s some to start with:
· Captain Corelli’s Mandarin
· Last Mango in Paris
· Rhubarbarella
· Easy Cider
· Little Miss Moonshine
· Good Morning Vietjam
· Lock Stock and Two Smoking Haddock
· Crocodile Dundee Cake
· EEEE Tea
· (Bath) Oliver
· Excalibrese
· The Lamb Shank Redemption
· The Good the Bad and the Ugly Fruit
· Double Cream Indemnity
· The Kipper and the Rose
· March of the Penguin Biscuits
· Steak Out
· Codzilla
· Hambo
· A Chocolate Orange

He he .. the alien has landed!

Well now this is fun!
This is a chance to make new chums of similar dispositions and similar outlooks.
Such folk are probably undergoing some kind of therapy, or at her majesty's pleasure, but then such is the reality of being nearly fifty and a keen student of human nature in a world stuffed full of paradox.
I do sometimes feel like an alien visiting a planet where I am familiar with the language and conventions but do not comprehend the shared values or deep presumptions that underwrite the way things are.
Unlike Louis Armstrong I do not see trees of green or red roses too.

• I see politicians so transparently crooked that one wonders if basic felony is a pre-requisite in standing for any political position. Isn't it paradoxical that we put people in positions of ultimate trust, running the country, who we would not trust to make us a sandwich?
• I see and hear musicians who's only definable quality appears to be a total lack of talent in any area that might be construed as music. This is referred to as popular music.
• I see sportsmen and women being valued above artists and being consulted on matters of philosophy or politics when clearly they are only good at bashing a spherical object, and then not well enough to win.
• I see "celebrities" valued highly as cultural leaders when they betray an almost complete lack of intelligence whenever they open the yawning, and generally broadly Thames flavoured gap beneath their silly noses.
• I see the elderly, who are by definition experienced and usually wise treated as fools and the young; who are by definition foolish treated as wise.
• I hear the beautiful language that is English whipped and fettered by almost everyone who is licenced by the media (meeejyaa) to occupy any kind of platform. Indeed it seems only the possession of an inability to articulate and a vocabulary largely comprised of the latest street gibberish will qualify as a commentator on our world. Most bizarrely, when someone like Brian Sewell who does have a proper grip on our fair tongue is showcased it is as some kind of anachronistic fool.. because he speaks properly!
• I see people fined more for speeding than for rape. Pursued more avidly for parking offences than for shoplifting and all this in cities where you cannot go out in the evening for fear of being vomited on or mugged.

Perhaps I have missed the point.

This has made me really miserable and it was supposed to be fun! I will try to make further observations less "going to the dogs"!

As I was going to write on my introductory page as my random question: "why are you reading this nonsense?

Pete