NaPoWriMo

I have made the pledge, I have signed myself up and counted myself in. One poem a day for a month, this April. It will hopefully bring back some (pleasant) memories of daily composition. Anyone else taking part?

I'm looking forward to it. With trepidation.

Stooge.

Another poem from the Back-catalogue(25). Or, perhaps, 'one from the vaults!'


Stooge contemplates a law of physics

An accident of gravity, I am hovering above stage planks
in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal when it dawns on me
how long I have lain for him.

I have pored these hours over amateur mathematics
trying to figure it out; the wonder for me is not in suspension
but how things must always fall.

They say gravity is an overlap from another dimension,
a dimple in the shape of our continuum, an equation
no-one can override. I have not yet got it all ironed out.

Sometimes, when I drift off, my dreams are of waking naked;
all eyes on my gooseflesh skin.

Believe it or not...

...an actual poem! Reworked from an old one from Catalogue 25. I knew there was a reason I did one a day for a year: the fun of editing poems I'd forgotten about.


Embrace

The man I am hugging is decidedly taller
than I'm used to and wearing a leather jacket
in a fetching shade of red. We are skewiff,
my head towards his shoulder out of line.
We are not alone, but I feel only our own hearts
beating. I am contained; in possession of his shoulders.

My arms tighten, my grip is stronger. I test myself
against his ribs; he responds by breathing. Our breaths
stretch us out, give us purchase for the deepening hold.

With my eyes closed it is not just his heart I feel
but the veins themselves; tissue fluid whooshing between cells
all calling for combination. There is no way out
but through. It feels for the longest time like stalemate.

My arms are shaking. I am lighter than blood
through his head through his knees through body cavity

I am lost in a singular us. I hear a sudden silence as now
and break out gasping. We turn to each other. His coat is open
where a button is missing; on my chest its imprint remains.

Important, time-consuming tasks that have prevented me from blogging so far this month:

• Working my way up to the Pokémon League with Hetty, Josephine, Therese, Valerie, Wayne and Phyllis.
• Getting the Mslexia directory into a state that is passable for publication in issue 45.
• Watching Skins. And getting quite upset at the latest plot turn.
• Thinking about blogging.
• Blogging elsewhere.
• Reading Twitter.
• Going on adventures with Craig.
• Tidying.
• Getting my Northern Promise application together.
• Reading Bleach.
• Considering my poems, and then deciding that I really need some new ones.
• Drinking coffee (decaf).
• Reading the Guardian.
• Looking at design blogs longingly. (Ffffound and Yay! Everyday, particularly)

These also all apply as reasons I have not been writing poems.

Oh! This means I have constructed a blog post whose entire reason for existence is EXCUSE. Excellent.

Pamphleteering

So I have decided that it's about time to collect my work together into a pamphlet. This is more difficult than it sounds, because although I have had a few poems published by magazines here and there, I have not had anyone look at a collection of poems and tell me that they work like that. This means, basically, that I am completely unsure as to whether any of my poems are really good enough. This is coupled with the unfortunate phenomenon which means that the longer ago I wrote a poem, the less I like it; so my recent habit of not writing means that I don't have many poems I like any more.

So, um, oh dear.

Still, I am getting an entry together to apply to a seminar that might help, and will hopefully send in an application for a Northern Promise award (gotta be in it to win it, however unlikely!) so I have my fingers crossed. Trawling through old poems is hard work. Trying to express why I need help doing it, in order to be in with any chance of help, is even harder. I have been procrastinating all day with Zelda and Pokémon - and cleaning the oven and reading comics and watching Casualty and Star Trek and sorting out photos on Flickr and drinking tea and making Chilli. And now, writing a blog post!

...and even posting a poem! A Renga written with two other members of the Salsa writing workshops, Josephine Scott and Rowan Ferguson:

White light casts no shadows
the sky has been full for days.

I watch a wader
brave the river.
Its purple head-feather bobs.

A pause grabbed mid-morning for champagne
Rushing all day to catch up,
evening poems only dent the surface.

Under the railway bridge
the rain cannot reach me.

We watch the shifting clouds
for a glimpse of the moon-
it doesn't appear.

Now... hop to it! (This isn't part of the poem. And it is addressed to myself. Bye-bye!)

An extra blog! AND I am still here.

Hello everyone!

I am aware I have not been blogging much. Or uh, at all.

There are a few reasons for this shoddiness (none of which, surprisingly, involve knitting. Some of which involve the new loan of a DS...), but one of them is THIS. Read me here too, why doncha! It is work-related, but hopefully interesting. Perhaps more interesting.

Also, I have joined Flickr in an attempt to organise my photographing in a more useful way. Link's in the left column there.

Oh, and I promise at least one poem this week. At least!

....hey! Get off my back already!

A poem.

The Falling

And so we come to the domestic avalanche,
that great weight of silence that does not wait
for the night, that forces us to gamble its steadying.
A muffled crack, a naming in your ear,
a slow slide from the church roof onto graves.
The first time any of us have looked up for days
or conceived of the white as anything but beauty.
There have been icicles forming for weeks;
and so we come to their falling. Swift. Soundless.