When I can’t figure things out
& I seem to have lost my way
you always know the right things
the right things to say
I know words don’t come easy
that meanings go astray
but still you know the right things
the right things to say
I may have the learning
the diploma and B.A
But besides you I’m inarticulate
lost for what to say
At the end of each morning
at the end of each day
you always know the right things
the right things to say
D,H, Moore wrote
in 2014
that his thoughts buzzed around
‘like hummingbirds
on crack’
but I like to think
of
Wordsworth & his sister Dorothy
wandering aimlessly
as a cloud
through the fields
in 1804
& being seized
by the vision
of the ‘host of golden daffodils’.
my distractions sit
in between
plentiful & constant
as weather;
sooner or later one settles
like a hummingbird
on a flower
pic courtesy of Wiki Commons
I was streaking ahead and then she put down that word. It was on a ‘double word’ score.
Hey! That’s NOT a word! I said.
Yes, it is. I was just reading about it in ‘Body and Soul’ [ a supplement in our Sunday newspaper].
And she bent across and showed me.
What does it mean?
It’s something we used to do as schoolgirls, she chuckled. And she told me.
I was flabbergasted. The secret life of schoolgirls, I thought. Wonder of wonders.
Okay, I said. There are 4000 new words in our language each year so why couldn’t that be one of them?
He
whines
& wails
down
the driveway
day after day
in search of
leaves.
God called him
one night.
He’s up there now
scouring
the avenues for
autumn’s discards
driving
the residents mad
like he did
down
here
* photo courtesy of Wiki Commons
The flower withheld its perfume
the sky withheld its rain
the road its destination
the labour its aim
She had taken away the love
life’s poetry and rhyme
Had taken all the flesh
left only the rind
I’ve just been informed it’s World Turtle Day.
As usual I’m a little slow off the mark
But I’m sticking my neck out now
writing a poem to Ginge
in his tiny turtle tank looking out at the world
I’ve been reading him some famous turtle poems
including Robert Lowells’ Waking in the Blue
but Ginge and I are shaking our heads:
the only turtle reference is ‘I strut in my turtle-necked
French sailor’s jersey’.
but the one by Mark Doty has a few really good lines:
‘a snapping turtle lumbered down the centre
of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet’
Ginge liked that
I read him a few more but their meanings were slow
to emerge
Perhaps that’s the point.
I hope he likes this poem.
I’ve been working on this one all day but I still
haven’t got very far.
“Will this do?” you say to your stomach at three in the morning. “Can I go to bed now?”
“Just a minute,” your stomach says. “Have I had enough?”
I know what it’s thinking: too little, it’ll come back for more; too much it will churn out nightmares.
“Perhaps a little more?” says the stomach, looking up at me pleadingly like a cat.
“No,” you decide, “You can have more in the morning like normal stomachs do. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where do you think?”
And it follows you back to bed, shoulders a little slumped.
I have a very bad feeling.
Tell me I’m wrong.
That I have written myself into obscurity.
That I was too clever by half.
That no one knew what the f*** I was writing about
in the previous post ‘Not a nightingale ode’.
It was a glass of red wine.
But that’s what happens when you put up a post
while you’ve been drinking
while you’ve been rhapsodizing about a glass
of red wine
O
the voluptuous girth
of you
yr full mouth
yr
tiny tiny waist
I love
to twirl
between forefinger and thumb
yr long tapering body
rich aromas
the blush
of yr beauty
the swill
of yr full-bodied flavours
down
my
gullet
Do you find that? That you are lying on the bed, buried in a book when suddenly you come across a passage that is so striking, so delightful you must write it down? And then you dash to your laptop and keyboard your excitement so others can read when you post it to your blog? Do you do that?
Here is the passage I found quite early into my voyage of ‘The Last Voyage of Mrs. Henry Parker’: ‘on the shelf above the clothes rail were two identical life jackets lying side by side like a canoodling couple …’ Even more apt when you learn she is waiting for her beloved husband to board.
It was an extra pleasure to be able to GO INTO the library, roam around the new book shelves, and strike up conversation with the librarians whom I had not seen for over seven weeks.
Do you do that? Do you copy out passages? What’s the last book you were really excited about, particularly regarding the quality of writing?
John Malone 