are we having fun yet?

Conforming to probable and wholly understandable sterotypes, I (or rather my poetry) could be described as being a bit dark and depressing. I can understand that, but - as I have previously stated - it's easier to write when you're pissed off with life and all that's being thrown at you. Even when the obstacles to living a life of sunshine and bliss are wholly imagined and purely a figment of your own warped and paranoid imagination, it still feels good to mope about it and scribble black thoughts on a secret notepad. I reckon all poets are a bit miserable, even the happy ones.

So when asked by a colleague to write a nice ditty about her cat (and no Mrs Slocum jokes please) I thought it a good opportunity to try something new and see where verse light and frothy would take me. I'll spoil the ending by saying that I haven't written anything of this ilk since, which was 13 years ago and counting...)

Molly's A Cat

Molly's a cat,
I've no doubt about that.
A friendly old furry fat cat.

In front of the fire
She'll cosily retire.
I've got no problem with that.

Eat food all day,
And a ten minute play,
This is the life we all seek.

And every half hour
A sleep she'll devour,
As if she's not slept for a week.

What can I say now,
That'll make sense somehow
Of the lazy old life of a cat?

Molly's a cat,
I've no doubt about that.
A friendly old furry fat cat.

April 1996

molly the cat
image © auspices

the sinning machine

When I first arrived in London, like most people experiencing the city for the first time, I was completely blown away. Having been brought up to implicitly loathe the capital and all it's pampered and over indulged occupants, I didn't expect to feel the way I did as I walked across the Victoria Station concourse - I was excited yet slightly overawed (but in a good way).

Unfortunately, although my new job was in Tooting (and how I laugh now when I remember it as the centre of my cultural universe for two years), I was only passing through on my way to live in a small Kent town near East Grinstead with my then girlfriend. I subsequently moved to a medium-sized commuter town in the Surrey broker belt - it was okay, but neither were London proper and neither felt like home.

I was approaching the end of my first year there when I started getting itchy feet, and I wanted to spend more time out and about with my workmates in Tooting rather than getting back to the broker-belt to do nothing much in particular. The train home arrived later and later and change, not that I knew it yet, was just around the corner.

It was about this time that "Monster" by REM and "Dog Man Star" by Suede were my constant audio companions, and it was the latter that inspired the following poem by in the now usual way of providing a rhythm to hang my made up lyrics onto. There was a near-future dystopian feel to the word in general that appealed to the post-apocolyptic sci-fi geek in me, and it empathised with my ongoing situation wasting my years in a nowhere town.

However it wasn't a track from the album that pricked my consciousness, but rather a b-side (if such a thing could exist on a cd single) from one of the track releases. "Together", track two on the "New Generation" release, was the first Suede track written by (the irreplacable) Bernard Butler's replacement Richard Oakes, and I was keen to hear how it stood up.

It fared pretty well, but more importantly for me it became the vehicle for some lines I had jotted down about the darker side contained within us all, and a nod in the direction of my changing relationship and the other avenues - or more specifically, avenue in the singular - that was presenting itself to me.

The Sinning Machine

I'm a monumental sinner
With a sackful of pain,
A convoluted Non-diluted
History of senselessness and shame -
(A nice line in degradation and pain!)
But why should I bother to explain?
I don't believe I'll ever change...

February 1996

6th st salvation
image © deneyterrio

how the music moves me

Today, like every other Monday through to Friday now that I'm no longer self-employed, was a work day. And as such I was plonked in front of the PC with Visual Studio (2008 if you must know), SQL Server (2005) and Internet Explorer open. It is also obligatory for ITunes to be open at the same time to provide me with some worthwhile podcast distractions (and not just to balance the obvious Microsoft bias prevelant in the office). I digress obviously, but the point is that I try to listen to stuff as much as possible while tip-tapping away at the keyboard.

I recently became the proud owner of my sister-in-law's boyfriend's entire music collection on mp3 as I've become quite safe and staid in my musical preferences over the last few years with only British Sea Power and Rufus Wainwright being allowed to gatecrash the party. Today was the first day that I remembered to (a) bring my IPod to work and (b) copy all the songs to my work machine. I was positively trembling with excitement at the thought of all those virgin tunes ushering in a new era of audio enlightenment and enabling me to once again be cool with the kids.

So what did I listen to then? Simon and Garfunkel of course, and specifically "I am a Rock" which brought wave after wave of nostalgia crashing over me. This was fortuitously aided and abetted by my being tagged on a slew of photos on facebook from more-or-less the same time early on in my university days. If you add all that to being half-a-world-away from home, it was a nice if poignant moment.

An old friend/aquaintence stared back at me from many of the pictures, and I was reminded to dig out a poem I wrote about/for him back in 1991 when, during the summer holidays, we decided to bum around Sheffield not working and getting drunk. And write! We loved to write while getting drunk, and this poem along with the line "I have my books and my poetry to protect me" was the soundtrack of that summer.

The Godchair

Sitting silhouetted
In that hazy smoke-filled room,
He grins with manic manner.

He always seems attuned
To ways of worldly wonder
And hope-filled halcyon heights,

Yet he feels the pain more freely
And reality more really
On those lonely winter nights.

Sitting in his Godchair
He plays another song
From those he shares so freely.
With pained expression he sings along

With loquacious lyricality,
Temporary loss of sanity,
Monumentous surreality,
Here, he will always belong.

July 1991

the godchair
image © bloohimwhom

over there / over here

Such a poor showing in only posting once in 2008, I'm caught somewhere between embarrassment and apathy. It's 2009 and the more things change, the more they appear to stay the same - except things have changed in a very real way (and what is the distinction between "real" and "very real"? Does the former have some kind of ethereal quality to it, milliseconds before Captain Kirk et al are fully transported?).

We've moved 13,000 miles across the face of the earth. So far away in fact, that were we to travel much further we would start to move closer to home again. Well I think that's right, and it's an oft-quoted fact to family and friends when discussing our emigration to New Zealand. It sounds good in any case, and I will confirm it via Google when I can be bothered.

More importantly I've decided to correctly use capitalisation when writing - lower-casing for the sake of it is so 20th century and was a by-product of the discovery of email co-inciding with the need to save the planet's resources. All those extra key-presses saved when typing, all that unused ink as followers everywhere print out my poetry in 128pt point text ready to adorn the wall of their shared student residence. Plus the fact that I'm 40 this year and it all seems a bit childish now.

Side-stepping the newly embraced spirit of change, I present the first poem that I ever had published (and referred to 1 post and 6+ months ago).

I Realise

I think it was,
(though I'm not quite sure),
I saw it alone
Standing in this place.

I realised
It wasn't me,
(The wind swept wild
In this barren place).

My tree
Threadbare with sincerity,
That lead
My moistened eyes to shine

Begat a tale
Of woe for me
When I realised
It's life was mine.

January 1998

later, much later

I've decided to dispense with the usual empty apologies and regret of not updating the blog in a timely fashion. So there.

I've not written anything for such a long time now, that it's almost become second nature to convince myself that I never did. However it came as a small surprise to me when, while tidying up the unstructured mess that is my email inbox, I found the following hidden in a long forgotten archive folder.

Never Realised (unfinished)

the tree we laughed at looked so sad
with branches torn and withered worn
where once we'd climbed and fallen there
beneath the bow so subtly torn

and so i pondered upon the sky
that bore down hard with relentless glee
taking time to try and understand
if really, truly, the tree was me

14th September 2006

Taken in isolation this poem doesn't mean anything - however it does relate to the first poem I ever had published, one that for some reason I never got around to blogging about. I've no idea why this might be, but it gives me the chance to link the two together for the first time.

However it has also brought some other, more scary, thoughts to mind - where the hell did I store all my old poetry, and did it survive the great laptop crash of 2007? I'm off to delve...