old eyes / new mind

I'm enjoying looking through my old stuff in a bid to see which ones can be promoted to the newly-formed 'division 2' (i don't go in for all this sky sports-inspired premiership/championship nonsense) of my league of poems, and found this one hidden away amongst some true bits of rubbish.

Surely

She held herself
In front of the setting sun
And posed,
Knowing the light shone through her skirt
Into my dirty eyes.

A silhouette.
An arrow pointing to my desire
The shadows shifted,
And all that I never had
Was gone.

She needn't have spoken
- Her words cradled me anyway,
Casting aside those doubts
And killing the shadows at my side.

Surely then, she loved me.
The ray of hope would re-appear
And surely the sun would shine again.


March 1993

'surely' was inspired by a scene reminiscent of the famous 'lady diana with sun shining through skirt' pose (that she in no-way deliberately manufactured of course), but instead happened in the living room of one of the many shared houses of my student days (which one, i obviously can't remember). i can vaguely remember it being my then-girlfriend (her being a trainee teacher she had a penchant for long flowery practical skirts), and there's a faint recollection of a bay window, but like most of my student-based memories they're shrouded in a fug of uncertainty.

looking back to other poems written at that time, it appears that i was going through a whimsical phase of writing for writing's sake. this is in no way a bad thing as my output (as my notepads of the time will attest) was prolific by my usual standards, and despite the variable quality inherent in bashing stuff out whenever any old shit came into my head, it has given me real joy in revisiting fine-slices of my previous life. i hold up my hands and admit it gives me real pleasure to revisit my old work and to 'reclassify' old cast-offs; viewed with old eyes and a new mind...

you're taking me over

i pretty much simplistically divide my poetry into two camps - those i'm proud of, and those i'm not. that's to say that some i'll pimp around messageboards and various incarnations of my own website, and there's the others that will languish in the darkest corners of box-files, stolen computer paper yellowing by the day. in truth however there's probably a third camp that resides somewhere between the two, and since starting this blog i've been reclassifying a number of poems because the passage of time (in many cases over 10 years) has meant that on re-reading them they seem almost new, albeit with vague almost deja-vu style memories attached to them.

the following poem falls into this new category. however it doesn't actually mean anything and isn't written about anyone in particular. the title is taken directly from a ben elton novel of the same name (although i am and was wholly aware of it's roots as a shakespeare quote, it was on finishing the book that i decided to use the name). finally, it was written to the tune of the drowners by suede, a band i was heavily into at the time.

In Any Other Eden

I could leave all this,
Travel oceans away.
But if the grass isn't greener, what then?
I have a taste for some things
Wholly unconnected
With the state I find myself living in.

Should I let you injure
My pure thoughts and deeds?
But if you won't let me love you, what then?
Make a martyr of pride
And let me sink to my knees -
I'd feel you taking my soul bit by bit.

There'll be heroes in
Any other Eden.
'til then I'll walk through the valley of shade.
Some dark grey days I'll despair,
But mostly I'll just sit there
Trying to remember when it was I lost control.


July 1994

somehow it doesn't seem as clunky viewing it again after all this time, although i don't think it could ever be 'promoted' to my top-tier. there are some lines in particular that i especially like (most notably make a martyr of pride and let me sink to my knees), and as ever there is a trademark bitterness present despite not being based on real events. i remember writing this on a train out of sheffield (possibly to liverpool but more likely to london where my then-girlfriend lived) and forcing myself to write something around a phrase i liked, but looking at it now i can't help feeling that it's a shame there's no real-life resentment attached to it, that i can't conjure up memories of some perceived past sleight and say to myself fuck you then, fuck you now...