journey ennui

Tags

car hire, don't stop believing, ennui, journey, long haul, NaPoWriMo, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, travel

memory blends all
those long-haul flights into one;
quells at the dispiriting brightness
of airport terminals,
all mouth and trousers,
the bleak unwelcome of them
each time I emerge into another land.

where no one ever held up
a rough and ragged corrugated
cardboard sign with my name
marker-penned across it.
no one ever watched for me.

weary to my soul
with sleeplessness
and the prospect of framing questions,
asking directions, in a foreign tongue,
or wrangling with the car hire firm
for the deal they swore to on the phone,
before half-forgetting to drive
on the wrong side of the road.

arriving where time is different
and you can’t just adjust your watch
in order to fit into it.
I wonder always why I’ve come
and why I always have to go.

cloak-and-dagger love

Tags

angela, blog, brian, claire danes, devon gummersall, my so-called life, NaPoWriMo, poem, school, unrequited love

he loved her with a ferocious
grave intensity
she entirely failed
to comprehend,
misreading disappointment
as disapproval.

sometimes her insensitivity,
the sheer totality of her disregard,
is enough to make him flinch inside,
a whiplash to his unprotected heart,
a hammer blow to a self-esteem
that already dragged hangdog,
half in the gutter.

he would die for her
and she might never notice
or realise the depth of his devotion.
his loyalty is absolute,
without expectation of reward,
though she can render him
incandescent with a rage
that consumes his leftover
shards of pride like kindling.

 

Other poems inspired by My So-called Life.

ornament

Tags

costume, ice skating, people, poem in a white ribbed vest, tonya harding

on the slick glittery surface
the figure skater’s
all tinselled up
in a christmas
tree decoration
of a costume, a gift
ready for unwrapping.

 

 

Photo of Tonya Harding from People.

‘if your heart is a flame burning brightly’

Tags

blog, chantal latchford, death, grant hart, husker du, NaPoWriMo, poem

posthumous praise pours out
with all the bittersweetness
of too little too late,
a cascade leaden with regret,
a familiar call and response,
the side effect of death is appreciation.

now the solar flares
of overdue recognition
burst from every page and screen,
scalding you with their importunity,
obituary, tribute, overview, résumé.

resentment stirs for
the bandwagon jumpers,
their feet still trailing
in the dusty wake
of a beleaguered talent.
the johnny come latelys who
bask belatedly in the reflected glory.

daring to claim him now,
prepared to be generous
now he’s in the grave
and no longer the thorn
in the side of the establishment,
they gladly cut him the slack
so rarely afforded him alive.

I hold a long island
iced tea party in my head.
I do this in remembrance
of grant at first avenue.

 

Picture of Grant by Chantal Latchford

death and the musician

Tags

blog, death, grant hart, grief, husker du, nostalgia, poem, rip

hearing a certain song now
resonates inside your heart
as if it really held strings;
and your eyes begin to leak the grief
that is drowning you by degrees.
your record collection
a roll call of the dead.

it carries the same unexpected pathos
as the accidental discovery
of something banal or mundane
– a note to the milkman,
for ‘one extra pint, please’,
 a recipe or an address –
in the handwriting of
a deceased parent, so
 familiar and now so seldom   seen.
they will never put pen to paper again.

dickinson

Tags

blog, emily dickinson, NaPoWriMo, poem

secondhand sunlight
through a casement shoots
shivers straight into her bones,
a gravestone cold
of exposed hilltops
and broken-down ploughs.

her view takes in the frosted
counterpane of fields,
hedgerows, carriages,
clergy and conformity.

her words thaw the barren land,
expose the narrow insularity
of a town built on niceties
and frozen birthday candle wishes.
she disdains that chill
undergarment, civility, bucks
at the taut reins of convention.

redemption is
a sentence strung
just so – and hung –
a lantern on a branch ,
chasing shadows into the dark
corners of the yard,
beaming brightness
into cloistered
secrets of the heart.

her pen a wand
that touches all with wonder.
an intellect so finely spun
it seeks its own society,
subsists on solitude,
shuns the ebb and flow,
the shallow soirées
of polite parlours.

her difference – once dared –
stands free and tall
and unabashed,
virginal and proud
clad all in white –
the colour of obstinacy.

there is no manual
to the heart
no rules are written down
a spirit’s wild desire,
a restless soul,
craves reciprocity,
her candle a naked flame
of longing held in check.

she has scaled the wall
of her captivity,
the disadvantages
of gender, to soar free,
to hover, iridescent,
a dragonfly on the breeze,
and release her passion
in a torrent of free verse.

and so – she writes,
in earnest fervour
like the sun –
to break the dawn
in splendour.

 

Picture from Emily Dickinson Museum.

swansong

Tags

carly simon, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, you're so vain

the softest soft focus
on the bleached out face
of the famous old folk singer,
her features, once so strong,
so definite, half erased
by highlighting,
as if in mid-dissolve
to the next shot.

insubstantial
as a wraith
when she used to be
so vital, so present,
grounded as a tree,
an earthiness to her
that connected to the stars
and sun and sky.

now she is stripped
of personality,
rendered generic,
blonde and ironed out,
almost to the point
of invisibility.

her song remains
her monument,
vibrant, trenchant, true,
her stairway
to immortality.

vanquished

Tags

bashfulbadgersblog, blog, carrie mathison, claire danes, homeland, peter quinn, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, rupert friend

he was broken, beaten,

almost into submission,

his limbs disobedient,

recalcitrant children

that won’t keep up,

that he has to drag along behind him.

 

his brain short-circuiting,

supplying the wrong words,

or nothing at all.

a blankness in his mind

where reason used to be.

 

it seems now

he is always

in the process

of falling.

and her arms

are weary

of catching him.

 

she has no strength left

to hold him up,

never mind the will.

he’s sapped it all

over long sad months

of not trying hard enough.

 

her debt can never be repaid.

the account is written in his blood.

his body bears the scars

of unrequited love.

 

can he help

wanting more

than a kind hand

on his shoulder,

a soft voice

in his ear every

now and then?

 

can he help

seeking to lay

his head down

on her beating heart,

to just close his eyes

for a minute,

and breathe her in?

Poem about Quinn & Carrie. Photo of Rupert Friend as Peter Quinn in Homeland.

Please also see secret squirrel blog on Quinn (Rupert Friend)/Carrie (Claire Danes)/Homeland.

‘wolfman agenda’

Tags

alejandro rose-garcia, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, shakey graves, wolfman agenda

it’s the lonesome sound

of the north wind outside

a mountain cabin

in a winter deep as forever

in an old fairy tale;

where a jilted lover hanged himself

one desperate christmas morning,

his feet swinging loose and free

in old sports socks from a used to be

a dollar store, threadbare at the heels

as the fabric of his life,

wrung out in its final spin.

it’s the lostness of a traveller

weary of new horizons and

hungry in his bones for home.

it’s the fierce and burning longing

that repossessed his soul.

Video is Shakey Graves’s ‘Wolfman Agenda’ from album Nobody’s Fool.

cassidy

Tags

70s, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, david cassidy, one of those nights, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

a song from a 70s heartthrob

effervesces from the speakers

with the sweet surprise

of sherbert fizzing lightly

on your tongue.

 

Video is David Cassidy and the Partridge Family performing ‘One of Those Nights’.