Personal Blogs

The poetry has been a tad neglected recently but this popped up today in my emails so I thought I would share it. We have lost out a lot in the last couple of years, I have said goodbye to two beloved aunts, my mum and several members of the extended family. I also lost a very good friend last year to cancer, whose name was Vincent, and his anniversary is coming up soon, so this struck a chord. I miss him very much and will continue to do so as he was one of the few people I could talk to about anything, and we used to have some great conversations. Time does not always heal but we do find ways to live with our losses and move on, to some degree. Ultimately, we have to, but I am thankful for having known all those lovely people and the good times we shared. Gone but not forgotten.

Time Does Not Bring Relief (Sonnet II)

By Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   
There are a hundred places where I fear   
To go,—so with his memory they brim.   
And entering with relief some quiet place   
Where never fell his foot or shone his face   
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

I was going through some work this morning and came across this poem I had written a while ago but never finished or posted it. So, I give it the once over and here it is. Mullach Dubh is an area near Bunbeg in Co Donegal, it has a beautiful beach, as have many places in Donegal, and there are huge blocks of granite on one side which were, at one time, part of the cliffs.

Granite - Mullach Dubh

Are these the fleshy forms of ancestral giants

petrified in time and set against the relentless flow.

Did they walk and tell tall tales

of ancient loves and battles,

fought and won,

or lost in the mythic mists of distant memory?

Were they once wizards who flew

with dragons that breathed fire.

Are you the voices that call to me

from twilight shores,

on long summer evenings?

Back to the vacated heart!  I have struggled with this one but think I might be on the right track now, so here it is, finished, almost finished, I think!  Although, I'm not entirely happy with 'tremble' but I will probably come back to it in the future. But in the meantime...

The Vacated Heart

A lonely wind meandered

through the hollow chambers

of the now vacated heart.

Fleshy forms, that once pulsed

with heat and passion,

have petrified into stony silence

and a will lies broken,

washed up,

on the unforgiving shore of life.

Moon-dark shadows haunt

the silent caverns

cast like lonely waves

that ebb and crash

over rocks.

Relentlessly counting

through the darkness -

to the returning light

that cracks

the concrete bleakness

and loosens Medusa's hold.

We're doing a CICM Spectacular Failure at work for February (this is the boxing themed one, I devised, wrote and presented) and one of the fun events is to write a love poem for Valentine's Day, so I put pen to paper and wrote a haiku and a sonnet.

Haiku

Sitting alone, night

falls, and warm embraces melt 

the hardening heart.

Sonnet

What can I say or tell you about love

When Shakespeare does it much better than me

Run off a line about the stars above,

Or tell a tale of how I, became we.

Create a metaphor, on winter’s cold,

How love sprang forth and melted the snow.

How I gave him my heart to have and hold

Playing Juliet to his Romeo. 

There are no words that can really describe

How true love feels and that moment of bliss

The magical spark it has to revive

You, when in their arms, and that first soft kiss.

So as you go forth, remember the stakes

And try not to be, another’s heart-break.

So, that was my busy afternoon at work! 

Talking about work, a friend of mine phoned me today to ask if I would help him with a job application this evening.  He's a bit of a handy man but hasn't had much work recently and saw a job for a street-sweeper advertised for the local council and thought he would apply.  I went in and looked at the form.  It's not a form, it's a 36 page booklet!  For a street cleaning job!  This is not a joke, it really was 36 pages long, this is totally insane!!  WTF is that about??

I spent a weekend recently filling in a 17 page application for a secretarial job, or an 'executive assistant' as it is called now.  It is the last application form I am ever going to fill in, from now on if they don't take a CV, I'm not even going to apply. I had also applied for another job as a Head Receptionist in a hotel where I have worked on and off for 10 years.  I didn't get it.  The criteria listed experience of reception work, hotel work and supervising staff, all of which I had.  But the job was given to someone who has never supervised staff, never worked in a hotel or done reception work!  

I was having a conversation with a work colleague recently, (he's in with the same agency as me) when I realised that the salary I am on now is exactly the same as it was in a job I was doing 10 years ago, for basically the same work.  This realisation along with all the recent joys of job-hunting have pissed me off big time.  So, I've been making a few decisions about work for the future.  So, along with the CV, I have decided I am not doing agency work again either, no-one is making money off my talents again except me. I am also not going to give anyone the benefit of my abilities or experience unless they pay a decent salary.  I would rather do minimum wage and I will!

Another receptionist/admin job I applied for sent me this lovely email:

Thank you for your interest in the Receptionist/Admin Assistant position at ...... We have reviewed your application. Unfortunately, you are not the right fit for the position at this time. 

So, this is what I emailed back to them:

I'm on a roll tonight, 3 posts in a row.  Well, I haven't posted in a while but now that the books have been put away the creative juices have started flowing again. This poem is from my level 3 creative writing course and has been hanging around for a while.  One of the things I learned from the course is that writing evolves over time and like good wine needs time to mature.  I got good feedback on this when I first wrote it and I hope I have improved it in this version. This could be the final version, I'll not know until I come back to it at some point in the future and see if there's something I want to change..I feel I'm missing a line or two after 'disapproval' but I can't think of anything I want to put in there yet.  Anyway, here it is....enjoy (I hope)

The Awakening

Ssshh!  She is sleeping, peacefully

under the frosted covers

and all is still, except 

the rhythmic cycle of her breath.

The children stand in silent contemplation,

swayed by the rise and fall of her chest,

her breasts: waiting.

Waiting for the light to lengthen the day

Waiting for the heat to penetrate the cold mantle of her skin.

Waiting to be called from the darkness

where they rest, to rise and dress

Her.

In a gorgeous cloak of velvet green.

Green!  Those greens!  Those bold and brazen greens!

Lively limes lust over flashy emeralds

but obstinate olive holds the ground

as sassy sage flirts outrageously

with dark broody bottles and precocious jades.

Vivacious, verdant mosses,

mass and march over field and hill,

in a luscious invasion of tree and hedgerow, 

Hanging with happy orange and laughing yellows

as those radical reds antagonize

the philosophical purples in a

cacophonous discourse on colour;

while blousy blues look on in disapproval.

Look! look! A snowdrop!

She is awake!

One of John Jones on his anniversary.  There's no date on this poem so I'm not sure when it was written.  It's called Mr Fantasy and I've taken the liberty of doing some light editing on it.  I hope no one minds!

It was around the time

That beer had a password and

the mattress was strained 

with the thoughts kept from priests,

That I first ever listened 

to the quality of your wisdom.

I had no means of understanding

the sadness from your guitar,

for hadn't I yet to compete

in a game that wasn't cricket.

I hovered; and wasn't to know

there would be blood on the mistletoe,

and no one in the bandstands,

save for Timothy

clutching a well-chilled bottle

of shoplift wine.

He would be looking forward

to the soup run

and I would have to pray

to the moon for him

because it's not much fun

either side of the ladle;

That the kids in our footsteps

would wear badges and earrings,

and all their heads 

would be full of emptiness.

A while back I put up a poem written by a young man named John Jones who died at the tender age of 22.  His nephew found the poem on the blog and contacted me and then put me in touch with his mother who is John's twin sister.  We've been keeping in touch and she has given me permission to put up the rest of the poems so I said I would do that over the month of December.   The poems were all written back in the 1970's and this is the first of them. 

Conditional Surrender

Some want

A curfew on laughter

Graffitti void of frolic

Oil slicks for seafaring dodo's

Crimes for every handicap

Multiple pile-ups on easy terms

Mutual interest in select perversion

An empty ledge for every desperate man

Others

An audience for the crocus

An encore for the rain

A meal for every stomach

An end to human pain,

A mother for each baby

A truth for every dream

Lovers for the lonely

Peaches with ice-cream

Stalemate again:

In trenches near and far

January, October 1976

This poem is dedicated to all those lost loves who have broken our hearts and sometimes their own too.  The title comes from a text message I received from my daughter one day, the sky was very heavy and dark and she had said in her text the clouds were skyscraper black.  I don't know if she mispelled something or if she meant that but it struck me immediately as a great description, and this poem just poured out it.

Skyscraper Black

Searching across a moon dark shore

Leaving midnight traces in the sand

I follow the trail of my lost love

To this distant other-worldly land

I feel the grief of other lonely souls

Moving in shadowed circles around my head

Crying for life and dreams not realized,

For hopes and wishes now long dead.

For I was loved, though he is now gone,

My heart remains clasped firmly in his hand

And feeling his presence still, I follow

His ghostly foot trails across the sand.

Now, standing alone along this darken'd shore,

Lost between his reality and my dream

I wait for the sun to rise and lighten

The skyscraper blackness in my soul

This poem is quite a heavy piece, I had always envisioned it as a performance piece and it's for all those who have experienced a trauma they would rather forget.

Brainwashing

I wish that I could wash my brain

And make it clean and free from pain

I wish that I could wash my brain

And wash away the hurt and stain.

Brainwashing, brainwashing

Brainwashing, brainwashing.

I wish that I could wash my brain

And make it clean and free from shame

I wish that I could wash my brain

And wash away the dirt and pain.

Brainwashing, brainwashing

Brainwashing, brainwashing.

I wish that I could wash my brain

And make it clean and free from stain

I wish that I could wash my brain

And wash away the hurt and shame

Brainwashing, brainwashing

Brainwashing, brainwashing.

I wish that I could wash my brain

And make it clean and new again

I wish that I could wash my brain

But I can't....

I was in France a few years ago and the journey back took me through Normandy where all the WW2 cemeteries are. I visited the British and Canadian one in Bayeux, and the American one at Caen and, after leaving Caen, I noticed a signpost for a German one at Orglondes, so I went to see it. Well, I have never experienced anything like the atmosphere of deep sorrow that hung over the place and, even now, when I think about it, it still gets to me.

I know some people might have a problem with that but I make no apologies for what I felt. When you walk around and see the ages of the young men who died and that goes for all the cemeteries, it really brings it home to you what an insanity and a complete waste of humanity war is. The average age was about 19 and, at the time, my youngest son was 21 and I thought about him and his friends going out to fight a war and, to be honest, you could hardly have left them alone with a box of matches never mind sending them into the battlefields of Northern France.

Orglandes 

In the Battle for Normandy, now long over,

this is the story of the losing side,

visible in the final resting places

of those known, and Known Only Unto God.

No glorifying memorials,

no quotes, no fine speeches.

Below a bell tower, an apologetic sign

Remains, a grey stone marker, six by one...

Onto the thousands, you fought and died,

you chased the dark dream, another ‘old lie’.

Youth sacrificed to an ideology,

that robbed so many of their humanity.

‘I did not think, I just went along’

‘My friends all joined so I did too

A boy’s own adventure, we thought’

‘I was afraid not to, I followed the crowd’. 

‘I believed in it, I was serving my country

I was proud.  I don’t believe now'.

So full of regret now, weighted in sorrow,

bearing down on me to grieve the tomorrow

that never came for this Lost Generation:

This is the story of the losing side,

that reveals the darkness that lives in us yet.

That negates the claims we make to civilization,

and reminds us to think:

Lest We Forget.

I wrote this poem last night. I was trying to get to sleep and I started to think about Gortin Glen where I like to go to ramble around and get away from the stresses of life.

I was trying to relax my mind and unwind my body, and then the first line came to me and so I got up again to write this.   

Gortin Glen 

Standing 

In the quiet of the forest

Breathing in -

the silent scent of pine and fir

Softening

the hard edges of a life on edge.

Breathing out -

Tension and tightness unwinding

with each tentative step

on the needled floor,

as moisture laden mosses

drip gently into rivulets, running

to a strengthening stream,

gathering all the cares and

worries of the world away.

Away,

to dissipate in distant seas,

as I step softly across

the sweetened grass.

Gently now, slowly now,

My soul is restored.

This is another poem I wrote which I use it to remind myself to challenge my own thinking. I have often found that very few people ever challenge their own thinking and when you question them on it, it often turns out that their beliefs are not their own but what they have been told, or brought up to believe.  I'm often told I think too much but I think we don't really think enough about everything.

Belief

Ask yourself a question;

What do I believe?

Think about it for a while,

Then ask yourself - Why?

Then write it all down.

Turn it into a poem

Or even a play,

Set it to music  

Make it a song and sing it out, 

loud and long.

Then ask yourself another question;

What if it’s all wrong?

Then think about that.