I’m finally starting to ease my way back into writing. Ideas are coming, and I’m over coming the laziness inherent in me that stops me from fleshing them out. I’m trying to get up early to have some “writing time”, perhaps I should just have an extra hour in bed. We’ll see.
At least I’m reading again as well.
Have to recommend Jen Campbell‘s Hungry Ghost Festival, the recent Rialto, Stop Sharpening your knives, New Roger McGough, John Clegg’s Antler , Confusion Species by Suzannah Evans and a few more..Names escape me at the moment and the books are all by my bed upstairs. I don’t want to wake Rachael. (That’s my wife, not another book title)
While I am on a recommendation trip, I can heartily recommend the new Blood Everywhere album, Method. A track called House Is a Feeling is my current ear worm. It deserves to be a hit in the hit parade everywhere.
Anyway, now you’ve spent all your cash, here’s some things from me.
I’ve been working on this for a while. I thought I had finished it, but perhaps not..
Shed Door
Paint kettles and brushes dried solid
next to bags of nails, extension cords and screwdriver sets
pushed to the back and gummed in the works
settled in with a video recorder minus its flex.
A silenced orchestra of saws up on hooks, and
strings holding up Olympic rings of masking tape.
Each chisel nestled in its guard and box,
waiting to chip through, and step up to the plate.
No recordings exist of the swearing and banged fingers
caught up in the debate between
the precision of hand drills,
or the power tools’ arguments for speed.
I don’t want to open it
for fear of letting out a millilitre of your breath
stuck in jam-jars of screws, mixed in the marrow
in the bones of a mouse caught in the cobwebs.
And on an entirely different theme, here’s another one at a stage close to finished.
Selfless Cars (Title subject to change)
I remain quietly convinced
that cars start with a different noise at night.
The ignition goes sotto voce,
and they pull away in carpet slippers, quiet.
Come on, lean in with me now,
while this street, all the streets for that matter,
is still. Listen in, glass at the window:
You will hear nothing from the motors.
Yes cars will rush past;
they are up and running about,
carried away with themselves,
but in leaving their watch they will not shout.
Through argument or by design
they stifle the exhaust pipes’ cough.
Keep themselves to themselves
as the designated driver draws off.
Supply trucks up the arteries and trunk roads
won’t give it the full roar.
Down the dead carriages at night
they muffle both barrels and double bores.
Motorcycles couldn’t give two shits either way.
This one feels like it’s about my writing process, it might not be though, it could just be utter bollocks.
Conditions
Get the ducks in a row,
and the stars aligned.
Keep bear markets afloat
to nurture the right conditions
for creating your baby.
Keep a weather eye and watch for a
fair wind, down hill.
With hoops to jump through..
be sure to look before you leap.
Leave to rise like dough,
warm the pot.
Just do it.
