Poetry Club 1

The Saturday Poetry Club

I'll be posting poems and automatic writings every Saturday.
If anyone wants to submit their poem, however simple or elaborate, please feel free to do so in the comments section of this post.
You don't need to leave your name.


Rubbing It In

The silence of a well kept room
only made worse Betty's loneliness.
*****************************************

Savage Family

In the jungle of his playroom
five year old Tommy rode a tiny tiger
his flawless hands squeezing the giant teddy
and riding with the beasts he was fearless.

In the jungle of her kitchen
thirty year old Maudie sat astride her breakfast stool
her parched hands holding her lovers last letter
and weeping she listened to Tommy

In the jungle of his office
thirty five year old Michael gazed at girls
his empty hands tapping out a love song
and lost he sketched wonderful escape plans.

In their jungle house high up on the hills of Wittering
the family nested...
***************************************************************

Birds of a Feather

The boy down the road
the one with the funny legs
skipped
when the girl down the road
the one with the funny arms
waved.
*********************************************

Garden

Nuts on a plate
A flower growing crooked
cracks in the pipe
that's my garden.
***********************************************

Surprise

Suddenly I swallowed a light
it fairly took my breath from me
its crackling sweetness
soothing my rancid throat.
***********************************************

Needs Not Manners

The squirrel without manners or thought
crash landed on the delicate bird table
its contents the squirrels breakfast.
And like a starving man he scooped every nut and seed
and pocketed a few for later in his day.
****************************************************************

Friends

Little Tilly's head left a dent in the ceiling
when big Roger made her laugh.
They spent the afternoon looking up...
*****************************************************************

Clive Stiffjoint Part 2 (Audio)

I'm not a natural story teller, so this short story is a surprise to me.
Part one is here if you wish to look for it.
I'm working on part three.

Writing this has given me a tremendous amount of pleasure and I've taken quite a liking to Clive, I only hope he doesn't go and do something silly like fall in love with me. Because after all, I am not responsible for my characters actions or what they say. Those things are left in the capable hands of my Muse.
Inf act she is with me right now yelling at me to look into my heart and write. I can't do that I say and please will you leave me alone.
She's staring at me, willing and daring me to cry everything out, but I won't because no good ever really comes from allowing others to see the dreadful things which weigh us down.
I'll write more later...

Do Not Eat

I've been perusing me cupboards and here is a list of what I do not have and why.

Tinned Rice Pudding:
It is anathema to me on account of it being too white and not containing bits of lemon peel.
Tinned Soup:
Because it is not soup as I know it. My soup needs a fork because sometimes it has a bits of cabbage in it. The thought of being tied down and having a spoonful of Heinz Tomato Soup dripped onto my lips keeps me awake at night.
Cook-In Sauces:
I bought one in 1985 and fainted when I opened the tin. I swore never again.
Canned Meat:
Because it reminds me of the War. Corned Beef is ok if one closes one's eyes and thinks of England. But canned Ham is unforgivable and full of water.
Instant Custard:
The country's supply of it should be chucked into a landfill site or poured over giggling women in baths who are doing it for charity and to get their picture in the paper. Do not use this product.
Tubed Garlic:
I must chop and mash my garlic otherwise I can't sing in Italian. I eat bucketloads of real garlic. I do not have any friends.
Cake Mixes:
If I see someone in Sainsbury's even LOOKING at these appalling things I tell the manager to evict them from the store. To make a cake is the best thing on earth. I don't trust people who buy Swiss Rolls.

And perhaps the foodstuff that makes me go most mental is

Cheap Sausages:
Pale insipid pinky winkies without any balls. When I see a bad sausage in Sainsbury's I spin round shouting obscenities, I cry out for the in-store butcher to be relocated and I weep for the wretched animal that had to be put to sleep just so people with no class or money can have a fry-up.
A real Woman's sausage is so powerful you have to kill it to eat it. A real sausage lives on your plate, it breathes and looks at you with contempt, it dares you to eat it.
I kill dozens of the blighters every month. And they love me for it. I float them in cider, I prop them up and against some mash, I slice them into a risotto and I squeeze them into a finger roll. And at all times the sausage in question is the best I can afford.
So on your knees you Cumberland Ring you, try and get the better of me you string of Toulouse, get me in a lather if you dare, you pound of big fat Venison bangers.
And melt me with your long lusciousness you violent Frankfurter.

I will at some time post a piece about what goes on in my kitchen.
And it's not all culinary.
Thank You.

Poor Old Girl

I simply MUST have a word.
With all that's occurring in the Horsehound house at the moment it will come as no surprise to you that I am feeling a wee bit overwrought. Indeed I felt so brittle this a.m. that I had to venture into the garden and talk to the birds. They of course dissed me as any sensible bird would, but to be laughed at by one's very own cat was just too much to bear. Yes, on re-entering the house that no good tyke Monty, ignored me plaintive cries and stuck his bonce into a plate of Sardines."Monty my son" I said "Mummy's all alone and in dire need of a cuddle". "Shut up loser" he said "Or I'll scratch your varicose veins".
He loves me really.

On a more upbeat note I do have something to look forward to this week, that being, watching my beloved England taking on the U.S.A on Wednesday. Course it's only a friendly, but I'll still put me footie shirt on and throw missiles at the telly.
I will, as with all England games, lob swear words around me front room, shoot to me size fours any time we come within half a mile of scoring and I'll definitely scream blue murder if we lose. But it makes me happy and keeps me out of the kitchen for ninety minutes.

On my rain splattered agenda today, cooking, doing industrial type things with hammers and putting petroleum jelly under me eyes on account of the rings which are present on account of late nights and early mornings.
I soldier on.

If I get the time I'll be posting some Audio. It's me reading the second part of Clive Stiffjont. I do sound terribly drunk.

What else?
Oh yes, I'm thinking, just thinking mind you, of joining a poetry club either here in Essex or in the bowels of the Smoke so as I can read out loud some of the great poems what I write.
It might be fruitful and it might even make me laugh.
Now that WOULD be worth the train fare...

My Soldiers Are With Me

Someone has asked me how I write my poems.
I can't control my episodes as I call them. Brief blazing patches of time when an almost anarchic creativity sets up camp inside of me. The arty soldiers dressed in cobalt blue and rose storm my otherwise sane buttresses releasing every colourful feeling in my body. Whilst at the same time keeping a vigilant eye on the copious blackness of the other place.
In other words I have an imagination.


Shocking New Love

Mr Pennington heard the first crack and dismissed it as hearing problems
After the second crack he stood stock-still silenced by the thunder of new love
His heart was being handled
set free
Something was squeezing it
just to see how much life was still there
And old blood flooded his face
and steeped in this good red blood
Lonely out of date Mr Pennington wondered 'what'll I do now?'
***********************************************************************

Happy

Up with Monty and the pigeons.
A cold quick breakfast
Hot fast thoughts.
Dressed in red in seconds
Whoosh! I'm Gone!
**********************

Wasted Life

Forgotten Mr Worthy aged 72
spent all day searching for happiness
A dusty diary and all was revealed
Days and days of a loveless life pencilled tidily and without drama
a 2/6 book of misery.
************************

Regrets

When I got lost yesterday
I found a sun lighting up my path
and on it were strewn fragments of past maps and plans
pebbles from untaken holidays
photographs I should have snapped
sex I wanted to have
laughs that should have deafened me
and
love that should have rocked me.
**************************************

Hope

My room with its pallid death drapes
hems me in
this Abaddon, this Gehenna, this hell
But through breaks in the curtains
and through the cracks in my splintered mind
I see light.
************

Prostitute

The legless old lady steeped in heady perfume
weighed down by heavy pearls
twists her mouth into fantastical shapes,
bringing down onto the velvet table her translucent head awash with love dreams.
Clenching knotted fingers she bangs and bangs and bangs till she can bang no more.
Her reddened knuckles standing out like splattered blood against the cool white of her pavement hands.
******

Lone Sparrow

And one lone sparrow isn't being deterred from his natural actions by the blanket of frost which covers the grass in my front garden
His tawny head swoops down
then shoots up
then swoops down again
as he pecks and digs and drills through the ice on his very own lot
his very own plot
within the slab of my snow clothed green

Then a flutter
a sound
so he stops
head darts from here to there
a shake of feathers
a re-adjustment
seconds to sense
then still again

A pale grey pigeon is comfortable on the wall
The sparrow hops and springs
spindly legs taking him to the mossy cloaked bottom of a broken gate post
then off he flies to another lot and another plot to wile his time away.

Mr Timpson

Crewe's blue. And so is Gordon Brown I would imagine.
Last night was possibly one of the worst in the Labour party's history. The once sexy Labour stronghold has been taken in a most violent fashion and now lies in the capable Tory arms of Mr Timpson, see above, whilst Miss Dunwoody lies on her back exhausted.
What a monumental balls-up..

Poor old Gordo, waits umpteen years to get the top job, then messes up big time. After all his errors I didn't think his political life could get any worse.
How wrong I was.

Labour have had their sublime day on the sunlounger with Mr Blair now they're huddling under a well worn blanket on a chilly beach with a miserable old mate. And this mate is going to ruin what's left of their sojourn into the balmy hot world of big time politics. They have to desert him and quick, and then head for the car otherwise they're all going to get cold.

The reverberating clang of Brown's death knell must be ding-donging in his ears as he works out what to do and say next. And I'd bet my best handbag that Labour M.Ps are busily checking and revising their cv's just incase they're out of a job in a couple of years. Or sooner.

The Conservatives however must be licking the lips and getting wet mouthed at the thought of Gordo lying immobilised, outstretched and stunned on the bloodied pavement outside Number Ten. Whilst David Cameron's wife will be wondering how big the kitchen and bedrooms are.

So unless Mr Brown can turn the party's fortunes around he and his cohorts will again be polishing the opposition back benches. Their bums did a good job for eighteen years, now it looks as if the Mrs Mopps of the political world will be doing it all over again.
But I wonder who their supervisor will be?

I also wonder what Cherie Blair is doing?
A jig I shouldn't wonder.

Thanks to Terry for commenting on Monday's post. Methinks a grand man in entering stage right.

Enter Stage Left...

As I sip my pre-dawn tea, my thoughts are on our beleaguered Prime Minister.

I see the dour Scot looking even more dour as, with his mighty shoulders drooping, he imagines the scathing headlines if Labour loses the Nantwich by-election today.
The election, brought about by the untimely death of the bullish blonde babe Gwyneth Dunwoody, couldn't have come at a more inopportune time for Labour. Limping behind in the polls and swallowing a succession of vitriolic attacks by Madam Blair and Mr Prescott, Brown has been left bloodied and rather out of it.
Meanwhile the light of Conservative leader Mr Cameron has gone from strength to strength, from a tiny twinkling fairy light to a massive footie floodlight. All eyes are now upon the old Etonian.
But what about poor old Gordo.
Where did it all go wrong?

I think it all went pear shaped for him after the death of John Smith in May 1994.

He should have fought harder and longer and smiled a lot more, after all he was up against the flair, panache and talents of the ambitious, hungry, star-in-waiting, Mr Tony Blair.
And the consequent crowning of Blair as leader put the big Scot in his place. His place playing second fiddle to Blair. It's rather sad and kind of pathetic that a man of Browns 'towering' intellect was always destined to play understudy to the Larry Olivier of politics, and therefore never winning any accolades, gongs or friends.
But we'll see what he's really made of in the early hours of tomorrow morning when the results start coming in.
If the voters of Nantwich decide to smack Labour in the mouth on account of the ten pence tax thing, then I can only see more and more vultures circling and salivating over the fabulous bushy hair of the handsome understudy.

My tea has gone cold.