Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts

2019-04-24

NaPoWriMo - 2019 #23 - Reference works




Reference works

So... Edward finally has the book.  It came
in Amazon's robust brown cardboard packaging
and the woman who lives downstairs took it in.
Thank you, says Ed, when he gets in from work
at seven p.m. but the woman — is it Carol? —
is blushing again and disappears.  Leaving
Edward with his box which he opens...

How to do anything!

(with diagrams)

This is the business -- and by business
he does not mean answering tech. support
queries for clueless noobs for eight hours every
day at what works out very close to minimum
wage, but business: the business of business
of getting stuff done and getting on.  Here we go...

How to debug Windows(tm) system-level drivers using a virtual machine.

Well perhaps this isn't where to start, let's try:

How to change a '64 or '65 Aston Martin gearbox.

--and the diagrams are great! You can see exactly
how to remove the clutch plate.  If only Edward
did not drive a smart car with a pushed-in wing.
Maybe the index is the thing?

How to sex aardvarks...

How to damp a gas-cooled reactor...

How to weld titanium in the vacuum of space...

All useful stuff but Ed to some degree
is aware of his place in the scheme of things
and this is not his metier:

How to turn a profit growing swedes...

How to hold a spade...

How to milk a cow...

How to duel with various blades...

And now Edward's starting to get angry
all he wants answered is one simple question
but is there an entry for How to meet nice girls?
Is it under "N"?  Is it under "G"?

Is this book even alphabetical?  Well nothing
for it but to read the whole damn thing.  Except
the doorbell rings and it is what's-her-face?
Karen?  Carla?  Katie!  That was it.  And it seems
she has made too much mushroom stroganoff
and would he like...?  Edward has too much
to do.  Too much to read...
Now, let's get down to this:

Chapter one:  How to recognise the obvious...




 


2018-12-19

Review: Paul Brookes "Please Take Change"

Paul Brookes is a poet I know through the internet.  We used to hang out on Poetry Circle, an online forum...

Before I begin this review I must reveal that I live a charmed life.  I have always found it easy to get jobs, and places I have worked have been more akin magical kingdoms, than grey Kafkaesque distopias.

I try to remain aware that this isn't true for everyone (should be... isn't) but awareness is one thing and knowing what living it is like would be something else again.  The main power of this book is it gives you a window into exactly that, and furthermore it paints subtly, neither glorifying, nor playing up to the grimness.

From the biography on the back we discover Paul has been a security guard, postman, admin assistant, call centre advisor, lecturer, poetry performer and now works as a shop assistant.  He has recently been interviewing almost every poet in the UK in  The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews and very interesting they are (you may find yourself, or even myself, in there if you look hard enough...)

This collection draws heavily on Paul's employment history.  Not all of those are the most glamorous of jobs (except "poetry performer" — literally the most glamorous job there is...) and you might expect there's a degree of arduous toil, unsympathetic bosses, wearying drudgery to be expressed.  In this you'd be right, and these poems do reveal a world of quotidian working days.

However, also running through this are threads of razor-sharp observation, human warmth and humour which keep the collection alive and make reading through the 75-odd short poems a light and rewarding experience.

Let's start with:

workaround

some systems don’t work
so you have to do
a work around
when this becomes the system
I don’t know
my bus
takes a detour for roadworks
or accident
something tells me
this is not temporary

I love the sheer universality of the experience related here, I have encountered the same thing in fields as separated as software design and cafeteria queuing; my home town had a "temporary car park" for four decades; and I've even worked for major international corporation entirely devoted to working around the things it failed to address previously.

Also the skillful way everyday language is put to work to illustrate the general principle, but simultaneously narrate the concrete example, is typical of the poems here.  Another that demonstrates this point is:

The List

Their companion gone
old men stoop lower
with less in their basket,

try to recall her shopping list,
was it Robinson's marmalade,
or Hartley's lemonade?

Spam. No she never liked spam.
Never enough fat on bacon.
Yes, I need a receipt, young man

Which is touching, humorous, and heartbreaking in roughly equal measure.  People who do or don't need receipts are a recurring theme, almost a running joke throughout this collection.

These two poems are perhaps a little unusual in using a symbol as a metaphor for something larger.  More pieces are essentially biographical, in the sense of relating wonderfully observed moments and characters from the author's working life, take:

Two Lads

at my till. I put first lad's
goods through while second

says to his mate,
I'm gonna get a kitchen knife
and rip your twatting head off.

Blip

I'm gonna put it in shoebox
Set fire to it. Piss on the remains.

Blip.

Do you want a receipt? I ask
the first lad.

There's the slyly comic receipt again :-) and also here is the acute observation of real everyday behaviour, skilfully juxtaposed against the mundanity of the till queue.

This is a fascinating collection.  The early copy I had was a little unevenly edited, but I hope that will be sorted out in the final edition.  The scenes from everyday life are compelling, and the understated humour and good will with which they are presented lifts them well above the mundane to a plane of their own.

The conflicts, insults and travails presented here are something to be accepted, but not surrendered to, and the ultimate message we take from this is one of optimism and — I said it before — good humour.

Lets just end with this:

Embarrassed

One of two young girls with flushed cheeks
who buy cans of coke and energiser asks

Please can I buy a lotto scratch card, #7?
I ring for the manager as per rule.

He asks the girls for i.d.
No. I haven't. I'm eighteen.

We need to see your I.D. he says.
You're an embarrassment, one replies

How dare you embarrass me?
Both girls flounce out the shop.

Did you hear what she called me?
Says the manager, smiling ear to ear.

Please Take Change is published by  Cyberwit.

Paul's other books are available here.


2018-04-23

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day twenty-one - The unfinished businessman




The unfinished businessman



makes his money doing business in inverted commas
and the far-East, dealing with situations
and anyone too slow to pull away their hand
from his tanned but slightly all too greasing palm.
He has been rumoured to deal the odd card
from the bottom of his PowerPoint deck
although nothing can be proved

but pragmatism is our business
as he likes to explain
to raw and still a touch too ethical recruits
over sushi in some backstreet little place
where he will tip the waitress heavily
but also slap her arse
should the opportunity present

I've probably just made her rent
for the week
 he'll say
on the way back to the office
and this is essentially my point
that's the nature of the world:
some people work,
some people pay and now...

I need to have an informal chat
with the police commissioner see if you
can grab a bicycle rickshaw and I'll see you
back in the office but remember:
we need to be cunning, although... if anybody asks
it is "superior domain knowledge"
that gives us our edge.

2018-01-30

New Muses for a Posthuman Age



New Muses for a Posthuman Age








I follow a filk singer/songwriter called Dr Mary Crowell and on her album: Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour she has a song: Courting My Muse.  This track inspired me to write a sonnet sequence about how the Muses might be updated for the 21st century.

So far, so good, nothing unusual there, I've written sonnet sequences before...

...however when I came to record this, I had a problem.  Muses are female and plural, where I am male and singular.  So I hatched a plan.  I put out a call to various female poetry friends asking them whether they would like to be one of my Muses (I phrased it a little more carefully than that.)

To my delight friends signed up in sufficient numbers to be able to record all nine Muses, plus a group effort for my bonus "Omnes" sonnet that rounds things off at the end, and I was doubly delighted when Mary Crowell leapt at the opportunity to participate (bringing the whole thing full circle...)

I've spent some time editing these together with sound effects and music to complement the poems.  I also recorded myself narrating between the various goddesses in my guise as "The Mortal".

I have to say I'm very pleased with the result.  There's something uniquely satisfying in hearing talented voices read your work back to you, and it also is also educational, bringing out things in the poems that wouldn't be there in my reading.



Cast in order of appearance:

The Mortal
A man, like any other...
Ian Badcoe
This is my blog you are already reading...
Facebook
Twitter

Calliope
Goddess of Complex Computation and Difficult Projects
Natalie Shaw
Natalie Shaw is a poet who also works for the Government Digital Service. She is @redbaronski on Twitter and writes very occasionally on her blog: https://natalieshawpoems.wordpress.com/

Clio
OMG of Celebrity Gossip and Fan-fic
N Magennis
N Magennis is an author and artist. She lives in Argyll. https://nikkimagennis.com/

Euterpe
Rock Goddess
Amy Kinsman
Amy Kinsman is a poet and playwright from Manchester, England. As well as being the founding editor of Riggwelter Press, they are associate editor of Three Drops From A Cauldron and the host of the regular Sheffield-based open mic, Gorilla Poetry. Their debut poetry pamphlet & was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2017 and is due out in April this year.
Facebook
Twitter: @manykinsmen

Erato
Goddess of Personal Development and Self Image
Juliet Anthill
Juliet Antill lives on the Isle of Mull with a SORN'd Fiat Punto and a cat called Alice. She has poems coming out in Magma and Prole this Spring.

Melpomene
Goddess of Heartbreaking News
Dr Mary Crowell
Dr. Mary Crowell is a geeky musician from north Alabama who is very active in the filk community. Her doctorate is in music composition, and she teaches music theory, composition, music appreciation, and piano at a local community college as well as at her home studio. Mary loves to write songs about mythology, gaming, coffee, beagles, and zombies. You can find her gaming album Acolytes of the Machine & Other Gaming Stories (2012) on Pandora Radio. Her latest album (funded by Kickstarter) is Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour (2017).
Patreon
http://marycrowell.com/

Terpsichore
Goddess of Body Modification and Bionics
Jenn Zed (Cyborg Edition)
Ms. Zed is an artist and writer who lives in Bath, England, with her cat. You can view her Portfolio at https://jennzedblog.wordpress.com/

Thallia
Goddess of Lies we tell Ourselves
Rosemary Badcoe
Rosemary Badcoe’s first collection, Drawing a Diagram, is available from Kelsay Books or directly from her. She is editor of the online poetry magazine Antiphon and has been published in a range of magazines.

Urania
Goddess of Space Shots and Surprisingly Distant Robots
Brenda Levy Tate
Brenda celebrates life in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, where she wanders outdoors at midnight, camera and tripod at the ready. She's especially drawn to astrophotography, so Urania is her particular Muse. She was a senior high drama and English teacher for endless years. Now she's a cat lady, poet, occasional singer and cheerful retiree.
Her book: Wingflash
brendatate.com

Polyhymnia
Goddess of Misc.
and Everything
and Holism
and Interdisciplinary Studies
and All That...
Jenn Zed
Biography as above

Credits read by
David Callin
David Callin lives on the Isle of Man.

Additional vocals
Rosemary Badcoe



Sound effects acknowledgements

All sound effects were downloaded from freesound.org under either The Creative Commons Attribution LicenseThe Creative Commons Public domain License, The Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License or The Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.  Changes were made such as fading-in and -out, tempo/frequency shifts, noise reduction etc...

The effects used can be found at:

Calliope:
https://freesound.org/people/Christopherderp/sounds/364531/
https://freesound.org/people/Erdie/sounds/27858/

https://freesound.org/people/brendan89/sounds/321552/
https://freesound.org/people/metrostock99/sounds/345078/
https://freesound.org/people/Snapper4298/sounds/183497/
https://freesound.org/people/Ali_6868/sounds/384911/
https://freesound.org/people/BigDaddyD/sounds/54829/
https://freesound.org/people/Cribbler/sounds/377083/
https://freesound.org/people/YleArkisto/sounds/349654/
https://freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/129745/
https://freesound.org/people/Sevin7/sounds/271039/

Clio:
https://freesound.org/people/jayfrosting/sounds/333402/
https://freesound.org/people/drotzruhn/sounds/405203/
https://freesound.org/people/btherad2000/sounds/328045/
https://freesound.org/people/satanicupsman/sounds/149140/
https://freesound.org/people/Pandos/sounds/362353/
https://freesound.org/people/jayfrosting/sounds/333384/
https://freesound.org/people/unchaz/sounds/150957/
https://freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/82361/
https://freesound.org/people/kukla/sounds/94036/
https://freesound.org/people/loudernoises/sounds/332808/
https://freesound.org/people/Adam_N/sounds/324892/

Euterpe:
https://freesound.org/people/luis_s/sounds/328971/
https://freesound.org/people/pitx/sounds/16188/
https://freesound.org/people/martian/sounds/83155/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182015/

https://freesound.org/people/karolist/sounds/370934/
https://freesound.org/people/straget/sounds/404687/
https://freesound.org/people/abett/sounds/316703/

Erato:
https://freesound.org/people/11linda/sounds/393600/
https://freesound.org/people/LasciviousGork/sounds/168132/
https://freesound.org/people/acrober/sounds/86112/
https://freesound.org/people/Setuniman/sounds/155256/
https://freesound.org/people/bulbastre/sounds/103991/
https://freesound.org/people/golosiy/sounds/107932/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182015/
https://freesound.org/people/safadancer/sounds/182018/
https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/195286/
https://freesound.org/people/btherad2000/sounds/328045/

Melpomene:
https://freesound.org/people/pgi/sounds/212606/
https://freesound.org/people/pgi/sounds/212600/
https://freesound.org/people/gkillhour/sounds/267222/
https://freesound.org/people/FillMat/sounds/384401/
https://freesound.org/people/pushkin/sounds/241590/
https://freesound.org/people/visions68/sounds/351333/
https://freesound.org/people/copyc4t/sounds/218372/
https://freesound.org/people/maycuddlepie/sounds/330298/

Terpsichore:
https://freesound.org/people/sevenbsb/sounds/349398/
https://freesound.org/people/FlatHill/sounds/324756/
https://freesound.org/people/stomachache/sounds/274516/
https://freesound.org/people/Vosvoy/sounds/139026/
https://freesound.org/people/botha9johann/sounds/326049/
https://freesound.org/people/SpiceProgram/sounds/365034/
https://freesound.org/people/chinpen/sounds/381959/
https://freesound.org/people/renatalmar/sounds/264981/
https://freesound.org/people/Reitanna/sounds/344001/
https://freesound.org/people/Hybrid_V/sounds/321215/

Thalia:
https://freesound.org/people/toam/sounds/198625/
https://freesound.org/people/esperar/sounds/170781/
https://freesound.org/people/Vosvoy/sounds/139026/
https://freesound.org/people/DJames619/sounds/389247/
https://freesound.org/people/OldSchool_/sounds/408768/
https://freesound.org/people/fisu/sounds/350619/
https://freesound.org/people/pyro13djt/sounds/337997/
https://freesound.org/people/kiddpark/sounds/201159/
https://freesound.org/people/benjaminharveydesign/sounds/366099/
https://freesound.org/people/f_ilippo/sounds/59194/

Urania:
https://freesound.org/people/the_very_Real_Horst/sounds/223419/
https://freesound.org/people/Corsica_S/sounds/52752/
https://freesound.org/people/Oddworld/sounds/125105/
https://freesound.org/people/Wesselorg/sounds/408442/
https://freesound.org/people/digifishmusic/sounds/54190/
https://freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/sounds/70986/
https://freesound.org/people/primeval_polypod/sounds/158894/

Polyhymnia:
https://freesound.org/people/chipfork/sounds/50087/
https://freesound.org/people/DCPoke/sounds/387978/
https://freesound.org/people/ProjectsU012/sounds/334685/
https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/160469/
https://freesound.org/people/MrAuralization/sounds/259292/
https://freesound.org/people/are16ocean/sounds/117597/

Omnes:
https://freesound.org/people/benjaminharveydesign/sounds/315918/
https://freesound.org/people/harrybates01/sounds/254364/
https://freesound.org/people/thegreatperson/sounds/210793/
https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/343130/
https://freesound.org/people/mike_stranks/sounds/341604/
https://freesound.org/people/lebcraftlp/sounds/243627/
https://freesound.org/people/parnellij/sounds/74892/
https://freesound.org/people/Parasonya/sounds/394921/
https://freesound.org/people/ryansnook/sounds/110111/

2017-09-06

On discovering one's new doctor is a girl...

There are certain global roles which are more important than run of the mill A-list celebrities and international leaders.

One of these roles was recently reassigned...  That's not the right word, what is it they say? "Appointed?" — No.  "Elected?" — No!  What do they say?  Oh yes...

"Regenerated"


The Doctor is an imaginary hero, and imaginary heroes are singularly important people.

Firstly because they are heroes.  Mere Presidents, Leaders of the Opposition, and Secretary Generals of the UN fade into insignificance beside heroes.  Leaders can only tell you what to do, but a hero can show you who to be.

But imaginary heroes outrank even real heroes because real heroes are only human, and consequently flawed.  It is a pity we're psychologically incapable of accepting that somebody can be a hero and a bastard simultaneously, or even a villain and a very nice guy (1).

But a fictional hero can be superhuman, transhuman, or even not human at all. Furthermore, they can face problems cunningly constructed to parallel awkward moral corners and demonstrate how a suitably progressed nature overcomes all challenges.

So if real heroes show us who who to be, then imaginary heroes give us aspirations for who we would be in the best of all possible worlds.  They show us what things could be like after we've sorted all this irritating mundane crap.

Imaginary heroes give us something to aim for, something in fact, to aim the whole World at (2).

So now The Doctor is going to be a woman and what could be better than that?  You wouldn't want to steer a World ignoring half of the passengers, would you?







On discovering one's new doctor is a girl...


I - which part of
fiction did you not understand?

The writers write and can write what they like:
make him an accountant, make him a fraud;
they could have Ian Chesterton wake up,
in January nineteen sixty four,
and call the whole damn thing a dream, a trip
more psychedelic than extraterrestrial

and the TARDIS only bigger inside his head.


II - which part of
science fiction did you not understand?

I mean, really, have you read the literature?
Forget the tiny part that gets to film,
because Sci-fi is at core about the different

the unusual, the strange. We've had hero robots
hero ghosts, heroes who were nobody,
we've had heroes who were toast

and brought back from the dead, irreligiously.

So a female hero should not be a stretch, especially
as "different", "unusual" and "strange" need not apply.

So perhaps the problem is the other side
of the equation, because Sci-fi is secretly about the day
in which it's written: the doomsday weapon fifties,

the cyberpunk eighties -- you get the idea...
So maybe an effortlessly superior, hyper-intelligent
witty, humane and technologically supported woman

is too close to the knuckle, for the average office drone?
Well get over it.



III - Which part of
alien did you not understand?

It's infeasibly lucky for Time Lord's to have hands
that the slightly vulnerable, yet gutsy, cute
and sometimes awestruck companion can hold.

Bilateral symmetry, being less
than one mile in diameter, a smooth
and spike-free outer skin, non-radioactive

a working temperature below one thousand degrees --
there's none of these we have a right to assume,
but every time we've thrown the dice and looked

at page two-six-four-one-three of the DM's guide
and the regeneration table, we've always rolled
not even a funky Klingon forehead.

You never quibbled at a pair of hearts
why so much trouble with a pair of breasts?


IV - It's not political.

I have heard otherwise well-meaning people say...
Hell yes it is! This is a choice made
before the public gaze. This is us when we say

we do not need the word "heroine". This is
the very best of Dr Who: grandstanding
and soliloquising all the way up to someone else's line

drawn in the sand and, when
the whole room is focussing on her,
rubbing out the line with the toe of one sensible shoe

before stepping across and strolling off
into the future that should already be.



(1) If we understood intellectually that we're all flawed, and therefore did not (for example) expect politicians to keep their trousers on, or policemen to be inhumanly incorruptible, patient, disinterested, perfect observers and the peak of physical fitness then the World would be a happier and simpler place.

(2) Which is why I do not grumble on rare occasions when the somebody needs picking up in the middle of night — it's the closest I can get to materializing in a magical blue box at to save the day...



2017-08-26

What is her mission here on Earth?

This was recently on the front page of Poetry Circle which is a great poetry magazine/forum site with lots of active members and a lot of energy.  A good place to check out...

What it is this about?  Well there's loneliness and isolation, wistful longing for another person...  but I think mostly this is about the awkwardness of adolescence and growing up.  Boy wants girl.  Boy doesn't understand girls.  Boy speculates wildly...

...obviously it works the same for any other combination of genders, and the gender of the protagonist is in fact wholly in the gift of the reader... is in fact a sort of 'everyperson'; a symbol for any or everyone.

One day, maybe, she'll speak to us and everything will change.







What is her mission here on Earth...


...and do I even waste what chance I have
lounging beside my locker, checking-out
the girl from Mars?  Nobody ever saw
her father's car: so maybe she gets dropped
at five a.m. by shuttle-pod somewhere far

beyond the football ground.  She has no clique,
not even in the default group for freaks
and friendless geeks--I know; I've run with them
myself.  How can you stand outside outsiders?
Unless intelligence, so alien

broods silent in one eye?   It sees but does
not do; it won't join in; her hands so thin:
she writes machine-like, awkward and a touch
frustrated, as if  paper with only two
dimensions is so quaint.  She ain't stupid

in maths, she writes the answer first, before
the working out.  And think of Martian sex!
Does she have tentacles...?  Scratch that.  Relax...
Focus on facts.  She's drifted through these halls
for three years now, with always half a smile,

an emissary from mission control;
or maybe robot telepresence rig,
that sort of thing: space-probe or bomb-disposal
mechanism driven by a soul, distant,
the far end of a string that's pulled so tight

out of an empty tin.  I'll ask again:
What is our mission here on Earth?




2017-04-29

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 25th - Antikythera and other mechanisms

Not really following any prompt here, except there was a prompt about "space" which prompted me (sic) to look through my notes for various terms and something I saw there reminded me I intended to write this.

This was all written in two sessions today, with minimal editing, so it's a bit "first draft" please forgive any built-in insanities.

I have used few Greek names and terms, not many.  I initially tried to get authentic ancient words but in the end decided the main thing I needed was two broadly suitable names.

The Antikythera Mechanism is this.  There is a theory that the ship that was wrecked may have been carrying loot from Rhodes to Rome for use in a triumphal parade staged by Julius Caesar.  I tried matching up the dates to see if that works.  It isn't clear it does, but I've incorporated that into the set-up anyway :-)  I've arbitrarily picked the time when Julius was a consul, there's no actual reason to think this true but I had to give him some title...

I do not speak Greek, especially not ancient Greek, so I have no reason to show off with it.  If I did I might have used some epigram such as:

Είναι εύκολο να ακούγεται έξυπνος σε ξένες γλώσσες

(thank you Google Translate).  Obviously I would never do that...




Antikythera, and other mechanisms


Captain Τιμόν(*) views the device

Caesar has ordered strictly, that no one turns
the handle
the technikós(***) Αλέκος(**)
staggers slightly in the swell, his hand upon
the opened cratenobody is to see
events from future time laid out.  The Gods
alone know this by right and the consul shows
due deference and decrees that no-one use
this thing save him.
  Much later when the man
was drunk, the whole crew heard him often boast
he had no choice but frequently to wind
the dials back to a century before
his birth and forward again up to today.
He claimed this as the only way to see
the mechanism hadn't suffered hurt.

(*-Timon; **-Alekos; ***-technician, modern Greek, I needed a plausibly old term but I also needed to imply the modern meaning, so this is a compromise...)


Αλέκος explains the dials

Upon this side are those things of the Earth:
above, progression of the months and years
laid out in spiral form, and more than that:
the festivals and Games at Athens,
Olympia and Rhodes.  Now lower down
another spiral shows eclipses: Sun
and Moon; dancing in the sky.  I'll turn
it round.  This side is for the heavens,
Gods, their wanderings across the night.

The Moon, its place in things, the dark and bright
phases, the motion of the Sun, through houses
of the Zodiac, and far beyond it all

fixed constellations rise and fall, throughout the year.


The sea captain's dream

Captain Τιμόν rests uneasy, his salt
and water blood uncalm, the mechanism
in his hold offers no direct harm, but a man
who's watched the heavens forty years can't
simply
sleep comfortable with ideas of gears
outside the sky.  The calendars that form
his life are woven from much softer things
the winds round certain islands, his son, his wife
and festivals that come because the town
gather; not because some metal pointer pins
them to a dial.  He turns in bed, uneasy.

Part of him knows the wind has changed;
within his dream the same unease: islands that move,
brass spins beneath the waves, a giant hand winding...


Unseasonable

The wind has changed.  The sea grows mad.  The captain
invokes Poseidon beneath his breath and grabs
the steering oar himself.  Beneath the deck
the oarsmen also pray, but Αλέκος
turns from the raging sea and guards instead
the precious crate.  Even technicians pray
but to what spirits, Gods or fates he's kept
his peace
part of the artisan's secrets
but whatever powers they are fail him.  Down
come the sails, and the oarsmen struggle more.  The lea
of any shore might save their skins. 
Τιμόν
tries first for Kythira but as fear grows
turns instead for tiny Aigila(*).  He knows
he's got there only when they hit the rocks.

(* transliteration of ancient name of Antikythera)


The technician's dream

Αλέκος sleeps so soundly when they pull
him from the sea, that all believe he'll die.
They try to keep him warm, burn sage leaves, ply
the fates with secret gestures, muttered words
they've heard the shepherds using for sick lambs.

This is no sheep, nor yet a man: technikós
who holds construction in his hands.  So deep
his charge has drowned, in sleep it takes him down

and he sees, unsurprised, a new dial: sea level
clearly marked.  The needle turns as all grows dark
around it.  In his heightened state he notices
also for the first time another gauge
"πολιτισμός", now well into decline.
He wonders for how long the dark will last,

when everything he knows has passed, how long
before technicians once again will build
machines to map the heavens?  How long until
they pull a lump of metal from the waves?

(* "πολιτισμός" - politismos: civilisation, modern Greek again...)




2017-04-26

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 21st - So, I said

The prompt here was a poem with overheard speech in it.

Sonnet again.  It is my default setting when I do a form.

Interestingly I have known people like this, not diplomats, but who use rudeness as a form of affection, and who even use it to test new acquaintances if anyone takes offence: well you don't want the effort of people that difficult anyway...



So, I said


So I said: you are a diplomat, are you?
Because I had by chance happened to hear
him call the Finish Attaché a weird-
arsed hybrid of a reindeer and a shrew
and he said: I'll tell you, since we have a while.
My brand of statecraft is my very own
and amongst the cognoscenti I'm well known
for slandering my best friends with a smile


and I can never change because all like
me how I am.  I can't be too correct,
except... just sometimes when I want to crack
their composure, well then I need to go icily
polite -- never fails.  I know he'll be a chum
'cos as he went he said I was plain dumb.



2017-04-23

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 20th - Identity Cards

The official prompt for today is a poem using the imagery of a sport or game.

I'm not 100% this one works.  It's not using the imagery so much as the rule structure of a trading card game and as the rules on the cards take effect, the protagonist's life gets changed.

It's yet another one I've had around for a while.  It's been sort of "finished" for a long time but I was never sure whether it needed completely rewriting, e.g. maybe with a different outcome or even a different conceit I have wondered whether the framework could come from a scriptwriter changing things about the events in a drama, rather than a game...  but for the moment it stands as it is.

I would vote for Edward, any day...



Identity Cards


Set-up
deal sixteen Terrain Cards into the city grid.

            The city is warm tonight.


Populate
draw a Neutral Card and place in each Terrain.  As you place each card, perform any special actions.

            The lights are on, and Edward Wu walks tired
            but overall content, through rising dark;
            echoey conversations from just a way
            away, traffic, someone bounces a ball

            against a metal shuttered door; and all
            of this is far enough removed.  There's peace
            in the canal-side market, it's intimate;
            warm summer air, the idea of crushed flowers,

            a hint of rotting food.  Ed loves this mood,
            this end-of-day-and-all-work-done moment
            although the latter's not entirely true
            he has much homework still to do

            the grading on; a weight in his backpack,
            a thought in his mind of kneeling sipping tea
            at Auntie's low down kitchen table, bright
            lamplight circling the paper as he marks.


Dimension Door draw a card, deploy for free in any area you control.

            Moments are moments and suddenly
            happens not in the moment, but half a second later
            when mind wakes up.  Edward's brain acts all surprised;
            lightning punctuates the sky and by the time

            he realises something's up, the dark-
            cloaked figure blocks his way... very tall,
            quite female, dressed Sunday Best Lord of the Rings;
            she seems, behind her furrowed brow, also confused.


The Sorceress
when played, draw three cards.  You may immediately deploy any of these (at usual cost) adjacent to the Sorceress.

            Everything happens at once: a second moon,
            a dragon drifts in front, briefly it rains
            clockwork men...  A wagon of police arrive,
            take turns to shout incomprehensibly

            through bullhorns.  Tasers are brandished; a weirdling mist
            creeps in; there's howling; ultimatums; an angry
            and extended speech nobody understands;
            a mobile incident unit parks; a shout...


They don't know what they do When threatened by a neutral card: you may destroy one artefact, then every player draws two cards from the Random Deck and plays them immediately.

            the haft of a staff slams on the ground.
            How often does a moon fall down?  How frequently
            is your young adult world unmade; remade;
            flayed by shrapnel; the sudden change of life

            or heart.  The world has many moving parts
            and every single one of them hits Eddy
            in just a minute and a half.  It's a kind
            of Armageddon.  A werewolf eats his homework.


Promote Leader move any friendly or neutral card from controlled space into the Palace.  Usual promotion bonuses apply.

            Edward runs the city now: there's more homework.
            It is an indeterminate time later;
            which is the only kind of time he owns
            the clockworkings with which the ticking men

            repaired him in the ruins of the fallen moon
            keep perfect beat but do not feel the moments
            as they fall.  This must be what it is he says
            to be a mountain with a million drops

            of rain upon you every day.  Each drip
            exquisite and unique, but you barely feel

            the river.  You don't know change at all.
  Edward
            keeps the city safe, best as he can.  He keeps

            the mutants in the broken lands. He stamps
            quite carefully but firmly down on crime,
            and once in four years finds its time to tell
            the voters once again.  I am stability,

            he says, I tick.  I am reliable
            as only clockwork minds can be.  A vote

            for me, is a vote against moons falling ever
            again this is my oath: not on my watch.



 

2017-04-21

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 15th - The impossibility of Elspeth Spangler

This one languished for a long time as just the first strophe and the idea of releasing the mice.  However on the train yesterday it got its moment to shine...

Elspeth doesn't shine...  she glows gently if she thinks nobody is looking.

I'm not vegetarian but I like vegetarian food.  And I'm not a cat person, but I'm even less a dog person so I get Elspeth to that extent.



The impossibility of Elspeth Spangler


The woman can't exist.  She does not work
for all hours in the whole-food shop.  She won't
arrive at six to clatter shutters down
and shove the drawer back firmly in the till.
She never checks the racks for misplaced packs
or things that need refill.  She has no chance

encounters with her oldest friend or lunch
outside the vegan café opposite,
and they don't laugh round cauliflower bake
or snort latte at what the teacher said
that day when they freed all the classroom mice
in the unreal childhood many miles ago.

And now she doesn't wander, weary, home,
the day of problems not quite out of mind,
although the ones now gone feel so well done.
There isn’t any hint of rain to damp
her slightly battered funky hat. There’s no
absence of boy or girl back in the flat,

boiling the kettle ready. She doesn’t need
to keep her coat and scarf on while the place
warms through. There is the cat, who adopted her
so many years ago and who awaits
the ceremonial filling of the bowl
as if the World were a real and reliable place.




NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 14th - Haunted

An old unfinished one I dug up and converted to electricity.

Quite by coincidence this (almost) fits of the prompts I saw elsewhere for April 14th: A poem about friendship I think that ever-so-ever-so-long-ago friends are still friends, aren't they?



Haunted


Somebody steps on the creak-board now.
The door is closed, bolt unthrown
when someone treads that selfsame creaking board
so forty years just come undone and blow with my smoke
through the empty window pane.  There was a time

when from that single tread I could have told
exactly which of the three of them
the other three haunts,
the other three-quarters
of the definitive clique
the high school slightly ahead of the curve
but not so geek squad: Becky, Dave or Edward

was stood on that selfsame creaky board
but no more those four decades
will not be put aside. Time goes in a moment
but the moments then remain, elapsed,
forever.

I've always known that I must come again
to haunt this ghost-filled building in the trees
but who in turn is haunting me
what spectre, childhood or young adult,
stands now upon the landing.  Why don't
they push the door?

Time was, we four, came here
to drink and smoke, snog
in various combinations
Dave/Ed is the only one they won’t admit to
and talk about how the World will be
when we’ve drunk from the secret cup

of growing up. And here I am
fast-forward to this moment
forty-odd years and no leagues hence
when all dreams are no more
and how our lives turned out are now well know.
Somebody steps on the creak-board now.
Please do not push the door.




2017-04-17

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 12th - Recital room on the edge of forever

Blatant cheating now, this isn't one I wrote for the occasion, but one I've had half finished in the pile forever.  So I dusted it off and forced it to reach some sort of conclusion.

This describes, pretty non-literally, an actual evening of Elizabethan music that we enjoyed some years ago.  The unlikely characters listed are caricatures of the people in the audience (including myself, guess which...)

The 'king' didn't actually die, but did fall asleep, and the time-machine wasn't visible but you could feel the possibility in the air.



Recital room on the edge of forever


I This is not historically accurate.

The time-machine is off.
The lighting dims.  The audience contains:
one child, adhesive with toffee, snot and cough;
one king, broken as veins in his nose;
one faerie princess, warlike, but with boots off currently;
one sister, handmaiden, or clone;
one disembodied mind, chilling;
and full supporting cast of students, spies,
more musicologists than mind can face, journalists,
and surely an assassin.

 
II Diagram not to scale.

The ensemble assemble and arrive.
They sit, to some applause, the lutenist,
recorder player, countertenor, viol...
as archaic arrangement as ever was desired.
The needle on the time-machine is hard
against the twenty-first century, but now
they start to playThe lutenist perspires.  Flow my Tears,
as Dowland said and maybe they can flow
into some place where Queen Bess isn't dead
so much as lost around some corner neither mind
nor eye can see.  Perhaps we hear a hint,
musically, of a place that time misplaced.


III There is no history.

The King is dead,
the music must move on, journalists
mutter into phones, and recorders:
descant, tenor, piccolo flow smoothly
through musicians' hands.  Everyone
counts strings on the lute.  Students,
spies, and surely the assassin are flown
back to some safer, more-familiar timezone
and the needle on the time-machine
without seeming to have moved
is clear of the end-stop.

2017-01-13

The X Thief's Daughter

Where this comes from is a certain class of book where the title is simply the description of a character.  You get these for children's, young adult and full grown up (tm) books with examples such as The Ink Thief, The Book Thief, The Kite Runner, The Memory Keeper's Daughter etc etc...  However I think The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is a different phenomenon.

These make wonderful titles, capture the imagination and begin the character development right there on the cover...

However, is this style of naming be quite as acceptable to the characters themselves?  Do they get jealous of other characters, who have their actual names in lights on the cover?  Nicholas Nickleby... Anna Karenina... Batman?

And what about the characters whose books are never finished, whose backstories aren't quite completely filled in?









The X Thief's Daughter...

...drinks ice wine in the sub-basement
of the basement club behind the real.
She has nothing to conceal: she says
too many times, as the frost rose blooms within
her chest.  Her eyes grow dark.  Maybe it's best

the fence does not learn more. The X Thief's
Daughter is complex but direct
in shady negotiations. She sees
the world as chances overlayed
on chaos. What is this whole thing for?

There must be more than this
, the normals ask.
So dumb.  "What can I get?"  She asks instead
and peels the false skin from her face.
The X Thief's Daughter knows her place
is nowhere that she's been, or will go.

The X Thief's Daughter is selectively
obscene, but will practice ritual magic
on a  first date.  She gets there late
as a matter of course and has rude words
tattooed, in schoolboy Latin,

in ruder places.  The X Thief's Daughter:
your mother never warned about.
How could she -- so far outside the bell curve
of parental advisory?  She's on
no chart.  The X Thief's Daughter

is all heart, all stomach, all pudenda;
a real but ill-defined character,
discontinuously variable
in every field but gender, and has,
always, that unbound variable

in her back-story -- she has no clue
what was the X her father stole
if any, but this is not a problem;
it's an opportunity.



2016-08-27

Red fish, blue fish...

This one was written from a prompt during NaPoWriMo this year, I forget what the prompt was, put possibly something quite distant from what I actually wrote.

Fish famously have only a three seconds of memorythis is of course untrue.

People famously will all be happy come the revolutionthis is of course untrue.

Goldfish famously possess no revolutionary zealthis is of course...












Red fish, blue fish...


Under the bridge
Under the bridge
Through the weed
Through the weed
Past the buzzing pump
Past the buzzing pump
Into the current
Into the current
Whee!
Whee!
Under the bridge
Under the bridge
Through the... hey!
Through the-- Hey?
Yes.  Hey!
What?
I just now thought, and have you ever thought:
the quality of fishness is the same
in each and every day we play no sport,
make no love, sing no song; we hunt no rhino, tame
no fairy creatures.  We just go round and round
within the same old rut.  I cannot put
my fin on it, but there's something profound
about the World.  We swim with our eyes shut

and do not see.  I heard a joking man:
he asked if we had ever heard the one
about the two fish in the tank, where neither
one could drive the great machine.  They had no plan,
you see?  So if our chance should ever come...
let's seize the day.  I'll captain, you're the driver.
This again?
It has to be said.  Solidarity brother!
Anyway...
Past the buzzing pump
Past the buzzing pump
Into the current
Into the current
Whee!
Whee!
Under the bridge...



2016-07-30

Transactional

These are the terms of the contract, they get:
  • the money
  • the adoration, power, glory, stalker
  • the celebrity lifestyle, drugs, divorce
  • more money
  • the early, tragic death
and we get:
  • the new series, roughly once a year
  • the box set
  • the posters, action figures, spin-off novels
  • t-shirts
  • to pay for all of the above
...and pretty much the same thing applies to pop and film stars.  Who's to say who's getting the better deal?








Transactional

What then, of folk like me, a touch
aloof in uncool sweaters.  If you knew me better
or us, as I should say, I'm not aloneperhaps you'd like
the way we stir our coffee, too intent;
or fail to clearly speak and consequent
from that...  we give ourselves away.

What then, of how we misplace all our lives
to long-run TV drama shows?  What time
are you on?  Why are you out-of-sequence
this episode's from Season One, when Joe
was not yet dead, and Lisa not yet gay.
You seemed happier then, so you also

have given yourself away?  Oh let me take
you hand in mitten, and let me buy you coffee,
from the van beneath the CCTV.  I watch
your eyes behind the steam?  Sometimes I dream
of one like you, tight-sweater ghost from a past
your writers don't provide.  And you dream too,

perhaps, of lives like mine, or ours
as really I should say.  Ambiguous, we are;
not telegraphed with what to feel; not healing,
albeit imperfectly, between one story
and the next; not sent the text by courier
before each scene begins; we arebeyond all else

not the one half-dressed upon the poster
whom wenot so aloof nowreturn to
through moments in our desperate night. We treat
it as our right, and maybe that is fair
you are repaid so many ways, and I'm always
your loyal customer, when you give yourself away.

2016-05-13

Acquaintance

Uriah Heap who, had he known
Mr Jethencorp, would not have presumed
upon the acquaintance.
Charles Dickens knew a thing or two!

And the principle things he knew about were:
  1. Characters
  2. Serialising a story into handy sized parts
  3. Ending parts on a cliffhanger
    (A technique later used to great effect in Flash Gordon...)

None of which means I'm not prepared to mock a little...



(The sound quality here maybe isn't quite up to the usual standard.  Please remember that a shoestring would actually represent a 300% increase in my recording budget...)







Acquaintance

My dear Mr Jethencorp, may I express delight?
How wonderful it is, that you are here tonight
and I wonder, friend, if I could prevail
upon the strength of long acquaintance
for a pint of ale?

...

Say no more, Mr Jethencorp, I would not desire
to make you uncomfortable, glum or perspire
with any hint of awkwardness or strain.
If you cannot spare the money --
no need to explain.

...

Why yes, Mr Jethencorp, I understand your claim
that in truth "Jethencorp" is no part of your name
but our friendship, possessed of such perfection,
I had to construct some term of affection
for all I have known you just a little time.

...

As little as a minute? Yet I have such respect
I quite failed to notice my great neglect
in asking your name. So "Jethencorp"
I coined for you which somehow expressed
the complex emotions inside my chest

in deference I leave the exact pronunciation to you.
And now, I regret, I must bid you adieu
and wander along to see what I can do
for the price of- but ah!
Who do I see at the end of the bar?

A man, he looks quite well-to-do...
Why? It's dear Mr Scratsenfrew,
allow me to introduce you...



2016-04-16

The police in different voices

He Do the Police in Different Voices was T. S. Eliot's working title for The Wasteland.  Eliot was quoting Dickens:

...Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.

The idea for this poem sprang to me fully formed one day.  The idea being to take a narrative, such as might feature in a detective or police procedural genre novel, and tell it using different characters to provide the different voices.

I'm not sure whether the idea of using historical characters was there from the beginning...  I think so, because I started looking for a suitable philosopher very soon.  When I hit on Heidegger, who was infamously sympathetic to the Nazis, then that gave me the fully formed idea of using European historical characters who lived through WWII.

Magritte lived in occupied Belgium.  Stanley Unwin was a Morse code operator at the BBC.  Marcel Marceau (Marcel Mangel) was a hero of the French Resistance and claimed to have first developed his miming as a way of keeping children quiet while smuggling refugees.

Unwinese is a marvellously expressive language (marvespress languicity uply grail) and I recommend its study to all those who are truly serious about linguistics.








The police in different voice



DS Martin Heidegger

Must crime imply a criminal?
is what we need to know.
Let us consider evidence,
the crime, the criminal,
and the theory of the crime
as separate ontological domains.

Let us bag the remains
and also these fragile fragments
from the floor.

The body is being dead,
the knife is being on the ground,
the fragments have a quality of brokenness...

...however, I shall show
that evidence is not fact,
fact not real,
and reality is not "Being"
in any sense I can relate to
and also the witness may have lied.

DI Rene Magritte

Ordinary objects in extraordinary light:
some object did not hang, unsupported,
and when it hit the ground it broke

why?  Did the victim or the assailant smoke?
And if so how?  We may believe what we perceive
paints a picture of what took place
but this image is treacherous
as any other, and these fragments
are not a pipe.

DCI Marcel Marceau

(Because the Chief Inspector is a man of actions
more than words, his statement will be read
by the renowned criminologist,
Professor Stanley Unwin.)

Observe the chiefspector looksee the crimescenery
and glassnify large-up the tiny bits
the sergeant found. Indeed not a pipesmokey
but a woodflute! Commency source
this crime outside the buskstreet. Where

nothing for but bravely clamber the roadlength as the wind
puff to blow him back the way he first strole in
and at the finial end bang slap
straight into the suspicial stranger
lurking the other way.

But what now?  Oh no!  The criminole
somehow identitheive the chiefspector
and he's carriage of misjustice slap bangy locked up
trying to find his way out of the invisicube
for thirty years without parade.



2016-03-21

The girl who...

As you may know, I'm something of a fan of Nordic Noire dramas.

Not an fanatical fan.  I'm not the type who can obsesses about a TV series (for the purposes of this discussion, Dr Who isn't a TV series, it's a religion...)  However I do check new Nordic Noire series out when they appear, just to see whether I'm going to enjoy them.

One of the frequent features of these series is strong, eccentric female leads, and this is where this particular poem stems from.  At the time of writing, I was thinking most about Saga Norén from The Bridge (which was on at the time).  However the direct references in the text are to Lisbeth Salander, the original Girl Who... (the films don't 100% do her justice: read the books.)

These are very different characters in several ways, but the big thing they have in common is minds found some way out on the autistic spectrum...  which is another place this poem is coming from.  I often relate strongly to autistic characters.

What else...?  (1) This is skirting the edge of being a sonnet...  (2) Remind me sometime to rattle on about "normal" human psychology and the various spectra within which we are all so carefully positioned.









The girl who...


tattoos dragons, kicks hornets etc and stands
in the half-furnished apartment smoking/staring
through the picture window while the world
fades monotonically into twilight and snow
takes the evidence. Somebody calls and she grunts,
eyes, hand and cigarette unmoving. Feel the cold as if
we were close, as if there were a closeness here.
We brush a hair from her temple, and click:
the side of her head opens to reveal the steel
wheels spinning and a quiet persuasive hum. Come
back to the front, see the eye, see the smile not for kissing
the face not wholly numb, and rapid-fire summations
of an intellect that takes no prisoners, sees no need,
but speaks: put the body-parts on ice for morning.




2016-01-17

The man who ate the world

I found another poem that was inspired by David Bowie.  This time directly, as I wrote it while listening to The Man Who Sold the World on repeat play.

As a poem, at the time, I never quite felt that it worked.  It needed something more than I had been able to put into it...

...and so it languished.  Until last week's sad news set me off on an extended session of listening to David, which necessarily included TMWSTW, and that lead me back here: to, re-read this.

And it has a lot going for it.  It needed some tightening, tuning, polishing; and it's not perfect of course.  There's a visible weld down the middle.

However, all-in-all this is as good as it's going to get, and if there is a time for this one, the time is now.








The man who ate the world

He eats.

He eats prawns, brawn, surf and turf
and lawn, and tiny-little handmade hors d'oeuvres
in fistfuls of a dozen.

It is Zen, a total focus, a mathematician's
locus of a point which moves
from plate to mouth. There's nothing else
of which he is aware.

He inhabits his moments with relish
especially in the topological sense: a manifold
whose destiny is to wrap itself round lobsters,
as many plates of fries, seasonal vegetables,
toast-and-pâté arrangements as it possibly can.

Bought his first café at twenty-one
soon angled on owning the pub next door.
The club was an obvious move;
had to take out a mobster or two
to get the hotel OK a whole chain.

Then it made sense to own his suppliers,
and the logistics people were for hire
and then sale.

It's a long walk, from talk of serving scampi
in a small town, to wheeling deals in front of
and behindentire governments
but he got here.

And still he eats:
genocide by chocolate, wonton soup,
coffee liquors, the cheeseboard,
a smorgasbord of goujons
and don't spare the ribs.

This is his way:
conspicuous consumption, the working luncheon,
in places appointed for filling faces, and he's the big man,
the master of this race: the suited, the college recruited,
plutocrats, the freshly commuted; all round and shiny
little parasites, who cling limpet-like
to unreliable accounts at anyone's expense

until today
when one of them mentioned
a small South-American country
that's up for sale.