Enough already.

Hey let's get away from the idea that this has failed miserably - which it has! Let's just say that I have learned something from the experience and move on.

I still intend to write as much poetry as I can but the novel must be my focus until July. I have scheduled in 500 words writing a day until then, when I calculate I will have a passable first draft.

So all good still writing, and actually a first line did come to me today while I was washing up. My usual means of achieving inspiration!

Here is it: the meaning is slightly cloaked but I wanted to try and capture that elusive thing that keeps us alive and in love when our relationships are not so good. I may come back and edit it a little after the school run. Until then enjoy its virgin state.

That Thing

That thing you gave me yesterday – it

shines and sparkles still. Star-like in our

cloudy skies, an item in the night to

cling to when my love flies

away to exercise her wings.

I’ve placed it on a dusty shelf so I

can see it when we rage. And when we

say what we do not mean it glitters

enticingly and I know that the anger

will flitter away.

For that thing is wedded to my skin – it

holds what we’re about. And I know –

I know that even when not on shelf and

show, when my love is so far to not

be seen – it sparkles.

Day 231

This one just came to me as I made myself a milky coffee this afternoon. An act which is forever married with the comfort of my mum when I was ill.


Council House Coffee

Pour me silkily into
copper pan - see as I
rise up in honour of
her. Smell me slightly
burned where I lingered a
fraction too long.
Pour me into instant
granules - sugary sweet,
blistering heat. Then wait
until the skin slides
over taut and tight.
Pursed lips - caught in
concern whisper still:
'Drink up and
all will be well.'

Day 215

I'm back. And I need to slip back into this poetry mode easily I feel. So just a short one today. An announcement to make too - i've been accepted on a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Exeter University and I'm so psyched about it - as most of you will know who are my friends on Facebook.

It's such a big deal for me because more than anything I want to call myself a writer. I want to write novels (I am writing a novel!) but without the confidence, contacts and technique that a course like this will give me, it is hard to imagine it ever happening for real. To see my book on a Waterstones stand is a dream.

I had to send them some examples of my writing which included 6 poems from this blog. So I guess that if I hadn't been writing this I may not have got on the programme. I also sent them a short story and the first chapter of the aforementioned novel. I guess it did the trick. Anyhow this is a little poem about dipping your toe in again.



Wild Swimming

Airdried and
warmed by summer sun -
the urge to stay that way
overwhelming. But
without the plunge
without the dive
into dark waters again -
We are nothing.

Day 101

Room 101

A bit like room 101, I have faced the worst of myself today to write this. It had to be done and it is honest as it can be seeing as I am a vain fool.

It's about the last few days before we left my dying grandmother to head west to Canada. It's not cheery, I'll promise you that!



Room 101

The betrayal smelled like
the boiled cabbage in that
crusty-cornered room. For the
first time in weeks as lucid as
lime she smiled her love through
dentured jaws. And I thought
there and then - if she could
she would return, such was the strength
of that love.

The boys, blond as the
sun, bursting with the promise
of this new life scrambled up
her frail form to kiss her, as she
held tight to life like
a full-bloomed rose clings
to its petals. The mantra of
my own justification issuing from
her lying lips.

"You must live your own lives" caught
in the swirl of the fan and spat back into
that stifling space - to hang in the
air like a plastic halloween
spectre. Gruesome in its plain
simple truth. The silent words "you need
to stay" rebounding off my
selfish spirit as she reassured me
she was okay.

Day Ninety-four

Romantic

I thought I would try my hand at a bit of romantic poetry today and use a technique that I'm sure is not called the 'repeat the first line again and again' technique, but here it is anyway.


We Are Not Romantic

We are not romantic but when
I fall you carry me; putting
your life on hold to
lift me higher.

We are not romantic but you
laid your velvet traveling cloak posh-side
down in the mire so I would not get
my best shoes wet.

We are not romantic but you
come to my bed with
a ready embrace and a smile
meant only for me.

We are not romantic but when
I hear a love song
on the radio
I think of you.

And on the day we married
you shone brighter to me
than the sun.

Day Seventy-eight

A walk in the country

I am a fantasist - no doubt. Aren't all writers? And I love to pretend to be other people when I'm walking, or driving, or well, anything really. Today I pretended I was a Jane Austen heroine - nothing unusual in that is there? ;-)


Three miles to Netherfield

I was Elizabeth Bennet today except
I crouched to pee in a bush - and
I'm pretty sure she
never did that. And I
had a short skirt on and
my new pair of jeans and my hair hadn't
been coiffured by a maid.

Or maybe Lizzy did and dear Jane
omitted to say how she
unbuttoned her
bloomers and squatted in an
unladylike sprawl. It was after all
three miles at least to
Netherfield Hall.

But I was still her as I traipsed
ancient paths and
jumped age-old streams.
Sun flickering
across fields half smothered by
cloud. And the pheasants
were making a hell of a row.

Day Seventy-five

I'm back!

It's been an amazingly busy couple of weeks and poetry has had to take a back seat. I've not enjoyed not writing. It's been awful having lines and fragments of phrases launch themselves into my mind and not be able to do anything about it. I suppose I should have been taking notes; or freewriting; or at least writing something down, but my head space being in moving house mode has been in another world. So there you go - my excuse!

On the night we actually moved in to our new house. I won't say home because at that point it didn't feel like one. Both Matt and I had a similar feeling and this poem is an attempt to catch it.


Moving on

Arriving alive in that space
between worlds. Primordial,
primitive cave.

Such was that place - that gap
between lines
laid bare
on a big empty page.

It was cold - crammed
into that airless hole. So we lit
a fear-melting fire.

And the blackness outside
felt further away.

And the warmth in our bones held it at bay.